I mentioned previously that I'd post some of Max Behr's thoughts on Beauty. Here it is:
Art in Golf Architecture May 16, 1925
We are too apt to mistake that which is pretty, or picturesque, for the beautiful.
Beauty practically always accompanies economy of structure.
When we perceive it, we first become aware of truth; and only in the presence of truth do we
recognize stability and permanence.
What, then, is art in golf architecture? 'Vhat are the values we should seek to achieve it?
If we analyze golf architecture in general, we shall discover that,
wherever beauty manifests itself in the necessary modifications of the
ground, wherever the work done seems inevitably to be so, we can be relatively
sure the work promises to endure.
,What are the requisites to perfection and thus
art? Repton, the great landscape gardener of the X VI lIth Century, has
perhaps most concisely and perfectly stated them. " .
"First it must display the natural beauties and lude the natural defects
of every situation. Secondly, it should give the appearance of
extent and, freedom by carefully disguising or hiding ,the boundary.
Thirdly, it must studiously conceal every interference of art, however
expensive, by which the scenery is improved, making the whole appear the
production of nature only. and fourthly, all objects of mere convenience
or comfort, if incapable of being made ornamental, or of becoming proper
parts of the general scenery, must be removed or concealed."
the golfer of the future will demand
of a golf course that ." relief to be found in the athletic pleasure to be derived
from landscape which expresses not man's will but the operation of
na tural forces."
It must be evident that there are two methods. in which golf architecture
is pursued. In the one were the architect, with plastescine or
contour lines, inventing regardless of the nonconformity of situations to
his ideas; and, thus, feeling himself free to modify the ground to his will,
it is his destiny' to be in bondage to the winds of fashion and reflect in
his work the psychology of his time. Driven by a self-complacency in his
omnipotence, the bark of his architecture, without the rudder of geological
law, must drift from one fallacy of design to another. Only thus
it would seem that "freak" architecture can be explained.
But the golf architect who looks upon his work as a true art will
ever be humble, for his search is beauty. 'With so high a purpose, his
will is ever subservient to his quest. I t becomes the handmaid by which
. he brings to fruition his intuitions of truth. He must first feel before he
thinks. And thus with no matrix of irrelevant ideas to' dim his sight, he,
with innocent eyes, perceives the forms of nature and rearranges them
as they.might once have been, or anticipates what they are to be, blending
with his work that modicum of necessity that golf demands.