voussoirs: ASTONISHING AFGHANISTAN: LOST TREASURES

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

ASTONISHING AFGHANISTAN: LOST TREASURES

Anticipation was encased in excitement: the rediscovery of lost treasures is always good news. It is like the archetypal story of the pirate’s hoard, but this cache has been found; and gold was involved too. There was no map, just altruistic good intentions that secretly placed the precious priceless items securely in a vault for twenty-five years. Sadly, the disappointment came with the first item on display: the grand Corinthian capital.

AFGHANISTAN HIDDEN TREASURES

FROM THE NATIONAL MUSEUM KABUL

5 September 2013 - 27 January 2014

QUEENSLAND MUSEUM

Placed on a column just over two metres high, this marvellous piece of boldly carved rock was illuminated from above and below in a manner that gave its crisp cutting no clarity. The mass was left in a haze of soft, unusually red-purple light that not only fuzzed the shading that might have emphasised the depth of the carving, as the lighting of the photograph in the catalogue did, but also concealed the actual colour of the stone. It was frustrating trying to peer through this bleary presence in order to see the strength and certainty of the capital that would have stood proud and assured, honest, in the blaze of clear Afghan light.

Yet again, the technical problems of properly lighting exhibits seem to have been ignored in favour of what looks like expediency. Rather than being driven by any commitment to an object and its identity, it looks as though near enough has been considered good enough: see - http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/a-mere-shadow-of-quilt.html and http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/on-exhibitionism-art-of-display.html Why is this problem allowed to go ignored? There was a sense of futility in the air. This is Queensland, home to one of the harshest of all penal colonies in Australia. Does some sense of this past place, its arrogant brutality, linger with us today? – see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/conviction.html

Water spout

Antefix

The other architectural pieces were impressive too. The stone waterspout was a real gem! Alas, frequently these pieces were displayed for their decorative identity rather than for information. The collection of stylised palm antefixes was beautiful, but how did they get fixed to the edge of the roof? One had to crank one’s neck and stand on tiptoes to try to see the backs of these pieces to see how they were mounted - by fixings through the terracotta shafts at their bases. The sundials were stunning, but why was it not explained that the ‘seat’ dial was a reconstruction? The catalogue was quite open about this fact. The gold dazzled the eye and changed the mood. There really is something mystical in this material, its firm and confident presence, its commanding solidity that can be sustained in its most frail of shapings and beatings. It is indeed the symbol of the sun in every aspect. It embodies power and authority. Little wonder that it has mesmerised man throughout the ages.

Alas, it was not the only thing that reflected and glowed. As one leaned over the glassy display tables or faced the gloss of the exhibition cabinets, one confronted one’s blurred reflection amongst the mirrored blaze of high downlights. In order to overcome this dazzling nuisance, one had to manoeuvre around into a location that would avoid the glare, using one’s own reflective shading to create a field for comfortable viewing. At times one had to lean over so far as to feel extremely awkward, choosing a less than favourable or comfortable viewpoint in order to just observe the pieces as best as one might in the circumstances. Why, oh why does this have to be so? It is not as though the science of lighting and display is unknown. Will we ever learn? Will we ever be bothered? Is it just carelessness? Budgets? It was not as though it was a ‘cheap’ exhibition to enter: $21.00 per adult. One really did not mind, just as long as the majority of profits were going back to Afghanistan. Were they?

Still the gold grabs the attention - delicate, detailed, firm and flimsy gold; deliciously chunky too: exquisite in every way, complete with engraving both in gold and coloured stone mounts that left one suspended in disbelief, such was its superb fineness and finesse. Memories of Macedonia came to mind, of that exhibition seen perhaps twenty-five years ago. Here gold was manipulated with such flair that the memories linger to this day: grand floral golden diadems. But this should be no surprise: the Corinthian column - there was a Greek connection. Yes, Macedonian craftsmen could have been involved in this remarkable making of fluttering gold fragments and filaments.

The pieces were so intelligently fine that a magnifying glass was sought in order to properly see the detailed form and decoration, and the construction and assembly of each piece. Interestingly, the gallery staff provided one. Someone must have anticipated the need. Why were magnifying glasses not a part of the displays for all to enjoy? Some pieces of gold were so extremely tiny that one would be unable to draw them full-size without the line thickness messing matters up; and some fine images had been engraved into stone too! What with? The glass revealed that even when small, faces had specific expressions and features, and that the gold decoration was never schematic either. It was precise in every detail. The tiny yellow shapes that were sewn onto clothing were remarkable. The mystery of how they might be connected to the fabric was solved once one noticed the miniature rods shaped in gold melded to the rear of the profiled sheet, pierced for the threads. Just why at least one of these pieces could not have been turned around to make this more obvious was a concern. At least the catalogue photographed one reversed to confirm the partial observation. Was the neatness of the display the primary matter, its patterned symmetries and alignments? It is a sad day when presentation becomes more important than the easy comprehension of fact.

Appearances seemed to be more important than information. Every piece had a formal presentation, a façade, in spite of references in the explanatory texts that told of decoration and other matters to do with the ‘reverse’ side that could never be seen. Why? It is not a difficult matter to overcome. There was a description in one text that told of an inscription on the side of a bowl that could not be seen. Identical bracelets were displayed identically as a matching twin pair when one item might have been placed differently so as to allow different parts to be seen in different ways. None of these possibilities appeared to have been considered in any display, let alone explored as an idea. When it was so significant that it could not be ignored, as in the aquarium bowl that had clever weights below that moved ‘fins’ in the water for entertainment, the lower mirror used to reflect this detail displayed only a dark mass that was just not immediately obvious. Folk were still bending down low to peer at the leaden baubles described in the wording, oblivious to the fact that the mirror might have displayed them more clearly and without less stress had the display been lighted appropriately. Gosh, it wouldn’t take much to install a small LED light that could be switched on when required by a push button, so as to fully reveal the cunning workings of this intriguing bowl. Sadly, even this matter was ignored, with the mirror being left with a darkly shaded reflection. Was this not noticed?

The aquarium bowl

Clarity didn’t appear to have any importance. There were blocks of copy mounted on large panels that had notations identified by what looked like catalogue reference numbers, e.g. K.001.3296. Alas, no matching coding could be seen on or near the items on display, leaving one at the mercy of what might be described as common sense to work things out. None of this uncertainty is needed or should be seen to be acceptable in well-designed displays. Where is the interest in the items? Where is the creativity? Where is the enthusiasm for good display? This achievement can be as infectious when well done as it can be dispiriting when poorly carried out. Surely if an item is considered important enough to be put on display, it must be significant enough to have the very best presentation possible so that all of its qualities can be sensibly and explicitly enhanced? Mirrors; lights; mounts; turning tables; and the like can all play an important role in displaying the wholeness and wonder of each object. Of course, one must avoid the problem of the Jewish Museum in Berlin where the clever gadgetry and smart ideas for the displays have taken control of the whole experience of both the exhibition and the extraordinary building.

Yet still the Afghan exhibition remained mesmerising. Imagine what it could have been? Perhaps it might have been just too overwhelming without these distracting annoyances that kept one just too aware of practical matters? It was obvious that these were skilled, sophisticated folk with a refined and sensitive culture. The exhibition made us look like the ‘huns and heathens’ - the barbarians! The technology and thought, skill and patience involved in the making of these items was astonishing. Our cliché reference to the crudity of all other times when compared to ours – identified as our ‘progress’ - became an obvious falsehood, a blind, boastful and ignorant, even foolish conceit. We need to recall this more frequently. Browsing through the explanatory descriptions, one name hit home and identified the core issue: ‘Nike, God of war.’ All we think of today, especially in this time of summer tennis, is ‘Nike, God of shoes and sporting clothes’! The difference in sensitivity and meaning is enormous. What might we know of or care for any god or symbolism other than its use as a commercial, promotional farce?

But there was more to consider and praise. The published catalogue is one of the best seen for any exhibition. It did not merely reproduce everything in the exhibition in an expensive and heavy book. It expanded ideas and information with drawings, photographs, stories and studies to truly ‘add value’ to the whole experience, all at a remarkably reasonable price too: $14.95. It is a shame that the display could not have been equally inventive and similarly interested in the subject being considered. Yet there were some niggles. Why was the drawing of the bone platter different to the platter itself? Why were small items illustrated as full-page photographs? One can understand the desire to clearly identify every detail. Indeed, I used a magnifying glass; but a catalogue should also present the objects as they might be experienced and maintain their real sense of scale. In the exhibition it was their smallness that was remarkable. Presenting them as larger images disguises this simple observation and fashions another false perception about these stunning pieces - their false grandeur. There was modesty here.

Still, one is left wondering if these ‘blockbusters’ are really all about dollars. Is the business plan to keep them cheap to maximise the profits? Some time ago the Sydney Powerhouse published its intentions to have a major display on the works of Le Corbusier. The ambitious plan was to reconstruct Corbusier’s cabanon at Cap Martin on the Côte d’Azur and one apartment from the Unité d’Habitation residential tower block at Marseilles at the Powerhouse for this exhibition. There was something to look forward to here. Both the cabanon and the Marseilles apartment are on nearly every architect’s wish list to visit. They are both icons, architectural legends. Now they were coming to Australia!

Le Corbusier's cabanon at Cap Martin

But as the time approached, nothing seemed to be getting finalised. When visiting the Powerhouse just prior to the planned opening of this show, I asked about it: why was there no activity? The response was vague. No one seemed sure or wanted to say anything much about it. So I wrote to the Director and did eventually get a response. It turned out that the proposal was just too expensive. The catalogue had been published, but still the exhibition was cancelled. Apparently the Powerhouse was more interested in paying to have the entrance space redeveloped, bringing the café up to this location from the more remote lower courtyard. Would this make it a better money-spinner with all visitors having to pass by rather than choose to detour to the lower level? Sadly there has been no more talk of the Corbusier show. Money matters.

Le Corbusier's Unité d’Habitation residential tower block at Marseilles

And so it also seems to be when looking at the Afghanistan exhibition. There are many simple things that could have been done to improve the displays. It only appears to need the raw interest and intrigue; simple honest, personal care, concern, and commitment, so that all aspects and qualities of each individual piece can be enhanced to their fullest. Why else exhibit any work of art? Style has little to do with anything but blurb and appearances. Exhibitions engage information; they tell about others and other times and places. They are not curious entertainments for easy pleasures and distracting interests.

The real surprise is that this exhibition seems to survive all of its issues and remain memorable, such is the amazing quality of the work - those lost wonders of Afghanistan that the country realises are so important for its culture. These precious items come from a time that we need to know more about. Drooling over sketchy promotional hype and broad summaries and glosses is only a beginning. The danger with the short-comings of the display is that these special items will be too easily left in the category of ‘interesting’ artefacts, old things to be assessed superficially with our clever understandings of beauty rather than with any complete feeling for place, people, time and culture: their integral expression with their own singular meaning and context. Placing things prettily rather than displaying them to reveal the full richness that they can offer us only isolates, decorates. It limits perceptions and highlights our own self-seeking importance, yet again.

One has to comment on the marvellously useful digital graphics in this exhibition: short, concise and accessible like the video clips that outlined the story of the discovery. One could spend the few minutes needed for viewing these presentations without feeling any disruption to the flow of being there, looking, understanding and learning - feeling. Unusually these presentations enhanced the experience by establishing a specific, more complete identity for some of the items behind the glass. One found oneself moving backwards and forwards to assemble the pieces, to get a better understanding of their milieu.

The structure of the display and the people management were equally impressive. The spatial division with translucent screens was simple, but extremely effective, allowing a large, anonymous open space to enclose smaller zones comfortably, with an easy ambiguity. Each zone presented the pieces discovered at the same location. The museum never felt crowded until one exited the Afghan display area and moved into the main public spaces of the building. Most exhibits were easily accessible without having to crowd around and wait for a viewing space to become available; some exhibits could be seen from two positions. Even though it was school holidays, the children were all well behaved. Maybe they were ‘gob smacked’ by the exhibits? They did not need smacking or any reprimand for misbehaviour. There were only a few places that suffered from the ‘corner’ problem – the situation where, when one is viewing one item, the adjacent display is made inaccessible. It is a shame that the attention given to some aspects of this exhibition did not flow through to all, for these works deserved it.

The motto of the National Museum of Afghanistan is: “A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive.” By way of expanding on the idea, one might state that: ‘a culture is understood only through its own roots.’ This is the challenge for any exhibition. Australia might learn from this too: we need to if we are to remain tolerant to our multicultural ideal. Anyhow, isn’t this why art is exhibited? It should be, and should be the singular guiding philosophy behind all such displays. To be anything less will always make the experience of the exhibitions less. Here less is certainly not ever more: it just remains, well, less – excluding: like ‘style’ that always seeks to be exclusive.

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ON GARDENING

I am strongly of the opinion that the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not make a garden; it only makes a collection. Having got the plants, the great thing is to use them with careful selection and definite intention. Merely having them, or having them planted unassorted in garden spaces, is only like having a box of paints from the best colourman, or, to go one step further, it is like having portions of these paints set out upon a palette. This does not constitute a picture; and it seems to me that the duty we owe our gardens and to our own bettering in our gardens is so to use plants that they shall form beautiful pictures; that, while delighting our eyes, they should be always training those eyes to a more exulted criticism; to a state of mind and artistic conscience that will not tolerate bad or careless combination or any sort of misuse of plants, but in which it becomes a point of honour to be always striving for the best. Gertrude Jekyll Colour in the Flower Garden Mitchell Beazley London 1998 – Introduction (first published 1908)

MORE IS LESS

Significantly, in the era of the ‘information revolution’, the same process is now affecting disinformation: whereas in the past it was lack of information and censorship which characterized the denial of democracy by the totalitarian state, the opposite is now the case. Disinformation is achieved by flooding TV viewers with information, with apparently contradictory data. The truth of the facts is censured by over-information, as we have seen from the press and television discussing the Balkans. The globalitarian state, built out of economic-strategic alliances, is no longer old ‘Anastasia’ with her scissors: it is Babel. Now more is less. And in some cases, less than nothing. Deliberate manipulation and unintentional accidents have become indistinguishable.

Paul Virilio Strategy of Deception Verso 2007 p.48

(first published Editions Galilee 1999)

‘That which precedes the event is not necessarily its cause,’ claims the wisdom of the ancients. p.76

As Negroponte has rightly remarked, with the ‘liberation of information’ on the Web, what is most lacking is meaning or, in other words, a context into which Internet users could put the facts and hence distinguish truth from falsehood. On the Web, where, as everyone knows, the terrorist temptation is constant and where depredations of hackers are committed with impunity in a strange state of legal indeterminacy, the difference between (true) information and (false) deception fades a little more each day. In entering the looking-glass worlds of television and home computers, we are in the end left in the position of Kinglake’s old ‘English soldiery’. As they saw it,

insofar as the battlefield presented itself to the bare eyesight of men, it had no entirety, no length, no breadth, no size, no shape and was made up of nothing . . . In such conditions, each separate gathering . . . went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; nay, even very often in ignorance of the fact that any great conflict was raging.

As Albert Camus asserted: ‘When we are all guilty, that will be true democracy.’ p.78

ENCOUNTERING CONRAD

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 92

At the end of his book, Kapuściński asks whether, in our encounters with others in the future:

Will we jointly wish to refer to what – as Conrad puts it - ‘speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity of dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.’?*

* J. Conrad, Preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’: A Tale of the Sea, New York: W.W.Norton, 1979.

Architecture stands in between of all of these circumstances of encounter, but how does it explain itself beyond being a bespoke ‘grand design’ of a potential genius?

ON THE CULTURE OF OTHERS

Herodotus . . . wanted to know them because he understood that to know ourselves we have to know Others, who act as a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected; he knew that to understand ourselves better we have to understand Others, to compare ourselves with them, to measure ourselves against them. As a citizen of the world, he did not believe that we should isolate ourselves from Others, or slam the gates in their faces. Xenophobia, Herodotus implied, is a sickness of people who are scared, suffering an inferiority complex, terrified by the prospect of seeing themselves in the mirror of the culture of Others.

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 19

CLEVER PEOPLE SELF-DOUBT

I last met him when Philomena came out back in 2013. Back then, Coogan was a bracing, combative interviewee. He saw every question as a potential ambush and moved to thwart any perceived journalistic angle. Today, though, he seems more comfortable with the process, more at ease with himself. It used to be that he felt he always had to have his guard up. Now he accepts that he can sometimes afford to let it drop. He’s middle aged and a mass of insecurity and contradictions. He suspects that, on balance, that’s not such a terrible thing to be.

“And actually I think acknowledging your own fallibility makes you a better artist and a better person,” he says in a rush. “It’s fairly obvious to me that the real wisdom lies in seeing people’s failings and trying to understand them. Because the alternative is that very childlike, Donald Trump thing of believing that admitting any weakness is fatal. What was it Bukowski said? All the clever people are full of self-doubt and all the stupid people are very confident. That’s the era we’re living in now. That’s the era I don’t want to be a part of. So all you can do is try to go about things differently. Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt.”

Coogan gulps for breath. His eyes widen and then he rocks with laughter. “There you go, that’s my big artistic statement,” he says. “Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt. Took me the best part of an hour. Got there in the end.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/04/steve-coogan-interview-stan-and-ollie

HILLS

The hills bespeak a healing power and closeness to unseen help now lost in the security of modern welfare. Those who befriend the silent peaks in a lifetime's work know well their embracing strength. (p.91)

For only once is it given to man to lie in the arms of the eternal forces which give all matter form. (p.98)

Iain R Thomson Isolation Shepherd Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2007

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121 King James Version (KJV)

SPAN

17 August 2012

This blog began as a co-operative concept. While the idea and the stimulus was generated through discussion, the blog has turned out to be an individual enterprise. SPAN stands for ‘Spence and’ in the context of others. As a word, it fitted in nicely with the idea of voussoirs - parts and pieces, complete with keystones, that could ‘span’ the gaps in understanding and communication. The word SPAN also allowed for a shared input into a blog.

Spence Jamieson is an architect and the author of these articles. The blogs show the scope of his interests.

THE IDEA

chapters and verses as architectural commentary:

the wedge to isolate, array and shape ideas; the keystone to highlight core, supporting issues. voussoirs is a concept to start an architectural discussion to span the large gap in the debate on things architectural; a bridging of the void in architectural issues by exploring considered bits and pieces. The state of the profession today is highlighted by silence and self. It is introvert and protective. Educational centres remain isolated within their own constructs, being run primarily as businesses. They put very little back into the community. They indulge themselves in their own interests and exclude contrary and different ideas and ideals. They constantly avoid any challenge on concepts or strategies that might change the plotted course. Rarely does comment ever come from this academic world into the public or any arena. Very few publications help direct the public interest. Rarely do newspapers grasp the issues and explore them. One aspect may be given space in the popular press, but architectural debates and concerns are rarely given attention. The professional institutes are doing much the same as the educational institutions. Private practice is doing likewise, offering, if anything, only its own pushy propaganda to the public. Yet there is a discussion and debate in these silences that needs a larger and more open platform. Discussion is alive and well amongst a few in at least one curry house, but the debate needs to be a broadened. voussoirs is the place for this discussion. It is a site for ideas, comment, articles, and critiques on things architectural and associated issues. It is here that matters can be aired and ideas discussed and debated without fear of the neglect and disdain that institutions and private groups and publishers give to open speaking and differing ideas.

There can be no true understanding of any idea if discussion and debate are curtailed in favour of a preferred position.

ON COMMUNICATION

. . . there has been a growing feeling of concern to solve what is now commonly called “the problem of communication.” But if one observes efforts to solve this problem, he will notice that different groups who are trying to do this are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.2

ON ART & METHOD

Even in relationships with inanimate objects and with nature in general, something very like communication is involved. Consider, for example, the work of an artist. Can it be properly said that the artist is expressing himself, i.e., literally “pushing outward” something that is already formed inside him? Such a description is not in fact generally accurate or adequate. Rather, what usually happens is that the first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what he may have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, he sees the similarity and the difference, and from this perception something further emerges in his next action. Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which he is working.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.4

THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE

The early 50's and 60's is a period that is gaining interest in architectural ideas. Perhaps this is why Princeton chose to republish The Tao of Architecture. It is a beautiful little book that discusses the implications of traditional wisdom in architecture. Given the astonishing lack of direction in current architectural theory, the publication is very timely.

Amos Ih Tiao Chang, The Tao of Architecture, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1956, reprinted 2017.

p.26

Laotzu's idea of formation is heavily concerned with emptiness or non-existence. To him who regards nothing as persistent, what is essentially important in things is the possibility of becoming something, not the opportunity of remaining as something confronting deterioration. Consequently, meaningful incompletion is taken as the most desirable state of tangible being.

p.22

. . . the full meaning of existence is beyond the power of any manifestation. What appears tangible, architectural or natural, is only a means to suggest that which is lacking in appearance and existing in man's intangible understanding and aesthetic feeling.

LIVING IN IMPERMANENCE

Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts – serious, sad thoughts – and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space

see: THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE in the sidebar

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY

I prefer, by far, real islands to imaginary islands, just as I prefer prime documents to novelistic remakes. That's because the real is richer than the imagination. The real demands investigation and is an invitation to sensitive knowledge, whereas the imaginary is more often than not just a collection of stereotypes, a soup of clichés offering an infantile kind of satisfaction. Then, a relationship to the real and its resistance requires changes in thought, in ways of being, in ways of saying, it leads to a transformation of the self. Whereas imagination is nothing but compensation. There's even something horribly autistic about sitting in one spot and spinning out invention by the yard. How much more interesting an open and poetic process involving contemplation, study, movement, meditation and composition.

Kenneth White Across The Territories Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa Polygon Edinburgh 2004 p.86

VISION, CIVILIZATION & SPIRIT

The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time - - - is he who shall create poems in stone.

When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.

It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.

Louis Sullivan

AN UNCHANGING PROFESSION

ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

. . . no one can relieve (the architect) from the need to rely on his own discretion, for that discretion is linked to a responsibility which belongs to no one but (the architect). It is the exercise of discretion hampered by considerations of cost, of risk, of exact justice, of conflicting interests, of uncertainty as to facts, of misunderstandings and of diverse individualities and dishonest or incapable agents, which is the chief care and preoccupation of architectural practice. To design a building, to draw and specify every part of it, and to direct its construction and see it completed with no other anxieties and dilemmas than belong to the exercise of those duties, is unknown.

H.B.Creswell The Honeywood Settlement Faber and Faber Limited London 1967 (fourth edition: first edition 1930 Architectural Press) p.128

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

CATHEDRALS and SYMBOLISM

Everything is the symbolical representation of an idea. p.28

The same artists, who had to follow a strict rule when treating the history of God, could use all of their imagination when treating the ornamental: whence the blossoming of the grotesque and the original. p.38

In those days religion, drama, and art had the same aim and sought to provoke the same thoughts. They did not pretend to amuse the people; they endeavoured to teach them. p.51

This way of thinking and reasoning takes sometimes a very subtle turn. p.53

Hélène Fouré The French Cathedrals Their Symbolic Significance Bruce Humphries Inc. Publishers, Boston, 1931

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 2

ON DEMOLISHING BUILDINGS

Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, than the remorseless way in which the educated ignorance, even of the present day, will sweep away an ancient monument, if its preservation be not absolutely consistent with immediate convenience or economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considerations, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would only consider the steps, and the weight of the following very simple argument. You allow that it is wrong to waste time, that is, your own time; but then it must be still more wrong to waste other people’s; for you have some right to your own time, but none to their’s. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste the time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of the dead; for the living can redeem their time, the dead cannot. But you waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy the works they have left you; for those works they gave the best of their time, intending them for immortality.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture George Routledge & Sons Limited, London p.109

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 1

How to avoid insult

But how much of nature have you in your Greek buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have lately built; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building in question will forgive me; for it is just because it is a good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair instance; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the institution on the mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise. It is not his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture and Painting George Routledge & Sons Limited; New York: F.P.Dutton & CO - p.64-65

ON EDUCATION

'. . those who are responsible for giving instruction in the theory of architecture should be practising architects. The warning is necessary because, strange though it may seem, English schools of architecture to-day tend to be run by men who either do not practise at all, or whose practices are for them a very subsidiary spare-time occupation. Often a teaching appointment is a means by which a clever student avoids the humiliation of entering an office as a junior assistant, thus depriving himself of the only opportunity he will ever have of learning something of the practical side of his profession from the bottom upwards. There can be no doubt whatever that the teaching of theory has suffered severely as a result of this habit: and this leads me to the conclusion that no man should be permitted to teach until he is recognized by his Faculty as a Master of Theory and Practice. In other words, he should be not only a practising architect but also, what is unfortunately a much rarer specimen, a good architect.'

W.A. Eden, The Process of Architectural Tradition, Macmillian & Co. Ltd, London, 1942, p.p. 86-87

ETHICS

Thus Pugin laid the foundation stones of that strange system which dominates the nineteenth-century art criticism and is immortalised in the Seven Lamps of Architecture: the value of a building depends on the moral worth of its creator; and a building has a moral value independent of, and more important than, its esthetic value. We must not consider this emphasis on morality peculiarly Victorian. Whenever esthetic standards are lost, ethical standards rush in to fill the vacuum; for the interest in esthetics dwindles and vanishes, but the interest in ethics is eternal.

Kenneth Clark The Gothic Revival - An Essay in the History of Taste, (1^st edition Constable 1928); third edition John Murray 1962, reprinted 1974, p.149.

MODERNITY

The everyday is covered by a surface: that of modernity. News stories and the turbulent affectations of art, fashion, and event veil without ever eradicating the everyday blahs. Images, the cinema and television divert the everyday by at times offering up to its own spectacle, or sometimes the spectacle of the distinctly noneveryday; violence, death, catastrophe, the lives of kings and stars – those who we are led to believe defy everydayness. Modernity and everydayness constitute a deep structure that a critical analysis can work to uncover.

Henri Lefebvre, The Everyday and Everydayness, in Stephen Harris and Deborah Berke, Architecture of the Everyday, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1997, p.37.

NAMING

The simplest act of substitution is to put the name of a maker in the place of his or her work, which amounts to a paraphrase in itself. . . . All paraphrase sets aside the original: To put the name in place of the painting is to remove it from immediate consciousness; to narrate the life of an individual is an act profoundly different from looking into a painting and one that cannot be conducted simultaneously with it. To substitute a temporal narrative, already present in a name, for the physical work of art is to give up those features of the thing that were transient and unrepeatable, bound to a moment that is irrevocably ended; the unique insistence is, for the moment at least, sacrificed on the altar of continuity.

Thomas Crow, The Intelligence of Art, The University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p.1.

ON BRANDING

Branding is now the art of getting people to think what something might be rather than what it necessarily is. It's about the manipulation of the virtual reality in which so many live. The manipulators include anyone with an interest in what we might think of them - not just big companies with products to sell but political parties with votes to win, design gurus with clients to attract - anyone, in other words, acting in some kind of market. They all have an interest in controlling their appearance to make us believe it is the reality.

John Humphrys Beyond Words How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now Hodder and Stoughton. Great Britain 2006, p. 86-87

see:

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/faking-provenance-misuse-of-meaning.html

PRECONCEPTION

Leone Huntsman Sand in Our Souls The Beach in Australian History Melbourne University Press 2001, p.16:

Thus first impressions were filtered through existing preconceptions, starkly revealed in Sir Joseph Banks's description of the people seen from Captain James Cook's Endeavour when it first touched on the Australian continent in 1770:

In the morn we . . . [discerned] 5 people who appeared through our glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us that we fancied we could see their Colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.

Here Banks refers to William Dampier's unfavourable accounts of the West Australian aboriginal people in published accounts of his landings in 1688 and 1699, and reveals his own awareness of the extent to which perception was influenced by expectation.

see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

THE MUSE - GETTING IT RIGHT

"It can be in the morning, any old time, I wake up with an idea and it starts following you around.

"You go, 'Ah that's good' because you know when it's going to work, it's going to be fruitful.

"Other times you'll get the edge of an idea and maybe it fades away or there's just no way it can be made to serve, you know?

"Then you just, it takes its time and you work on it and if necessary you work on it more than once. I'm known to work on it two or three times before you get it right."

Les Murray

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/les-murray-latest-volume-reflects-on-bunyah/6816714

http://www.lesmurray.org/

JARGON

The world seems to find it necessary to use more and more jargon in general reporting and conversation. It is especially noticed in accounts and discussions on the arts. The ABC TV arts programme presented on 7 January 2017 at 6:15pm had more jargon than usual; indeed, had more unusual expressions than previously encountered, ones that had not been heard before:

"unpicking the tapestry" of one's life;

and

looking at "the fan deck of what you do."

These reminded one of other popular fashionable expressions:

“to unpack an issue,” meaning to analyse it in some detail;

and

“to segue,” meaning to shift to a new topic or activity.

This last term is a favourite of radio announcers. The Italian word is often misspelt as ‘segway’ because of the similar phonetic sounding that is more commonly understood as Segway, the brand of a human transporter.

The parallel is interesting, as the idea of being ‘transported’ is common to both words, but it seems to hold little interest to the radio voices that appear just too cleverly happy with the use of this different, interesting expression.

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

ASTONISHING AFGHANISTAN: LOST TREASURES

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