The Tyranny of the Straight Line
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| Friedensreich Hundertwasser, 1954 |
“I have a bicycle. Paris is big. I think that the lines I draw through this city with my bike are wonderful. The lines I draw are just as wonderful as all the other lines that I cross over, which other people have left behind. I ride around people and obstacles. I am happy that as a painter that I am finally in harmony and in direct contact with others. These lines, which cost me many hours and make me tired, and have become giant circles by the time of my return, are more beautiful, truer and more justified than those which I can draw on a sheet of paper."
- Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Nearly
20 years ago, when we were starting the massive cob, strawbale and earthbag
structure that was to become The Green Dragon, we wondered whether we had been
wise to listen to Bob Kornegay, who was a biodynamic landscaper. Bob had insisted
that we needed to avoid corners and follow the lay of the land rather than
level the foundation. Now that we have the experience of years in the building
to draw upon, we can know how right he was. The building is alive.
From
the moment you enter you feel a sense of wonder and magic in the space. The
sloping floor and round pole ceiling give you a sense of a Neolithic cave or a cathedral of boughs in the forest. You feel secure. The light, entering through odd shaped
and unevenly placed windows, plays off the irregular surfaces in a dance of color, form and life.
The building makes you happy.
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| Pleasant Hill Shaker Village |
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| Steiner's Goethaneum |
It was small wonder then that
little Friedrich Stowasser would be deeply affected by Steiner, whether he
learned of him through the Montessori School in Vienna in which he was enrolled
in 1935, later from the news surrounding Hess, or from his connection to Heinrich Himmler's astrologer WilhelmWulff, a Steiner devotee. 
Stowasser was fond of art
and would eventually pursue a career in it.
Like Steiner, he became an enemy of the straight line.
When Hitler annexed
Austria, Stowasser, age 10, suddenly had his world turned upside down. His Montesorri
School was closed in the Anschluss. His mother was Jewish and to avoid suspicions, she enrolled Friedrich
in public school and urged him to join the Hitler Youth, not atypical for Jews
trying to hide their identity. The Stowassers survived the war but 69 of little
Friedrich's cousins, aunts and uncles went to the furnaces or starved in camps.
In 1948 Friedrich enrolled
at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and began signing his works
Hundertwasser ("Sto" means "hundred" in most Slavic
languages). He dropped out after one semester and travelled to Italy, Paris,
Morocco, Tunisia and Sicily, learning English, French and Italian quite well and
some Japanese, Russian, Czech and Arabic. He held his first art show four years
later.
In 1953, Friedrich painted
his first spiral, which became something of a trademark, but it was in 1959
that he stepped out from the art world in a more profound way. As a visiting
professor of fine arts at Hamburg University he staged his first political
theater.
On December 18, 1959 at
3:11 o’clock in the afternoon, a date and time recommended to him by his friend
Wulff, the astrologer, he began painting an endless line in room 213 of the University of Fine
Arts building.
Together with a group of
students working non-stop, Hundertwasser painted a continuous line around the
walls of the room, including doors, windows and radiators. His intention was
for the line to entirely cover the walls and then wander outside of the
building into the neighborhood until the entire city district was literally
contained in a spiral. He would not only to take the art into the community,
but to draw the community into the art. So when newspaper reports about the
project implied that it was open to the public, people came. The university,
which had approved the work, was unable to deal with the masses storming
through its halls in an attempt to enter or at least peek into room 213.
The university ordered
Hundertwasser to stop painting and the project ended abruptly 46 hours after it
had begun. The line had been competed to a height of about 9 feet. Hundertwasser
was not fired, he just declined to return to the university after the Christmas
break.
As his students might
attest, he vehemently criticized Hamburg’s pragmatic post-war architecture with
its sterile straight lines, calling them a tool of the devil. He denounced the profession
of architects as a closed club of elitists. Architecture, he claimed, was no
more than a conspiracy of straight-liners.
"I dare say that the line that I draw with my feet in order to go to the museum is more important than the lines that one finds on the actual paintings hanging in the museum. And I take endless satisfaction in seeing that this line is never straight, nor, however, is it random. Rather, it is just as it should be. And this holds true in its each and every segment. Beware of the straight line, and of the inebriated line. But especially beware of the straight line. Following the straight line will someday lead the human race to its doom."
In the early 60s, on a visit to Japan and trying to
translate his name into kanji, he realized another possibility: Friedensreich, which means either
Kingdom of Peace or Rich in Peace. So he became Friedensreich Hundertwasser.
In
1967 he made his now-famous “naked-speech” in Munich, in which he made the case
for people’s right to a “third skin.” According to Hundertwasser, people have
three skins: their epidermis, their clothes, and finally their shelter."A person living in a rental apartment must have the right to lean out the window and scrape away the stucco as far as her hands reach. And she must have the right to take a long paintbrush, and without falling out the window, paint everything pink as far as she can reach so that from the street people can see: A human being lives here."
Later,
in 1972, Hundertwasser added two additional layers of skin: our social
environment of family, friends and nation, and the biosphere and its role in
clothing, sheltering and protecting us. He took the name Regentag (Rainy
Day"). He later added the word “Dunkelbunt” (“dark-colorful”), so his full
name became Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser.
In 1981 Hundertwasser
wrote his treatise “On the Relationship of Architecture to Nature," while
in Venice. In it he laid out his love of the colors found in nature, rather than
by mixing chemicals, and his distain for smooth surfaces. "Nature, the
definition of life itself," he wrote, "is inherently uneven. It is
rough, rugged and curvy. Nothing pleases the eye more than an old farmhouse
with its corners, curves, warps and crookedness. Such houses appear to grow out
of the ground like plants. They appear to belong there."
With modern apartment
blocks. One person, the architect, determines how the building is to look,
right down to its uniform color. The inhabitants become slaves to the will of
the architect. Hundertwasser proposed that apartment dwellers shape the
appearance of their apartments, not only on the inside, but on the outside as
well. Paradoxically, this expression of individualism creates the diversity that
humanizes the space. Not only are the inhabitants humanized, but passers-by as
well. Consequently, such a building has a positive effect on the entire
community.
According
to Hundertwasser, vertical spaces belong to humans (we construct and shape the walls), horizontal
spaces belong to nature (grass and trees belong on roofs and walkways). Floors
should never be level. From a bird’s eye view, the building is invisible. 
We will be taking these
ideas to the Natural Building Colloquium, not as new things, but as reminders.
Natural building is not a new thing, it is ancient. These structures resonate
deeply. Requiring neither architects nor professional builders, they are a
people's art. Each structure is an individual expression. It has roots in the
earth and touches the sky. It soars, and it burrows. Natural buildings are
something very much in alignment with Hundertwasser's powerful vision of human
reinhabitation.
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