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desire and technique
The dominating relationships of Gothic art and architecture to nature and to the inner structure of its composition, also manifests itself in a polarity of rational elements in both art and architecture.
The whole of 19th century defined this architecture as a "calculating engineer's art" that draws its inspiration from practical utility, and expresses simply what is technically necessary and structurally possible. It was believed that the principles of Gothic architecture - above all, the exhilarating verticalism - could be derived from the ribbed vault, a technical innovation. This was a mechanistic doctrine. It was believed that in a genuine work of art no single detail could be altered without impairing the whole, and a Gothic building, with its strict logic and austere functionalism, was looking on as the very prototype of an artistic whole.
One author is anxious to derive artistic form from the particular practical task at hand and its technical solution; another author emphasizes those many examples where the artistic idea is achieved only by exhausting available technical resources, the technical solution itself being to some extent the result of pursuing a certain artistic form. In none of the phases of production of a work of art are artistic purpose and technique really separable, both are always but aspects of a process.
vertical survey
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