The perennial tendency to make of beauty itself a binary concept, to split it up into “inner” and “outer,” “higher” and “lower” beauty, is the usual way that judgments of the beautiful are colonized by moral judgments. — brain pickings
Susan Sontag would have been 82 years old this week. Here is a link to some of her illuminating writings as pointed by Maria Popova. We could use some of these ideas applying them to architecture as we, hopefully, move towards more "interesting" criticism after a period of sling-shotting and targeting the walls of the obvious.
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I was going to say this was an interesting read, but that wouldn't be nice ;) I'll say it was a good read, plenty to respond to. Some sentiments ring true, but others don't hold past further reflection.
I'd say beauty was never the only standard for art - both Goya and Heironymus Bosch produced works of art that were inherently ugly. Likewise European interest in African art and primativism starting in the late 19th century (attested by Picasso and Gauguin among others) wasn't exactly about their beauty so much as raw emotional power and was perhaps a foreshadowing of the rejection of beauty as a standard for taste.
Beauty has always had an element of propaganda to it. As the passage about the Catholic Church suggests, beauty can be used as a cover up. I'm pretty sure art historians have been long aware that the patrons behind behind much of Europe's art since the Renaissance were to varying degrees sponsors of or beneficiaries of either the Church or some state power. Beauty was then naturally the preferred idiom for presenting any work related to celebrations of theology or history, excepting the limited depictions of Hell.
My reading of Adolf Loos and proto-modernism was a sense that beauty was too facile, easily manipulated to cover up dirty motives. Modernism was originally focused on the idea of rebuilding society in a holistic and pure way, which entailed eliminating elements that celebrated Europe's very impure history. To the extent modernism was a rejection of beauty for its political associations, it's not entirely unreasonable that the public never fully acclimated to the style. It seems like the places where modernist architecture has been most readily accepted into the vernacular are places like Japan and Germany where the past political history itself became distasteful.
Her comments on 'interesting' as a form seem spot-on and easily applicable to the trend of Starchitecture. What remains to be explained is how this vacant concept of 'interesting' has become embedded into the institutions ostensibly set up to promote the arts. As it's often progressive universities, musuems, etc which commission the most egregious icons of architecture.
Today much of this meaning has washed out of architecture so it's hard to say where to go. There are plenty examples of new modernism which are simply essays in sensual beauty. This is neither good nor bad - but it's better as an architect to approach work with an appreciation of the context and background of styles.
Probably much of the veneration for someone like Zumthor is the way he has come into architecture without this background and the impression that his work is a more matter-of-fact use of construction to create aesthetic effects without external associations.
Also can't resist the opportunity to refer to Mies's famous quote: "I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good."
I like Sontag. She turned me on to alot of fiction I since read. I think I stil have her fiction in boxes somewhere. Saw her beforte she died at UCLA. If I remember she donated her 'archives' to them, and for a lot of cash. I also have a screenplay she wrote, also in a box, with so much else. Good post Orhan
I loved this quote of hers...
"The perennial tendency to make of beauty itself a binary concept, to split it up into “inner” and “outer,” “higher” and “lower” beauty, is the usual way that judgments of the beautiful are colonized by moral judgments."
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