484 ARCHITECTURE: MATERIAL AND IMAGINED

A Wall of Boolcs: Natural and Applied Colors in Architecture

WILLIAM W. BRAHAM, AIA University of Pennsylvania

". . . in this separate art of colouring, as referred to paint, is felt to constitute the natural color. The earlier architecture, it is very notable that the best tints are use of bright color had value in attracting attention to always those of natural stones. These can hardly be the new style, but it could not long remain pleasing. It wrong; I think I never yet saw an offensive introduc- ceased to startle and began to bore; its mechanical tion of the natural colours of marble and precious sharpness and freshness became rapidly tawdry. If stones, . . . On the other hand, I have most assuredly architecture is not to resemble billboards, color should never yet seen a painted building, ancient of modern, be both technically and psychologically permanent.' which seemed to me quite right.' The logic of that palette is still visible in contemporary "high In a recent article, a popular shelter magazine interviewed tech" buildings, expensive consumer products, and shelter an interior designer about the acquisition of books-by-the- magazines. While the errors, exaggerations, and omissions yard to decorate the apartments of non-readers, and the of the exhibition have been examined and debated since its magazine wondered at the ethics of the de~eption.~Their inception, the fact remains that it produced a startlingly question turns on the issue of identity and the accurate successful manual of style, similar in many respects to the representation of occupants by their dwellings. The complex guidebooks and manuals of interior design.4 The Intema- interaction between inhabitants and their habitats is made tiorzal St~)lepromoted a highly refined and selective taste that doubly intricate by the intrusion of a professional. who must relies directly on the distinction between natural and applied first interpret the client's identity and then deploy elements colors, deploring the artifice and impermanence of paint. to make that identity legible. The fact that those elements are Indeed, it too extends that ethic to the decorative use of presented according to cultural conventions and stereotypes books, invoking the logic of function to explain their use and is further exacerbated by the degree to which identity is itself an apartment interior by Mies van der Rohe to illustrate them. negotiated through such acts of display. My question is the "The use of natural materials and of such contrasts between inverse of the magazine's. inquiring about the decorative use different walls as structure and function easily provide is of books themselves. This shifts the emphasis away from more satisfactory [than colored paint]. There is no better identities, to the architectural elements and practices with decoration than a wall of book-filled shelve^."^ which they are negotiated. How do the actual procedures of Books introduce colored elements into a room without the coloring condition those manifestations; how are they dis- artifice of painting the walls or draping fabric. Moreover, cussed or conveyed in practice; and by what reasoning are their colors endure and derive from the materials and crafts- they applied? manship of the bindery. They convey both the discipline of Inquiring about the decorative nature of books directs us their production and the authority of their use, implying to a material palette that attained its mature form, in The precisely the literary activities that the shelter magazine felt Ii~ternationalStyle of 1932. Henry-Russell Hitchcock and should not be deceptively advertised. These conventions of Philip Johnson succinctly describe it in the section of their decoration have a precise history and can be traced to two book on "The Avoidance of Applied Decoration." historical circumstances: the discussion of architectural At present applied color is used less. The color of authenticity in the nineteenth-century and the develop~nent natural surfacing materials and the natural metal color of interior design as a distinct and separate practice."he two of detail is definitely preferred. Where the metal is are deeply intertwined; when decorative elements are deemed painted, a dark neutral tone minimizes the apparent artificial, they and their advocates are excised from main- weight of the window frame. In surfaces of stucco, stream architectural practice, displaced in many instances to white or off-white, even where it is obtained with interior design. Interior design constitutes one of the modern 8ST"ACSA ANNUAL MEETING ANDTECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE

field of home economic^.^ In her introduction, de Wolfe outlines a prehistory for the feminine nature of sensible domestic design: "the virtues of simplicity and reticence in form first came into being, as nearly as we can tell, in the Grotta, the little studio-like apartment of Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness ofMantua, away back in 1496."1° However, her reference to simplicity has a much more complex history which is bound to the discussion of authenticity and utility and which finds its moment of crystallization in the English reform movement of the mid-century. William Morris, John Ruskin, and their circle profoundly altered the discussion of domestic design, and their ideas were broadcast across America through Charles Locke Eastlake's Hints on House- hold Taste (1868)'' and Oscar Wilde's 10 month lecure tour on the "English Renaissance" in 1882. In the many variations of Wilde's lecture, eventually titled "The House Beautiful," he too followed the room-by-room format, describing suit- able materials and finishes for each element of the house.I2 He illustrated the unity of beauty and craftsmanship, which is the hallmark of the movement, in his own discussion of books: "an old library is one of the most beautihlly colored things imaginable; the old colors are toned down and they are so well bound, for whatever is beautiful is well made."" Neither Morris nor Wilde argued against all use of applied colors, both discussed the selection and use of paint colors at length. But with respect to the exterior, Wilde followed Fig. 1. "Mies van der Rohe, Apartment Study, New York, 1930," Ruskin's distrust of painted buildings, indicating one of the The International St.vle, 191. operational principles by which natural and applied colors are distinguished. divisions of labor within the building trades, and it is a highly gendered division in which the activities and the individuals The true colours of architecture are those of natural engaged in them are assumed to be somehow feminine. That stone, and I would fain see them taken advantage of to assignment derives, in part, from the domestic situation of the full. . . let the painter's work be reserved for the women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shadowed loggia and inner chamber. a situation noted by the first professional interior designer, This is the true and faithful way ofbuilding. Where this Elsie de Wolfe (1 865- 1950), in her arguments for the inven- cannot be, the device ofexternal colouring may indeed tion of the discipline: be employed without dishonour---but it must be with We take it for granted that every woman is interested the warning reflection that a time will come when such in houses-that she either has a house in course of aids will pass away and when the building will be construction, or dreams of having one, or has had a judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the house long enough wrong to wish it right. And we take dolphin. Better the less bright, more enduring fabric. it for granted that this American home is always the The transparent alabasters of San Miniato and the woman's home: a man may build and decorate a mosaics of Saint Mark's are more warmly filled and beautihl house, but it remains for a woman to make a more brightly touched by every return of morning and home of it for him. It is the personality of the mistress evening rays, while the hues of the Gothic cathedrals that the home expresses. Men are forever guests in our have died like the iris out of the cloud, and the temples, homes, no matter how much happiness they may find whose azure and purple once gleamed above the there.' Grecian promontory, stand in their faded whiteness like snows which the sunset has left cold.I4 Like Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman's Decoration of Houses ( 1897),#de Wolfe '.Y House it1 Good Taste ( 19 13) was This is a real distinction of craft: the demands on exterior a room-by-room analysis of the house, which refers to the finishes differ substantially from those of the interior; the great houses and palaces of Europe for authority. Her work facts of endurance and wear draw a line precisely between was among the first in a deluge of books explaining the natural and applied colors. Fifty years of experimentation principles and practices of interior design for homeowners with modern polychromy had taught nineteenth-century and professionals, and feeding directly into the developing architects the importance of "structural" color, not only by 4x6 AR('H1TECTURE: MATERIAL .AND IMAGINED experience. but in recognition that the applied coloring of Likc its intcrior dcsign predecessors. The Personalitj~of a ancient and medieval buildings had becn lost to time." House outlines a series ofprinciples and then proceeds room- Nevertheless, the force of the twentieth-ccntury's misgiv- by-room, referring to the English Georgian as an exemplar ings about applied color are not sufficiently explained by and also to local examples, including Post's own work, for either the demands of craft or the consciousness of futurc the specifics of American usage and construction. Her generations. On the one hand, the authority of the natural general ethic, "emptiness is always an essential of classic over the artificial reaches back to the 18th century. while the beauty and dignity." is virtually identical to de Wolfes lnistrust of color's artifice extends at least to the painter's "simplicity and reticence," and the "better none at all" of the argument about ciisrgno r co1or.e of the Renaissancc and International Style. Her fundalnental principles of design- sixteenth centuries.''' The further affiliation of applied color- utility. strength, and beauty-are plainly drawn fro~narchitec- ing with the tcndency of matter to change fonn aligns it with tural treatises. Implicit rules for natural color occur in her the strongly gcndered hylolnorphic (matter-fonn) tradition chapter on the design of "A Room for a Man," in which she traced by David Su~runcrsback to the Pythagorean contrar- articulates the gendered assumptions about of colors, fin- ies." But on the other hand. questions about the preference ishes. and books. for natural color and the decorative use of books are not All plain wood-lined roorns are good, as are also walls wholly answered by a linear histories of influence; the painted or papered in neutral tones ofputty, or sand, or situation is full of contradictions. From Wilde's tour of 1882 olive-gray, or wrapping-paper brown, made colorhl to the International Style Exhibition of 1932, those prefcr- by many books (red ones!). . . . For a man's study- ences are shaped in the co~nplexinteraction between the unless he never reads-the most firnishing de corations rapidly consolidated practices of interior design, the chang- are well-filled book-shelves, not too closely matched. ing roles of women and characterizations of femininity. and Odd lots of books, reference books in calf or leather, the fonnation of modern ho~nosexualidentity, itself given or at most, sets of favorite authors in cloth bindings, are focus by Wilde's trial and conviction in 1895.'" far more suggestive of the inan who reads than are even Expressions of taste like The Iritc~r~riutiotiulStj.1~ or the rows of splendidly-tooled bindings-unless bindings manuals of interior design are also highly class based. As are his hobby." Hitchcock and Johnson explained about their work, "the current style sets a high. but not i~npossiblestandard for In a subsequent section. she discusses the production of decoration: better none at all unless it bc good. The principle "Faked Bindings for Decoration." prefiguring exactly the is aristocratic rather than puritanical."'VWilde lvould agrce convention reviewed in the shelter magazine discussed at the with thc standard if not the specifics of the style. The beginning of this paper. This practice, and the decorative proliferation of mass-produced dccorativc goods and the deployment of books in general. operate not according to the successive ~novclnentsof rcfonn and cducation arc bound logic of utility and authenticity by which the fonnal prin- together. while thc develop~ncntof kitsch. camp. and low art ciples are explained at the beginning of her book, but attest to thcir interaction and complicity.'" Betwen 1882 according to the negotiation of identity and its representa- and 1932. thc positive discussion of applied color and tions. As Heidcgger noted. the correlation of this kind of decoration shifts into intcrior dcsign and the room-by-room opposition with the fonil and matter pairing produces a fonnat of its guidebooks. Thcrc the discourse is conducted at "conceptual mechanism that nothing is capable of with- two levels: one organized by the declaration of formal standing."?' Decorative practices like the faking of books are principles and exemplary works. ~vliilcthe second is inlplicit in the topics, examples. and commentary. which arc better suited to the fonnation of a canon of taste. The ethic of natural color described by Hitchcock and Johnson is highlighted by Emily Post's interior architecture guidebook of 1930. Tlzr Per:sonulit~tofu Holrse, published just before the It~ternatioliulSti.1~ E.ri1ihifiori was mountcd." Post is bctter known for her i~n~nensclysucccsshl guide, Tlie Etiquette, which has becn in print since 1922.:' She was the daughter of Bruce Price. the architect of Tuxedo Park, and after a divorcc supported herself by writing articles and designing interiors. In a different timc, she would surely have been an architect and despite her success as an arbiter of manners, her son has said that the book on interior dcsign u as hcr favorite work." The Etiquette and Tile Per:voricrlitj. of a Housernirroroneanotherrelnarkably,both advancingstrong Fig,2, i,lvitinpman's in which color is supplied in gay standards of taste founded 011 the ~rinciplcsof &arm. print and the mellow quality of old books," Tlre Per:sot~nli~vof'rr comfort. and accommodation. explained through example. Holr.sc.. Platc 45. XSTH ACSA ANNUAL MEETING ANDTECHNOLOGY (ONFERENCE excluded from the formal discourse, leaving them largely ' Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, Tlte Interna- unexamined and disciplined only through the room-by-room tional Style (1932). (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966), 75. narrative format that is consequently their trademark. ' For a history of the exhibition: Terence Riley, The Interna- The similarities between the "Room for a Man" and the tional St~~le:Exhibi~lon I and the Museutn of Modern Art (New room of The International Style exemplify the hlly formed York: Rizzolilcba, 1992). concept of modem color and finish by which simple, achro- The International Style, 76. matic roo~nsor devices are deemed masculine. That identity C. Ray Smith, lrlterior Design in 20th Century America: A History (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987). Marg- is remarkably independent of style, and it continues to aret Milam Sharon, Historical Perspeclives on Interior Archi- characterize designers, occupants, and finishes, warping and tecture/Design as a Developing Profession (Unpublished Dis- restricting architectural practice by its definition. The dis- sertation: University of Kentucky, 1992). tinction of natural finishes from applied colors derives its ' Elsie de Wolfe, The House in Good Taste (New York: The energy from the resistance to the subjectivity of "taste," Century Co., 1913), 5. Edith Wharton, and Codman, Ogden, Jr. The Decoration of which is hrther affiliated with intuition, irrationality, and Houses (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1897). Metcalf, Pauline the feminine. The repeated efforts to develop a definitive C. Ed. Odgen Codman and the Decoration of Houses (The science of color effects, either hnctionally or linguistically, Boston Athenaeum, 1988). are efforts to excise that subjectivity and its connotations The prototype for these room-by-room prescriptive works, from architecture. The fear of taste also exacerbates the gap though not literally referenced, has to be: Nicolas Le Camus de Mezieres, Tile Geniu.~ofArchitecture; of; the Analogy of the Art between the practical applications of color and the discourse with our Serisation.~(Santa Monica: The Getty Center for the which seeks to explain them. The logic of color practices history of Art and Humanities, 1992). cannot be grasped by positivist theories without an equiva- "' House in Good Taste, 9. lent consideration of change. occasion, and taste. It requires " Charles L Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste: The Classic the kind of attention to variable elements proposed by Claude Handbook of Victorian Interior Decoration, 4th Ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1986). Perrault. '' Kevin H.FO'Brien,. "'The House Beautiful': A Reconstruction In architecture there is positive beauty and beauty that of Oscar Wilde's American Lecture." Victorian Studies, XVII (June, 1974), 395-41 8. For the form of this talk, as well as many is only arbitrary, even though it appears to be positive of its specifics: William Morris, "Making the Best of It due to prejudice, against which one guards oneself (1 879)," The Collected Works of Williarn Morris. XXll (Lon- with great difficulty. It is also true that even though don: Longmans Green and Company, 191 4), 8 1 - 1 18. good taste is founded on a knowledge of both kinds of I' The House Beauttful, paragraph 38. beauty, a knowledge of arbitrary beauty is usually ''This quotation is from a slightly different version of the lecture. Oscar Wilde, "Art and the Handicrafstman," The First Col- more apt to fonn what we call taste and is that which lected Edition of the works of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 14 (London: distinguishes true architects from the rest.26 Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969). 292-308. l5 David Van Zanten, The Architectural Pol~~chrom~vofthe1830 :T The selection of colors and finishes is an exercise of taste, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977). Robin Middleton, and any such acknowledgment makes evident the deep "Colour and Cladding in the Nineteenth Century," Daidalos, 5 1 affiliation of architecture with the arts of convention-dress- (March, 1994), 7889. ing, dining, dancing, etc. That perhaps is the deepest fear '" John Gage, Color and Culture: Practice and Meaningfiom expressed by the privileging of natural over applied color: Antiquity to Abstraction (Boston: Littlc, Brown and Company, 1993), 1 1 7-38. that acknowledg~nentof the arts of convention and the I' David Summers, "Forni and Gender." New liter at:^ History, 24 necessity of timeliness would undermine a profession dedi- (Spring, 1993), 243-271. "Form and Gender." "' Form,' cated defensively to timelessness. Ultimately, it is through Nineteenthcentury Metaphysics and the Problem of Art his- taste, shaped according to class and gender, that we discrimi- torical Description," Critical Inquir:~,15 (Winter, 1989), 372- nate among the qualities of materials and their finishing, but 406. 'V owe my understanding of this process to the dissertation despite the arbitrariness of its specific, historical elements, research by Durham Crout on E.W. Godwin, C.R. Ashbee, the composition of a palettes is among the most demanding and Oscar Wilde (unpublished, University of Pennsylvania). forms of discrimination required of architects and designers. For a discussion of Wilde and the trial: Hyde, H. Montgom- Its method involves the close attention to material details at~d ery, Oscar Wilde: A Biograplly (New York: A Da Capo identities, for which the best guide would be Emily Post and Paperback, 1975). As to the precise effects of homophobia on the subject of this paper, I can only note the degree to which Hitchcock and Johnson. Hitchcock and Johnson both operated according to the stereo- type of homosexual connoisseur-ship and applied the NOTES homophobic exclusion of artifice and changeable finishes. The contradictions of the process affects not only the logic of ' John Ruskin, Tlle Stones of Venice (New York: Da Capo Press. the practices, but the public discourse and identities of the 1960). 102. critics and architects themselves. ? I have been unable to locate this article which I read in the late IY Tile Internafional Style, 75. 1980's, but as I hope this article will show. it is the expression '" Matei Calinescu, Five Faces 0fModernit.v: Modernisnz, Avant- of both a common practice and a con~monplace.Si tion e vero Garde, Decadence, Kitsch. Postmodernism (Durham: Duke e bene trotata. University Press, 1987). 488 ARCHITECTURE. MATERIAL AND IMAGINED

'' Emily Post. The Personalit.vofa House: The Blue Book ofHonze author who had enlarged their library living-room was annoyed Design and Decorafion (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co.. at the distressing emptiness of so many of the new book- 1930) shelves. So she went to a store that had advertised cheap --7, Emily Post, Etiquette in Societ,t*,in 5u.cines.c.in Polific.~,atidut editions and asked for 'lots of books.' Said the clerk: 'Which Honze (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1922). It quickly became books rnay I get you?' To the horror of the clerk, she answered, known as The Blue Book of Social Usage and is now in its 15th 'Red ones!' She giggled afterwards at the clerks's obvious revision. estimate of her literary taste." 188. '' Edwin Post. Tr~ilvEnii/v Post (New York: Funk & Wagnalls ?' Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art, (1935-6)" Company, 1961). Basic Writings (Harper & Row. Publishers, 1977). 158. '? The Personality of a House. 406. The reference to red books ?" Claude Perrault, 01-donnancefor the Five Kinds of Columns comes from an anecdote that she relates earlicr in the book. nfier [he Merhoci nfrhe Ancients (1683) (Santa Monica: Getty "This reminds me of a story that is true: Thc wife of an eminent Center, 1993).