voussoirs: MODERNISM – THE MAKING OF HEROES

Thursday 13 January 2022

MODERNISM – THE MAKING OF HEROES

Does David Bowie's song rhythmically echo the theme, the general ambition of the era: "You can be heroes, just for one day"?

It was while perusing two articles on Glenn Murcutt that treated him as a uniquely creative architect who has been applauded with copious awards, that the thought arose: modernism creates giants, singular identities who stand alone as 'heroes of our time':

https://assemblepapers.com.au/2019/11/14/glenn-murcutt-touching-the-earth-lightly/

and

https://www.architectureanddesign.com.au/people/australian-architect-glenn-murcutt-houses-architec

Murcutt is ideal for this representation of the solitary genius architect as he runs a solo practice, already alone, with a fashionable popularity that reportedly has folk lining up, waiting years for the master to have time to give to their projects that seem to have flexible budgets to allow the wizard to be freely creative. Calling Murcutt a 'master' might seem a little over the top in egalitarian Australia, but he himself runs what are called 'master classes' for architects, young and old. His own comment on the ‘blowout’ of the budget for the mosque in outer Melbourne suggests that he sees himself as the hero he is promoted as. His comment used words that suggested that it would be worth every extra penny, well millions of dollars, to get “a great work of art” that would last out the years - (the typo 'tears' seems just as appropriate a statement): see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/01/murcutts-mosque-meanings-sources.html

The mosque

The Master class

Murcutt's publicity machine seems to be working well, for an exhibition that included drawings, models, photographs of, and a commentary on this, at the time, unfinished project – the Australian Islamic Centre at Newport - declared the project, well, the mosque, to be the great masterpiece that Murcutt said it would be, even though this new mosque is not without its own inherent issues that need to be discussed and debated rather than ignored under a shroud of anticipated, uncritical delight that defines the way to see and experience the place: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

The 'Master' at the mosque standing in amongst the maze of 'amazing' skylights where no one else can go.

Is this the most 'interesting' image the photographer could find?

The architect 'star,' the 'starchitect,' is presented just like any other ‘star,’ standing alone, idealised; heroic.* The closest parallel is the rock star, highlighted on the stage, screaming and bouncing around unusually for the admiration of the crowds at events that are withdrawn from the everyday with their own hyped, dramatic contexts that enhance the uniqueness of the performance and the performer in front of crowds of 'fans' who hysterically egg each other on as they complete the special scenario they create. Even as part of a band, the small group of ‘other’ individuals critical to the success of the performance, the lead singer is the 'front' person who stands out as the core identity of the group: its icon. Queen's astonishing performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert is a good example of the singularity of this presence. It is the same hagiographical position that architects are placed in, even when the office is large: consider Zaha Hadid's office that has all the work labelled with her name, even after her passing: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2021/04/hadid-in-new-york.html David Bowie, standing singing in the spotlight with his backing musicians behind in the shadows, in front of tens of thousands of cheering admirers, offers yet another example as an analogy.

Perusing the illustrations of Murcutt's work singles out a similar issue with his projects: they, like the individual rock star, are all isolated, standing alone in their own, individual, exhibitionist glory, as heroic 'master'pieces. Can Modernism only survive in this self-indulgent world of hyped singularity; insularity? The way that the camera statically isolates projects, (it does not 'follow us in slo-mo' Graceland-style here), framing a special way of seeing, has been raised previously – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/11/architectural-seeing.html The glorification of Murcutt's work, and Murcutt himself, is an excellent example of this selective viewing and understanding in this profession that presents selected works as 'high art' architecture designed by a mystically creative genius. Making a 'starchitect' out of Murcutt establishes the role for his performances and his work; it frames an expectation, with the mind ready for an 'occasion,' as the camera cleverly isolates and captures glimpses of his projects that are published in full gloss with his embellishing texts, full of persuasively poetic catchphrases like 'Touch the ground lightly' - as if they actually do or might, even if they stand on concrete tanks.

The words immediately sound unquestionably right and attractive, realistic rather than whimsical metaphors, in a way that ensures and enhances the special photographic way of viewing, of knowing. Other words like ‘the Australian bush character,' 'local materials' and 'response to climate,' do describe what one sees in one way, suggestively enhancing the desirable aspects of the idea, the nostalgic regionalism, while ignoring the rich, ad hoc careless, but happy contentment of the bushie's trade: "She'll be right, mate" - that marvellous, casual making of a knowing, rustic, practical 'mess' with a charming naivety: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2013/11/bond-downpipes.html The circumstance has something suggestive in it, like Philip Drew's comment in his book on Murcutt, Leaves of Iron, (really steel), subtitled with the boastful: Glenn Murcutt, Pioneer of an Australian Architectural Form, published in 1985 by Harper Collins - a title that unapologetically claims the poetic richness of Frost's beautiful Leaves of Grass, and sets the magical scene for the reader to experience the ‘poetic’ ideas of a genius 'pioneer of form.' Herbert Read's book, The Origins of Form in Art comes to mind (Thames & Hudson, London, 1965). In his book, Drew records that Murcutt was raised by a black nanny in New Guinea, and includes a photo of a young child in a tub with the local lass beside, as if this experience might have had a critical impact on Murcutt's understanding of things regional and ‘native.’

The proposition is that one needs to ask more questions about matters instead of indulging in safe, enjoyable hagiography. It is very easy to be persuaded by this marketing language that really needs to be reviewed and analysed rationally if one is to avoid being blindly swept along in a hopeful world of superfluous wonder and idealism. One is encouraged to see Murcutt and his work as special, bespoke, desirable, a circumstance that superimposes a grandly positive spin on every reading of the projects and Murcutt's attitudes, and his 'authoritative' statements. Can one ever truly look at the buildings and see them as part of ordinary, messy living, without seeing them as compromised? Do the projects require planned performances rather than any nonchalant living - special architectural theatre? Is there a style of thinking and living imposed on the occupants?

Laurie Short house

Once one sees the origins of Murcutt's attitudes to architecture in his early Miesian-inspired structures, for example, the proposals for the Laurie Short house and the Douglas Murcutt house, precisely and primly detailed, Miesian lookalikes, one can see this core, very self-conscious, calculated, Germanic attitude to planning, materials and junctions in all of his work. One gets the feeling that this self-conscious, laboured elegance underlies a superimposed layer of things 'Australian' - corrugated iron, overhangs, and louvres - that generate the regional 'lightness' boasted about. There is an 'artfulness' in this work that makes it un-Australian, but internationally attractive: "It's a bit arty-farty, ya know." Architects, even in Shetland, drool over the images and seek to recreate them in locations that could not be more remote from or different to the Australian context which the work is said to embody, as the texts record: 'Australian Architectural Form.' It is interesting to note how the Marie Short house is very similar in form to the Shetland Crofthouse Museum at Dunrossness.

Marie Short house

Croft House Museum, Dunrossness, Shetland

Has Murcutt's universal success been this core, stoic, Miesian rigour that has been superimposed with things Aussie, offering suggestive, learnedly picturesque, twinned references to the International style and to bush sheds at one and the same time, making it easy for all to indulge the hybrid quality of this 'fusion' in regional architecture? Does the intimacy of the international approach make the strange, nostalgic, romanticism of the Australian character more accessible, more acceptable, more attractive, with its recognisable stylishness?

One senses that reviews such as this are seen, in themselves, as 'un-Australian.' "Give the bloke a break mate. He's done bloody well for a wanker. Ya should be proud of the bastard, the way he's shown all those smart-arse foreigners a thing or two. He's won a lota bloody awards, ya know." This is, of course, true, but letting ourselves be embroiled emotively in a congratulatory bespoke world is really no different to attending a rock concert: it is a unique, distraction from the everyday; pure entertainment for unquestioned indulgence.

The concern with the everyday is not to drag everything down to some rude, grubby, mundane existence that is devoid of art and wonder. The aim is to embody things ordinary in delight, to enrich things we are engaged in everyday. By isolating 'art' we are turning it into a special world that is an aside, a world that we turn to as something uniquely different - a world of heroes that we can dream about, aspire to be, to become, “if only.” Such a stance sews the seeds of constant dissatisfaction, enhancing the flourishing of envy that gnaws away at ordinary contentment, torturing the mind with constant disappointment; challenging the stability and stamina of one's mental well-being.

Coomaraswamy tells us how, with the traditional artist, personality and personal expression were irrelevant; characteristics that worked against good outcomes, to be discouraged, rather than becoming the core intent as they have today, where the ambition is 'self-expression.' Coomaraswamy writes of traditional times, when art had rules, in a world where 'every man was a special kind of artist, rather than every artist being seen as a special kind of man.' Things personal were seen as perversions rather than creative expressions.

It is the seeing of Murcutt as a 'special kind of man' that defines the problem, for his work comes to be seen likewise, as a 'special kind' of architecture. We seem to have forgotten about community, society, in our effort to create heroes to worship. Has this something to do with the demise of religion today, its conversion into the special extremes of individual, personally feel-good indulgences?

Murcutt says that he is not a religious person, but while working on the mosque, the imam told him that he was a very religious man. If Murcutt's story is true, one has to hope that Murcutt does not see this as his being some supreme creative being - a 'god.'

As for Modernism: it seems that, whatever one might call it, architecture today needs to look beyond the singular in every way, and concentrate on the complexities of the many, both as designers and as the things designed. We seem to gave lost any interest in designing place, neighbourhoods, towns, cities, concentrating only on heroes who build bespoke, stand-alone 'gems' that actually do stand alone, or are photographed to appear as though they do, or should, or could. One might call this syndrome 'narrow-minded' - a continuation of the search for distracting entertainment in our 'boring,' everyday existence that is tortured with feelings of inadequacy, emboldened by the envy stimulated by the bespoke, heroically singular world of marketing.

Yes, "You (too) can be heroes, just for one day" . . . and so the scene is set for everyone to become a genius, to expect this to be so, if only for Andy Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame," just once, with Queen's refrain echoing in the mind: "We are the champions . . . . of the world!" "Ah! This is ME!"

We need more of Schumacher's 'good work' that finds a beauty in things small and apparently insignificant, rather than the emotive lust of blaring, itemised entertainment, be this a rock star or a 'starchitect' – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/02/starchitects-starkertecture.html Instead of ME and MY architecture, we need OUR architecture, places and spaces that we can all understand, share, and enjoy as part of our everyday being there, requiring no special ways of seeing or acting - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2013/11/bond-downpipes.html - or any unique stances for recognition or admiration: we need buildings that can participate in our lives without making any demands on us to acknowledge the 'starchitecture.' We need structures that can nonchalantly enfold our being and enhance our contentment by accommodating us, anticipating purpose, functions and feelings as good designs do with depth, with a simple modesty that embraces the spirit, sustains with a quiet satisfaction: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/04/what-is-good-design.html

Starchitect Gehry

It is the latent ambition of architects today to become heroes who create iconic, 'creative' works for the adulation of all, that inhibits an OUR architecture that can care, instead of arrogantly perform. This circumstance can be best exhibited in the way architects annihilate an other's work, demean it by word of mouth or actual action, activities that either change the other's work without talking to the original architect, or just ignore its presence completely with some dominant adjacent expression that claims visual superiority.#

In short, we need to come to know and understand building, space, and place, not the architect or the ‘architecture;’ and build appropriately: heroes only distract us with all of their personal pomp and hype that frames a field of envy.

Architectural award evenings use the model of the Oscars presentation with all of its glamour and hype for this celebration, treating the 'winners' as 'stars.'

# This has happened to me on two occasions now where the Rayner architectural firm has boldly changed my work significantly without any discussion or attempt to seek my input. One might expect this from the firm that was blocked on Wikipedia for improper use: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/02/tensegrity-bridge.html This is the firm that falsely claimed it had designed the first ever tensegrity bridge.

Councils likewise feel that they can do whatever they want to another's work. Experience has seen councils remove, alter, and demolish projects and pieces of projects to suit ambitions for 'easy' solutions to civic infrastructure. One artwork in Brisbane was completely removed after the artist refused to change the glass fountain table to a stainless steel one. Brisbane has a history of disappearing fountains: they just become too much trouble to maintain, even after being transformed into a garden. This attitude says something mean about the city itself.

NOTE

Beam's book on the Farnsworth House, Broken Glass, seems to tell the story of how architects see themselves as heroes who look on a project as an opportunity for personal expression.

Edith Farnsworth House

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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.

Thursday 13 January 2022

MODERNISM – THE MAKING OF HEROES

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