The Sublime and Modern Architecture: U Nmasking (An Aesthetic Of) Abstraction

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The Sublime and Modern Architecture: U Nmasking (An Aesthetic Of) Abstraction 83RD ACSA ANNUAL MEETING HISTORY/THEORYICRITIClSM 1995 177 The Sublime and Modern Architecture: U nmasking (an Aesthetic of) Abstraction KATE NESBITT University of Virginia INTRODUCTION beauty as an architectural issue. Similarly, the subjectivity of beauty's reciprocal, the sublime, led to its demise. This paper proposes that an aesthetic capable of accounting By arguing that the sublime exists incognito in the work for modern architecture has begun to coalesce in the of the 20th century avant-garde, one can begin to re-situate postmodern period. Its fundamental category is the sub- lime.' The significance of the sublime as a subject of art and the architectural discourse, and to displace formalism. (I will review the received formal preoccupations of theory architecture lies in its conceptual reach or its spiritual during modernism only as they affect the ~ublime.~)The dimension. The sublime refers to immense ideas like space, potency of the sublime as a transgressor of periods and time, death, and the divine. disciplines is obvious in recent writing on this rehabilitated The 18th century saw the development of aesthetics based subject. In architectural theory, the sublime presents itself on a dialectic of the sublime and the beautiful, orginating in today in several guises, including the uncanny and the literature and crossing disciplinary boundaries to consider grotesque. These psychoanalytic and aesthetic categories, as the visual arts. Kant's and Burke's treatises2 form the basis used by Anthony Vidler and Peter Eisenman, will be read of my discussion of these aesthetic concerns. Their catego- against Lyotard's postrnodern model in a project of revision. ries of the beautiful and the sublime were applied to the study The latter's notion of the sublime as questioning the founda- of nature, to the character of men, and to their artistic output, tions of representational painting will be examined as part of in particular, poetry, painting, and architecture. Roughly a definition of the contemporary sublime. These recent contemporary with these philosophical treatises, the archi- theoretical positions are fundamental in constituting a mod- tects E.L. Boullee and C.N. Ledoux advocated an architec- ernist aesthetic. They remove the mask of avant-garde ture of the sublime, expressed in a reductive architectural repression which has limited our ability to see modem language (albeit neoclassical) which led to their designation architecture in terms of a continuous dialectic of the sublime as the "first modern^."^ and the beautiful. Around the turn of this century, avant-garde challenges to I am suggesting that the sublime offers an alternate, the pictorial traditions of painting were mirrored by aesthetic route to understanding modernity. The recupera- architecture's rejection of the classical language and of tion of the sublime (and therefore of the beautiful7) as historical eclecticism in favor of a new expression. The outlined herein will allow a significant opening up of the abstraction of form adopted by both avant-gardes did not architectural discourse. signal an absence of content, but rather, a less accessible content. Jean-Francois Lyotard has characterized this con- PHENOMENOLOGY tent in painting as "presenting the unpresentable," the inde- terminate, or the n~ndemonstrable.~ Contemporary architectural theory is heavily influenced by In 20th century architecture, any mention of the sublime the philosophical domain of phenomenology, especially the and the beautiful seems to have been deliberately repressed work of Martin Heidegger and Gaston Ba~helard,~which by theorists and designers anxious to distance themselves laid the groundwork for the emerging aesthetic of the from the recent past.' To assert a radical break with the contemporary sublime. Phenomenological approaches have history of the discipline, the terms of aesthetic theory had to foregrounded human sensory and spiritual apprehension of be changed. A modernist polemic calling for an aesthetic phenomena, via a process described as the "renovation of the tabula rasa (of abstraction) and the application of scientific body".9 Visual, tactile, olfactory, and aural sensations are principles to design supplanted the preceding rhetoric. Posi- the visceral part of the aesthetic reception of architecture, a tivist emphasis on rationality and function marginalized medium distinguished by its three-dimensional presence. 178 83RDACSA ANNUAL MEETING HISTORYTTHEORY/CRITIClSM 1995 Recently, the bodily and unconscious connection to ar- Beautiful and the Sublime. Their constructions of the chitecture has again become an object of study. Juhani sublime operated to "restrict the type and forms of experi- Pallasmaa addresses the psychic apprehension of architec- ence that are held to be generative of sublime sensation"" ture by "opening up a view into a second reality of percep- and became the foundation for later definitions. tion, dreams, forgotten memories and imagination."1° This Typical of the formulations of both Burke and Kant is the is accomplished in his work through an abstract "architecture pairing of the term sublime with that of the beautiful. of silence."" Pallasmaa's investigation of the unconscious Sometimes presented as opposites, and other times as poten- parallels Freud's idea of the uncanny, while his architecture tially co-existent qualities, the sublime is always considered of silence resonates with the sublime. to be a higher order emotion by romanticists. As Kant said: Along similar lines, phenomenologist Alberto Perez- "The sublime moves, the beautiful charms."18 For him, the Gomez claims that the apprehension of architecture as beautiful is the result of the mind working harmoniously meaningful requires a "metaphysical dimension" which while attending an object.I9 It is easily distinguished from the "reveals the presence of Being, [or] the presence of the experience of the sublime which is an irrational, violent invisible within the world of the everyday."12 (There is a reaction. strong correspondence between his definition of the meta- Burke's definition of the beautiful is as measured as his physical in architecture and the contemporary sublime, sublime is visceral: "beauty is some quality in bodies, acting including Lyotard's claims about modernist, abstract paint- mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of ing.) But for Perez-Gomez, the invisible is to be signified the senses."20 On the other hand, his sublime is a curious with a symbolic, figurative architecture.I3Following Boullee, mingling of pain and pleasure provoked by terror and awe in I would argue that the abstraction of the sublime, "deprived the face of ovenvhelrmng greatness. One fears deprivation of all ornament" as Boullee said,14offers a more promising of life, company, light, or freedom. The pleasure comes in existential foothold than a representational architecture. the suspension of the threat of deprivation. Burke and Kant thus explain the impact of the sublime in MAN AND NATURE terms of the primary motivation of men: self-preservation, which can be manifested as fear. Beauty, on the other hand, A long-standing philosophical problem which has been inspires only a secondary motivation: love. In addition to the highlighted by phenomenologists is the question of the fury of nature, representing the effects of ravaging time and relationship between man and nature. Nature as "the other" the depiction of mythological sites are common ways to in relation to culture has been a stabilizing theme for invoke the romantic sublime. English garden follies and the centuries. In fact prior to industrialization, the production of Romantic painting tradition epitomize the fascination with meaning in architecture relied upon structured references to the ruin and with sacred places. More generally, Burke cites or associations with nature. Even today, architects' work the following absolutes as sources of the sublime: infinity, literally and symbolically overcomes the forces of nature to vastness, magnificence, and obscurity. One might extend to provide shelter. The human struggle with a threatening the political arena Burke's statement: "I know of nothing Nature also characterizes Enlightenment ideas of the terrify- which is sublime which is not connected to the sense of ing sublime. Thus, aesthetics also provides a philosophical power."21 framework to handle such issues. It is clear that in architecture, manipulation of scale, monumentality, and light are important to evoke the sub- AESTHETICS lime. Etienne-Louis Boullee's unbuilt work, comprising an Aesthetics analyzes a work of art or architecture "in regard "architecture of shadows," is one of the first deliberate to form and sensory qualities, its processes of production," investigations of the application of Burke's sublime to and its reception, and proposes a theory of taste with stan- ar~hitecture.~~The Reign of Terror clearly influenced the dards for j~dgement.'~According to Kant, the nature of imprisoned Boullee in his designs for institutions of the state. aesthetic response is disinterested appreciation: a direct, Projected buildings such as the National Library relied on a active, and unmediated experience.16 Let us now focus minimalist palette and endless repetition of similar elements for their power. briefly on the mid 18th century consideration of the relation- Similarly, Ledoux's many unbuilt works relied upon an ship between the sublime and the beautiful. This discussion austere language of facade and rigorously
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