“Through art we may break the shell and allow the real world to influence us.”
It is my belief that we are passing through a gate from one age to another perhaps more profound than the changes medieval man faced with the rising of Humanism and the age we call the Renaissance. We have spent the last five hundred years trying to understand the world by dividing it into parts. We are now at the task of putting our world back together. We are seeking a vision of a whole world, with ourselves as part of the whole.
Have you ever watched the millions of stars in the sky on a moonless night, or seen the wind waver over a field of grass, or noticed the dust at play in a shaft of light, or felt the warmth of another’s hand..someone you cared for? This is where architecture must come from. Architecture must take measure of all that it is to be human in a world that is whole. It must take count of our galaxy and of a smile and somehow learn to interpret and express our new world in walls, doors and roofs.
It is not that economics and function are not important but that they no longer express the whole man. They no longer express who we believe ourselves to be. We must add our love, our history, our metaphysics. We must add the wind, the sun and the call of the hills. Our buildings must learn to express all that we contain, for now we are a whole world.
I have heard astronomers talk about the music of the spheres. I have heard this music described as a song of jubilation. Perhaps this is a word for our coming age, a time of coming together, of coming back to the whole.
We need an Architecture of Jubilation to sing of it!
Seeking Beauty’s Place in our Time
My world is the world of objects, of inner musings made real, a world of things not necessarily coming from ideas. yet, there are thoughts and ideas that have been extremely important to me through the years. One is Beauty. This word, at least in the art world, has been out of favor for a good part of this century. I would like to see its reintroduction into the modern world with the understanding that Beauty, like love, has the power to change things. It can also help us make decisions and unite the disparate elements in our lives.
What I call beauty is far from what we call pretty. A plastic rose no matter how well fashioned can never be beautiful; it can only grow dusty. It is the full cycle of life of a real rose that gives it its beauty. Knowing that it wilts and dies is the essence of its wonder. Mozart’s music is beautiful because there is within the wonderful melody, both the pathos and joy of being human.
Excerpts from a self-published collection of poems and essays:Architecture of Jubilation: The Poetry of Our Lives and What We May Choose To Build by James Hubbell (2001).
To view more essays and poetry from this collection and others click here.