cm, Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich 13.6 × , 1530–1540, Kupferstich, 21.7 Dorisches Gesims Meister GA mit der Fussangel, THE HIDDEN HORI ZON TAL GRAPHISCHE SAMMLUNG ETH ZÜRICH, RÄMISTRASSE 101 CORNICES IN ART 25 AUGUST — AND ARCHITECTURE 14 NOVEMBER 2021 INTRODUCTION Cornices are everywhere. The skyline of any city street cultural phenomena recurring throughout history. is a ragtag procession of cornices in various states of These themes juxtapose works from different stylistic materiality, refinement and maintenance. Windows, movements, periods of history and geographies, doors, ceilings, mirrors and wall paneling from across encouraging visitors to survey enduring expressions the centuries sport elaborate profiles at their edges. of the cornice from multiple simultaneous perspec- Cars, clothes, furniture and household objects all fea- tives. ture their own cornice-like elements. Strips, bands and lines of paint act as cornices by framing, hemming or Curated by the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, crowning almost any kind of artefact. In paintings, Dr. Linda Schädler, and the Chair of the History and etchings and photographs of buildings and streets, Theory of Architecture ETH Zürich (gta), Prof. Dr. cornices quietly structure the image and help to set Maarten Delbeke the scene for the life unfolding there. Assistant Curators: Anneke Abhelakh (gta), David Bühler (gta) and Dr. Emma Letizia Jones (formerly gta) Cornices tell stories about our histories. Drawing attention to the persistence of the cornice in European architecture and visual culture reflects broader cul- tural and aesthetic movements. As a crucial part of the classical repertoire of architecture, the cornice has been drawn, measured, designed, fabricated, con- structed and discussed ever since Antiquity. And sur- prisingly often, it has become the focus of attention: of critics articulating their vision of architecture, of architects making a built statement, and of artists test- ing the potential of their medium. A history of the cor- nice provides an oblique window onto the wider his- tory of architecture and its representations. Far from being a detail of interest only to specialists, the cornice, in its ubiquity, also materializes many con- nections between buildings and their larger context. Cornices shape the contours of streets and the bound- aries of an interior. They make visible property lines and speak of social aspirations. They show how forms persist by habit even when fabrication methods change. They illustrate the ways in which the fragmen- tary ghosts of classical architecture become popular- ized and mutate across scales, materials and media. They reveal a multiplicity of authors’ motives as they decorate rooms, articulate joints, hide technical instal- lations, embellish facades, monumentalize furniture, frame precious objects, and stage events. Revealing the hidden horizontal of the cornice is an invitation to talk about the changing expressions of culture. The cornice is architecture, both real and imagined. It appears in built space, but also in the rep- resentational space constructed through the unique selection of visual material presented here: including over 150 drawings, prints, books and objects from the The exhibition is generously supported by: fifteenth century to the present day. The exhibition presents these works not in chronological order, but ORAC, Oostende according to themes reflecting distinct aesthetic and 3 1 2 THE CRISIS OF THE CORNICE THE METAMORPHISM OF THE CORNICE In 1930 Frank Lloyd Wright gave a lecture titled The But by the twentieth century, architects were less inter- The enduring nature of certain cornice forms can tran- Passing of the Cornice. Wright called for the total abo- ested in decorative architecture and its long-assumed scend material, temporal and even geographical lim- lition of the cornice, as an inauthentic form of building expressions of character. Arguments for its retention, itations: raising questions about how the cornice decoration copied from the past. Le Corbusier voiced such as the appeal of cornice ornamentation to the becomes contemporary through constant material similar ideas when his Five Points of a new Architec­ human face, began to appear decidedly non-rational. renewal, and about how architectural ornament ture included a sixth: the “suppression of the cornice”, And yet, the cornice continued to emerge as a theme retains its relevance for contemporary life. This is since he believed modern construction methods had in the genealogy of modern architecture, perhaps because the cornice is a constant register of alchem- made it obsolete. This extreme opposition to the cor- nowhere more so than in the demolition of the early ical material transfers, not only from wood to stone, nice by the architects of the early twentieth century Chicago skyscrapers (designed by Wright’s mentors but also from stone to the other kinds of materials on shows how it was this element, far more than the col- Adler & Sullivan) in the 1960s and 1970s. During that display here: ceramic, polystyrene, fibreglass and umn or the beam, that symbolized what modernists period, the cornice became an emblem of cultural cri- plaster. saw as the major obstacles to the realization of their sis once again, but this time it came to symbolize a architecture: conservatism, force of habit, irrationality, wrongly abandoned architecture whose ornament As a fragment changing its material over time, but and the mindless copying of historical forms without and refinement stood in stark contrast to the bland- retaining its essential formal preoccupations, the cor- taking into account the needs of the present. At the ness and overt rationalism of post-war real estate. nice can be viewed through nineteenth-century same time, by casting the suppression of the cornice Jacques-François Blondel, Entablement Toscan de Scammozy (li) German architect Gottfried Semper’s theory of met- as a radical gesture, the modernists acknowledged its and Entablement Toscan de Vignole (re) from Blondel, amorphism (Stoffwechsel). Semper’s theory, found in Jacques-François; Patte, Pierre: Cours d’architecture, ou Traité power, and silently admitted that the cornice’s deco- de la décoration, distribution & construction des bâtiments, his Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts (1860–62), rative elements appealed to human sensibilities that Paris 1771–1777, Tome 1 (1771), Pl. 11 & 12. explored the phenomenon of how architecture escape rationalization. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, RAR 441, retained its characteristic forms during transferences https://doi.org/10.3931/e-rara-366 / Public Domain Mark from one building material to another. When new In his Cours d’Architecture, the eighteenth-century materials are used, cornice profiles are sometimes French architect and teacher Jean-François Blondel retained, and sometimes altered to take on new mean- tried to define these relatable, ‘human’ qualities he ings, creating hybrid cultural and technological mem- believed the cornice possessed. To do this he com- ories. For example, cornice fragments to be found in pared the profiles of cornices of different architectural Indian and Buddhist temple architecture hint at the orders to human faces. Blondel’s image suggests that rich Indo- Hellenistic exchanges occurring via Persia. the cornice is ideally composed in section, which, In other cases, profiles have moved beyond their orna- when extruded horizontally along the building, quite mental classification to become sculpture, as contem- literally gives it a face. Because of this analogy, the porary artists and architects enact new, more personal cornice becomes key to what Blondel considers the incarnations of the cornice. No longer classified as a main quality of a building: its “character”. Meaning, its fragment waiting for its whole, the cornice has now ability to convey its function and purpose to viewers, become an art object, complete in its own right. and to instill them with the appropriate emotions for enhancing its appreciation. These striking images crown a tradition rooted in many earlier Renaissance attempts—for example, those by Francesco di Giorgio Martini—to under- stand the anthropomorphic descriptions of buildings found in the ancient Roman text Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture (c. 30–15 BC). The first vernacular (non- Latin) compendium on classical architecture, the Span- ish Medidas del Romano (1526) by Diego Prévost Sagredo, contains two woodcuts explaining how the various parts of the cornice correspond with facial fea- tures. These images would spread across Europe, thanks to the numerous translations and editions of the work, such as the French translation of 1555 on Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1501) display here. Trattato di architettura, ms., 1480 Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Fondo Nazionale, II.I. 141. Su concessione del Ministero della Cultura/ 4 Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze 5 3 4 CORNICE TECTONICS THE CORNICE IN THE URBAN PERSPECTIVE The cornice, projecting from a facade and often seem- At the scale of the city, the cornice becomes an urban ing to defy gravity with its overhang—such as in Louis- element that frames the perspective of the street and Émile Durandelle’s late nineteenth-century photo- guides our eyes along it—in built environments as well graph of the massive cornice at the Opera Garnier—is as in depictions. Since the emergence of central the perfect element for demonstrating a hidden con- (single- point) perspective, the relationship between