The unity of all space-making factors erases the boundaries between the various plastic arts, so rendering further discussion of 'collaboration' superfluous. The demands of this new aesthetic amount to absolute unity of construction, function, form, and color. Mechanization is in command and the logical consequence of this is a new universal and objective aethetic.
There is only one possible route to collaboration between architecture and other plastic arts and it is signaled by mechanization, the same mechanization that previously protected architecture from dilution. Salvation must come from the visual arts but not, of course, in this form. Today's architecture is apparently still too impoverished in terms of plasticity not to be afflicted by an inferiority complex when faced with this turbulent stream of artistic hocus-pocus. But in the visual arts, which provided the initial impetus, the situation is rather different.Īt the present moment, expressionism - abstract and figurative - is on the offensive and, paradoxically enough, is finding some support among architects: waverers who are not philosopher enough to refrain from this unnatural marriage with a visual arts phenomenon that stifles architecture under the pretext of collaboration. In architecture, the opponents of expressionism found direct support in the economic advantages of mechanization and, partly because of this, costly expressionism was short-lived there.
An individualism was held responsible for the decline of plastic form in favor of nebulous 'expression.' This Geltungsdrang of the individual, this expressionism, had and still has to be stopped. De Stijl resisted individualism in the visual arts and architecture. Even so, there would probably have been no question of collaboration had it not been for de Stijl. The idea of an amalgamation with architecture arose at a time when visual art had reached a point in its development when the concept of space acquired a more direct significance than it had enjoyed so far.
In the visual arts domain alone, there already exist such unbridgeable differences that it is impossible to speak of visual art in terms of a single clear concept. It is useless to talk about collaboration so long as we do not know what demands both architecture and the visual arts must satisfy in order for this collaboration to be of any benefit. Constant Nieuwenhuis from collaboration to absolute unity
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