RECONSTRUCTION AND DECONSTRUCTION OF A TWELFTH- CENTURY CISTERCIAN CHAPTER HOUSE IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CALIFORNIA ____________ A Thesis Presented To the Faculty of California State University, Chico ____________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Art ____________ by © J. Craig Brown 2011 Spring 2011 RECONSTRUCTION AND DECONSTRUCTION OF A TWELFTH- CENTURY CISTERCIAN CHAPTER HOUSE IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CALIFORNIA A Thesis by J. Craig Brown Spring 2011 APPROVED BY THE DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND VICE PROVOST FOR RESEARCH: Katie Milo, Ed.D. APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Cameron Crawford, MFA Asa Mittman, Ph.D., Chair Graduate Coordinator Matthew Looper, Ph.D. PUBLICATION RIGHTS No portion of this thesis may be reprinted or reproduced in any manner unacceptable to the usual copyright restrictions without the written permission of the author. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During the winter of 2007, many decades after earning my bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, I suddenly realized that the study of art history had become my lifelong passion. During those years, art had contin- ued to subtly invade all aspects of my life, from my businesses of building design and world travel to later administration of a small Native American museum in Novato, California. Art in all of its forms always fascinated me and time had come to inquire if I could earn a higher degree, one specializing in the history of art. Thanks to the work of Dr. Matt Looper, at California State University at Chico, I was accepted into the master’s degree program in the Art History Department there, and I began attending graduate level classes that fall semester. I sincerely wish to thank the Art History staff, and especially Professors Dr. Looper and Dr. Asa Mittman and Professor Emeritus Dr. James McManus of that department, for their belief in my abilities to succeed in this endeavor. Through their classes I found that the subject of art history was far more complicated than I had ever imagined. I am grateful for all of their varied insights, lectures and readings during these past several years. And I am proud that both Dr. Looper and Dr. Mittman agreed to be included as thesis committee members for this paper. My deepest thanks to all for guiding me through to the completion of this task. I would also like to thank several individuals involved with the Sacred Stones project at the monastery of New Clairvaux, Vina, California. As the result of many visits iv to the monastery and personal meetings between 2007 and 2010, I gained much of my knowledge of the restoration of the Santa Maria de Ovila chapter house. I specifically would like to thank Robert McMullin, currently development director of the project, and Frank Hemholt, Master Stone Mason, and his apprentices, who have been involved with the actual construction of the project since the first stones were refinished and put into place on-site in 2002. And, through their published comments, I also appreciate the insights into the restoration by the project architect, Mr. Patrick Cole of Chico, Cali- fornia, and the project originator, Abbot Thomas X. Davis (now retired), whose inspi- ration took the stones from the piles he saw in 1955, at the inception of the dream to restore the chapter house, to their eventual reuse at Vina “where they would be loved and cared for on Cistercian soil.” I appreciate all of their assistance which helped me to analyze and understand the significance of their remarkable achievement. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Publication Rights ...................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments...................................................................................................... iv Abstract ...................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I. Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 Introduction to the Subject and the Literature Used .................... 1 Organization of the Thesis ........................................................... 5 II. Literature Review..................................................................................... 10 III. Methodology ............................................................................................ 18 IV. Discussion of the Research ...................................................................... 21 Cistercian Philosophy .................................................................. 21 The Recent History of the Sacred Stones Project ........................ 29 Cause and Effect of American Medievalism ............................... 32 California Dreamin’: A Distinct Medievalism ............................ 45 The Medieval and Modern Concepts of a Copy .......................... 48 Five Motivations for Reconstruction ........................................... 52 Dependence on the Past ................................................... 52 Philanthropy with Benevolent Intention .......................... 53 Advertising: Sale of a Product ......................................... 54 Imagination as Public Entertainment ............................... 55 Fallacy of a Cultural Context ........................................... 55 Resulting Chapter House “Use” and Conflicts ............................ 57 Perspectives and Viewpoints on the Sacred Stones Project ......... 60 vi CHAPTER PAGE V. Summary and Conclusions ...................................................................... 62 References .................................................................................................................. 67 vii ABSTRACT RECONSTRUCTION AND DECONSTRUCTION OF A TWELFTH- CENTURY CISTERCIAN CHAPTER HOUSE IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CALIFORNIA by © J. Craig Brown 2011 Master of Arts in Art California State University, Chico Spring 2011 This thesis compares and contrasts use and value in the New Clairvaux Monastery chapter house reconstruction at Vina, California. Use augments the value, as perceived by those directly involved in the project. However, there is inherent deconstruction of Cistercian principles, or value when the project is seen from differing twenty-first century viewpoints. A unique view of “romantic medievalism” in con- temporary California has been partly responsible for these contradictions. My rationale for this study is as follows. The reconstruction of the Santa Maria de Ovila chapter house had two original goals. First, to gather the broken stones and restore them in order to reconstruct the original monastery chapter house, the central assembly hall for any medieval monastery. This building was to become the spiritual center for the New Clairvaux Cistercian complex at Vina. Second, the reconstruction was viii to establish a physical link for the monks with their Cistercian past glory, when their monasteries covered Europe and competed for intellectual supremacy of the Church against the Dominican Order of monks at Cluny. Yet, after the passage of nearly eight hundred years, can the use of the reconstructed building, upon completion, repeat the original one intended in twelfth-century Spain? Was the project, upon completion, to be considered an “authentic replica,” a copy, or solely a “symbolic” suggestion of the original chapter house before its demolition in Spain? Were these terms and concepts significant to the reproduction and restoration of ancient structures? Or, even applicable to this specific project? Even more to the point, has the changing role of a Cistercian monastery in the twenty-first century changed the use of its reconstructed “heart” signifi- cantly from the original intent? In just the last fifty years, since Abbot Thomas was sent to found a new Cistercian presence in California, that dream has changed considerably. All these questions eventually concern the value of the completed chapter house recon- struction in the context of a modern monastery. The focus of the monastery is now the commercial production of wine by the previously cloistered order of monks who work in that environment, facilitated by public access to the property as a pilgrimage or tourist site. ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Introduction to the Subject and the Literature Used I, too, saw them lying at the base of an aged eucalyptus tree in the foggy sum- mer’s sunlight. They were simply heaps of carved stones and charred wood fragments, nearly black from the effects of age, moss, and mud. Their carved designs evoked images of structures long past. I wondered: “How long have they been there? And, what had they been used for; where were they from?” My chance discovery in Golden Gate Park hap- pened at a time when tattered, man-made “ruins” from San Francisco’s past were very often found discarded and unused throughout the city. But these stones seemed different. Someone in another time and place had prized these stones for they had been carefully worked. Some were massive and sculptural, others petite and plain. There must have been a great story involved, I surmised, for them to have ended their journey discarded as trash in a hidden corner of that beautiful park. That was the last time I visited them until nearly four decades later. While my own path took many twists and turns, the “Sacred Stones” continued their journey also, and we met again in 2007 in a tiny farming village named Vina. The modern