Despite what may seem to be very significant basic differences between the aims of the poet and the musician on one hand, and the artist and the sculptor on the other, all four can obtain their particular results by utilizing similar methods.  In the same way that Eliot communicates with more depth and clarity by involving his viewer in the creation of the message, so can the artist or sculptor achieve more effective communication by making his viewer an active participant in the construction of the image.  Through the use of forms which are incomplete or partial representations of an idea, the artist can force his observer to project himself into the work of art - to empathize. Such viewer empathy can, when attuned to the expressive character of the artwork: the artist's empathy - be a powerful means of communication between artist and viewer. The artwork can thus serve as more than an object of pleasure for the viewer. It can become a medium for communication between two people which transcends temporal, geographical, or even cultural barriers.

The Rose Cooney house presents a striking example of the emotive power of a fragmentary form. It was built on the desert near Phoenix, Arizona. High on a mesa, its stone walls stood silhouetted against the sky. Strong, heroic forms were punctuated only by the intermittent timbers supporting the canvas roof. Tragically, or so it would seem, the house burned.  The fire roared through the wood and canvas leaving only charred remains among the ruined stone walls. Even these were knocked away in some places where the firefighters had attempted to gain access.  The architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was called to the scene to assess the damage and make recom­mendations for repair. Arriving several days after the fire he stood among the ruins speechless, admiring. Slowly a smile crossed his face and without so much as a sound he turned and walked from the site, never to offer the least advice for renovation. "The great masonry bulk that survived the fire made a more beautiful silhouette than the house in its entirety had made while it was still standing."⁴  For Wright, the ruins embodied a beauty his design could never capture. The house stands today in its ruined state.

Wright was not the first to find wonder in the remains. Corbusier uncovered inspiration among the ruins of the Parthenon. There are vivid literary portraits of Brunellesch scrabbling among the scattered fragments of ancient Rome copying the details that would give birth to the Renaissance, while nearly two hundred years later Claude Lorrain would romantically juxtapose these same fragments with his pastoral landscapes. Paul Zucker suggests that such is the nature of the ruin, to interact inextricably with the environment.⁵  But though it may stand in this way as a monument to the endurance of form, such is not the source of its fascination.  Rather, it is the power it possesses as a mere fragment to act as a communicant for the essence of the whole.  It is fair to ask whether the Parthenon would be more appealing were it complete, for surely in part its attraction lies in the opportunity the observer has to imagine what it would be like if ....

That opportunity had passed for Wright, but his indulgence in the ruin of the burned house may not have required the influence of imagination. An architect, or any artist, has an idea in mind when he sets out to create a work of art. The creative process is a struggle to force this idea to emerge in medium, and it is not always successful. The fury of Michelangelo's attack on his second Pieta attests to this, but Frank Lloyd Wright could not very well destroy Ms. Cooney's house in a fit of pique. Perhaps he did not need for the essence of his ideal may finally have been revealed through the interjection of nature.

One must marvel at this ability of the incomplete, the way that a piece of a thing can so strongly communicate its idea.  Clearly, the allure of the ruin goes beyond the romanticism of Zucker's Fascination of Decay, but how far? Even if the ruin is part of a work of art, it is certainly not a representation so much as it is a piece. Can its qualities of the fragment serving as an embodiment of an idea, or as a skeleton for imaginative construction, be logically extended into the realm of representation and abstraction?

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