The Australian Ugliness Read Free Page B

heedless as an anthill and as accidental as a rubbish dump. No matter how one photographs it, draws it, looks at it, or describes it, it remains physically an awful mess. In any case negative, careless ugliness is not the worst thing. What really must concern us more is the positive, atrocious prettiness of bad design. The disease of Featurism, which sweeps Australia in epidemic proportions, is hardly less virulent and threatening anywhere that modern technology and commerce are in coalition. In describing the horrible Australian symptoms of this distressing international complaint, the one thing I have intended to prove is this: that every object made by man has its own integrity; that it should be an honest thing, made with an understanding of all its functions and with a sense of order. To learn how to make things like that is the main problem and duty of professional designers of all sorts; but this is a social problem too. To learn to appreciate sound design when it does appear is part of the essential artistic education of everybody; so it seems to me.
    When most objects are truly and sensitively functional, this technological age will be civilized and as beautiful in its own way as the nicer streets of classical Greece.
    The problem is universal, but the justification I claim for having written this book, after English writers had tackled the subject fairly thoroughly, is that I concentrate on the Australian aspect of it. For this reason, when it was first published some Australian critics said it was unpatriotic. Quite a number said it was also unfair because the ugliness of which I complained was not Australian but international. On the other hand, it was curious to note that among those who accepted the book were some who were not really interested in aesthetic or even visual considerations. They welcomed it simply because it was critical, and not very much criticism of Australia by Australians was being published then. Yet the smugness with which the majority of Australians appeared to regard their own country was building up a fierce reactionary distaste in a minority. Australians who did not see eye to eye with the conservatives in matters of cream-brick veneer and plastic flowers and censorship were inclined to blame the social establishment for everything else they found imperfect about this country, including any bush fires or droughts, and the flies, and the slowness of growth that must accompany under-population. This diffuse distaste has since found some healthy relief in a growing volume of criticism and satire. The pressure is reduced and it seems to be allowed now that one can criticize specific aspects of the land without condemning the whole. In fact, the more criticism that appears, the more acceptable and lovable Australia becomes to more people. Even an ineffectual vocal antagonism to complacency restores a semblance of civilized balance. In this spirit I feel obliged to reaffirm that the Australian ugliness is not only unique in several ways, but is also worse than most other countries’ kinds.
    That is not to deny that other countries have hideous aspects. The USA has become painfully conscious of ‘the mess that is manmade America’ (see page 39) since John F. Kennedy’s occupation of the White House. He was the first President of the USA since Thomas Jefferson to be actively interested in planning and architecture, and Lyndon B. Johnson has carried on the campaign he began. An essential element of Johnson’s Great Society is the cleaning up of the visual squalor that surrounds all American cities and permeates some. The American Institute of Architects lately has become almost obsessed with the desire to tidy up the urban background against which its members usually have to work. Among fairly recent books on the subject is a devastating photographic attack on the ugliest aspects of the urban scene, and on the devastation of the beautiful American landscape. It is the work of