Goth's letter

Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) is the greatest figure in the history of German literature. He wrote a letter to his good friend Schiller on August 14, 1797. Part of the text reads like this:

​"Yesterday, I watched a performance at the Palmire Opera House. The building is well-built on the whole and very decently. In addition, I was extremely happy to observe an element of the setting nearby- -I mean its decoration. These decoration works are from a Milanese named Fuentes who currently lives in the area. The most difficult part of the theater building is that it must have all the basic principles of real architecture perfectly at the same time. It is necessary to systematically stay away from these principles in order to meet its unique purpose. Architecture-in the higher sense of this term, its responsibility is to give the environment it creates a solemn, noble, and rigorous characteristic, and does not allow architecture to have the characteristics of dignity, nobility, and rigor. A sense of entertainment, but at the same time it becomes dull. Relatively, everything in the theater must present an elegant appearance. The theater’s architecture should be light, delicate, and diverse, but it must also reflect gorgeous, magnificent, and noble at the same time Generally speaking, the decoration of the theater (especially the background of the stage) should have a painting-like effect, and the decorator should be more thorough in this direction, even more than the landscape painter, and the latter is also the case-he must also The style of the building is changed according to actual needs. The renovation project of the Palmyra Opera House provides some good models. On this basis, it is possible to formulate guidelines for the style of theater paintings. There are a total of six decorative paintings in the theater. Continuous use between the two scenes, no one will be repeated, very clever for diversity and gradual layout. We are strongly aware that painters have all the real art techniques of architects, even when they use unconventional, To build in a different way, he still always follows the principle of realism, and all his buildings are based on the dominant idea of ​​real architecture."

From Goethe's narrative, we can find his strong classical thought characteristics, which of course is influenced by the background of the Enlightenment era. What he described about architecture and art represented the spirit of that era, and it was also a symbolic meaning to the society and culture of the time. People of that era seemed to have universal norms and evaluation standards for architecture and art. However, what we should think about is whether we are in this era, do architecture or aesthetics have similar standards? Or, should there be so-called standards? Classicism and Romanticism have been a concept of party rotation since ancient times. One comes to power and the other goes down. Then in this era when we can’t feel whether classical or romantic is the supremacy, what should we follow? Or say, Is there a clear follow-up?

The more chaotic the era, the more chaotic and complicated things need to be considered. I feel that sometimes the more I want to use system logic to figure out them, it is easy to fall into contradictory situations.