From David Mayernik,
July, 2000
Dear Poliphilo,
Welcome to your new
home, a happy place I hope. I remember the long discussions
we've had over the years in piazzas, courtyards and gardens,
and I'm glad they will continue via these letters, no matter
what the distance or time involved. I have invited some
friends of ours to contribute to this dialogue, and I hope
they will invite others who are interested in our little
renaissance of Humanist ideas.
A
big issue which you know has occupied my thoughts for
several years is this (and I trust you will indulge me
raising it again, since I know you share my concern): if
this is to be a renaissance of those things we love from the
past (and by renaissance you know I mean rebirth and not
revival), is it enough that our work rejects those things of
contemporary culture than we find banal, dehumanizing or
profane, or should we also have aspirations to the best
which that problematic word "classicism" conveys? Put
another way, how good do we really want to be? If we want to
make things of beauty, at what standard of judgement do we
aim? I will leave for a later discussion those particular
qualities that deserve praise in artists, and for now
suggest only that we should speak about more than just style
(still, no small thing in itself), and that we say that
there is no aspect of art (technical, manual, compositional,
intellectual, poetic) which is not vital to the success of a
truly Humanist work of art.
Isn't the virtue in the difficulty of a
task? Why then make it easy on ourselves by only wanting to
be better than the worst? Maybe you know the story Ben
Franklin told about the man who went to have his axe
sharpened: "[He] desired to have the whole of its Surface as
bright as the Edge; the Smith consented to grind it bright
for him if he would turn the Wheel. He turn'd while the
Smith press'd the broad Face of the Ax hard & heavily on
the Stone, which made the turning of it very fatiguing. The
man came every now & then from the Wheel to see how the
Work went on; and at length would take the Ax as it was
without further Grinding. No, says the Smith, Turn on, turn
on; we shall have it bright by and by; as yet 'tis only
speckled. Yes, says the Man; but - I think I like a
speckled Ax best."
Before we grind our speckled axes, there is
a question we should have asked earlier: do we
deduce our critical
standards (e.g.: classical architecture is the mytho-poeic
representation of its tectonic origins, therefore that
principle is also our standard of judgement) or
induce them (e.g.: Rome
embodies the most complex [formally, materially,
iconographically] system of classical architecture
available, therefore what we find in Rome defines our
critical standards)?
I
put much of this in the form of questions in the hope that
you will share these thoughts with others, which may inspire
them to respond from wherever they are. As our favorite
Alberti (famously able to leap over the head of a standing
man) wrote to his friend Brunelleschi, "No writer was ever
so well informed that learned friends were of no use to
him...."
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