ARCH FOLLIES

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5834319-trump-triumphal-arch-approved/ 

It’s all in the detail – and the lack of it.

In his analysis of classicism, Rudolf Wittkower shows the strength of classicism, its vital meaning, its inner integrity, and the rich referencing in its practical and metaphoric strength and structure. He shows how classicism is exciting, intelligent, not a mere kitsch, copy book style to be learned by wrote and applied at whim. His seminal book, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, published by the Warburg Institute, University of London in 1949,# reveals classicism as a rational, mathematical system rooted in humanist philosophy. Classicism is not a devious, decorative declaration of power or authority. Classicism holds logical meaning in its expression that Wittkower exposes in his beautifully illustrated and annotated detailed analysis that reveals the intriguing rigour of classicism, its ordered order of orders, its bold, inventive gestures, and its exquisite, deliberate detailing, all to achieve its intentional ambitions. Classicism is no random, ad hoc assembly of bits and pieces; it is not a Greco-Roman Lego system for novices to muddle with; it embodies a knowledge and an understanding of purpose beyond merely assembling various pieces and parts.

Time and forgetfulness seem to have watered classicism down to become nothing but a ghost of its roots; a pure, hollow style reproduced randomly as cut-and-paste items selected from a clutter of pattern books, using visual preferences that know little of the origins of its form and detail, making classicism a mere decorative indulgence used for its nostalgic associations that reference the celebration of status by the civilizations that made it what it was, while adopting the safety and comfort of familiar things, rather than exploring and exposing its beautiful inner logic – its necessity.

Now we see classicism used for blind, blocked buildings celebrating cerebral aberrations. Our use of what we label ‘classicism,’ shows our illiteracy with form, our ignorance of decoration, our lack of imagination, our indulgence with perverse ambitions, and our failure to have the courage to grasp a vital and real expression for our era. We are back into the erection of shoddy theatre sets; we have returned to the madness of the Chicago World Fair that only stimulated change – Modernism, that is hated by those with egos that stimulate a desire for classicism - heritage power. Alas, now all we see is kowtowing; there will be no revolution: see - https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5834319-trump-triumphal-arch-approved/ . Forget about the cliché of moving forward; we are not even marking time, other than leaving history with a poor charade seeking a grand display by adopting the expression of other bold charades with the aim of eclipsing them; of outdoing them, little else. To use authority’s own terms, we are seeing the celebration of fake power with hollow grandeur. The sad irony is that perhaps this new arch is the true expression of the madness of this situation where it seems that only bluster about size matters matters: see – https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/us/politics/trump-arch-dc.html.

Hitler's proposed arch would have been larger than Trump's triumph.

One only has to look at the triumphal arches of old to understand that the difference lies in the density of integrity, rather than bland enormity. There are stories layered into the grand images of old; necessities. There is a rich vitality held both visually and in the narrative; there is depth here. What we see today seeks to draw on the idea of the arch as only an expression of blatant, grandiose power – because it can be done. Its visual identity is the essence, rather than the expression of any real substance; it is shallow; thin; meagre; false. We are truly looking at a blind ghost, a real folly attempting to celebrate the phantom of a self-promoted, puffed-up victory; delusional triumphs. This arch is everything that Wittkower revealed classicism not to be. He showed that Renaissance architects, such as Alberti and Palladio, viewed classical antiquity not as a set of rules to blindly copy, but as an intellectual language of harmony and proportion designed to reflect cosmic order in exquisite works that amaze even today.

We have learned nothing with our pastiche of patterned preferences that uses a kit of parts dredged from classicism randomly, to suit appearances that pretend to hold meaning with an irrational demand that it must, as if it should, has to. These intentions are so vapid that they do not even try to uphold the pretence of substance or relevance; the ghost of the idea is enough to satisfy the ego. There is no story to be told; there is nothing to embroider with any pretty or petty decoration, let alone presenting a story to celebrate. We have forgotten the ideals that formed the forms and informed them, and just do not care. There is even no begging for forgiveness on the grounds of not knowing what has been done. The bliss of ignorance is hard to ignore or put aside, for it also drives the work on the new East Wing too, to ever bigger, exaggerated follies; more and more of them into unbelievable extremes. It is like a child playing with alphabet blocks hoping to get something admirable, like a Shakespearean text; surely the millions of dollars is able to achieve this? Alphabet soup remains the another analogy; cold soup at that which leaves one with a frightening, sad, despairing nothingness – see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2025/10/in-praise-of-classicism.html.

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The primary publisher of Rudolf Wittkower's seminal work, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, is the Warburg Institute, University of London (originally published in 1949 as Volume 19 of their Studies). Later, it was published by W.W. Norton & Company (1971), Wiley (1998), and Academy Press. 

TRIUMPHAL CLICHÉS

Varieties of victory.

The ghost of arches past?

(with apologies to Charles Dickens).