Making in Mind: the Work of Art in the Age of Theoretical Reproducibility Talia A

Making In Mind: The Work of Art in the Age of Theoretical Reproducibility Talia A. Perry For Making in Mind: The Work of Art in the Age of Theoretical Reproducibility: All content produced by Talia A. Perry unless otherwise attributed. Most text and images produced for classes at Carnegie Mellon University, including Architecture Design Studio Materials (48-205), History of Architectural Theory(48-353), and Rights in Representation (79-278); others produced new for this publication. Production estimate Spring 2010. Printed Spring 2012. CC BY-NC-ND. MAKING IN MIND Rereadings of Gottfried Semper offer radically different interpretations of his writing. Depending on the conditions under which Semper was read, he could be a mate- rialist or a functionalist, pioneer of space or of symbols, lean towards the side of historical precedent or innovative creation. But contemporary society demands yet another reconsideration of Semperian theory. Modernists may see Semper’s purification of the tectonics as inspiration to embrace both technique and technology, and post- modernists may interpret Semper’s glorification of textiles ridden with meaning and references as a completely different goal worthy of pursuit. Today, we remain non- committal about architectural declaration. Modernism was the last grand narrative, postmodernism was the last style, but Semper has not yet been wrung dry. If any uni- fying element of our contemporary cultural condition can be found, it is our obsession with information and 5 6 Making in Mind connection. Technology allows for instantaneous communication and exchange. This element of discourse not only appears in Semper’s writing, but begins to mature into a more fully developed position on the relationship between theoretical writing and the physical construct of architecture. So our attention is turned not to the roof, to the mound, nor to the wall, but to the most immaterial element of architecture, the hearth. It is the hearth that is privileged as the “first and most important, the moral element of architecture,”1 anticipat- ing architecture, the coming together of people prefac- ing the coming together of materials. “Around the hearth the first groups assembled; around it the first alliances formed; around it the first rude religious concepts were put into the customs of a cult.”2 Semper sets up the hearth as a social mixing bowl for all other ingredients. It is “first and most important” because it initiated architecture by facilitating exchange of ideas, establishing ideals and goals before putting them into practice. Yet the hearth is Semper’s most neglected element – both in explanation by Semper himself but also in the theoretical discourse that followed in response to his work – because it lacks the clarity and development of his other arguments. The loose connections Semper attempts between the hearth and his physical processes or materials fall short of the Making in Mind 7 complete coupling that seems to work so well with wood tectonics and roof, with weaving textiles and wall. Where the hearth emerges in Semper’s texts, though, offers some clues for interpretation of the hearth’s meaning. In “The Four Elements of Architecture,” Semper acknowledges that ceramics and metal works began to depend on the hearth physically, as the fire provided a way of more permanently fixing these types of materials to a particular shape.3 He also explains in Der Stil that ceramics have a very strong historical association with social development. Semper writes: “The earliest and most general application of this art was without doubt to satisfy needs: eating, drinking, and washing above all. Yet ceramics acquired great significance even in the earliest times because urns were used in funeral rites.”4 While ceramics did not depend on the hearth exclusively, especially when only used for utilitarian purposes, the fire allowed for a degree of permanence. Semper continues: Not only were the remains of the dead interred in earth- enware cinerary urns but vessels were also placed in tombs as pledges of a continuing cult of the dead, as favorite pos- sessions of the deceased, and as mementos of important moments of his life. Remarkably, we find this custom wher- ever a people displays the first signs of a higher culture.5 8 Making in Mind In its use, the vessel is raised beyond the level of physical- ity – it is a symbolic gesture not reliant upon religious knowledge, but can be read as a social object. The development of ceramic production as a social activity, and the use of these objects as cultural artifacts embedded within a community’s social relationships, suggests that the hearth offers society a way to establish and to keep physically aware these relationships – the hearth fixes immaterial relationships into physical objects that last beyond the biologically ephemeral existence of a human being. The mound, though it remains distinct from the hearth in “Four Elements,” emerges not around the hearth, like the other elements of architecture, but beneath it. And Semper is tempted to combine them on more than one occasion. Footnoting his comment that roof, enclosure, and mound materialize as a way to protect the hearth, Semper attempts to stamp out the complexities of the mound-hearth relationship: “At first glance the mound or the terrace appears as secondary and as necessary only in the lowlands; yet the mound joined at once with the hearth and was soon needed to raise it off the ground […] it is probable that man, not as individual, but certainly as social being, arose from the plains as the last mud-creation, so to speak.”6 He argues against those who might consider the mound a particular architectural Making in Mind 9 idiosyncrasy of some specific climate, because the mound, too, is not just a physical entity; it is necessary to separate man’s artifice from the natural world. Man, “as a social being,” has to pull himself out of the mud before he can create discursive, cultural objects. The mound as hearth gains some clarity in Der Stil: The raised earthen plateau of the hearth represents the ideal type of the mounding of earth that people everywhere have done since the beginning of civilization. It has been prepared or built up so that it may be used, as it were, to detach something from the earth and the world as a whole: a consecrated place dedicated to some entity.7 The hearth is a glorified plinth, simultaneously material and immaterial in its paradoxical ability to separate man from his surroundings while grounding him to a place. Ceramics and sterotomic production may be inher- ently different processes, but both are inevitably bound to the hearth. Social behavior and development arise from their interaction with physical and psychological flame that is at the center of every communal enterprise of man. The hearth can never escape its socio-cultural origins the way roof and wall can detach themselves from geologi- cal or chronological place. And while Semper was able to draw connections between hearth and monumentality, 10 Making in Mind the hearth operates on a level beyond physical creation of architecture. The hearth is not embodied by architectural practice, but discourse. The reason Semper has difficulty articulating its pairing with a physical process or material is that it belongs to a fifth way of making. Theory, socially constructed understandings of what architecture – what man – should be, is a way of making architecture, argu- ably the most important way and undoubtedly the process favored by Semper in his own cultural contributions. Fundamentally, architecture mediates the relationships between individuals, or between the individual and the collective – but our understanding of how it does so is dependent upon language as much as it is buildings. The hearth establishes a mutually-defining relationship between architecture and its inhabitants, placing them within a field of social discourse by their interaction. The hearth is not tectonically oriented, is not about putting things together physically, but is a socially constructed, discursive element of architecture. The hearth yields to a dynamic understanding of architectural style through the dialogue it generates, through constant questioning of what our built environment is and should be. It is necessary to return briefly to the wall in order to understand the hearth’s discursive function, because Making in Mind 11 the wall, too, is seen by Semper as a way to communicate ideas. The wall also strings together conceptual underpin- nings of its architecture to give a greater understanding to the whole. Through its physical and visual presence, the wall influences our perception of space, but it simultaneously serves as a symbolic meaning of that space. Semper writes heavily about specific examples of the textile covering, determining that “the dressing and the mask are as old as human civilization,” and that this covering up of reality “is necessary if form is to emerge as a meaning- ful symbol, as an autonomous human creation.”8 The painting, paneling, and dressing of the wall meant that this element was wrapped in stories and symbols. But the legibility of meaning was, and is, reliant upon a greater understanding of the culture from which it came. It is impossible to read the textile once removed from the cultural conditions under which it was made. The mask does not read as a mask without the context to define it as such. Misreadings of architecture are inevitable, but if meaning is so important to Semper, it assumes a degree of consis- tency. The textile may be a projection plane for symbolic communication, but it is never literal communication. Theory, written and spoken discourse, is necessary to facilitate discussion across time and place.

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