Capitalism and power politics have made our generation creatively sluggish, and our vital art is mired in a broad bourgeois philistinism.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the negative impact of capitalism and power on creativity and art.
Walter Gropius suggests that the influence of capitalism and the politics of power have led to a stagnation in creativity within contemporary society. He points to a cultural environment, which he describes as bourgeois philistinism, where true artistic expression is stifled by materialism and superficiality.
In practice
In a discussion about the challenges faced by modern artists at a gallery opening.
The ultimate aim of all artistic activity is building! ... Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all get back to craft! ... The artist is a heightened manifestation of the craftsman. ... Let us form ... a new guild of craftsmen without the class divisions that set out to raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! ... Let us together create the new building of the future which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting.
A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.
The utilization of flat roofs as 'grounds' offers us a means of re-acclimatizing nature amidst the stony deserts of our great towns; for the plots from which she has been evicted to make room for buildings can be given back to her up aloft.
Architecture begins where engineering ends.
Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts.
Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.
The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.
At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. Bat at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it.
I'm having so much fun, because you know what? They cast a Star Wars fan in a Star Wars movie. Biiiiiig mistake!
When you first start out in stand-up and, probably, as any performer, you enjoy the attention so much, and even though that hasn't died down on stage, it certainly has satiated whatever was in me that was needing that much attention. When I'm off stage, it's not something that I really need.
If the audience, in minute 50, is thinking about the way a movie is shot, there's a problem. I want it to permeate emotionally.
I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.
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