What is modern? (Translated by Nader Vossoughian) [Lecture by Professor Josef Frank, held on 25.

June 1930 at the public rally of the meeting of the German Werkbund in Vienna.] We publish the lecture by Professor Frank in order to point out that the discussion of this entire constellation of questions will take place in the second half of October in Stuttgart. It is increasingly necessary for the Werkbund to confront the diverse phenomena and concerns of modern life on a renewed basis, and to offer an interpretation and assessment. Ladies and gentlemen, we want to speak today about a question that has concerned us for a long time. Over the course of the last years for about forty years now we have heard and read intermittently what it means to be modern and non-modern, what one is allowed to do and what one is not allowed to do, what is intended for our times and what opposes our times, and other similar such things. All these notions have repeatedly changed their meaning over the course of these forty years. There are countless things that we once considered exemplary and now regard as repulsive. This sort of thing is indeed not new. We know from history that every period despises and finds fault with the achievements of those that come earlier. The biggest error of our time has to do with the fact that many of us construe this new age as analogous to an earlier one, as we have come to know it through history, even if they have the consciousness to live in a new era. They think in archaic terms. Now the most essential feature of our times is not technical ability, for technical ability every age has possessed. But our time has historical knowledge in addition; that is what distinguishes us from earlier times. This is seen by many as unnecessary or even as harmful; but it rests within the scope of our efforts to exploit completely everything we have, every bit of knowledge without qualification, to utilize and leave nothing unnoticed. Thus every struggle against historical knowledge is also unnecessary and hopeless. The men and women of our times stand in a much closer relationship with the past than those of former times. Those who knew nothing of what once came before had it easy as far as being modern; nothing else remained for them. It is considered only proper nowadays to speak about the 19 th century in disparaging terms: we see incomprehensible imitations of styles that are almost entirely outmoded. We must, however, not think of these things in such contemptuous terms; they also represent a period of new development that is not inferior in power to that which came before. Every age is a transitional age. We know that bourgeois culture spread itself throughout the world in the 19 th century. In the name of this bourgeois culture forms that were not accessible before were utilized,

and by that means later made banal in such a way that that have become meaningless. All the symbols of power, the symbols of the church, monarchism, feudalism, were appropriated by the bourgeoisie as symbols of their own power and thus also stripped of their original meaning. That actually gave us first the possibility of starting anew from the beginning, and that we have been for the last forty years. The development of this new art form emerged out of the decorative arts [Kunstgewerbe] and belongs still today to the decorative arts. This has not declined in its reach in recent years, as is always claimed, but on the contrary has grown to include everything that comes close to this material - technology, industry, trade, handicraft has become a decorative art; it assumes forms different from those of before 1914, but that is not important. It is one of the distinguishing features of the decorative arts to change quickly, because it is not actually modern, but actually fashionable and thus subject to rapid change. It always attaches itself anew to momentary needs, ideas and symbols of its times, and one can follows this development of the new decorative arts for the past forty years. Whether ornament is used or not, whether it is decorated or not is irrelevant; it always remains a decorative art. I do not want to get myself bogged down with definitions here: it is senseless to define concepts like art, artists, decorative art, etc., for this so beloved, pseudo-scientific way of thinking is only ever used to obscure the real meaning of things and to establish virtually any system as the one and only correct one. This setting up of one correct system is, however, to a large extent the very essence of decorative art. Transforming the world with the decorative arts is relatively simple because it follows a unified system that can be applied to the whole world and all objects, and thus these experiments are always being undertaken. Its foundation principle is as follows all that exists is bad, it must be reformed, and in particular in such a way that it can be brought into a closed system. In earlier times one drew an ornament over everything or utilized similar types of materials; today one utilizes similar types and colors and much more. But the principle of spreading a unified system throughout the world exists today still and is often seen as modern. This is just the opposite of what I could characterize today as modern. Our times differentiate themselves from earlier ones, as we read in any issue of any newspaper, in that distances have become shorter, as we need shorter traveling times, and we have knowledge of the entire world - we read newspapers namely. What is not mentioned, however, is that we not only overlook the entire world spatially, but also temporally can look far further back and in reality have far greater knowledge of the world than those who would like to stretch themselves out over space alone. And that gives us a feeling today for the entire world that cannot bring itself easily into a unified system.

We want to define none of these words today, and, because there is something wrong with the definition, to replace them with something incomprehensible. It is senseless to, for example, replace the word decorative art with another, for example purposeful art [Zweckkunst] or taste industry [Geschmacksindustrie] or new formation [Neue Gestaltung] or something along those lines. It is basically always the same principle to unify everything that exists formally and to press them together in similar forms if the forms also change. If someone furnishes his room in the historical style, for example, whether it is through one of the countless workshops [ Werksttten] that exist today or whether it is built with tubular steel furnishings, then there exists between these three furnishings no significant difference. They want to be attractive or practical or hygienic one quality they share in common: modern they are not. For in everything that is modern everything has to fit that our time has, and our time encompasses so much so completely that we cannot bring it into a nearly unified form. One always hears that the earlier times were pathetic, that today we are sober [sachlich]. There was hardly ever a time, however, that was more pathetic than our own, never were demands of such a clear nature asserted. Every simple thing that is not outdone is pathetic; it is pathetic to want everything to be the same so that variation is no longer possible, to want to organize everything so that all human beings are forced into a giant, homogeneous mass. We utilize symbols as we always have, they are simply different. A well-known example for this from modern architecture is the flat roof. This flat roof is doubtless modern. Why? When you read over the literature, you will find false statements about it. One writes: it is more practical, cheaper, healthier, faster to manufacture, easier to repair and so forth. That would not warrant turning the flat roof into a polemical object. Circumstances can come about that are appropriate to these reasonings, but it must not be the case. Despite this, many of us (myself included) use the flat roof. Why? Because it is a modern symbol of our times. It was from the beginning not thought of as such; it has, however, become a symbol and is also today seen from the opposition (friends do not understand it or dare not mention it) as a symbol. How has it become a symbol in modern architecture? It is the clearest expression of clarity, which the observer cannot otherwise quite recognize so easily. The house with a steep gale holds secrets and unknown places. The flat room is an expression of the non-metaphysical world view that wants clarity everywhere: the house stands there, it is this and that inside and so it is ready. Earlier one said: the house stands out, and its contents are known, and there is something that gives people a pleasant sense of something mysterious and unknown. This is the real reason why the flat roof was introduced into housing. We need these symbols like any other time in order to make ourselves comprehensible. A form must serve no lowly or practical purpose to be modern.

A second characteristic that is often posited today as a departure from earlier times is industrialization. One says: in earlier times, handicraft worked; in our time, industry works, and it leads to new forms. In truth, the following is being conducted: the new movement was begun with the decorative arts as handicraft, basically as a protest against industry. Nonetheless, there emerged at the time all the slogans that we use today, i.e., simplicity, usefulness, economy, and other similar such expressions. But with the death of handicraft, which is now taking place slowly, all these forms are being delegated to the machine and are being transmitted according to the same principles using new methods of production. The machine does not require a new form, but it makes possible new forms, and we, at least we Europeans who hold ourselves to be the modern people, cannot decline the opportunity that is being offered to us. This is the modern standpoint that the Europeans and Americans, in contrast to all the other peoples, have had forever. If we now look at the modern feature of our time, we must say: at first the European standpoint is the future of all other peoples. The reason for this is that all other peoples, whether they have a culture or not, cannot assert themselves against the Europeans, for we have something that matters for the pride of our culture and civilization: these are the machines, as we euphemistically describe our canons. If we say machines, we mean in particular cannons because through their power, they give us the possibility to spread our culture throughout the entire world. Other peoples do not have this possibility unless they tie themselves to European culture, making canons that also accept European culture; they must absolutely go in our direction, irrespective of whether this culture is replaced by a different one in the distant future or not. [complicated translation; please check for accuracy.] If we take Chinese culture, for example, we find ourselves confronting totally different tendencies. I want to quote a famous story from parables of Chuang Tzu [please check English spelling: Chuang Tzu saw an old man who worked in his vegetable garden. He dug irrigation ditches. He stepped in the well and held up in his arms a container full of water and poured it himself into the ditches. He tried as hard as he could and accomplished very little still. Chuang Tzu said: There is an invention with which one can irrigate a hundred ditches in a single day. With a little effort, it will soon be achieved; wouldnt you like to try it? The gardener got himself up, saw him, and asked, And what would that be? Dsi-Gung replied: one takes a wooden lever that is weighted to the back and is light up front, there one hangs a bucket. In this way, one can get water that flows as though from a spring. One calls this a draw-well. As the old mans anger rose in his face, and he said: I can hear may teacher say, when one uses a machine, one does all his business in a mechanical fashion; whoever runs his business like a machine also receives a mechanical heart; when one carries a mechanical heart in ones chest, one loses all of ones innocence; he by whom pure innocence is lost will be unsure of the

movements of his spirit: uncertainty in the movements of the spirit is something that does not get along with the true sense. Not that I would not get to know such a machine, but I would be ashamed to utilize it. This is a Chinese standpoint. We cannot start anything with this standpoint because our destiny is predetermined. Progress is always technical progress, the leading principle of the new age. It goes without saying for us European that nothing is modern that is not in a position to utilize technical progress, but rather excludes something for some reason. That is, however, not everything, but rather technical progress serves us by executing our plans and thoughts. It is itself not a spiritual foundation that urges itself to something or makes something. Our modern house is also the progression of the urge for freedom that first expressed itself in the 19th century under Japanese influence. The longing for the primitive forms of the orient came through because during the war many were forced to question the happy-making characteristics of the machine; the age-old longing of the Northern Europeans for the south and for sun receives through technology a few new possibilities, to execute things as they are often otherwise only possible in a happier climate. The foundations of our modern architecture, the principles according to which the new house is built are neither steel nor iron nor reinforced concrete but rather its model is the Japanese house, which is made out of wood, with which sliding walls, flexible and light, are made mobile and transparent. That was the longing before we got to know the new material, a spiritual foundation of architecture, before which many are ashamed. For the modern architect wants to build like the engeneer. This striving belongs among the most significant mistakes of our entire modern expressive culture. From the beginning, architects and artists I use that word without describing who deserves this title and who does not - have had the desire to ingratiate himself with every ruling power: earlier it was the nobility and royality. That stopped in the last century. Art served at the time in the service of the merchant: that was a slogan that to us alone is familiar. And, had they not remained noble as at the time where courts and princes consecrate so remains, they nonetheless remained sycophantic as before. The artist seeks, where he senses a new power, to associate himself with this very fast, does not deny himself, and calls this new service the Zeitgeist. And he saw in war the immense power of the machine and entered into its service. A shifting of capacities created a new mass spectacle [Amsiergesindel], and the artist offers it that which pleases it. The manifestation that we believe to have found for ourselves can be divided into two components. The one component is the decorative arts, the other, militarism, which today is deflected into other areas. The essence of our modern art was most clearly

expressed during the war, to the painter Anton v. Werner, as he offered his judgment about the bombardments of the Rheims Cathedral: The bones of a single German soldier are more valuable as the entire cathedral. Under the circumstances, the authority of this statement cannot be denied, even if one were to add that many more bones were gladly sacrificed for machine guns than for art. This statement shows the complete and utter contempt for the kind of spirit who was honored during the war and who in the handling of that spirituality, which was not involved in the war industry, found its expression [this translation is probably wrong; the phrasing is very difficult; please check.] Certainly, there hides in this very sound statement, namely that the individual is more important to us than stone, that nothing must be held on to when the life of men and women is at issue. Still, this statement was intended as an attempt at assassinating culture [ Geist] and has exercised its effect. It was the standpoint that tried to suppress everything unncessary unnecessary from the standpoint of the most basic practical ends and made material value into a fetish. This attitude lives still today and has been transformed into an ideal. If any individual who seeks unity find something that he doesnt immediately understand, he asks why it is actually there. If he does not understand the practical purpose that expresses itself in dollars and cents, he does not want to think further about why it is there. The entire thought process limits itself to a goal, it has blinders and sees nothing else. But modern it is not. In printed works of all kind that propagate the modern times, we often read of a domination of our times that rests on the firm persuasion that in recent years a new historical age has begun. And in addition to that, we read about the explanations of why this is so and in what ways our age is categorically different from the one that preceded it. I would like to read aloud such a text. The name of the author is irrelevant, for he is a typical representative of a similarly oriented generation of writers who have dealt with this issue. Our informant writes the following about new music: Day dreaming is the only thing that we can take offense to from an artist today. One should definitely not overestimate the machine, as modern intellectuals do. But when you doze through the Potsdamer Platz, then I wont give even five cents for your life. And I completely do not understand why art should bring us up to day dream. Whoever makes music or writes books or paints pictures nowadays needs a damn clear head. To that extent and only to that extent should artists learn from engineers. In the 19 th century, the engineer was still an artist. In the 20 th, the artist needs to be an engineer. Despite all efforts to do away with the border between the two, they are still as clearly drawn as possible. One identifies the invention of the printing press and the discovery of

the Americas with the end of the Middle Ages. One is accustomed to look at the time around 1900 as the beginning of a completely changed collective world picture [Weltbild]. But to that belongs a little courage. But precisely that is what I wish for the new musicians. This is a characteristic sample of a kind of modern journalism that wants to associate itself with everything successful. Art is there for it, as a traffic officer on the Potsdamer Platz, to release the officer for other, more serious tasks. If it cannot accomplish this, it is just worthless, and you should get rid of it or raise it to a level that influences traffic. Traffic is necessary, art is not necessary. And if both are not regulated the same way, there is no doubt what we will dispose of first. The artist must be an engineer. This is often stressed by people who know nothing about engineering. I must say from my own experience that the engineer is one of the least imaginative figures of our times. He works with all hismeans against the new forms and must do things according to his own disposition. He calculates new values and needs. He calculates new technical values, and needs a compensation for his activities in totally other forms. A formal thinker is simply not an engineer, just as a calculator is no architect. That is why industry succeeds in making some very good, very impersonal types, which our decorative artists also try in vain to match. A collaboration of the engineer and the architect is thus also futile, for the two think differently and the architect will never find a form that is inclined toward typification: his essence is to think individually. This all previous results have also shown. People hold too much onto abstract ideals, as though one could convince them of useful things; these are always questionable opportunities about which one can be of differing opinions, while the absolute principle is something that one one can believe in and must, and which, when one abandons it, takes a full stop. [check] The cited passage shows to us the foundations of the new age and proves how it is different from earlier times. A second manifesto should now show how they have changed due to the new artistic expressions of the new era. Our basic transformation in sensibility with regard to the shaping of our world affects the shifts in our means of expression. Today impacts yesterday in terms of materials, form, and tools: instead of the random blow of the ax - the chain saw. Instead of the dim line of charcoal - the precise line of the rail travelers. Instead of the easel - the drawing board. Instead of the French horn - the saxophone. Rather than copy the reflections the design of light itself (as a light image, the light organ, play of reflective light, pictorial photography). Instead of a plastic replica of a movement - the movement itself (as a simultaneous movie, neon signs, gymnastics, eurhythmy, dance). Instead of poetry - the

sound poem. Instead genre - short story. Instead of color - the lux value of color. Instead of sculpture - the construction. Instead of caricature - the photo sculpture. Instead of drama - the sketch. Instead of opera - the revue. Instead the fresco - the advertising poster. Instead of colored material the materiality of color itself. (The painting without a brush requires already a manual for the construction of images.). For a long time now the new muse has been kidnapped by practical men, practical and homespun from the high pedestal back to life. Their lands are expropriated, blurred and mixed. The boundaries between art, mathematics, and music are no longer to be delineated, and between sound and color there is emerging only the gradual difference in the vibration speed. That is the art of today, namely so, as our author had construed it, developed logically from the character of our times. He does not at all recognize if that really is true or not, but on the basis of the precondition of our first citation, our world must according to logical thinking look this way. We all know that it does not look this way, that, for example the light organ and the sound poem are things that do not exist, that the short story has not replaced the novel, but rather that the most successful novels of our time are the longest ones, that the short story (a term that is better referred to as novella in German) belongs in the impressionistic age, had reached its true golden age at that time, and has since virtually disappeared. The only thing that remains, that in place of the ax the chain saw has indeed emerged in many cases, but from that one cannot draw other conclusions in other cases if one does not assume a unified world picture. One of the biases of our time is that we construct an image of time that allows us to determine that Modern man has no time. This sentence, cornerstone of the unified world picture, derives from the undeniable fact that the automobile moves faster than the horse-drawn carriage. Reflection would give one to recognize that modern man has more time than his predecessors. That is easy to realize if one considers how many work hours he earlier had and how many today and the amount of time it took to get to work earlier and the amount of time necessary today. The rest of the day is left as our own. Only we (probably) have many more possibilities to exploit this extra time, and it is the most important goal as well of the state, as all holders of power, to offer us all what is necessary to keep all of us busy and safe during this free time. Men and women should not think, and thus they are offered that which our author, who has designed the image of contemporary art, has been advocating for. Instead of opera - the revue. Instead the fresco - the advertising poster. Instead of spirit [Geist] amusement. That these forms do not replace one another, because they service different ends and different people, we know. But the artist, left behind in his fear of missing out of being

connected to the power to throw these things at your feet and wanting to become a member of the mob, he idealizes mass taste and makes it popular. Strangely, self-deception is the characteristic of the new age. The artist facilitates war like a war-monger and worships the power of the machine. He claims to be for universality but in fact thinks only in terms of his closed system, closes his eyes before real life, so that his square is not disturbed. This is also the only possibility for maintaining unity, but modern this is not. We must on the contrary aspired toward that which today is and need to be able to engage that which surrounds us, to find forms that can assimilate us all. If we ask ourselves where the modern is being developed or which country is modern, this is basically a useless question. We also cannot answer it, as the concept modern is a thoroughly unclear one and has various strains that frequently appear opposed to one another. One of the few things that we can assume with certainty will spread in the near future is mechanization, and that misleads many to regard it as the very essence of the modern. Otherwise we do not know how the future will appear. Many have the feeling, however, that there are today two countries that stand opposite one another as modern cultures that play a major role in shaping our fate, namely America, on the one hand, and Russia on the other. It is quite possible that although these countries represent opposing principles, that their development will unify themselves, even when it is uncertain in what way, and it would be dangerous to try and predict. A unification of opposing principles of this kind is about absolutely not new, particularly when both in general have similar tendencies. I want to mention here an historical example. In Imperial Roman times, there were two different modern principles in the world. The one was Roman imperialism and the other was Christianity so two ideals that were completely opposed two one another. A person of that era who wanted to speak of the spirit of the age would have had to have spoken of the necessity of choosing between one principle or the other. Over the course of time, we have seen that both thoughts can get along completely, that they unify themselves and exist further and remain modern to the point where they are separated from new axioms and new principles. What may be different from the basic ideas we cannot predict. It is also unnecessary to try and prophesize much, particularly in the long-term. One should rather limit oneself to shaping the present as comfortably as possible. If we think about the word modern in terms of its everyday linguistic usage, we often here: this person is radically modern. And we must ask what that might mean. Such a person will probably say to himself that he is completely modern, for his principles are the correct ones for the modern age, which alone should exist, which, however, were retained by the remaining unmodern people. We cannot, however, confuse modern and ideal. Modern thoughts are likely from our point of view ideals, which however are pushed in a new direction by other powers.

If we now think as objectively as possible about our times and with it the man who characterizes us as radically modern, so one means in general he who not only strives to mechanize the entire world, but rather even accepts it. A radical modernism can only be accepted if it is directed in a particular direction, according to an abstract ideal and according to a clear goal, as is the case for religion, for example. That is an abstract goal which is always maintained and according to which people can always orient themselves. A man who is today radically modern must have a goal that does not relate to daily life and its needs, so a goal that always moves straight ahead. Mechanization and rationalization are certainly goals of the immediate future. Because many people believe rightfully that these principles are becoming more powerful, they seek to force everything into this system to the extent that, for example, use a drafting machine in lieu of an easel, despite the fact that these are two things that actually have nothing to do with one another, which can unite nothing, because each of these two serves a different purpose, assuming that a drafting machine even exists. The rationalization of art is an absurdity. The abstract goal that the person who professes to know the present establishes do not think about whether what they do is good or bad. They imagine man in the sense of ancient times, as a medium that services a higher goal. They are not concerned with making him comfortable but rather pose ideal demands. They follow an idea that they hold to be modern. The radical modernist derives the idea from man as a manufacturer of mass goods, which becomes cannon fodder for the idea, for the mass good will be produced until the market overflows, at which time it must reach other means. That is the abstract ideal of todays economy, to which people should sacrifice themselves. It is now clear that a determination of that kind must make a milieu of a clear kind; it is radical, but modern it is not, for it rests on irrational assumptions. Life in America is in many respects taken as our model, and is seen as our future. And that is justified, for we have felt its enormous influence into the smallest details of our lives. What still causes us concern is the complete separation of everyday commerce from metaphysical needs. Both ideas are unified in every person, as the two ideas were in the Roman Empire. Russia seeks to unify the two concepts. Life in America is, so far as possible, mechanized; business, so far as possible, rationalized, but without making rationalization a religion. People also have their entertainment, in many way also typified, but according to other principles. This is for us today still in its thickly retained sentimentality not entirely native, but we are getting ourselves accustomed. They have a religion, which is not a religion, which should not be a religion, but calls for business. Entertainment is a replacement for everything. It must in concentrated form compensate for the overflow of rationalization and real thinking. This is a tangible situation. Exaggeration on one end must be balanced by exaggeration on the other.

This should be different for us when we observe the plans of the radically modern. Whoever wants to shape life according to abstract theories today gets further along. He sees how the factory is furnished, how it is organized, no longer does it let in two systems, it wants to rationalize entertainment in the same sense and mechanize it as is done in the acquisitions business. It says to itself: The factory is for practical reasons well-furnished, I will thus handle my apartment and leisure time in exactly the same manner, for the ideal man of the 20th century is an engineer. He probably forgets that the engineer also lives outside his labor time. The average man, citizen and worker, has nothing to do with it; he wants the opposite. A factory is a place where one stays not a minute longer as one absolutely must, for one goes out, retires home in an environment of the reverse kind. Every memory of one of the other raises feelings of aversion. The average person who does not live according to theories, but rather dues what is comfortable to him can have nothing to do with such a rationalization of the home. It interests him not. The worship of the machine is in our times not popular. We cannot always believe that the principal interest of the public rests on the manufacturing techniques of mass-produced objects. Essential are the results, irrespective how they were made; means to an end thinking does not interest people. They quickly become obsolete and are not ideals. Mechanical labor is no fun since it is not in a position to allow even the slightest pleasure in work during working hours. Human life begins afterwards and is the opposite. I would like to draw attention to something that is of no consequence in and of itself, something that often pleases me. Many of our radical modernists seek the most kitschy stuff they can find , when they want to send a postcard to a like-minded person,. So meaningless this fact also is. It shows, however, that in the case where the mind must speak (as is the case with the sending of a postcard), all of that it needs to suppress to make a comfortable impression on the receiver. That this occurs with self-irony is a sign of intense inferiority. Such small characteristics show best how the Gesinnungskomplex is actually obtained. Our views on everything are unsettled through war and are partly also destroyed. We have seen that nothing has to be as it is, that all can be different, that sacred concepts from earlier times have disappeared at once, that they in fact represent nothing holy and that most rules are refutable. We have come out of the war without rules. And what is happening now? Do people seek now to be freed from the limiting rules? Are they happy that they are no longer bound to certain old rules, which nevertheless still has a development behind them? That they can now build freely? No, they seek new ideals that are constructed according to abstract ideals, and specifically rules in a proportion and mass as we never knew before. The entire uncertainty and inferiority complex of those who hold onto them. Whoever feels of lesser value has not the walk out of

oneself, but rather feels secure when it can lean against something. He has a crutch that he himself built, his rules and dictums, which now serve to make results irrespective of what the quality is, from a particular perspective can be defended, even if it is also graspable by others. That does not interest the maker; he has his rules and his closed system; what left and right goes before, he does not see and wants not to see. Such rules do not only exist in just one direction. Each one sets up any system which he now protects as his personality, a system according to which the now works, a system that uses the decorative arts to manufacture the world. We have the radical modernism only as an example put forward, as one that utilizes rationality decoratively as others set up historical or modern styles, forms and color systems, which stand still outside every reality, yes the majority still much further than that, because often not once a modern thought to have excited them. The weaker the creator, the stronger, more rigid, relentless will be the system that he needs. For he establishes here an ideal a pathetic ideal which develops according to logical laws, for only then can it be advocated for. If anyone has responded to an ideal that cannot be surpassed, one cannot say to someone, "I do this, that, and much more according to some direction;" he has done the best he could do; if he does not consider that there are things that he can get in the way that would be observed, also that he will not see it. In his view, so it's a perfect work. Ideals of that kind lead to great pathos in all things. For something that is not pathetic can always be augmented, while the pathetic speaks in poster form to t he people; it is larger than other things, it despises all the little details that would make things human and goes directly to the great abstract goal. I have already noted that our modern architecture is far more pathetic than any previous. Earlier pathos found expression through columns, arches, symbols of power. Our pathos is, however, a so-called Urpathos to which many want to return, next to which classical art forms always appear tied to their own times. Our unbridled individualism does not tolerate any expression of a foreign person next to us. We seek therefore to come back to a primordial state; each seeks to return to the beginning of time in order to isolate himself from foreign influence. You know all the consequences that has had and that everyone, depending on his attitude, can treat anything as primitive or primordial: negro art for one, rustic lifestyles for another, iron construction for a third, light values and everything more for a fourth. This one is accepted as primordial and will continue, Because, says modern man, modern art is not there to serve an individual, but rather the world at large [ Allgemeinheit]. That is doubtless a modern idea. But by its own strange way, it does not offer the world at large a general framework within which individuals can live, which is of course of value to the world at large. For the artisans want to have their unified world view that founds itself on military principles.

And the people of the world [Allgemeinheit] knows not what to do with these creations and rejects them. Emerging peoples represent formal problems, problems of power, but they have taken up so much from the traditions of centuries that the abstractions of primitive times have nothing to offer them. Modern art says nothing to those who seek to rise up. For what it offers today is the ultimate refinement of a time that has grown beyond the objective, which today can abstract, which can only serve those who participated in the culture of ancient times, those who are tired and need exotic sensations, who want to have meaning, but those for whom it is actually intended, it actually says nothing. The emerging class is seeking something else. It was already mentioend that the 19 th century wanted first and foremost to conquer symbols of power. And so today, although it is not modern to offer people aesthetic ideals, they may still be disguised, however. You want to take advantage of everything and realize what is in their power. The naive man has his European tradition. Puritanical spite is foreign to us, we need our measure of sentimentality and the ennoblement of kitsch to push ourselves into the new. People do not hold themselves back from things they can have and the small differentiations are the ones that offer them joy. It is not true that our times do not represent; they represent differently. The character of the individual person does not change, but forms do change. If we ask ourselves what direction our times should go to attain unity and what its unified expressions are, I cannot offer an answer. It would also be totally unmodern for us to offer an answer here and set rules when in fact rulelessness, or randomness, is the expression of the times. It would come back to the same system that restricts us; it would continue into eternity the same system the one that man takes pleasure in and enjoys - of decorative art that shuts out many facts and possibilities. For the system is as such outdated, even if those who think archaically here also belong those who are radically modern cannot get away from. Uniformity has its pathos and its success can be assured. A world structured as a unity will always have its fashionable effect, whether short or long depends on many circumstances. Much of what it shows is also taken from the real world and can be used in its name. It is thus of little use to differentiate between individual systems; they are not what they appear. Let them be based on any abstract presupposition that restricts us and gives us freedom: they all have one thing in common they belong to the spirit of a past age modern they are not.