AMAZING ARCHITECTURE – ITS FAILURE

It is surprising what one discovers when cleaning up one’s computer. This piece had been drafted up ready for publication, but had been forgotten, perhaps lost under its bland working title – JOHN E-MAIL. It is still worthwhile thinking about.

The E-mail read almost as a plea for help:

Just going through cleaning up my computer. I asked my son what this meant. He didn't answer.

Subject: Fwd: Can you please tell me what this means?

From the upcoming RAIA seminar series “AG Urbanism’ speculates on the notion of a parasitic city. Sydney 2050 Fraying Ground examines the future as a condition of the present; the future occurs to the extent that the present allows for its own transformation. The project consists of investigations at all scales in which drawing and mapping and thus the reinvention of terrains and ground will continue to produce sustainable interventions. Part of the project is the investigation of new urban strategies, which because they incorporate the process of ‘fraying’, ‘knotting’ and ‘parasitism’ are able to operate at all scales.”

One could only sympathise. What on earth might one say? How could anyone respond? Little wonder that the son gave no answer. How might one help? Youth usually understands computed confusions that confound age, but not this astonishing shambles of a text!

The words gave the impression that they were collected together using the strategy that believed that any bewildering nonsense will promote one’s ‘genius’ just because of the rude brashness. Such a text is so striking that it silences everyone with its blatant cheek, allowing the author to believe that this lack of any response from anyone feeling threatened by this boldness, only highlights an inferior mind, a lesser intelligence bowing to a superior one.#

Humbug. If one is unable to simply state what one’s ideas and intentions are, then it is the author who has the problem, not the reader.

The revealing proposition was inadvertently exposed by the silly, pretentious statement in the ABC TV 5:00pm news of 12 June 2014: “The welfare system needs a simpler architecture.” That two wacky statements might stimulate some sense appears at odds with ordinary logic, but they did. The words ‘simpler architecture’ rang loud and clear, and resonated with an equally certain: “Yes!”

We do need a simpler architecture that can be spoken about in simpler English. We need to learn that complexity has no inherent value in its own being, when implemented just for its own sake, for confusion and dense befuddlement. Complexity is not clever; it is confounding; baffling. Tortured English like tortured architecture leads only to a muddled mess of words, ideas, forms and messages that do not elevate any author or work into the realms of creative genius, even though these might highlight ME! loudly and clearly by ordinary amazement and dumbfounding astonishment. “WOW! How stupid!” seems to be a preferred reaction that demands attention, and distracts, apparently being considered better than the quiet enrichment involved in the experience of simple meaning.

There is little doubt that this preference is misguided. The approach reeks of selfies and their culture that centres only on the individual's primal scream: “Look at ME!” Architecture involves others and needs to accommodate them with grace and ease; care and consideration, not eye-catching exaggerations and distortions. This is its responsibility: its ability to respond in silence rather than to loudly, proudly declare.

#

NOTE

30th October 2019

 The point is made clear by Jon Lys Turner in The Visitors’ Book In Francis Bacon’s Shadow: The Lives of Richard Chopping and Dennis Wirth-Miller Constable 2017, page 124 – 125:

Critics and gallery-goers append to his work a narrative and meaning, perhaps led there by the storytelling nature of traditional religious triptychs and the suggestive title. (This text is referring to Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion.) Many saw Three Studies as a story and judgement of war, a comment on man’s inhumanity to man. Bacon, however, did not mean his works to be narrative, judgemental or religious. The figures in Three Studies are Furies captured in a moment of anguish, not victims within a narrative of the extraordinary cruelty of the Second World War: the depicted moment gives the work power, not the backstory, not the ‘why’. The strength of people’s reactions would force them into conjecture to fill the void left by the absence of narrative, and this lack of narrative, combined with visceral power, gives his paintings continued resonance. They speak to our own horror whatever the actuality of the situation, personal or global.

As long as the artist remains silent, the observer is placed in an emotional no-man’s-land where context and provenance reign supreme. Who might dare suggest that Bacon’s paintings were merely provocative smudges? Given Bacon’s reputation – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2013/01/bacons-sacrambled-studio-francis.html

- one might be forgiven for being a little cynical.
This amorphous, subtle situation is a loophole that is manipulated by those we are told are 'lesser' artists who seek to promote meaning in their silent voids, their bold thrusts into inarticulate nothingness.
Jon Lys Turner explains why Bacon is never challenged - page 259:
In critical terms, he had become untouchable.
The myth reigned supreme, and has only been reinforced with time.

 NOTE

1^st November 2019

Jon Lys Turner The Visitors’ Book In Francis Bacon’s Shadow: The Lives of Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller Constable 2017, page 277:

‘I wonder very much whether a few who get a kick from being outsiders and rebels won’t feel a sense of disappointment and perhaps have to try some new eccentricity.’

This comment was made after the passing of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 in Britain that removed homosexuality as an illegal pursuit. The post-war (WW2) British art world seemed to have become a confederacy of queers. The statement says much about art and artists.

It highlights an understanding confirmed by Quentin Crisp on page 318. He gave a talk to students in at the Royal College of Art that was reported as being very opinionated but interesting. Offering no solution but self analysis and ‘doing one’s own thing’ with obsession.