Philip Johnson with Alfred barr
'When Alfred Barr and I presented Machine Art at The Museum of Modern Art in 1934, we included Plato’s comments from Philebus in the preface to the catalogue. Plato states that the beauty of geometric forms such as the circle and straight line is absolute. And we believed that at the time. Now, I feel differently. Such things are relative. I am a follower of Heraclitus. The only absolute is change itself.'
Note: but how to measure change if nothing is stable?
The website offers to quotes: one from Plato's Philebus and a quote by Corbusier wherein he speaks of a architecture as a language of forms.
'By beauty of shapes I do not mean, as most people would suppose, the beauty of living figures or of pictures, but, to make my point clear, I mean straight lines and circles, and shapes, plane or solid, made from them by lathe, ruler and square. These are not, like other things, beautiful relatively, but always and absolutely'
Plato. Philebus
'L'architecture est le jeu savant, correct et magnifique des volumes assemblés sous la lumière. Nos yeux sont faits pour voir les formes sous la lumière; les ombres et les clairs révèlent les formes; les cubes, les cônes, les sphères, les cylindres ou les pyramides sont les grandes formes primaires que la lumière révèle bien; l’image nous en est nette et tangible, sans ambiguïté. C'est pour cela que ce sont de belles formes, les plus belles formes. Tout le monde est d’accord en cela, l’enfant, le sauvage et le métaphysicien. C'est la condition même des arts plastiques.'
Note: the intimate connection of the visible with the 'formes primaires'. The visble is therefore not disconnected with perfection. The Platonic forms are everywhere, not only in some sort of heaven.
Le Corbusier. Vers une architecture
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