Symbolic Space

( l. I ·'"l t I l ·-·"/ r.-",, SYMBOLIC SPACE FrenchEnlightenment Architecture and Its Legacy ., L., 'I i I L ...! _,_,...,.._ ....z_·_ ,...J THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago and London THE NEOCLASSICAL INTERLUDE On the other hand, champions of neoclassicism, who mine the univnsal qualities of its outlook, as found, for example, in the provocative C!msi r-r ----.7---_- cism ls Not a Style ( 1982), edited by Demetri Porphyrios, feel no pressing need to satisfy Schapiro's charge to the architectural historian. - 4 - If neoclassical architecture is to be considered within the context of its time, then it will not be the universally powerful aura that its forms L---~ evoke across the centuries that will uniquely fix our attention but rather The Neoclassical Interlude the specificity of its outlook, sandwiched between the Baroque and the Rococo, which preceded it, and the historicism and eclecticism that fol lowed. Indeed, late eighteenth-century neoclassical architecture was a The legacy of neoclassic-al architecture, as we have seen in the preceding cultural interlude with multiple layers of meaning so specific to the era chapter, reached from Boullce to Louis Kahn. Emil Kaufmann was cor- that it requires a historical study for us to understand how it was in ' rect in entitling his study "From Ledoux to Le Corbusier," for a similar tended and perceived. I propose three ways to consider late eighteenth impulse to what he called "autonomous architecture" marked both the century French neoclassical architecture. One involves the creation of a late eighteenth-century neoclassical era and the twentieth-century mod new grammar for architecture, a concern that in many respects parallels ernism commonly termed the "International Style." 1 Repeatedly one the narrative aspect of symbolic space considered in Chapter 2. The sec finds the succeeding generation of modernists drawing not only on the ond addresses the articulation of a new typology for architectural form, lessons of their immediate predecessors but also reaching back to which has similarities with metaphorical character in architecture, as dis Boullee and Ledoux. Here Louis Kahn was not alone. Consider, for ex cussed in Chapters 1 and 3. Finally, one finds a new aesthetic experience ample, Aldo Rossi, whose neo-Rationalist aesthetic derives both from de~ived fro~ architecture, whose experiential qualities engage the do that particularly local brand of the International Style known as the Ital mam of senuence much as do symbolic character and numinous space, ian Rationalism of the 1930s and from Boullee's work, which is acknowl both discussed above. In short, one cannot fully understand the inten edged through an homage paid by translating Boullee's treatise into tions behind French neoclassical architecture merely by looking at the Italian. 2 drawings and buildings. The meanings they afforded contemporaries Yet, whereas Kaufmann was insightful in the general outlines of his and the perceptions they prompted were inextricably tied to a multifac argument, Meyer Schapiro was also correct when reviewing the former's eted conception of symbolic space, which needs to be deciphered by work by calling for an explication of neoclassical architecture on its own considering their accompanying written texts. terms and within the context of its own times.' Kaufmann is not to blame . Any consideration of French neoclassical architecture must begin ifhe was more interested in elucidating a common outlook between two with Jacques-Germain Soufflot's Eglise Sainte-Genevieve and proceed to avant-gardes separated by 150 years than in studying neoclassicism on its consider the work of the two greatest architects of this manner, Etienne own terms. Rather, it is not to Kaufmann but instead to certain de Louis Boullee and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Whereas these latter men tractors and defenders of classicism in the nineteenth and twentieth cen had to await the twentieth century to earn the well-cleserved epithet of turies that the tendency to avoid the issue must be assigned. From the being "visionary architects," Soufflot, through his Church of Sainte vantage point of those nineteenth-century critics of postmedieval classi Genevieve, was immediately recognized as having initiated a new style.' cal architecture, such as James Fergusson, John Ruskin, and Montgom Through a retrospective glance of the architecture of the preceding cen ery Schuyler, who saw the entire period encompassing the fifteenth tury, Amaury Duval summed up the sentiment of an entire half century through the eighteenth centuries as one continuous era of Renaissance when he credited Jacques Gondoin's Ecole de Chirurgie and Souffio_t's architecture, deemed a sorry departure from the original and creative Eglise Sainte-Genevieve as having ushered in a "revolution in architec endeavors achieved in the Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages, the ture." With these buildings, a new "severe" style, usually called neoclassi particularities of the neoclassical period vis-a-vis the preceding centuries cal today, began to replace the "affected taste of the old school," that is, of classical building were hardly apparent and were of negligible import. the late French Baroque along with the Rococo. 5 In studying the trans- 88 89 rl j , CHAPTER FOUR THE NEOCLASSICAL INTERLUDE formations from one style to another one finds a curious conjunction of . Sue? criticism of Baroque architecture, for failing to adhere to a changing tastes along with a redefinition of the grammar of architec rat1onahzed understanding of the meaning of classical elements and I hence of their combinations, was accompanied by a dramatic shift in ture, a new understanding of architectural typology, and an enthusiasm for the experiential aspect of certain components of classical architec aesthetic taste. Critics such as Cordemoy and Laugier were blind to the ture that might, to some observers, seem quite "unclassical" in its emo subtle transitions of Baroque massing. They were insensitive, for ex tive intensity. I ample, t? the ways in which Hardouin-Mansart's two-tiered portico at f the lnvahdes provided vertical unity to the composition. A similar combi nati~n of rati~nalized grammar with altered aesthetic preferences can A New Grammar be discerned m Jacques Gondoin's praise for Sainte-Genevieve, which he compared to the latest and most notable example of a two-story The language of neoclassical architecture was still largely the language church facade as found at Saint-Sulpice. "Let the public judge whether of classicism, based upon the orders-Doric, Ionic, Corinthian. How the architect of Saint-Sulpice or of Sainte-Genevieve was more successful evfr, the combination of the constituent elements-columns, entabla I !n imparting the character of a temple; whether the colonnaded galler tures, pediments, walls, doors, and windows-obviously has been al ies [of Saint-Sulpice], which serve no purpose on a church facade, are tered. Simply by visual inspection one sees that there is a new grammar, more appropriate than the simple and noble figure of a portico crowned that is, new rules that govern their ordering. Emil Kaufmann, as we have f with a majestic pediment. "7 seen above in Chapter 1, termed the most innovative features of this I Such critic~ also had little patience for the partially engaged col new grammar "autonomous architecture" to designate an assemblage of t ~~ns and the p1l~ters that subtly modulate Hardouin-Mansart's compo geometrical prisms independent of the Renaissance and Baroque com t s1t1on at the lnvahdes. The visual and structural logic of the column as positional hierarchies rooted in expressing the channeling of forces a vertical support required a freestanding, rounded shaft. From Corde downward to the ground or in elevating the piano nobil,e above a rusti moy to Laugier to Boullee, to engage a column into a wall or to flatten cated base, the latter serving as a metaphor of culture and civilization it int~ a pilaster was_to denature it as well as to render it visually disagree created out of the raw, natural world. able. In the end, It was deemed that Baroque architecture offended Yet, the new grammar of neoclassical architecture also involved a i reason and simply did not look good. Cordemoy dismissed the exterior new understanding of the meaning of the classical vocabulary and qf the dome of the lnvalides as ejjil£and mesquin, thin and mean.9 · relationships between its elements. For the early champions of what was i To cl~rify the a~gument and to ground it with a legitimacy that con to become the neoclassical style, the great Baroque works of the previous t temporanes found m what they considered to be nature understood as decades violated what they saw as the inherent grammar of architecture. I the underlying order of things and hence the basis in politics for natural To the abbe Cordemoy, for example, the Baroque facade of Jules law and natural right, Laugier created his story of the origins of architec Hardouin-Mansart's Dome des lnvalides (c. 1680) was devoid of mean ture based on the natural hut: ing. More precisely, the classical vocabulary of its exterior offered a mes sage in direct contradiction to the reality of its interior. From Cordemoy It is for ~rc?itecture as for the other arts: its principles are and Laugier onward, classical grammar required that each level of col founded m simple nature, and in the proceedings of nature are found clearly marked the rules of architecture. Let us consider umns with entablature signal a separate floor. The two tiers of columns man in his first state without any assistance, without any guide under the drum and dome of Hardouin-Mansart's church falsely indi other than the natural instin~t of his needs. He needs a place to cated two stories, which were not present.

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