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.
Interpretation
The arts should not be practiced in isolation, and collaboration among artists is essential for holistic creation.
This quote by Walter Gropius emphasizes the importance of cooperation among different artistic disciplines, such as architecture, painting, and sculpture. It suggests that true artistic expression and the creation of meaningful structures can only be achieved when artists work together and understand the interconnectedness of their crafts, appreciating both the individual components and the overall composition of their work.
In practice
During a panel discussion on interdisciplinary collaboration in the arts.
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.
Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.
With but a few exceptions, we don't have this personal study under masters any more. Craftsmanship has sunk very low. We no longer have any universally creative persons who are able to guide young learners not only in technical matters but also, at the same time, in a formal way.
It's incumbent on us to reach beyond the confines of the institutions that traditionally produce art and find new ways to get it to the people.
If you want to find out what a writer or a cartoonist really feels, look at his work. That's enough.
There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection.
I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It's very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it's there and it's not there. But in this fraction of a second comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love - all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there.
I was meant to be a composer and will be I'm sure. Don't ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football - please.
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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