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Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 343
 
 Vox Populi
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VOX POPULI

Harold Payne

The business of the world tends to fall more and more into the hands of experts, and in any choice of method or material where the criterion of efficiency is applicable their decision is authoritative and final. But where Art and Industry co-operate, Taste enters in as an indeterminate factor, and the consumer is the ultimate judge. Since he has to foot the bill, this seems only reasonable.

The consumer, whether fortified or not by artistic training for the task of choosing, for example, a scheme of decoration, is apt to believe that no expert is endowed with pontifical authority to override his individual taste. To subject that to the arbitrament of another seems an infringement of the sacred rights of personality. A specialist knows best where to run the hot-water pipes, but can a specialist ensure that his warp and weft of theory and practice will satisfy his client better than any haphazard farrago evolved from the client’s own untutored fancy ? Simple Simon finds it hard to believe that ; and too often, “ with bold countenance and knowledge small,” takes the matter into his own hands. Well may the expert look rather in sorrow than in anger, rather with pity than with contempt, upon the hesitations and bewilderment of one who brings to such a problem nothing but obscure prejudices, ill-founded preferences, and unlimited hope-for-the-best. More pitiable still is the plight of such an amateur when failure is certain to call forth the caustic comments of family and friends. Nevertheless, a painstaking examination of the guiding principles of taste may help him to tackle his problems with at least the joy of endeavour, and not without hopes of success.

We hear too often from quite intelligent people the assertion “ I know what I like,” uttered in a tone which suggests that they take some credit to themselves for such an elementary degree of self-knowledge. Yet a moment’s thought would show that an infant in its cradle could say as much, if the bull may be allowed, before it can talk at all. Nay, anyone who has ever ridden a donkey or driven a pig to market may testify that the humbler creation can make that comfortable boast with more assurance than many of their human superiors ; and what is more, the lower animals not only know what they like, but generally contrive to get it. It behoves us, therefore, as reasonable beings, though so seldom getting what we like, to show our superiority by asking why we like it, and whether we do well to like it.

The answers are by no means easy or obvious ; and curiously enough, while in the more subtle and debatable parts of the subject there are theories in plenty offered on all hands for our enlightenment, it is in the simplest and most direct and generally accepted propositions that there is least to be said in explanation. Who, for instance, can say why he likes sugar ? Fortunately, in this and in many departments of taste we do at least concede to each other a complete freedom of choice. The most incorrigible busybody will allow us to like sweet wines or dry, cats or dogs, cricket or golf, without requiring a moral or scientific justification of our preferences. It is when the notion of Art enters into the question that we feel at once there should be one right solution of every problem among innumerable wrong ones, and that it is our duty to find it.

There are guides and teachers in plenty ready to tell us all about the matter, but unhappily they seldom agree with one another, and a lifetime would scarcely suffice to investigate all their conflicting theories ; and meanwhile we are under the necessity of exercising our taste, such as it is, every day. Personality weighs heavily, perhaps too heavily, with most of us : we incline to suspect the qualifications of one Mentor because we should not care to ask him to dinner, and to rely implicitly upon the judgment of another because—well, everybody likes him. But always there is one voice which rises clear and peremptory above the confusion of tongues, demanding our subservience under pain of untold penalties, and promulgated by obsequious multitudes of devotees —the voice of Fashion.

Fashion is an all-pervading, incalculable, and all-but irresistible force. It is not always meretricious, but must always be suspect, for it is based on caprice and not on principle. Without it life would be dull and stagnant ; it expresses that love of change for its own sake which is no defect in human nature, since it supports, or at least encourages, all our hopes of betterment. It serves, too, to relegate the crowd of mere imitators, camp-followers and hangers-on of Art to the second rank, where they belong, and keeps the course clear for the rare creative spirits who are always ahead of their time. But the perpetual mutations of Fashion are too adventitious ; its real purpose is not to be better, but to be different.
Design For Today   3   1935  Page: 344
 
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It looks always towards the morrow, but never to the day after to-morrow. It is intent only on change, and has no definite objects, and no long views, no ethics and no responsibilities. It finds no satisfaction in anything accomplished, for it scorns the past, and only tolerates the present as a jumping-off ground to a future novelty.

Fashion is essentially feminine, appearing before us radiant with charms, graces, splendours ; the world is at her feet : she wins golden opinions from all sorts of people. To be sure, her back view is ridiculous ; but she is never conscious of her absurdity till she sees it in retrospect, and then does not perceive that she is making merry over her own unrecognized self.

By this want of purpose and foresight we may distinguish Fashion from that other great promoter of change which for lack of a more exact nomenclature we must call Style, using the word in one well-defined meaning among its many. Fashion is feminine, and Style is her masculine counterpart ; and living in such close association they have their frequent quarrels, as male and female will ; and their differences sometimes go deep. Style will not be satisfied with change : it demands progress and organic development. It has an infinite patience, and takes small account of time. It is serious and purposive, remembering the past with piety and looking towards the future with eager anticipation.

Its power and character are well seen in the history of any art which has passed through period after period of organic growth. It was Style, not Fashion, that during five centuries presided over the evolution of Gothic architecture. Two factors, the need for defensive strength and the lack of science and skill in the use of materials, imposed the chief characteristics of its earliest forms—enormously thick walls and very small windows and doorways. Increasing security in social conditions, and study and experiment in the science of building gradually did away with those restrictions, until at last, buttresses and flying buttresses, slender columns and vaulted roofs formed a mere framework for windows in which miracles of tenuity and refinement were wrought in the obedient stone. Fashion had no hand in all that ; but at this point she stepped in and ruthlessly interrupted the development of an Art which even then had by no means reached finality. It was Fashion that determined to make a fresh start with all the new-found paraphernalia gathered up out of the ruins of Greece and Rome. Fashion seized upon Art and eloped with her, hinting that Style was getting old and crabbed and weary.

After a period of hesitation a concordat was arranged. Style found it possible to live and work with the new ideas and forms, and took a keen delight in the sense of scope and freedom they afforded, and for a couple of centuries all was harmony again. Then once more Fashion grew restless and impatient of the ordered progress which Style found so satisfactory, and asserted herself throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century in the craze for Chinoiseries, in the Pagoda at Kew and other toys of Robert Chambers ; in the soi-disant Gothic of Strawberry Hill, the Grecian ruins at Virginia Water, and the imitation rusticity of the Petit Trianon ; and from time to time during the nineteenth century too, in the neo-Gothic of St. Pancras station, and in a hundred suburban churches.

In the opinion of this writer Style made a serious effort to regain control at the close of the century with the forces of l'Art Nouveau, but they promptly deserted to the enemy. The work of Alfred Gilbert was a legitimate and organic if self-conscious development out of Gothic. It had a very distinct character congenial to many good artists, and an intense vitality which appealed at first in the right way to the public, that is to say by an immediate evocation of delighted recognition. But too many designers saw in it merely a facile trick which they could repeat ad nauseam without any apprehension of its underlying principles, and so Falstaff’s old charge against our English nation was once more exemplified, that if they have a good thing they make it too common.

This perpetual strife between Style and Fashion is much to be deplored, for when they are living amicably together Art prospers ; after-ages speak respectfully of the fortunate era as a “ Period,” name it after the reigning monarch, and resuscitate it from time to time to supply their own poverty, as an actor-manager puts on an old successful play after a series of new failures. It is the function of the critic to discern and promote that happy state of domestic harmony for the benefit of all who would be of the household of Art.

Some will think that during the present century relations between the two continue to be strained : Fashion, it would seem, has had the upper hand, and Style has played a losing game ; so that those who come as guests into that distracted ménage find themselves drawn unwillingly into a family quarrel. To the lover of a quiet life it is easy to stand aside, to commission the expert to take all the responsibility and make all the decisions, as one calls in a lawyer or an electrician at need ; or blindly to side with Fashion and adopt the collective taste of our most assertive neighbours. But it is always better fun to use our own brains than to buy the ready-made products of other people’s ; and—the old proverb of de gustibus notwithstanding—brainwork does and must enter into the formation of taste. Without some output of brainwork we may persist in the naive and futile assertion “ I know what I like,” but we shall never take the needful step further and know why we like it.