I recently came across the following passage from the architect Ralph Adams Cram’s commencement address at the Yale School of Fine Arts (as it was then called), published in The Ministry of Art (1914):
The artist is bound and controlled by the laws of his art, but doubly is he bound by his duty to society. If he is prohibited — as he is under penalty of aesthetic damnation — from denying beauty or contenting himself with expedients, or sacrificing any jot or tittle of the integrity of his art to fashion, or vulgarity, or the lust of evil things, still more is he bound to mankind by the law of noblesse oblige, and by the fear of God, to use his art only for the highest ends, to proclaim only the vision of perfection, to cleave only to the revelation of heavenly things.
The architect who abandons himself to the creation of ugliness, however academic may be its cachet; the painter who “paints what he sees” or makes his art the ministry of lust; the sculptor who regards the form and sees nothing of the substance; the poet who glorifies the hideous shape of atheism, or the grossness of the accidents of life; the musician who exalts the morbid and the horrible; the maker of ceremonials who assembles depraved arts in a vain simulacrum of ancient and noble liturgies, — these are but traitors to man and God, and however competent their craft, they are enemies of the people, and to them should be meted the condemnation of their kind.
Those unfamiliar with Cram (whose polemics, he tells us, were delivered with a twinkle in his eye) might consult Matthew Alderman’s fine reflection, or better yet, walk into St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York and gaze at what the exacting standards expressed above could actually accomplish.
He was America’s John Ruskin. But our Ruskin could build.
August 26th, 2010 | 5:27 pm
Well, at least we can all sleep soundly knowing this jerk is long dead. Good architect or not, he certainly sounds like a holier-than-thou waste of life.
August 26th, 2010 | 8:41 pm
Jason, let me guess. You’re 16, and you just finished reading The God Delusion.
August 26th, 2010 | 8:52 pm
Thank you, Jason. I think you said what we were all thinking. The absolute last thing we need more of in this world is architects who design buildings out of some misguided sense of “duty” to “other people” or to “God.” Seriously, First Things, I expect a more Progressive viewpoint here.
August 26th, 2010 | 9:49 pm
Yes, Jason, and what enduring works of art has your own worldview inspired you to build?
August 26th, 2010 | 10:56 pm
A portion of the Anglican Breviary was dedicated to Cram. He is described as “Architect. Churchman. Philosopher…. [He] taught a generation of Americans the dignity of worship.” Requiescat in pacem.
Didn’t FT run a review of _The Architecture of Ralph Adams Cram and His Office_ by Ethan Anthony about 4 years ago? I (and, if I remember it correctly, the FT author) recommend the book for those who can’t see Cram’s work in person.
August 26th, 2010 | 11:01 pm
The review of the book on Cram can be found here.
August 26th, 2010 | 11:09 pm
If you’re not a subscriber (and you should be!) you’ll have to settle for mine:
http://www.somareview.com/a-spiringtogod.cfm
August 27th, 2010 | 7:08 am
This mans views of art are remarkably similar to those of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and the Alphas in charge of Brave new World. Go to the wikipedia article “degenerate art” to see what I am talking about.
August 27th, 2010 | 9:14 am
Understanding Ralph Adams Cram requires the reader to possess a vocabulary and frame of reference that, in the first place, conceives of higher and lower things and, in the second place, is able to conceive of human beings as architects of culture – as “acting persons” who shape inner and outer realities; who have this power as part of their human heritage. Those who choose to observe and present what we do and not what we might do, using the arts as their vehicle, are, of course, free to continue their work.
August 27th, 2010 | 9:37 am
Nice to see you here on First Thoughts, Matt.
August 27th, 2010 | 12:28 pm
Yes, clearly, a belief that some things are genuinely good and other things are genuinely bad makes you like Hitler, Stalin, and fictional symbolic embodiments of tyranny.
Probably liking butter on your toast does, too.
August 27th, 2010 | 2:50 pm
Godwin’s Law!!!
August 27th, 2010 | 4:35 pm
Thank you, Mr. Mills.
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