DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.69711#0087
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craft as well. Art in its greatest period has always entered
into the very marrow of the bone of civilization, into every
part of life. The people demanded that while they were
going about their daily tasks, their spirits should be fed
through the eye, through the beauty which existed in line
and proportion in their implements of work. We see how
Michelangelo was not above using his talents for the iron
window-gratings of Florence, for he lived at a time when
people saw and recognized art wherever expressed.
It was with the introduction of machinery in 1834 that
this attitude towards art began to be lost. Machinery
brought to the fore the utilitarian point of view and man’s
chief concern thereafter became quantity, not quality. We
glibly say that machinery has revolutionized the world,
without stopping to consider what we mean by that. Are
we sufficiently honest to face how it has roused our greed
for money? Through our greed we have let machinery
control us, instead of controlling and assimilating its new
aspects sufficiently to become the true masters. Until we
rise above our greed for money and once more recognize
the importance of art as a part of our daily life, art and
its gentle influence of refining will vanish more and more
from among the Western people. We complain of the
brutality of the working people, forgetting that it was we
who have made them brutal, when we took beauty away
from them and in its place gave them ugly utensils, ugly
implements with which to work. The time will come when
we will recognize our blunder. Then machinery will be
used to produce just as beautiful things as were made by
hand in former years. Our artists will then be called upon
to create the models for our machinery to copy.
All craftsmen in olden times were not artists. The chief
work has always been done by the few, whose designs were
copied by the many, whose fancy they pleased. The dif-
ference between former times and the present lies chiefly in
the uninterrupted break which the public had in seeing the
69
craft as well. Art in its greatest period has always entered
into the very marrow of the bone of civilization, into every
part of life. The people demanded that while they were
going about their daily tasks, their spirits should be fed
through the eye, through the beauty which existed in line
and proportion in their implements of work. We see how
Michelangelo was not above using his talents for the iron
window-gratings of Florence, for he lived at a time when
people saw and recognized art wherever expressed.
It was with the introduction of machinery in 1834 that
this attitude towards art began to be lost. Machinery
brought to the fore the utilitarian point of view and man’s
chief concern thereafter became quantity, not quality. We
glibly say that machinery has revolutionized the world,
without stopping to consider what we mean by that. Are
we sufficiently honest to face how it has roused our greed
for money? Through our greed we have let machinery
control us, instead of controlling and assimilating its new
aspects sufficiently to become the true masters. Until we
rise above our greed for money and once more recognize
the importance of art as a part of our daily life, art and
its gentle influence of refining will vanish more and more
from among the Western people. We complain of the
brutality of the working people, forgetting that it was we
who have made them brutal, when we took beauty away
from them and in its place gave them ugly utensils, ugly
implements with which to work. The time will come when
we will recognize our blunder. Then machinery will be
used to produce just as beautiful things as were made by
hand in former years. Our artists will then be called upon
to create the models for our machinery to copy.
All craftsmen in olden times were not artists. The chief
work has always been done by the few, whose designs were
copied by the many, whose fancy they pleased. The dif-
ference between former times and the present lies chiefly in
the uninterrupted break which the public had in seeing the