Quote:
Originally Posted by mhays
Space travel and surgery require science. Aesthetics is art, and purely subjective.
Most forms of art are great opportunities for the artists to go nuts and do their own thing, because you can either look/hear/buy them or not, your choice. And naturally some people like avante garde art, but most don't pay much attention or actively dislike some or all of it. They certainly remain choosy about what's on their walls.
Architecture is the environment everyone has to live in, or walk past. We can't opt in or out, except for buildings we personally pay for. So architecture should be subject to the opinions of the public.
Would you tell a hair stylist to use their expertise and do what they want? Of course not. You'd tell them how you want it, despite your total lack of schooling on the subject. Despite being just some rube that has to live with the hair they create.
You can argue that you're paying for the hair while most people aren't paying for the buildings they walk past. But then you'd be giving in to uncontrolled capitalism, the dollar is king, and so on. Architectural theory doesn't tend to jibe with that concept.
Arguing with architects is generally pointless. But we're progressing. Many architects are finally beyond their myopia about what the public likes, and have now fallen back and retrenched at "the public is wrong".
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The subjectiveness and aesthetics of art or architecture are completely irrelevant to both practices. As stated earlier, there is so much more to architecture than aesthetics and there is so much more to art as well. Generally, people like and dislike art for irrelevant ("the wrong") reasons. This is not elitist, it is a fact of life. Just because anyone can look at art and comprehend it on some level does not mean they have any credibility on the subject. Architects spend seven years in school. Many people study art for their entire lives. No member of the general public could have ever accomplished what Mies Van Der Rohe, Mondrian, Monet, Picasso, Warhal, or anyone else of such calibre. For example, I'm sure many people today question why Mondrian's work hangs in galleries. "It is so simple. My kid could to that." On the contrary. Works such as Tableau 2 were created during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and represent a brand new way of looking at and seeing the world. Artists shine new light on the world; they allow us to see differently. People have to realise when they are out of their league in the comments they make. As an architecture student, I realise that when I speak with instructors, they are thinking on a much higher level than I. It's just the nature of a culturally refined society.
Mies Van Der Rohe's work, along with many of the leaders of Modernism (Gropious, Corbusier, Reitveld, Paxton et al.) created a new, simplified expression representative of a new era. One of the reasons we have such a large collection of poor architecture today is because of people who thought they understood Modernism copied its surface qualities (pun intended). They did not take the underlying value and significance of early modernist work. People need to understand before they engage.
This has nothing to do with a preference for Modernism. It has everything to do with respecting each artistic movement for its underlying values.
Your comment about hairstylists is completely irrelevant. They are hair stylists, not artists. And I'm sure the hair stylists that are artists don't take orders from their unknowing clients. These would be the people who style the hair of runway models and the like.
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