Less Is More Not Mies?
Did the iconic architect appropriate an obscure line of poetry for repurposing as his modernist dictum? Robert Browning (above left) wrote a poem about Florentine painter Andrea del Sarto (above middle) in 1855 (according to Wikipedia) which uses the phrase later made much more famous by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (above right). Was Mies a Browning fan? Exerpt beneath works by del Sarto and van der Rohe (...and Sondheim. Read on.) below.
What got us thinking about this? Well, we were reading Finishing the Hat, Stephen Sondheim's new book about his own work in musical theatre. In the preface, Sondheim cites "Less Is More" as one of the three basic principles necessary for the lyric writer, along with "God Is in the Details" (also widely credited by architects to Mies. Wikipedia's speculation ranges from Flaubert to "anonymous." ) and "Content Dictates Form," an inversion of a the more gently framed, alliterative directive "Form Follows Function," first issued in the late 19th century by "American architecture" advocate and practitioner Louis Sullivan. Or was it...?
"...To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)--so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,.."
Complete poem at PoemHunter.com
Image sources:
from J Paul Getty Museum, designclassics.cn, guardian.co.uk, wikipedia
