Chapter 12
Patrons of Art: Death And Life
2Granted that the foregoing teleological theorem of the cause and process of genius articulation is acceptable for understanding what Einstein mean by man’s ‘‘doings’’ being motivated by either fear or longing; granted that genius is responsible for the progressive inventions by man; and granted that the genius, like all others, has to eat (economics), it becomes of interest, in a study of the vital motifs and trends underlying man’s history to trace the patronage of the artist throughout the historical ages of our particular civilization. In other words, who actually accredited genius with the bread, butter, shelter, and clothing, without which he could not have existed, and, consequently, could not have provided man with the means of progressively conquering his environment?
3 The first great patron of art, in its earliest days, was DEATH. The King or Pharaoh, for whom life expectancy was short (20 years) and who belonged in the fear-dominated group, patronized the artist and artisan out of fear of death. He patronized the artist in order that he might be enshrined after-death and provided with the appurtenances necessary for ‘‘after-death’’ life. Precious stones, gold and other objects, seemingly eternal from a practical service viewpoint, were garnered and entombed for the eternally long period of ‘‘after-death.’’ In short, there was a complete animate enslavement to a single absolute, inanimate monarch,—DEATH.
4 Subsequently, when the static populace center of the Pharaohs was invaded by roving monarchs and their hordes, the situation changed. The roving monarchs, in consequence of having constantly
5 to adjust themselves to the conditions of an ever-changing habitat, were competent, intelligent fighters, and, being mobile, were easily victorious over the static Pharaohs and their huddling subjects.
6 The new monarchs were concerned—by proclivity and of necessity—with LIVING problems. Said they to genius, as his new patron, ‘‘Aggrandize me in your art. Show how great are my LIVING deeds!’’
7 Thus LIFE—though not yet popular-life—supplanted Death in becoming the patron of the artist.
8 Next came the prophet and philosopher era—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Socrates, Archimedes, Jesus Christ, Mahomet, and others—mindover-matterists whose rationalization wrought greater ‘‘miracles’’ than had the influence of the matter-over-mindist or ‘‘bully’’ type of leader. Some were personal mind-over-matterists or dramatists: the prophets; others were abstract and impersonal: the scientific philosophers.
9 Common to both mind-over-matter types, personal or impersonal, was the assumption of the attitude that progression by intellectual selective-compositional growth is superior to progression by material erosion, cleavage, survival, albeit progression by one or the other means is inevitable.
10 Progress we must, progression being expansion toward ephemeralization, though the way is dual. It is precisely in this matter of arbitrary choice of the ‘‘high road or low road’’ to the same destination that the only demonstration of ‘‘free will’’ is discoverable. The early philosophers chose the ‘‘growth’’ way instead of the course of sheer ‘‘survival,’’ for in ‘‘growth’’ man does a majority of the selecting.
11 Wheat was selectively segregated from chaff by these philosophers, but they did not burn the chaff as had the bully-leaders; some was held over for further selective compositional use,—a ‘‘place for everything’’ in the ‘‘we run it’’ scheme. These were the early scientists. Democritus (400 B.C.), the widely traveled, ‘‘laughing philosopher,’’ evolved the atomic theory.
12 ‘‘Nothing is created out of the non-existent,’’ he said, ‘‘or is destroyed into the non-existent.’’
13 As a group, they were early efficiency men, theoretical technologists, which made it possible for them to segregate abstract forces from substance experience. They mentally segregated the sad from the wind instead of continuing, paganly, to ascribe the phenomenon of ‘‘sailing’’ to the mysterious action of a non-rationalized God existent in the sail.
14 The expansion of rational segregation eventually led, by necessity, to the development of an abstract mathematics capable of expressing ‘‘progression,’’ which might also be teleologically re-applied to fields of expression other than that of the original progression observed. The results seemed little less than miraculous.
15 When, within recent memory, Watt observed the expansive energy of steam in a kettle on the stove, instead of allowing this mist of the devil to go to the devil, he rationalized the phenomenon so effectively that all factors were included with scientific adequacy wherefore he succeeded logically in harnessing the steam to propel an engine. If one realizes the advanced stages of mathematical computation which Watt had necessity of employing at the central point between observation and articulation, and the long areaway traversed by the prophet and philosopher, which mathematics at that stage represented, one pauses appalled before the distance covered by mind-over-matterists from those B.C. days down to our modern period, ushered in by Watt. One marvels even more at the contributions of the Greek philosophers, in view of their isolation as shown on the charts included in this book,—an isolation marked by a 2000-year gap prior to their occurrence, and a 1000-year gap subsequently thereto.
16 The prosaic, impersonal, scientist-philosophers held a philosophic attitude identical with that of Jesus Christ and the other prophets, but parted company with the latter in the manner of articulation of mind-over-mattering.
17 Christ’s articulation was confined to the limits of Aryan-Hindu Yogiism, in which mind had developed to such a complete control of the individual body as to be able to make it impervious to elemental exposure and which could levitate, transport, kill, or keep it in a state of suspended animation. But all these Yogi abilities had a mutual limitation. They remained a personalized art. The power gained by one could be practiced upon but not transferred to others. It is true that a technique for the acquisition of the power could be recited, but its adaptation was a matter of individual ability; ‘‘going the long road,’’ as they called it. The attainment of this ability required years of exercise in mental self-control through physical relaxation and mental concentration to the point of exquisite utilization of energy.
18 Since Yogi is a personalized art, the art dies with the person. The abstract power involved remains as real and true, always, but it cannot be made utilizable in increasing continuity for the world in general. Christ and his counterparts realized this and were unique in their refusal to apply this power to self ends. It was this personal limitation of the Yogi art which led the prosaic philosophers to search further. They sought a means of limitless articulation.
19 The Pythagorean type of philosopher, evolving observations of potential laws of radiation, and the Democritus type, evolving observations of potential atomic laws, jointly evolved a geometry for their own objective mental guidance. To certify this rationalization, they further deduced trigonometry, an objectified measuring means in which the certain relationships of the angles of triangles formed by abstract straight lines became understandable and utilizable.
20 This art was a step beyond demonstrating truth by means of an abstract flexed or tensed straight line. It realized that angles are the abstract ‘‘space’’between radial lines, and that the latter are ‘‘representative’’ only. The abstract angle can be numerically dissected without possibility of error in terms of parts of a finite whole, the circle, whereas the terminals of a ‘‘straight’’ line are but arbitrary parts of an infinite whole.
21 Thence evolved a mathematics based on the proportion of reciprocal forces, complements, and functions of a mobile, non-static, TIME-world. Thus the scientist-philosopher-artist, by the teleologic mechanism of mathematics which contains in its infinite ramifications all the secrets personally contacted by the knowledge of Yogi, made possible continuity of the expression of truth beyond the ‘‘great wall’’ of the body and of personal death. TIME became a continuous scientific factor and was no longer an interruption-of-life-by-death theme. This new specific teleologic continuity gave to man not only a means of dominance over matter of first contact (inherent in Yogi)
22 but a technique of dominance that could be transmitted to others. So long as the phantom captain retains philosophy and mathematics he will have a progression means of selective life; the presence or absence of personal equations is unimportant.
23 The two types of mind-over-matterists—the Christ Yogi and the scientist-philosopher—soon won popular credit away from the monarchial bully.
24 The appeal of the dramatic Yogi was first and foremost to the pagan-minded populace. He steadfastly maintained that there was no formula for mind-over-mattering and quite consistently refused to write down ‘‘rules.’’ Christ, when pressed for a ‘‘rule,’’ said only ONE word, a dynamic word,—LOVE. Today this may be scientifically defined as the non-retarded, RADLATION OF PURE ENERGY, harmonically digestible and scientifically utilizable by all the Murphys through the selective and recompositional functioning of intellect. He did not give the ‘‘rule’’ in two words, for that would have been formula. The source of his designating word was identical to that which was symbologically developed by the Egyptians in their supreme sun-god, ‘‘Ra,’’ from which we get the ‘‘ra’’ in ra-diation, ra-dio, and ra-dex or root, and ra-dius, the direct line from the center outward. The artist-invented ‘‘halo’’ of Christ is simultaneously symbolic of the corona of the sun and the form root of the cypher ‘‘O.’’
25 After the ‘‘death’’ of Christ, the disciples dogmatized ‘‘Love’’ down into the language of humpty-dumpty; into illusion rules of ethics, symbolism, ritual, and formula; as, for instance, ‘‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’’ and, conversely, ‘‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.’’ These disciples, in ignorance and good conscience or over-conscience racketeered a free shelter for their activities, through exploitation of popular credit of experienced proximity to Christ, and started a property estate tradition that was to acquire undreamed of matter-over-mind power and to constitute the greatest known hindrance to the mind-over-matter growth of original causation. Thus the fallacy of personal equation religion was destined to demonstrate itself.
26 Likewise, the ‘‘intellectuals’’—the dilettante fans of the scientistphilosophers—started an academic dogma racket that still makes mathematics (geometry, calculus, et cetera) an obscure and to-beeschewed complication of the schooling ritual. Mathematics in its present frozen state is murderous, as a rule, to an understanding of the simple true thought that first evolved it. Just as the religious racketeers chiseled chapels and monasteries, so have the professional intellectuals ‘‘acquired’’ academies and ‘‘endowments.’’
27 Despite the racketing-down by professor and priest, however, each has indirectly provided a boon for mankind.
28 In every hamlet and in every kingdom there were shrines or churches, the equivalent to the populace of those days of our motion picture theatre, town hall and market place all rolled into one. In the church there was one spot known as the sanctuary into which any victim of a temporal rulers disfavor could run and be immune from temporal wrath so long as there.
29 The king, being fear-motivated, dared not penetrate this area lest he provoke the wrath of his irrationally accredited pagan bully gods, of whose ‘‘frat’’ this new god, worshiped by the people, might be a regular’’ member. This fundamental fear was born of the observation that at least one prophet quite successfully demonstrated an utter disregard for the king’s own bully gods. Moreover, that prophet proved to be immune to the indignant wrath of those gods, which wrath presumably was aroused by the prophets insulting attitude. So, while directly denying the power manifested by this new messiah, the king intuitively subscribed to it, and feared it even more than he did the wrath of his own bully gods. He was wholly unaware of his error in attributing this non-rationalized intuition to his relationship with his own gods rather than to the power motivating the prophet.
30 Spinoza (1632) said: ‘‘This is the reason why each man has devised for himself, out of his own brain, a different mode of worshiping God, so that God might love him above all others and direct all nature to the service of his blend of cupidity and insatiable avarice.’’
31 The effect on the populace of the monarchs temerity was to awaken a suspicion that there is a power greater than any temporal ruler’s.
32 With this recognition there awoke a sense of freedom, though ever so slight, from the temporal ruler’s dominance. The Christ demonstration of non-fear of death and his subsequent resurrection was highly convincing in the matter of their intuitive ability to sense a life continuity replacing their superstition that life-after-death is the only worthwhile area of existence. This made it important for the populace to win emancipation during life-on-earth.
33 Exultantly (though hesitantly) they claimed the shrine-shelter as OURS.
34 Turning to the artist, they commanded, ‘‘Stop painting pictures of faked exploits for the king! Paint for US!’’ Within the framework of his painting for the king the artist had interspersed an abstraction of his harmonic articulation necessity quite unrecognized by the king.
35 The artist arose to the new opportunity and obeyed the popular command. It soon became self-evident, however, that although he could paint a lie about a king, he could not paint a composite lie about a whole populations exploits, which must be universally satisfactory as ‘‘deed’’ illusion to every individual of that population. Wherefore, he painted allegorical subjects dealing with morals or mind-over-matter subjects of universal appeal. Into these allegorical paintings he also wove his interspersed abstract harmonics. El Grecos paintings are a strongly suggestive demonstration of this abstraction compounded with picture.
36 Thus emerged the beginning of a POPULAR LIVING patronage of the artist-scientist, signifying the birth of an one-for-all and allfor-one objective activity, albeit rampant with confusion, glittering camouflage, and stenches.
37 Immediately, however, there appeared a new necessity.
38 The ‘‘author,’’ being an artist, discovered that he, too, must articulate for many. Under the impetus of this compelling urge the first printing press materialized,—primarily to print the Bible, which was the most useful subject of universal interest for writers to articulate under the new popular patronage. This instrument of literacy-promotion actually proved to be the primary emancipating means of man from his then current matter-over-mind, or might-makes-right, status to that of mind-over-matter dominance. The development of the individual mind was brought about by the printed word.
39 Man, when printing the Bible, produced by inanimate machine extensions replicas of a product which evoked an understanding between author and reader, by virtue of the inanimate printed symbols of the implicit word meanings identical to that called forth by perusal of the original manuscript, although this end-means was non-identical to the manuscript of the artist. This is in juxtaposition to the popular patronage first developed by the painter wherein the many eyes of the populace viewed directly the original articulation of the artist. The machine extension, as first apparent in book-making, is now highly integrated in the mass production of the visual art as demonstrated in the motion picture industry, where the original concept of the artist is amplified for scanning by hundreds of millions of eyes.
40 What a thrilling indirect result this is in contradistinction to the mind-over-matter retrogression implicit in holy rule-making by the disciples of the prophets! The superstitious or intuitive shunning of disciplehood by members of industrial society today, which grants new leadership but for an instant lest the ‘‘leaders’’ fall into a retrogression of method, is dramatically emphasized in the rise and fall of such idols-for-a-day as Lindbergh, Pickford, Hoover, MacDonald, and others.
41 Because of the very high percentage of illiteracy at the time of this initial demonstration of industry (book printing) industry was ‘‘manifested’’ in a seemingly unimportant category. But this very seeming unimportant and the apparently limited potential field of the product’s distribution hoodwinked the temporal monarch and the organized church into allowing its uncontested inception. Otherwise, this first wedge in the ultimate unseating of both the monarch and the church would have been bitterly resisted. The doom of the monarch and of the church lay not only in the establishment of mass production but in the EMANCIPATION of man THROUGH KNOWLEDGE,—of which the printed word was to become the instrument
42 The monarch probably said, ‘‘This is a fine idea! Now, I will have a lot of books to give to my courtiers and important colleagues!’’ The book was to him just a bauble. To the church, it was at first a new mechanism of control. While the populace was kept ignorant, the clerics found it important to read ever more widely in order to browbeat any heretical revolutionary.
43 The authors of that day—seeking subjects of wide popular appeal—printed more than forty almost identical tales based on the Faust legend, interspersed with their own particular moralizations and dogma. But the Bible continued to be the most popular product of the press. Its universal appeal was due to its sustenance of the credit of potential mind-over-matter, which was certainly the only possible constant, in those days, for the prevention of factual retrogression from mind-over-matter through the absurd dogmatic end-results of professional discipledom.
44 The monopoly of printing an English translation of the Bible was retained even to a comparatively recent day; it remained a King’s ‘‘patent’’ until the War of the Revolution in America emboldened the colonists to print Bibles without royalty tribute.
45 The reproduction of universally satisfying products to meet the demand of a popular patronage (which we currently call mass production) was particularly significant as being the first manifestation of the new era,—the ultimate far extension of which is not yet even remotely realizable.
46 INDUSTRY was BORN.
47 By ‘‘industry’’ we mean the phenomenon of scientific humaneffort-coordination of three or more beings which, through the selected activity of the two-or-more beings, is made possible by the third being in whom the two-or-more divided-activity-performers have faith that: he truly has divided the effort and will coordinate that effort to the end that: mutually profitable resultant compositions are obtained, within a reasonable time limit, beyond the physical ability of any being, or group of beings, non-mentally coordinated, to obtain within all time.
48 Industry can concern itself only with the reproduction of those designs which adequately satisfy the ‘‘standard,’’ and are reproduceable in a quantity directly proportionate to their timeliness and adequacy; in relation to which industrial satisfaction ‘‘standards’’ improve (include and refine), and without which satisfaction ‘‘standards’’ cannot improve—such is the human progress responsibility of reproductive design, being based on our philosophic interpretation of LIFE, to wit, that whatever is ideal enough becomes reproduceable in its own image in direct proportion to its adequacy.
49 STAGES OF "PATRONAGE" AND OF SHELTER
DESIGNING ATTITUDES
- 1.
- ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF DEATH.
5051‘‘I know that thou will bring me to death, and to the HOUSE appointed for all living.’’
52 Job XXX:23.
53 (The conception of life only after death.)
- 2.
- ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF LIFE BUT A SINGLE, VAIN, SELFISH LIFE.
5455‘‘It is the curse of kings to be attended by slaves that take their humors for a warrant to break within the bloody HOUSE of life.’’
56 Shakespeare, King John IV:2.
- 3.
- ARCHITECTURE UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF LIFE,--ONE-for-ALL and ALL-for-ONE. POPULAR USE PATRONAGE:
5758‘‘Let the houses be changed and arranged in order and this will easily be done when they are first made in parts on the open places and then the framework can be fitted together on the site where they are to be permanent. Let the country folk inhabit a part of the new houses when the court is not present.’’ Leonardo da Vinci, Notebook, 1515.
59‘‘The building which was fitted accurately to answer its end would turn out to be beautiful though beauty had not been intended.’’
60 Moeller, Essay on Architecture.
6162‘‘HOUSES are built to live in, and not look on; therefore, let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.’’
63 Bacon, Building.
6465THE UNIVERSAL ETERNAL ARCHITECTURAL VIEWPOINT:
66‘‘Happiness DWELLS not in herds nor in gold; the soul is the dwelling of happiness.’’
67 Democritus.
68 ‘‘Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.’’ Michael Angelo.
- 4.
- NATURE’S ARCHITECTURE THE SCIENTIST’S EXPLORATION.
6970‘‘Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy. The cell of the bee is built at that angle which gives the most strength with the least wax. The bone in the quill of the bird gives the most alar strength with the least weight.. . . There is not a particle to spare in natural structures. In rhetoric this ART OF OMISSION is the chief SECRET OF POWER. In general it is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way,—veracity, first of all and forever.’’
71 Emerson.
7273‘‘A structural gelatinous INVESTMENT of the anterior part of the body is the beginning of the HOUSE. It increases, assumes a peculiar fibrous structure, and in the course of an hour, in a vigorous animal, it is separated as an envelope in which the whole body is capable of free movement.’’
74 Huxley, The Anatomy of Invertebrates, p. 514.