Oz Volume 9 Article 7 1-1-1987 Architecture as the Inversion of Architecture James Wines Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/oz This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Wines, James (1987) "Architecture as the Inversion of Architecture," Oz: Vol. 9. https://doi.org/10.4148/ 2378-5853.1136 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Architecture as the Inversion of Architecture James Wines This Essay has been excerpted from James Wines' book entitled " De-architecture" to be published by Rizzoli in the fall of 1987. De-architecture is a frame of reference Certainly in visual art, its fertile gesture he had created a new kind of tiona! requirements. Existing buildings for questioning the nature and practice resources have been frequently utilized "collaborative art," as well as having were engaged for their sociological iden­ of architecture in the late 1980s and as a means of commentary on ques­ staged an assault in the form of cancella­ tity, even though the structures beyond. The term was invented tionable institutions. In this respect, tion against the mindless rituals of themselves were not in use as legitimate because, as Picasso once observed, "Art Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased culture-hero fetishism . shelter at the time of the artists' interven­ is a series of destructions,'' and the con­ DeKooning'' was a landmark in the tions, or became inoperative as a result cept of subtracting from an institutional history of inversion, used for its cen­ Rauschenberg was able to tap into the of their transformation into art. definition to re-evaluate its purposes suring effect. By the late 1950s, fundamental connections between ar­ seemed an appropriate way to proceed. DeKoonings' paintings and drawings tistic process and cultural reference in Before his tragic death in a light plane De-architecture is an inversion for had become critically over-praised and a way that would simply not be possi­ crash in 1973, the pioneer earthwork ar­ critical effect, a context of exploration economically successful to a degree ble for architects, given the standard tist Robert Smithson had begun to and a purposeful disassembling of all where they were more closely identified design mentality. The manipulation of demonstrate considerable interest in ar­ those restrictive and axiomatic notions in the popular press with their value as formal elements is seen as the exclusive chitecture by recognizing that buildings of architecture in the interests of capital stock, than as works of art. In a option for creativity in architecture, but are fundamentally anti-entropic in con­ establishing a more flexible interpreta­ rebellious statement against such com­ an inversionist sensibility is clearly ception and stand as the most substan­ tion of this most essential public art. mercially based acclaim, the younger beyond such constraints. In this regard, tial public expressions of the human in­ Rauschenberg deliberately erased a the following selection of influential ex­ stinct to conquer and control the natural It is the thesis of De-architecture that the , DeKooning drawing (with the older ar­ amples of inversion from the early 1970s environment. Smithson was one of the ultimate function of a building is to com­ tist's permission) and then exhibited this cannot really be considered "designed" first major visual artists of the post­ municate as public art. This role has elimination-of-art as art. Through this architecture from the standpoint of func- Modern era to speculate in his art and been seriously eroded during the past writings on the power of entropy as an few decades by the lingering effects of aesthetic concept, equating thought academic Modernism and, more recent­ itself to what he called ''abstract ly, the pastiche of style and decor of geology" where "one's mind and the Post-modernism. The alternative now is earth are in a constant state of erosion." for architects to reach beyond the limita­ He saw the role of architecture in art as tions of formalism and historicism and the classic metaphor for maximum order draw upon social and psychological and as the perfect vehicle through which sources in the contemporary world. This to explore the mysteries of disorder. means that architecture today - like Gothic and Renaissance structures of Smithson's " Buried Shed," constructed the past - can use walls and spaces to at Kent State University in 1971 and deliver urgent messages to the public, afterward dedicated to the "Kent State or "narrative content" as way of ad­ Four" students who were killed by the dressing topical information. With this National Guard during campus anti-war regard , architecture can become a uprisings, was an existing wooden struc­ critical tool. ture crushed under several tons of earth dumped on the roof until it collapsed. Inversion is the natural extension of ar- The source of its message derived from 24 chitecture as the critique of architecture. Robert Smithson, Partial Buried Woodshed, 1970. the analogy between pressure on the shed's support beams and the mounting which he categorized under the term profitability as real estate, which can­ through the old building with subversive strains on public conscience after the "anarchitecture" -a subtractive theory celed out the element of occupancy and determination, intent upon creating students' deaths. Under the cir­ not unlike de-architecture in its rejection shifted the emphasis to cultural merit. what he called a confrontation of the cumstances, it was perhaps regrettable of what he called "the functionalist Art institutional instinct being what they "non-umental, that is an expression of that the artist could not bury a more aspect of past-due Machine Age are, under this hypothesis architecture, the commonplace that might encounter sociologically significant public building moralists,'' included a group of could be deemed worthy of value (and the grandeur and pomp of architectural at Kent State- for example, the ROTC dissected buildings. On superficial ap­ curatorial maintenance) relative to the structures and their self-glorifying military headquarters. However, what pearance at the time, these works degree of its elimination. client. " "In Paris," he added, "I was was important about "Buried Shed" was seemed to be almost pernicious attacks, incredibly lucky in finding such the use of an architectural presence for like guerrilla warfare, against architec­ Gordon Matta-Clark's best known work a situation.'' its psychological relationship to social ture. Structures were variously cut up, is "Splitting 1974" in Englewood, New The works of Smithson and Matta-Clark stability. Its subjection to an inversionist stripped, torn apart, excavated and Jersey, where he literally sawed a typical examined here also qualify as concepts attack and its transformation into generally de-materialized in some way suburban wood-frame house in two involving indeterminacy and chance. political commentary were based on the to achieve a precarious feeling of or­ parts, from roof to foundation. This When, for example, mounds of crushing unconscious associations in the popular chestrated apocalypse. hierarchical split was, in itself, a strong earth and acts of demolition become mind with buildings and orderly func­ sculptural statement, but the concept part of art-making, the aesthetic tension tions - or that generic "state of Matta-Clarks' art seized upon the gained its narrative identity through an of the idea is based on playing a game use" referred to earlier. Also, this paradoxical relationship between the association with the archetypal with "uncontrollable destiny." The "erasure" of architecture bears great American dream of progress and the act American dwelling. This is completely essential power of this approach, when resemblance to Rauschenberg's "Erased of destruction. Any work of architecture different from the structuring of an applied to architecture, is in the risk fac­ DeKooning" in method and attitude, if being razed is assumed to be of no value abstract composition - for example, the tor and the vast distance separating the not specific references. within the "blast-out-a-hole-and-build" line bisecting a Barnett Newman paint­ "chance attitude" from standard ra­ mentality of the development corpora­ ing - because no object, other than a tionalist formalism. Gordon Matta-Clark was another victim tions. Buildings are demolished for only house, could have provoked the viewer of early death (of cancer in 1978) whose one reason, to prepare for a more pro­ to mentally unravel a progression of Since the virtues of indeterminacy and career, like Smithson's was cut off in the fitable replacement. Since a number of ideas so inextricably tied to sociological chance might not be readily apparent to prime of creativity and idea develop­ Matta-Clark's reduced buildings were content. As the artist explained, ·'Split­ the average real estate developer - ment. Trained as an architect at Cornell destined to be removed anyway, his pro­ ting" was his "reaction to an ever less especially in the form of self­ University, he rejected the profession jects became a unique example of inver­ viable state of privacy, private property destroying edifices and programmed de­ after graduation out of distain for its con­ sion which might be seen as preserva­ and isolation." materialization, it is perhaps the right formity in order to pursue a highly per­ tion by demolition. At the point of being moment to inject an explanation. The sonal series of projects in conceptual art; acted upon by the artist (in the form of In another project, entitled ''Paris demonstrations of inversionist art by many of them dealing with architectural dissections) , the buildings in question Cutting," Matta-Clark chopped a series Smithson and Matta-Clark, and a few of inversion.