because they are such inclusive categories. Plainly they may divide the world between them. A formal design is one in which the objects are arranged in geometrical relations, their forms defining geometric figures on plan or being exactly balanced about a central axis. Such a design has been variously called architectural, regular, symmetrical, and geometrical. An informal design is one in which the objects are not arranged in the way we have just stated, that is, it is any design which is not formal. (Compare Plate 30 and Drawing II, opp. p. 30.) Most of the difficulties in regard to the term informal have arisen because different men have understood it in different senses. Some of the more ardent disciples of formal design have in effect considered informal to be synonymous with formless, and have denied that any good design could exist where, as they considered, there was no consistent organization of any kind. Others, having observed that the works of nature are without geometrical form, have endeavored to make their designs appear natural by the simple expedient of allowing no geometrical forms or balanced relations to appear.* The thoroughly unorganized and bad work produced in this way has been used as a reproach to those who were doing good naturalistic work, that is, design which, not being organized to express man's will, nor to express his esthetic desire for recognizable form and symmetrical balance, was informal, but was none the less composed, depending on more occult relations of balance and harmony and organized as an expression of the unity of certain forces of nature. It is evident that the negative term informal is so general that it is of very little value in naming a style, and should certainly not be used as the designation of the principle of organization of naturalistic design. From the point of view of the fundamental ideal expressed by the designer, styles of landscape design fall into two classes, those which express the dominance and the will of man and those which express the designer's appreciation of the power and beauty of nature.† (Compare Drawing IX, opp. p. 78 with Plate 21, and Tailpiece on p. 230 with Plate 27.) We have called the styles which fall into the first of these categories humanized and those which fall into the second, naturalistic. Since giving an object geometrical form is a common † See Chapter III, p. 30. * Cf. footnote on p. 45. and obvious way of making it express man's will, the term formal has often been used in the sense of man-made or man-dominated, but the two terms are not synonymous, for there are many informal designs which nevertheless are definitely and obviously humanized. The arrangement of their parts will consist in a more subtle sequence and an occult balance of interest among the objects composed, in pleasant harmonies and contrasts of the natural character of these objects, and in studied compositions of their individual effects for the greatest result in the effect of the whole. The hand of the designer and his artistic achievement may be recognized as fully in this design as in man's formally arranged compositions. (See Plate 6.) Historic Styles From among the various styles of landscape design, we have chosen Examples of for discussion in this chapter several of the more clearly defined as examples. Some analysis of the causes which brought each style about, some appreciation of the particular esthetic effect which is the stamp and the soul of each style, should give us a clearer idea of how our predecessors in landscape design have met their problems and what the essential considerations are which we in our turn must bear in mind in meeting ours. The Moorish gardens in Spain had for their direct prototype the The Moorish gardens of Persia and Syria. The first Moorish gardens in Cordova Style in Spain may well have been laid out by men who remembered the gardens of Damascus, and some of the fruits and flowers which to us are almost typical of Spain were introduced from the East by the Moorish invaders. In the hot and dry climate of southern Spain, the Moors had no need greatly to change their inherited method of life; and their social customs, and the constant wars, little and great, through which the country went, made it natural that the gardens should be almost in every instance patios partly or wholly surrounded by buildings, accessible only to the owner, and defended from the outside world. Of the many gardens which must have existed in Cordova, Toledo, Seville, and Granada, few have remained to the present day. Two notable and beautiful examples remain essentially unchanged in the gardens of the Alhambra and the Generaliffe at Granada. (See Drawing III, opp. p. 36.) Shade and coolness were the things which the climate made most desirable. A love for the color and scent of flowers, the Moors had The Moghul brought with them from the East. Water, essential in any case for the growth of the vegetation, was also by its life and movement and sparkle, by its suggestion of coolness, by its very contrast with the outside world in a land of drought, the most precious and attractive thing with which they could decorate the small areas in which perforce they concentrated, to be enjoyed at ease, the kind of beauty and restfulness furnished so scantily by the outside world. The water appeared in brimming fountain basins, in long and narrow pools, in multitudes of slender jets, and in little runnels cut in the pavements of the courts and even of the buildings themselves. The fruit trees and flowers and fountains were necessarily made a part of an architectural scheme, and the style of the Moorish gardens is not separable nor essentially different except in material from the style of Moorish architecture of the same period. When the Moors were finally conquered by the more virile but less beauty-loving races of the North, their taste left its stamp on the culture of Spain, and the conquering Spaniard in Mexico and California left in turn monuments of his taste and customs, still in a similar climate, which serve as examples in these places to our civilization of the present day. In the same way that the Arabs, having had previously no particular garden art of their own, prized and appropriated the garden design of the Persians and carried it to a new perfection in Spain, the Mongolian invaders of Persia appropriated the same art and carried it later with the founding of the Moghul dynasty in India to the greatest magnificence which it has seen. Thus the gardens of the Alhambra and those of the Taj Mahal (see Plate 1) have a readily traceable common ancestry. The design of the Moghul gardens was based, as the design of any garden in a hot dry climate must be based, primarily on the value of water and shade and flowers and fruit. The arrangement of these was deeply influenced - both in the general division of the garden and in such things as the grouping of the trees and the number of waterfalls by the Mohammedan symbolism which became gradually enriched from the traditions of the symbol-loving Hindus.* The Moghuls were *Cf. the "marriage of the trees" and other symbolism alluded to in various chapters in C. M. Villiers Stuart's Gardens of the Great Mughals, 1913. (See REFERENCES.) |