Remembering Other Beauty a Framework for an Architectural History from Christian Archaeology to Modernism
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Remembering Other Beauty A Framework for an Architectural History from Christian Archaeology to Modernism Jasper Van Parys "De auteur geeft de toelating deze masterproef voor consultatie beschikbaar te stellen en delen van de masterproef te kopiëren voor persoonlijk gebruik. Elk ander gebruik valt onder de bepalingen van het auteursrecht, in het bijzonder met betrekking tot de verplichting de bron uitdrukkelijk te vermelden bij het aanhalen van resultaten uit deze masterproef." "The author gives permission to make this master dissertation available for consultation and to copy parts of this master dissertation for personal use. In the case of any other use, the copyright terms have to be respected, in particular with regard to the obligation to state expressly the source when quoting results from this master dissertation." Jasper Van Parys 01-06-2018 Remembering Other Beauty. A Framework for an Architectural History from Christian Archaeology to Modernism Jasper Van Parys Supervisor: Prof. dr. ir.-arch. Maarten Delbeke Counsellor: Ben Vandenput Master’s dissertation submitted in order to obtain the academic degree of Master of Science in de ingenieurswetenschappen: architectuur Department of Architecture and Urban Planning Chair: Prof. dr. ir. Arnold Janssens Faculty of Engineering and Architecture Academic year 2017-2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my supervisor professor Maarten Delbeke, who enabled and enriched the process of the past two years leading up to this dissertation. I would also like to thank Pierre Chabard, Hakima Alma El Kaddioui and Enora Prioul. Their genuine interest and warm encouragement in Paris have provided me with much of the energy required to work as vigorously as I did. It means the most to me to be able to thank my parents. Nothing of the past five years would have been possible without their constant care. My mom helped to shape this work both with her linguistic advice and her readiness to hear dull arguments repeated time and again. Thanks mom. I hope you may like what I made of your help. Here you should know saints once dwelt You who seek the names of both Peter and Paul. We freely acknowledge the east sent them as disciples For Christ’s sake and the merit of his blood They followed him across the stars And sought heavenly regions, kingdom of pious souls Rome has merited to claim them as citizens. Damasus wished to proclaim these things, O new stars, to your praise. - Damasus “Masque nègre” - A Pablo Picasso […] Visage de masque fermé à l’éphémère, sans yeux sans matière Tête de bronze parfait et sa patine de temps Que ne souillent fards ni rougeur ni rides, ni traces de larmes ni de baisers O visage tel que Dieu t’a créé avant la mémoire même des âges Visage de l’aube du monde, ne t’ouvre pas comme un col tendre pour m’émouvoir ma chair. Je t’adore, ô Beauté, de mon oeil monocorde! - Léopold Sédar Senghor Above: This epigram from the Platonia catacomb of the S. Sebastiano fuori le mura basilica of Rome was commissioned by bishop Damasus of Rome (366-384) in 380. It is quoted from: Louis Perret, Catacombes de Rome, VI, 1855, 22. For the source of the translation from Latin: Marianne Saghy, Pope Damasus and the beginnings of Roman hagiography, 10. Below: This poem was part of the exhibition Picasso Primitif at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2017. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Chants d’ombre suivi de Hosties noires – poèmes, Paris, 1956, 23. Above: Inscription du musée chrétien du Vatican – bustes de Saint Pierre et de Saint Paul. From: Louis Perret. Catacombes de Rome. V, 1855. Plate XI. Below: Photograph by the author, Still from the short film 1907: la visite de Picasso au Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro by Pierre Goismier as exhibited at exhibition Picasso Primitif at the Musée du quai Branly of Paris in June 2017. ABSTRACT This dissertation is an exploratory study on the interaction of architecture and Christian archaeology around the turn of the 20th century. As one of the roots of architectural historiography, Christian archaeology – the largely ecclesiastical study of the remains of the material culture of the first Christians – has assumed a crucial role in the discipline of architecture from the final decades of the 16th century onwards. It enabled the reconciliation of humanist archaeological interest in classical antiquity on the one hand and Christian apologetics on the other hand. During the 1800s, however, the role which Christian archaeology fulfilled in architecture appears to have been reversed progressively. This dissertation exposes how theorists and architects have debated what ought to be the fundamental aspirations of religious architecture by means of Christian archaeological argument in the 19th and early 20th century. Two distinct positions clearly surfaced in the 1860s. Some drove a wedge between form and meaning or defended the devotional potential of classical architecture on the grounds of the omnipresence of classical forms in the oldest Christian remains in the catacombs of Rome. Others, however, designated the catacombs as the origin of a distinctly Christian aesthetic. It was argued a historical perspective on the early Christian arts teaches that the Christian religion itself had set the original believers on a path of renouncement of the intrinsically pagan beauty of the classical arts, towards aesthetics of simplicity. Despite the history of Christian archaeology as a fusing agency, the discipline became instrumental in untangling Christianity and the classical forms which had been the core of ecclesiastical architecture throughout the previous modern centuries. On the grounds of the theological authority inherent in any clear example distilled from the oldest Christian remains, it was argued Christianity had historically induced the aspirations towards fundamentally other aesthetics. Concretely, this dissertation studies a variety of subjects on a European scale. The first part relates three different facsimiles of parts of the catacombs of Rome to one another by means of the publications which originally accompanied them. One was created as part of a procession of martyr’s relics in the city of Amiens in 1853, one was built to represent the Holy See at the Paris world fair of 1867 and one was part of an oecumenical scientific project of Dutch academics in Valkenburg around 1910. Juxtaposing these three instances where the catacombs were reproduced, allows discussing some of the ideological foundations of Christian archaeology. A comparison of how archaeological scholarship and devotion to the early Christian martyrs interacted in the procession of Amiens and the scientific project of Valkenburg illustrates how the catacombs of Rome were used to tie the contemporary Church to original Christianity throughout Europe. The world fair catacomb which Pius IX (1846-1878) commissioned on the eve of the completion of the Italian Risorgimento, furthermore exemplifies how Christian archaeology obtained new political topicality, validating the discipline’s increasing isolation from classical archaeology. The second part of this dissertation uses a set of theoretical sources. It includes arguments from a debate on aesthetics which was organised during one of the Assemblées générales des catholiques en Belgique of the 1860s. The second part also presents the course on Christian archaeology which was taught by theologian Edmond Reusens to architectural engineers at the university of Louvain from 1878 until 1900. These Belgian sources are compared with publications from the archaeological scenes of Beaux-Arts Paris and papal Rome. Their comparison reveals how the dissonance which surfaces in the ideas of the Belgian Catholics, echoed, in fact, more fundamental fault lines. Subsequently, this dissertation presents how the metonymical Orpheus-Christ fresco of the catacombs, which exemplifies how theology and aesthetics became inseparable in Christian archaeology, was depicted in an aquarelle by the Catalan architects Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol in the 1920s. In line with Gaudí’s aquarelle, a third part finally focusses on signs of reception of Christian archaeology in two different architectural milieus. It first presents the case of the shared architectural patronship of the Belgian diplomat Georges Reusens and his brother. The diplomat’s embassy at the Holy See was closed for political reasons by the Belgian liberal government in 1880. As he returned to Belgium after this diplomatic landslide, he and his brother realised a series of buildings which substantiated their newly acquired political status of “comtes pontificaux”. Employing architects with a distinctly archaeological profile, it seems as though the Reusens patrons mobilised both a classical formal repertoire and the Christian past of Rome and Antwerp. Finally, the last part also builds a case around a few statements of architects in the Parisian press. Excerpts from the Catholic newspaper La Croix and the specialised journals l’Architecture and l’Art Sacré evidence Christian archaeology played a part in the renewal of ecclesiastical architecture in the city of Paris between 1910 and 1940. Initially, the transformed legacy of the first Christians imagined by the archaeologists accompanied and facilitated the 19th-century endorsement of the Gothic style. One, however, finds the same quasi-theological foundations for architectural simplicity to have paved the road of concrete into the interiors of churches in the modernist milieu of the French capital during the