Die Form: Zeitschrift für gestaltende Arbeit (5.1930)

sonality of the designer: a tradition is already in
existence.

But the problem of design does not end in the
studio and the factory. It is piain that the victory
which has been achieved in architecture by Wright,
Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, and
which has been the product of a hundred almost
anonymous designers in the industrial arts, has not
yet been Consolidated in society. Modern industrial
design is based on the principle of conspicuous
economy. Unfortunately, the bourgeois culture which
dominates the Western World is founded, as our
American economist, Thorstein Veblen described in
his classic "Theory of the Leisure Class," on the
principle of conspicuous waste. The aim of the
arts, in this society, is not essentially to serve and
enrich life, but to establish the pecuniary position
of the patron. This aim is widespread: it is as notor-
ious in the home of the most humble manual worker,
who feels that lace curtains are "respectable," as
it is on Park Avenue. In fact, a good part of what is
called beauty in this society consists of objects
which show, at first glance, their costly and luxur-
ious character. The old-fashioned house was a
species of private museum; and one of the chief
occupations of the housewife was that of curator.
If the poorer member of our society cannot achieve
this kind of "beauty" at first hand, he demands
it in some cheaper reproduction or caricature: in
America dyed catskin takes the place of ermine;
and debased rococo furniture, built out of poorly
seasoned wood and carved by the machine,
simulates the luxury of the Renaissance.

Now the best industrial designs of today psycho-
logically contradict the Standards of this society.
They are cheap; they are common: they fulfill their
peculiar function; whereas, to satisfy the canons
of conspicuous waste, an industrial design should
look expensive, should seem unique, and besides
performing more or less its essential function should
increase the sense of power and self-importance
of the owner. This confronts us with a real dilemma.
Whatever the politics of a country may be, the
machine is a communist! The whole social life and
ritual of Western European countries, on the con-
trary, is built on gradations of financial caste and
status; and the business of the industrial and
decorative arts in the past has been to label grace-
fully these social distinctions. Incidentally, these
arts have offen achieved beauty of form, as inciden-
tally they may also have performed certain functions:
but a large animus behind these arts was show.

The machine has revolutionized this condition. By
its aid, we now have at our command a störe of
power which, if properly used, will do away with
industrial slavery and create, for every member of
the community, an equal share in the essentials of
life. The esthetics that goes with this System of
production is necessarily different from that which
fitted a purely handicraft regime: unless this esthe-
tics is formulated and generally applied, the machine
will have no rational and effective ends. In this new
economy, there is still a place for individuality, for
that is a constant attribute of a developed human
Personality; and I am far from looking forward to a
time when, as Mr. Buckminster Füller thinks, the
whole world will live in his Standard Dymaxion

house, built on exactly the same design in Brooklyn
as in Bombay. Nor do I think that standardization is
tolerable without a considerable freedom of choice
between Standard patterns, and without a flexibility
in production which will permit the free creation of
new patterns. (The costly standardization of the
Model T Ford is a warning, not a happy example!)
But the individuality which can be achieved by
machine design has precious little to do with social
status and financial success. Hence, to put the
problem in another way: What place is there in
contemporary bourgeois society for our best and
most typical industrial art?

The answer is that there is very little place.
Before modern industrial design can conquer every
department of life we shall have to change our
Standards and attitudes. Industrial design has
improved most swiftly in departments of the
household, like the kitchen, where practical func-
tions must be performed, and in the construction of
cheap workers' houses, where the demands of
economy were uppermost, whether the worker him-
self vas pleased with this fact or not. With these
two exceptions, the best modern designs, such as
those of Djo Bourgeois, have been executed for
that handful of the elite, produced even by bour-
geois society, who have oriented themselves deliber-
ately to the modern world, and who have sought to
eliminate in their personal lives the vestiges of a
more sordid culture, bound by an undue respect for
property, financial status, and the things that money
can buy.

Our modern industrial esthetics, then, requires for
its success an ethical reorientation to life, and a
corresponding change in many venerable habits and
institutions. We can enjoy these new forms to the
füll only when we no longer ask them to satisfy
irrelevant interests: the impulse to display oneself,
the impulse to dominate one's fellows, the impulse
to demand homage, not for what one i s , but for
what one has. For the lack of such a spiritual con-
version, a good part of modern industrial art is so
only in name, and in the fact that its eccentric
forms and its extravagant gestures have no direct
precedent in the art of Baroque or Medieval times.
"Modernist" art, though it superficially may take
its cue from machine forms and may cling to
abstract geometrical patterns, satisfies none of the
real conditions of good machine form: it is a luxury
art, and the fact that it may be produced by the
machine is only an unimportant accident.

If we cannot root out snobbery and caste-asser-
tion, we should find some less offensive outlet for
them than that which they now have in the industrial
arts. For we stand, perhaps, on the threshold of a
new age, and unless we understand the machine and
use it to aid in the creation of appropriate Standards
and modes of life, we will be debased by it. Stand-
ardization at a high level will give us freedom and
new opportunities for cultural expression. Stand-
ardization at a low level, with luxury and sensuous
display as its main aim, will give us a culture even
lower than that of the Carthaginians, for it will
endow a vast servile population with the vices of
its masters. Modern industrial design presents a
sharp alternative. The road branches: we must
make a choice.

324