To the painting’s self-justifying presence corresponds the self-sufficiency of our experience to it. Paintings are not useful in any obvious sense; they are not good for anything. But just their uselessness endows them with an appeal denied to anything that answers toward the future. Thus it lets us be present to ourselves in a way denied by our usual engagement in the world. To the plenitude of the aesthetic object corresponds the plenitude of aesthetic experience.

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This objectification of reality must be understood in all its ambivalence: on one side we know, as well as Ruskin or Loos did, that in countless ways objectifying reason has improved the quality of life. One could cite advances in medicine, or the revolution in communications, or the impact technology has had on food production. Although countless problems still await a technological solution, who could deny that technology has helped us lift at least some of the burdens of life? There is an obvious sense in which we are less limited by our body and by the accident of its location in space and time than were our predecessors. It would be irresponsible not to affirm the liberating potential of objectifying reason.

But such affirmation may not mean the absolutism of pure reason. For its other side is the often-lamented rootlessness of modern dwelling. No doubt, science and technology have brought us greater freedom; both literally and figuratively, we have become more mobile. Such mobility has made us less willing to accept what happens to be the place assigned by nature or history, more ready to experiment. Beyond what is, the self-elevation of the spirit has opened up infinite realms of what might be. But this very real increase in freedom has given new urgency to questions about what should be our place and vocation, and for these, Kant’s conviction notwithstanding, pure reason has no answers. The same self-liberation presupposed by the objectification of reality lets us live our lives sub specie possibilitatis, haunted by a sense of contingency and arbitrariness, of emptiness and futility. Where do we find ground or measure in the infinite realms opened up by reflection? How can we justify the way we live? Reason alone has no answer. And to the extent that objectifying reason shaped our life world, threatening to debase human beings by reducing them to material to be subjected to planning and organization — just another resource, to be used and used up like any other — that world holds no answer either; it leaves us with dreams of lost meaning, lost plenitude, of a communal existence strongly rooted in both space and time. It is no accident that ornament should have come to figure what is felt to be missing.

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An analogous point must be made concerning Lodoli’s other commandment: “Architecture must conform to the nature of materials.” There is a sense in which the necessities of building enforce such conforming: every crafts-worker must understand the nature of his or her materials if the work is to succeed, if knives are to cut or walls to support vaults. But just as regard for function does not mean that an attempt has to be made to display that functional and to make it conspicuous so regard for materials does not mean that an attempt has been made to call the nature of the material of which an object has been made to our attention. Quite the opposite is true. When tools work well we often forget what they are made of. We really look at such objects of daily use only when something goes wrong: we lose a heel of a shoe or tear our shirt. Suddenly the familiar and usually overlooked becomes conspicuous and all too visible. The same may be said of building after the unfamiliarity of a newly painted wall has worn off, the broken yellow we have chosen may only call itself to our attention when suddenly made to glow by the late afternoon sun or when it blisters or peels.