this may be a completely generic and uninspired question but....
can anyone explain, pinpoint and/or postulate what where when how AND why the paradigmatic shift from modernity to post-modernity occured both in relation to larger ideological shifts as well as in more specific fields, i.e., art, architecture (complexity and contradiction, of course, but what led to venturi's manfesto?) etc.????? I am a bit more interested in the larger ideological paradigm shifts and how these became translated into the PoMo which we all love to hate, or, hate to love.
I think you should read Marshal Bermans brillian book called 'All that is Solid melts into air'
I dont want to ruin it for you- but it is a fantastic look at what the very idea of modernity is and how it has come about.
philosophers and literary critics/theorists got there first. sociologists, linguists, many other disciplines were way before architects. we merely latched onto an academic trend, twisted and crafted it into our own particular frankenstein monster.
don't know a particular time, but terry eagleton's layman's guide 'literary theory' may give you a place to start looking.
I have the book for you, in fact i was just re-reading it last night:
"The Condition of Postmodernity" By David Harvey.
Though a total critique must leave a lot out, Harvey does an amazing job at summarizing without making overly general claims---his scope is admirable. He talks a lot about architecture in addition to art, economics, philosophy etc. To say that one can pinpoint the shift from mod to pomo is silly and besides the point (what?, you say, i thought it was when Pruitt-Igoe was imploded?) but Harvey talks more about a generalshift in ideas that occured around 1972. First he starts with a summary of modernism since descriptions of pomo are often defined in reaction to tenets of modernism. then theres a section about pomo. the end of the book is a more detailed account of the pomo conception of time and space. it was one of the first theory books i read and was great resource for understanding some major themes as well as a springboard for further study.
all that said, i'm not sure if i agree with steven ward's statement that "[achitects] merely latched onto an academic trend, twisted and crafted it into our own particular frankenstein monster." if the beginning, and indeed the existence, of postmodern thinking as anything other than a different strain of modernism is in question then i wouldnt say that architects were "latchers on." that statement minimizes the effect of the architect in bringing high ideas into human realm in the form of constrcuted space. (and here i am paraphrasing...the more i read the more i find that someone else has already had my ideas)
i am not a fan of the terms as we archi's use them...
mod=box
p-mod=venturi.
the concepts are represented much more clear in art, lit, philosphy,etc.
i don't think venturi can really be called pomo...but anti modernism.
trying to bring a concept of relativism and truth, as well as some of the overarching ideas pervading our society REAL post modernism would actually be very interesting to us all. too bad we had to kill it by naming that crap in the 80's pomo.
when you are trying to understand pomo...leave the archi books behind! we call the death of CIAM (1968), the death of modernism...
While i agree it is associated with CIAM, its actually the involvment of the Team 10 sub-group during CIAM X[1956] which marks the move of modernism to post-moderism via a structuralist/post structuralist perspective.
"The term was probably first used by Arnold Toynbee in 1939, and prefigured by him in 1934. In his...'A Study of History' [1934], Toynbee proposed...that the period referred to by historians as the 'modern' period ends more or less in the third quarter of the nineteenth century...in 1939, he used the term 'post-modern'...for the first time. At this point he had shifted the chronology slightly, suggesting that the modern now comes to an end during the First World War...and that the postmodern begins to articulate and shape itself in the years between the two world wars...The word 'post-modern' is thus characterised from its very inception by an ambiguity...
"A major source for the contemporary debates around the postmoderm is to be found...in the text proposed by Adorno and Horkheimer in 1944, 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'...
"The word then...hovers around the edges of sociological arguments and the 'end of ideology' debates in the 1950s...
"In philosophy, there arises a whole series of 'anti-foundational' modes of thinking, already foreshadowed in the early deconstruction of Derrida in his three great 1967 texts.
"A key date here is...1968...when these revolutions failed, many began at precisely that moment to rethink their commitment to the fundamental premises of Marxist theory...
...if a political theory had failed...to produce the requisite practice, then...how does one safely ground an emancipatory cultural politics?
All from 'Postmodernism: An Introduction' by Thomas Docherty, 1993.
I have thought that Colin Rowe's essays ("Mathmatics of the Ideal Villa", et al) began the shift in Architectural Theory from Modern to Post-Modern, in as much as they began to peel away the Functionalist dogma from classic modern works and show the compositional relationships to renaissance design principals. These essays date from the late '40s.
Are there earlier works that do this type of analysis?
Granted, the larger family of Post Modern criticism is much more complex and difficult to assign specific dates to.
ideology is dead therefore we rely on our own personal mythologies therefore pastmodern...
Apr 7, 05 7:30 pm ·
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As soon as the inhabitants of Pessac began to alter the appearance of their homes counter to the modern 'purism' of Le Corbusier's design, might just pinpoint the beginning of post-modern architecture.
umpf... then Modern architecture just existed for a nanosecond... not only the second line Corbu drew in his life was already Post-Modern, but at the end of the first line Modern Architecture was already dead...
Apr 8, 05 12:12 pm ·
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Does it say anywhere that modernism must end as soon as post-modernism begins?
If so, then who writes these rules?
[Did Judaism end as soon as Christianity began? Did Christianity end as soon as Islam began?]
no, i think modernism still is going on today in the form of some 'digital medium' practitioners who base their concept of 'blobs' on the notion of speculation + can be built with technology [CNC and such] i consider this 'modern'.
there is so much 'everyday' architecture that i think falls under the presumption of 'faux-modernism' that stylistically takes on the charateristics of a modern building yet isnt modern in intent. cant fathom where that would fall.
i must restate CIAM rep an international style IS different than modernism!! i don't understand why this myth is perpetuated in arch schools!
i am with rita with what are the rules and where are they...because while modernism is stated VERY clearly in other sources, pomo is naturally a little less clear...our arch style of each are horrible charactures...
question: is gehry modern or postmodern??
Apr 8, 05 12:46 pm ·
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raj, the religious analogy employed is not a stretch when you consider how this thread began, specifically in reference to a "paradigmatic shift". Christianity is a paradigmatic shift vis-a-vis Judaism, and Islam is (in part) a paradigmatic shift vis-a-vis Christianity.
Interestingly, the rise of Christian architecture did coincide with the end of 'classical' Pagan architecture--not long after Christian basilicas were built in Rome and Judea (under the supervision of St. Helena), the legislature under Constantine I (the son of St. Helena) began to steadily outlaw Pagan cults. Ultimately, under emperor Theodosius I, all Pagan cults within the Empire were outlawed, hence no more classical Temples.
[Is what I do modern or is it post-modern? Honestly, I don't care.]
Was it European Colonialism that began the end of many indigenous architectures throughout the "non-Western" world? Can the 'international style' of CIAM be seen somewhat as an extension of Colonialism?
[These are questions that interest me much more than whether Gehry is modern or post-modern?]
there is no question in my mind...indigenous architecture is "defeated" as the culture is defeated!! part of colonization must be a complete replacing of the culture...in the past forcing styles upon people was very characteristic of the defeat of a people.
isn't it still the same. we bring "modernization" to afganastan and iraq...so we can make sure they get their own episodes of survivor and jerry springer!!
international style was about the same revolution of ideals as was connected to communism-- replacing the layers of cultures by attempting to flatten it to one. is it colonialism?...i would say no. this is mainly because colonialism is more an establishment of the social layers usually with the external element on the top...and natives on the bottom.
i am very interested in how these two questions cause someone to dig deeper in the styles of the past...mixing the gov, politics, philosophies, culture, etc WITH architecture. my point in this thread has been that the question posed have been seperated from the surronding culture etc. that is why i asked about gehry...i think the typical arch history class is more involved in assigning titles to each building and arch. than really analyzing culture etc. with the architecture.
Apr 10, 05 6:30 pm ·
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raj, can you elaborate a bit more on the nature of "international style" as you understand it?
(I may be wrong, but) isn't the International Style largely a Western European style?
You note the death of CIAM at 1968. European colonialism (primarily English and French) evaporated in the early 1960s. I suspect there are correlations still to be made between the International Style and late-colonialism even if the International Style is connected to communism.
i'm a little late to the 'does postmodern signal the end to modern' part of this discussion, but frederic jameson made the point that the postmodern was part of the modern project - merely an aspect of the continuing modern period. also according to him the postmodern never really was formed so much as it accumulated in many places at different times over a few decades. per lyotard - postmodern is a condition of modernity, not a replacement.
rita your point of Int-Style being european is exactly correct. but i would say that it is an attempt at really no style...modernism's attempt at purity, perfection, and plato's "heaven". i am facinated by the way it was used (by L'Corb) in india and africa, khan in india and bangledesh, and followers in South and cent america and has been really accepted as theirs. (though having been to chandigarh it is really weird!! it is NOT india in planning...but they really have embraced the buildings)
the idea was to strip its identity to place...and following loos' theory that all ornament was negative to a building. that ghetto can look the same as high end housing. government building and residence has a similar form. inervening with roof gardens to make a res feel more residential. while i don't have the tenants to the CIAM 'faith' in front of me (and have not studied for almost 10yrs in college) i am responding partly to what it worked out to be and how they hoped it would be.
i am facinated that south of the US border CIAM principles have more effect on their society than it did in europe. working so hard to strip identity...(individual, social, political). leaving gangs drug dealers etc. to usurp a control over the area (similar as with pruitt igo if i remember right.)
by the way i always ended colonialism with ww2 of course viet nam was french colonial...but it was really already ending...india, africa, south and central america, even eastern europe...political theories were causing "colonies" to overthrow their parasite...(ironically political theories from the west!!) i still maintain colonialism is a parasite stripping resources from its host...where as political theories have a different effect...sort of.
sorry it is kinda all over the place. i think i am still working all of it out...so i love the discussion...hopefully so do one or two others out there.
Apr 11, 05 10:31 am ·
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raj, I see where you're coming from. Here are some observations.
Many African nations did not reach independence until the early 1960s--childhood stamp collecting taught me at least that.
I'm not too sure that I would relate Le Corbusier and Kahn as the same type of 'International Style'.
South America does indeed appear to have much more 'International Style' architecture than North America.
Reread Loos because the whole anti-ornament issue stems from a critique of 'primitive' tattooing, which very much evokes 'colonialism thinking'.
All this discussion has reminded me of something I sent to design-l over six years ago:
to: design-l
re: assimilating architecture?
date: 5 December 1998
Since c.1500, humanity (however, mostly Western/European culture) has operated predominantly under the influence of an assimilating imagination -- a process whereby everything about this planet, and even beyond, has been and still is run through the workings of absorption -- absorption of land, data, capital, whole societies, etc. (Science in general is a very assimilating process, and genocide is just one example of absorption in the extreme -- purge.)
According to chronosomatics, a theory based on the interrelationship of time and the human body (The Timepiece of Humanity - the calendar incarnate), there are roughly 200 years left where assimilation will play a major role with regard to the human imagination, and, more importantly, the next 200 years of assimilation will also be the largest and grossest ‘chunks’ of assimilation yet, perhaps culminating with the total and complete knowledge of every bit of rhyme, reason, cause and effect of the human genome. Chronosomatics also shows us that metabolism (equal doses of creation and destruction) has been steadily becoming the new and eventually predominate operation of the human imagination. Therefore there is a strong pluralism within the operation of the human imagination today as well.
Are there thus some things within the last 500 years architectural history that relate to the notion of an assimilating architecture? Is there something about the present state of architectural affairs that points to an assimilating and/or metabolic architecture? For example, is the high eclecticism of the late 19th century one form of assimilating architecture? Is Le Corbusier’s Purism akin to assimilating architecture in the extreme? Is the current widespread/global land development precisely a continuation of the assimilating process begun by the likes of Christopher Columbus? Will humanity, 200 years hence, have come extremely close to assimilating (for better or for worse) every square inch of this planet?
Personally, I think the answer is yes, but that’s not the worst of it. After assimilation ceases to be a major element within the operation of the human imagination, humanity will spend 500 years working under the influence of an almost purely metabolic imagination. Imagine living on Earth when pretty much everything thought and done is create and destroy, create and destroy, create and destroy. . . . .
rita.....drive through the suburban landscape and it becomes obvious that capitalism and globalism have assimilated our 'discipline.' architecture is increasingly the deployment of pastiche that is used to define markets and capitalize on trends in which the consumer is assimilated. the average architect is merely a tool for assimilation.
listen to architects talk about their projects and it becomes obvious that they operate under the assumption that the 'observer' is to be assimilated.......bound up in a prescriptive or ontological reading of architecture based hierarchically and repressively on the creator's intentions.
There is a difference between modernism and postmodernism (which refer to architectural styles, and which can be identified with specific works and eras) and Modernity and Post-modernity (which are more general ideas about progress and change).
Modernity, which adopts an idea about progress towards a rational truth that emerged with the enlightenment, and has a belief that there is some kind of objective universal truth.
Postmodernity by contrast adopts an idea about progress that emerges from citicism, from diverse perspectives questioning one another, seeing a complex world without objective truth, but only relative truths.
I think Modernity and Post-modernity are different ways of seeing, and thus never really "die", but both can have a significant impact on how you design, what your research focuses on, and how you approach that investigation.
Apr 11, 05 1:02 pm ·
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What is the universal truth that Modernity believes in?
What are some examples of relative truths?
[Isn't the notion that the world is "complex without objective truth" itself "a belief that there is some kind of objective universal truth?"]
So Postmodernity replaces Modernity's certainty of rationality with the certainty of relativity?
[Is "the ether" still the playground architectural theory plays in?]
What is more truthful, professional architectural photography or the candid snapshot of a building?
rita i am not sure if you are baiting us or have a point...but i will play along. i like the questions...
first back to the others...loos critique of primitive tatooing ...( i do need to reread loos)-- can this also be seen as a plea to remove cultural stigmas directly relating to position, heirachy, place, cultural stigmas...etc. ?
as for a new "dark ages" ... it would not suprise me. i think the public in general are feeling trapped by ignorance of a rapidly changing science and technology that they embrace their "simpler times"...a sort of memory clutching on to a natural understanding of things. a form of establising some sort of control. of course with that comes something that assumes REAL control...that invisible hand is slapping us around. letting the consumers to mind numbingly head back into the mall buying and sleeping their way to "happiness" orgy porgy...
their will always be a small group crying for those who are alseep to WAKE...i loved the images of kurt vonnegut's book Timequake to see the cultural awakening that we really need to experience in this world!
i digress...
i don't really know if it assimilation by something...but really our cultural laziness. willing to fall, with memories Wells warned us of, for the same ridiculous party line over and over.
so...brink...i am in your court. i don't think movements "die" but we evolve. despite darwins idea that we "progress" toward the fittest...i think that we just evolve in our ideals. did the renaissance die? no it was just replaced.
universal truth in modernity acknowledges that it is too great for us here in this plane to understand. it is the purity of everything. this is pulled verymuch from an understanding of plato's "god" observer, watchmaker ...whatever. i don't think it really mattered...just that there is a public good...a good and evil...
whereas PM loves your comment that their statement is a rational error...they are ok with that...like the idea that christianity, judism, muslim, hinduism,buddhaism,etc. can all be the same DESPITE the fact that EACH denys the other!
it is more about spin...recreating history, rereading it to see a new truth...gosh do we love biographies!!
the ether is now just spirituallity...it is a truly subjective experience hardly founded on any rationality...just a belief they are right.
as for the arch photo or candid shot...i would say NEITHER...once something is made into art...is it merely still a picture of something? is the mona lisa really just a pict of someone? arch is really the design of SPACES ...the area between walls...hardly matter...hardly photogenic...
forgive me (if) i am a bit less informed than those on this discussion board but i would like to participate bc this is much more intellectual than than the "White/off-white" and "dead wrong" discussions...
Rita - I believe point of modernism was to search for the universal truth using the most rationally based methods conceivable at the time. there was a belief in the machine and technology as a means to achieving the truth but i dont think the truth was ever truly attained but rather envisioned as a goal?
Cindy Sherman's photography in the seventies make an interesting illustration of relative truths. sherman photographed herself dressed as iconic figures in popular culture. at first look it is easy to mistake sherman for the actual character. the photographs called to question whether sherman or the icon were the subject of the work, and whether the icon or sherman were a "True" representation of the icon if the viewer perceived them to be the same.
i think your next two statements are really beggin the same question. i think to say that postmodernity "replaced" certainty with uncertainty is really the same and saying modernity's belief in what was true changed to uncertainty. which is why postmodernity may be continued modernity, depending on how you choose to see it. (another example of relative truths?)
your last question: for me, neither.
Apr 11, 05 2:31 pm ·
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Maybe I'm baiting AND have a point. Maybe the baiting is the point, or vise versa.
Platonic Forms exist only in the ether, don't they?
Ok, which is more ethereal then, a professional architectural photograph or a candid snapshot of a building?
There is one thing that distinguishes Christianity from the other major religions, and that is the notion that Divinity and Humanity are capable of being the same thing. [Gosh, that kinda sounds Pagan, doesn't it?]
Apr 11, 05 2:46 pm ·
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Maybe it's just me, but I see professional architectural photographic akin to plastic surgery, a kind of makeover.
I like Sherman's work a lot, but I see it as reenactionary before anything else. [Reenactment works with degrees of separation, anything from getting as close to the original as possible, to stretching the truth as far as it will go.]
if you're serious and committed to this investigation it may be helpful to begin by locating the modernity/postmodernity distinction within the framework of philosophy. this is a purely western story mind you and therefore exclusive to the formulations of the western humanist bias.
the following summary is so macro as to be almost misleading but if you find this basic narrative helpful there are many many sources and texts which can fill in the gaps and give you the details. let me know, i can point you in certain directions, especially along the lines of epistemological wirings. others surely will point you in other differently helpful directions as well.
plato outlined the first and still primary thesis which purports that humans are equipped uniquely with the faculty of reason, and that this commonality allows us to then derive systematic insight into nature. in otherwords a foundation of metaphycial certainty was built which was perhaps forgotten at times in the subsequent 2000 or so years but certainly not truly challenged until about the 18th century. plato's method can be cabeled subject-centered reason because it necessitates the individual's consciousness to make sense of and order the world. it is a useful perspective because with it you can surmise that there are universal truths, there is a universal notion of good and of bad, of beauty and of ugliness.
this attractive utility allowed this classical understanding of the world to, the consensus goes, reign supreme in europe through subsequent modifications and clarifications (descartes' "i think therefore i am" was perhaps the epitome of metphysical proofs of subject-centered certainty) until some doubters came out of the woodwork in the 17 and 1800's.
people like david hume and rousseau, laid the groundwork for skepticism about the truthfulness of the certitude of rationalism, if not its harmful effects. they were vastly different in their methods but the importance of their writing lay in the proposition that the tradition of rationalism (from plato, and then recently rediscovered during the enlightenment) might be like a massive wedding cake: layer upon layer of ever decreasingly sized logic games which, clever as they may be, are all resting on a fallacious foundation (the assumption that reason can ascertain a clear and truthful picture of nature).
i should here add that there are devout platonists still today who believe as surely as ancient greeks that their perspective is the correct one. and these people are not firebrands necessarily but simply convinced artists, architects, politicians who are in favor of the optimism that derives from the belief that man possesses the capacity to comprehensively understand without recourse to self-delusion.
back to the past: in the 19th century there was finally a radical shift brought about by nietzsche and hegel.
hegel claims that modernity is a new condition which rested on the assumption that contmporary societies understand history as the necessary precursor to the present. this sounds obvious but consider: the greeks never saw their present as transmutable to a future and resultant from a accidental or purposeful series of past events. neither did people of renaissance italy or the prostestant reformation. hegel proposed that the here and now was merely an anticipation of the future. essentially historical unfolding became an end in itself.
nietzsche added to this by insisting in no uncertain terms that this understanding of history had some liberating side-effects: for one the scientific study of history 'proves' nicely that there are and have been many different ways of, say, defining good. or defining beauty. or defining just. after all the ancient romans valued things which 19th century germans find preposterous and vice versa. and furthermore it is a specious claim that purports to absolutely prove that one culture's take is better or more natural than another's.
thus was born relativism. there are inherent difficulties to this. and the refutations of relativism, appropriatley, can be found everywhere, in literature, art, laws. existentialism sprang from the not so happy side effect of relativism which is: since everything is relative to a time and place and nothing can be claimed to be authentically enduring, why do we believe what we believe? why eat lunch? why wear pants? why value money and stability?
we are today just a few steps removed from the latest battles between the belief in the primacy of reason and the belief that the emphasis on reason has not only led us astray and caused resoundingly awful things (holocaust, ruination of our planet, worhip of money, reliance on technology).
these french poststructuralists (foucault, derrida) were/are pitted against others who believe that reason never 'lost' the war, that in fact a thorougher accounting and a closer look will show that we're in a detour currently and just have to get back to a more rigorous, disciplined appraisal of rational thought structures. that at bottom we CAN undertsand ourselves and nature communally and with agreement, that is without the denial of transcultural and transcultural claims. these arguments emanated first from the frankfurt school (jurgen habermas most notably) and the lineage extended to some americans like richard rorty.
so that is the broadstroke context of current philosophical discourse. postmodernism, in sum, is at root the belief in the insistence of history and sociology, literature, and anthropology that man never really had it all down cognitively. that we must, to be authentic, heed our ultimate impotence.
obviously this stance applies to architecture most readily in the denial of the functionalist assertions of 20s modernism. but oddly, unlike literary or philosophical postmodernism, architectural postmodernism was happy to embrace the forms and symbols of a dead western past.
at the end of the day it is telling that building construction with its incredible exigencies (particular to itself only) of staging dwelling as a existential act, of defining our cultural and physical posture on the horizontal plane of this here earth, and projecting personal and cummunal priorities and yearnings, eludes the clarity of categorization and ready summation. those who claim to be able to do this do not create and i would argue do not understand the irrationality of the creative impulse. building correctly is not black magic but it does need to embrace the uncertain and the undefinable. there is no linguisitc clarity, no rhetorical recourse to logical eradication of faulty systems.
in sum architecture, i believe, is so complex and yet so rudimentary in its mission that the act of intelligent construction may simply in the end be one of the most authentic, life-affirming acts possible by man.
ok. i'm helping revive this discussion because i was mostly 'out' the week it took place and i'd like to keep reading more of this.
...although it's intimidating to go behind pedromartinez [this has to be an alias for someone else, 0 entries 1 comment?] i'll give it a try....
modernism: search for the purity and autonomy of the arts [of each art in itself]. hegel --> adorno --> greenberg --> eisenman, in different degrees. the question with eisenman becomes, what is *only* architecture, or purely architecture, and nothing else? for him, the answer is space.
but also for eisenman, of course, all modernism was really part of the classical... he sees his first cardboard houses as the beginning of *real* modernism.
aml, i think equating modernism in architecture with attempts to see the discipline as autonomous is an interesting but difficult claim to make. someone like demitri porphyrios or quinlan terry would argue that architecture of modernism has tended to rely almost completely on anti-architectural methods and forms (engineering- 'house as machine'; or sociology- 60's flow chart architecture; or literary critique - 'eisenman taking linguistic theories and using them as a basis for formmaking; or, most commonly, art - building as sculpture).
traditional urbanists would argue that architecture once responded to an entire body of knowledge specific to itself that was at the service of one common goal: good construction that heeded the creation of a meaningful and effective public sphere. they would add that modernism fails partly because these ultimate concerns are not effectively addressed.
so many, i think, would counter your autonomy definition of architecture and modernism.
Proud of my boy Pedro, will throw my hat in in a little bit...
May 4, 05 9:59 am ·
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[...and although Heynen found the notion of reenactment in architecture intriguing, she also found it threatening to her thesis--which translates: it scars the shit out of her that someone other than Tafuri knows what the Ichnographia Campi Martii is really all about. Oh, and that look on her face when I too arrived for Thanksgiving dinner at the Zenghelis/Gigantes' was priceless!]
May 4, 05 10:48 am ·
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[Tafuri's mistakes regarding Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii -- a set of nine webpages first published at www.quondam.com 1999.05.17.]
pedro, my argument is that they were striving for autonomy- i don't think they ever got there, but that was the drive behind eisenman's search when looking at linguistics. there is of course a contradiction here, since he was looking outside the discipline and then trying to mimic processes into architecture in striving to separate the discipline, but ultimately he -i think- was striving to find the irreducible essence of architecture -form, for him- although he 'instruction manual' came from other sources.
others tried to find that irreducible essence in function, others in structure.
rita, i can't discuss heynen yet because i'm 1/3 through... i haven't gotten to her mentioning tafuri yet but we'll see. not that i believe tafuri is faultless, just in case. in fact, he confused the dates of his benjamin quotes, believing 'the author as producer' was an evolution, done after 'the work of art in the age...etc', when in fact it was written before.
oh, and by the way thanks captain eo for getting this discussion started... it was not a generic and uninspired question, i've enjoyed reading the posts very much. but i did notice you sort of got everybody started and backed out.
i think eisenman's investigations were very interesting. for many reasons. but i am not willing to grant that they were, at base, a genuine attempt at claiming autonomy for architecture.
but lets say for the sake of argument that thats exactly what eisenman desired and accomplished.
is that autonomy unique to modernism?
i am curious as to why the insularity of autonomy would be a modern characteristic.
hey- not accomplished. i never said he accomplished anything..
autonomy of media as unique of modernism- and i'm willing to bend here- could you give me an example outside modernism?
i think it probably exists but this was a time period when autonomy 'exploded' and was pushed further, basically through adorno and then greenberg. fields like architecture have echoes of this search, but in a distorted manner.
aml, i think, as pertains to the issue at hand, we might be differing on our definitions of autonomy. i have not read adorno or greenberg, could you elaborate?
bear in mind i will not do either justice, just off the top of my head...
adorno, in 'the fetishization of music and regressive listening' argues for a 'work of art' that needs to exist only in its structural form... this is the only way it will not be tainted or contaminated by consumerism... 'recognized' pieces of music, like let's say beethoven, are easily fetishized and made part of popular culture, 'cheapened' in adorno's head, devoid of their true significance, turned into jingles and whatnot. therefore, the only composition that will withstand this sort of consumption will be the one that is only based in the rules of the discipline. he cites a composer [don't remember name] that later denied he had any intention of doing that.
clement greenberg, 'avant garde and kitsch' and another writing [don't remember title, too lazy to look] argues for modernity in painting... as reducing it to the medium of painting, in this case, the fluidity of the actual paint, the texture of the canvas... jackson pollock. the medium is then reduced to 'only painting', it's not referential to literature [such as figurative painting], space, or anything other than the process of making it.
extrapolating, some might interpret this process of making in architecture as structure and construction [frampton], others as the process of design [eisenman, particularly in the detailed axonometrics showing the design process of the cardboard houses].
[and i'm backing up again- yes eisenman accomplished some things, just not necessarily modernity]
is a better word 'fragmentation' rather than autonomy? one of the traits unique to disiplines, especially academic ones, in modern times is the insistent claims toward specialization.
modernity/post-modernity
this may be a completely generic and uninspired question but....
can anyone explain, pinpoint and/or postulate what where when how AND why the paradigmatic shift from modernity to post-modernity occured both in relation to larger ideological shifts as well as in more specific fields, i.e., art, architecture (complexity and contradiction, of course, but what led to venturi's manfesto?) etc.????? I am a bit more interested in the larger ideological paradigm shifts and how these became translated into the PoMo which we all love to hate, or, hate to love.
Thanks.EO
I think you should read Marshal Bermans brillian book called 'All that is Solid melts into air'
I dont want to ruin it for you- but it is a fantastic look at what the very idea of modernity is and how it has come about.
philosophers and literary critics/theorists got there first. sociologists, linguists, many other disciplines were way before architects. we merely latched onto an academic trend, twisted and crafted it into our own particular frankenstein monster.
don't know a particular time, but terry eagleton's layman's guide 'literary theory' may give you a place to start looking.
1968
I have the book for you, in fact i was just re-reading it last night:
"The Condition of Postmodernity" By David Harvey.
Though a total critique must leave a lot out, Harvey does an amazing job at summarizing without making overly general claims---his scope is admirable. He talks a lot about architecture in addition to art, economics, philosophy etc. To say that one can pinpoint the shift from mod to pomo is silly and besides the point (what?, you say, i thought it was when Pruitt-Igoe was imploded?) but Harvey talks more about a generalshift in ideas that occured around 1972. First he starts with a summary of modernism since descriptions of pomo are often defined in reaction to tenets of modernism. then theres a section about pomo. the end of the book is a more detailed account of the pomo conception of time and space. it was one of the first theory books i read and was great resource for understanding some major themes as well as a springboard for further study.
all that said, i'm not sure if i agree with steven ward's statement that "[achitects] merely latched onto an academic trend, twisted and crafted it into our own particular frankenstein monster." if the beginning, and indeed the existence, of postmodern thinking as anything other than a different strain of modernism is in question then i wouldnt say that architects were "latchers on." that statement minimizes the effect of the architect in bringing high ideas into human realm in the form of constrcuted space. (and here i am paraphrasing...the more i read the more i find that someone else has already had my ideas)
i am not a fan of the terms as we archi's use them...
mod=box
p-mod=venturi.
the concepts are represented much more clear in art, lit, philosphy,etc.
i don't think venturi can really be called pomo...but anti modernism.
trying to bring a concept of relativism and truth, as well as some of the overarching ideas pervading our society REAL post modernism would actually be very interesting to us all. too bad we had to kill it by naming that crap in the 80's pomo.
when you are trying to understand pomo...leave the archi books behind! we call the death of CIAM (1968), the death of modernism...
While i agree it is associated with CIAM, its actually the involvment of the Team 10 sub-group during CIAM X[1956] which marks the move of modernism to post-moderism via a structuralist/post structuralist perspective.
so 1956 [a very good year!!]
"The term was probably first used by Arnold Toynbee in 1939, and prefigured by him in 1934. In his...'A Study of History' [1934], Toynbee proposed...that the period referred to by historians as the 'modern' period ends more or less in the third quarter of the nineteenth century...in 1939, he used the term 'post-modern'...for the first time. At this point he had shifted the chronology slightly, suggesting that the modern now comes to an end during the First World War...and that the postmodern begins to articulate and shape itself in the years between the two world wars...The word 'post-modern' is thus characterised from its very inception by an ambiguity...
"A major source for the contemporary debates around the postmoderm is to be found...in the text proposed by Adorno and Horkheimer in 1944, 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'...
"The word then...hovers around the edges of sociological arguments and the 'end of ideology' debates in the 1950s...
"In philosophy, there arises a whole series of 'anti-foundational' modes of thinking, already foreshadowed in the early deconstruction of Derrida in his three great 1967 texts.
"A key date here is...1968...when these revolutions failed, many began at precisely that moment to rethink their commitment to the fundamental premises of Marxist theory...
...if a political theory had failed...to produce the requisite practice, then...how does one safely ground an emancipatory cultural politics?
All from 'Postmodernism: An Introduction' by Thomas Docherty, 1993.
I have thought that Colin Rowe's essays ("Mathmatics of the Ideal Villa", et al) began the shift in Architectural Theory from Modern to Post-Modern, in as much as they began to peel away the Functionalist dogma from classic modern works and show the compositional relationships to renaissance design principals. These essays date from the late '40s.
Are there earlier works that do this type of analysis?
Granted, the larger family of Post Modern criticism is much more complex and difficult to assign specific dates to.
ideology is dead therefore we rely on our own personal mythologies therefore pastmodern...
As soon as the inhabitants of Pessac began to alter the appearance of their homes counter to the modern 'purism' of Le Corbusier's design, might just pinpoint the beginning of post-modern architecture.
umpf... then Modern architecture just existed for a nanosecond... not only the second line Corbu drew in his life was already Post-Modern, but at the end of the first line Modern Architecture was already dead...
Does it say anywhere that modernism must end as soon as post-modernism begins?
If so, then who writes these rules?
[Did Judaism end as soon as Christianity began? Did Christianity end as soon as Islam began?]
no, i think modernism still is going on today in the form of some 'digital medium' practitioners who base their concept of 'blobs' on the notion of speculation + can be built with technology [CNC and such] i consider this 'modern'.
there is so much 'everyday' architecture that i think falls under the presumption of 'faux-modernism' that stylistically takes on the charateristics of a modern building yet isnt modern in intent. cant fathom where that would fall.
I guess people tend to adjectivize a certain period of time according to the predominant style of the moment...
Maybe the question should be who quantifies the predominant styles.. then you'll find who write the rules...
if we don't accept that a certain style can kill the previous the one, we should admit too that we're still in the Renaissance, or in Late Gothic...
wow rita quite a stretch on that analogy!!
i must restate CIAM rep an international style IS different than modernism!! i don't understand why this myth is perpetuated in arch schools!
i am with rita with what are the rules and where are they...because while modernism is stated VERY clearly in other sources, pomo is naturally a little less clear...our arch style of each are horrible charactures...
question: is gehry modern or postmodern??
raj, the religious analogy employed is not a stretch when you consider how this thread began, specifically in reference to a "paradigmatic shift". Christianity is a paradigmatic shift vis-a-vis Judaism, and Islam is (in part) a paradigmatic shift vis-a-vis Christianity.
Interestingly, the rise of Christian architecture did coincide with the end of 'classical' Pagan architecture--not long after Christian basilicas were built in Rome and Judea (under the supervision of St. Helena), the legislature under Constantine I (the son of St. Helena) began to steadily outlaw Pagan cults. Ultimately, under emperor Theodosius I, all Pagan cults within the Empire were outlawed, hence no more classical Temples.
[Is what I do modern or is it post-modern? Honestly, I don't care.]
Was it European Colonialism that began the end of many indigenous architectures throughout the "non-Western" world? Can the 'international style' of CIAM be seen somewhat as an extension of Colonialism?
[These are questions that interest me much more than whether Gehry is modern or post-modern?]
there is no question in my mind...indigenous architecture is "defeated" as the culture is defeated!! part of colonization must be a complete replacing of the culture...in the past forcing styles upon people was very characteristic of the defeat of a people.
isn't it still the same. we bring "modernization" to afganastan and iraq...so we can make sure they get their own episodes of survivor and jerry springer!!
international style was about the same revolution of ideals as was connected to communism-- replacing the layers of cultures by attempting to flatten it to one. is it colonialism?...i would say no. this is mainly because colonialism is more an establishment of the social layers usually with the external element on the top...and natives on the bottom.
i am very interested in how these two questions cause someone to dig deeper in the styles of the past...mixing the gov, politics, philosophies, culture, etc WITH architecture. my point in this thread has been that the question posed have been seperated from the surronding culture etc. that is why i asked about gehry...i think the typical arch history class is more involved in assigning titles to each building and arch. than really analyzing culture etc. with the architecture.
raj, can you elaborate a bit more on the nature of "international style" as you understand it?
(I may be wrong, but) isn't the International Style largely a Western European style?
You note the death of CIAM at 1968. European colonialism (primarily English and French) evaporated in the early 1960s. I suspect there are correlations still to be made between the International Style and late-colonialism even if the International Style is connected to communism.
i'm a little late to the 'does postmodern signal the end to modern' part of this discussion, but frederic jameson made the point that the postmodern was part of the modern project - merely an aspect of the continuing modern period. also according to him the postmodern never really was formed so much as it accumulated in many places at different times over a few decades. per lyotard - postmodern is a condition of modernity, not a replacement.
rita your point of Int-Style being european is exactly correct. but i would say that it is an attempt at really no style...modernism's attempt at purity, perfection, and plato's "heaven". i am facinated by the way it was used (by L'Corb) in india and africa, khan in india and bangledesh, and followers in South and cent america and has been really accepted as theirs. (though having been to chandigarh it is really weird!! it is NOT india in planning...but they really have embraced the buildings)
the idea was to strip its identity to place...and following loos' theory that all ornament was negative to a building. that ghetto can look the same as high end housing. government building and residence has a similar form. inervening with roof gardens to make a res feel more residential. while i don't have the tenants to the CIAM 'faith' in front of me (and have not studied for almost 10yrs in college) i am responding partly to what it worked out to be and how they hoped it would be.
i am facinated that south of the US border CIAM principles have more effect on their society than it did in europe. working so hard to strip identity...(individual, social, political). leaving gangs drug dealers etc. to usurp a control over the area (similar as with pruitt igo if i remember right.)
by the way i always ended colonialism with ww2 of course viet nam was french colonial...but it was really already ending...india, africa, south and central america, even eastern europe...political theories were causing "colonies" to overthrow their parasite...(ironically political theories from the west!!) i still maintain colonialism is a parasite stripping resources from its host...where as political theories have a different effect...sort of.
sorry it is kinda all over the place. i think i am still working all of it out...so i love the discussion...hopefully so do one or two others out there.
raj, I see where you're coming from. Here are some observations.
Many African nations did not reach independence until the early 1960s--childhood stamp collecting taught me at least that.
I'm not too sure that I would relate Le Corbusier and Kahn as the same type of 'International Style'.
South America does indeed appear to have much more 'International Style' architecture than North America.
Reread Loos because the whole anti-ornament issue stems from a critique of 'primitive' tattooing, which very much evokes 'colonialism thinking'.
All this discussion has reminded me of something I sent to design-l over six years ago:
to: design-l
re: assimilating architecture?
date: 5 December 1998
Since c.1500, humanity (however, mostly Western/European culture) has operated predominantly under the influence of an assimilating imagination -- a process whereby everything about this planet, and even beyond, has been and still is run through the workings of absorption -- absorption of land, data, capital, whole societies, etc. (Science in general is a very assimilating process, and genocide is just one example of absorption in the extreme -- purge.)
According to chronosomatics, a theory based on the interrelationship of time and the human body (The Timepiece of Humanity - the calendar incarnate), there are roughly 200 years left where assimilation will play a major role with regard to the human imagination, and, more importantly, the next 200 years of assimilation will also be the largest and grossest ‘chunks’ of assimilation yet, perhaps culminating with the total and complete knowledge of every bit of rhyme, reason, cause and effect of the human genome. Chronosomatics also shows us that metabolism (equal doses of creation and destruction) has been steadily becoming the new and eventually predominate operation of the human imagination. Therefore there is a strong pluralism within the operation of the human imagination today as well.
Are there thus some things within the last 500 years architectural history that relate to the notion of an assimilating architecture? Is there something about the present state of architectural affairs that points to an assimilating and/or metabolic architecture? For example, is the high eclecticism of the late 19th century one form of assimilating architecture? Is Le Corbusier’s Purism akin to assimilating architecture in the extreme? Is the current widespread/global land development precisely a continuation of the assimilating process begun by the likes of Christopher Columbus? Will humanity, 200 years hence, have come extremely close to assimilating (for better or for worse) every square inch of this planet?
Personally, I think the answer is yes, but that’s not the worst of it. After assimilation ceases to be a major element within the operation of the human imagination, humanity will spend 500 years working under the influence of an almost purely metabolic imagination. Imagine living on Earth when pretty much everything thought and done is create and destroy, create and destroy, create and destroy. . . . .
rita.....drive through the suburban landscape and it becomes obvious that capitalism and globalism have assimilated our 'discipline.' architecture is increasingly the deployment of pastiche that is used to define markets and capitalize on trends in which the consumer is assimilated. the average architect is merely a tool for assimilation.
listen to architects talk about their projects and it becomes obvious that they operate under the assumption that the 'observer' is to be assimilated.......bound up in a prescriptive or ontological reading of architecture based hierarchically and repressively on the creator's intentions.
it is all about assimilation!
do you see what i mean........
I see what you mean, but "that's not the worst of it," is it?
There is a difference between modernism and postmodernism (which refer to architectural styles, and which can be identified with specific works and eras) and Modernity and Post-modernity (which are more general ideas about progress and change).
Modernity, which adopts an idea about progress towards a rational truth that emerged with the enlightenment, and has a belief that there is some kind of objective universal truth.
Postmodernity by contrast adopts an idea about progress that emerges from citicism, from diverse perspectives questioning one another, seeing a complex world without objective truth, but only relative truths.
I think Modernity and Post-modernity are different ways of seeing, and thus never really "die", but both can have a significant impact on how you design, what your research focuses on, and how you approach that investigation.
What is the universal truth that Modernity believes in?
What are some examples of relative truths?
[Isn't the notion that the world is "complex without objective truth" itself "a belief that there is some kind of objective universal truth?"]
So Postmodernity replaces Modernity's certainty of rationality with the certainty of relativity?
[Is "the ether" still the playground architectural theory plays in?]
What is more truthful, professional architectural photography or the candid snapshot of a building?
rita i am not sure if you are baiting us or have a point...but i will play along. i like the questions...
first back to the others...loos critique of primitive tatooing ...( i do need to reread loos)-- can this also be seen as a plea to remove cultural stigmas directly relating to position, heirachy, place, cultural stigmas...etc. ?
as for a new "dark ages" ... it would not suprise me. i think the public in general are feeling trapped by ignorance of a rapidly changing science and technology that they embrace their "simpler times"...a sort of memory clutching on to a natural understanding of things. a form of establising some sort of control. of course with that comes something that assumes REAL control...that invisible hand is slapping us around. letting the consumers to mind numbingly head back into the mall buying and sleeping their way to "happiness" orgy porgy...
their will always be a small group crying for those who are alseep to WAKE...i loved the images of kurt vonnegut's book Timequake to see the cultural awakening that we really need to experience in this world!
i digress...
i don't really know if it assimilation by something...but really our cultural laziness. willing to fall, with memories Wells warned us of, for the same ridiculous party line over and over.
so...brink...i am in your court. i don't think movements "die" but we evolve. despite darwins idea that we "progress" toward the fittest...i think that we just evolve in our ideals. did the renaissance die? no it was just replaced.
universal truth in modernity acknowledges that it is too great for us here in this plane to understand. it is the purity of everything. this is pulled verymuch from an understanding of plato's "god" observer, watchmaker ...whatever. i don't think it really mattered...just that there is a public good...a good and evil...
whereas PM loves your comment that their statement is a rational error...they are ok with that...like the idea that christianity, judism, muslim, hinduism,buddhaism,etc. can all be the same DESPITE the fact that EACH denys the other!
it is more about spin...recreating history, rereading it to see a new truth...gosh do we love biographies!!
the ether is now just spirituallity...it is a truly subjective experience hardly founded on any rationality...just a belief they are right.
as for the arch photo or candid shot...i would say NEITHER...once something is made into art...is it merely still a picture of something? is the mona lisa really just a pict of someone? arch is really the design of SPACES ...the area between walls...hardly matter...hardly photogenic...
forgive me (if) i am a bit less informed than those on this discussion board but i would like to participate bc this is much more intellectual than than the "White/off-white" and "dead wrong" discussions...
Rita - I believe point of modernism was to search for the universal truth using the most rationally based methods conceivable at the time. there was a belief in the machine and technology as a means to achieving the truth but i dont think the truth was ever truly attained but rather envisioned as a goal?
Cindy Sherman's photography in the seventies make an interesting illustration of relative truths. sherman photographed herself dressed as iconic figures in popular culture. at first look it is easy to mistake sherman for the actual character. the photographs called to question whether sherman or the icon were the subject of the work, and whether the icon or sherman were a "True" representation of the icon if the viewer perceived them to be the same.
i think your next two statements are really beggin the same question. i think to say that postmodernity "replaced" certainty with uncertainty is really the same and saying modernity's belief in what was true changed to uncertainty. which is why postmodernity may be continued modernity, depending on how you choose to see it. (another example of relative truths?)
your last question: for me, neither.
Maybe I'm baiting AND have a point. Maybe the baiting is the point, or vise versa.
Who said anything about "dark ages"? Is Krakatoa going to erupt again?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/01/010102061812.htm
Platonic Forms exist only in the ether, don't they?
Ok, which is more ethereal then, a professional architectural photograph or a candid snapshot of a building?
There is one thing that distinguishes Christianity from the other major religions, and that is the notion that Divinity and Humanity are capable of being the same thing. [Gosh, that kinda sounds Pagan, doesn't it?]
Maybe it's just me, but I see professional architectural photographic akin to plastic surgery, a kind of makeover.
I like Sherman's work a lot, but I see it as reenactionary before anything else. [Reenactment works with degrees of separation, anything from getting as close to the original as possible, to stretching the truth as far as it will go.]
things to think on children-
how does modernism retain its integrity when used as a background to define postmodernism?
"the less human a work of art, the more valuable it becomes."
what are the cultural politics of modernism? how are they perceived through the prism of cultural theory?
welcome vado...did you read the previous posts?
i am interested to hear your comments on how they answer your questions and comments.
Karl Friedrich Schinkel.......The First Modern Architect
if you're serious and committed to this investigation it may be helpful to begin by locating the modernity/postmodernity distinction within the framework of philosophy. this is a purely western story mind you and therefore exclusive to the formulations of the western humanist bias.
the following summary is so macro as to be almost misleading but if you find this basic narrative helpful there are many many sources and texts which can fill in the gaps and give you the details. let me know, i can point you in certain directions, especially along the lines of epistemological wirings. others surely will point you in other differently helpful directions as well.
plato outlined the first and still primary thesis which purports that humans are equipped uniquely with the faculty of reason, and that this commonality allows us to then derive systematic insight into nature. in otherwords a foundation of metaphycial certainty was built which was perhaps forgotten at times in the subsequent 2000 or so years but certainly not truly challenged until about the 18th century. plato's method can be cabeled subject-centered reason because it necessitates the individual's consciousness to make sense of and order the world. it is a useful perspective because with it you can surmise that there are universal truths, there is a universal notion of good and of bad, of beauty and of ugliness.
this attractive utility allowed this classical understanding of the world to, the consensus goes, reign supreme in europe through subsequent modifications and clarifications (descartes' "i think therefore i am" was perhaps the epitome of metphysical proofs of subject-centered certainty) until some doubters came out of the woodwork in the 17 and 1800's.
people like david hume and rousseau, laid the groundwork for skepticism about the truthfulness of the certitude of rationalism, if not its harmful effects. they were vastly different in their methods but the importance of their writing lay in the proposition that the tradition of rationalism (from plato, and then recently rediscovered during the enlightenment) might be like a massive wedding cake: layer upon layer of ever decreasingly sized logic games which, clever as they may be, are all resting on a fallacious foundation (the assumption that reason can ascertain a clear and truthful picture of nature).
i should here add that there are devout platonists still today who believe as surely as ancient greeks that their perspective is the correct one. and these people are not firebrands necessarily but simply convinced artists, architects, politicians who are in favor of the optimism that derives from the belief that man possesses the capacity to comprehensively understand without recourse to self-delusion.
back to the past: in the 19th century there was finally a radical shift brought about by nietzsche and hegel.
hegel claims that modernity is a new condition which rested on the assumption that contmporary societies understand history as the necessary precursor to the present. this sounds obvious but consider: the greeks never saw their present as transmutable to a future and resultant from a accidental or purposeful series of past events. neither did people of renaissance italy or the prostestant reformation. hegel proposed that the here and now was merely an anticipation of the future. essentially historical unfolding became an end in itself.
nietzsche added to this by insisting in no uncertain terms that this understanding of history had some liberating side-effects: for one the scientific study of history 'proves' nicely that there are and have been many different ways of, say, defining good. or defining beauty. or defining just. after all the ancient romans valued things which 19th century germans find preposterous and vice versa. and furthermore it is a specious claim that purports to absolutely prove that one culture's take is better or more natural than another's.
thus was born relativism. there are inherent difficulties to this. and the refutations of relativism, appropriatley, can be found everywhere, in literature, art, laws. existentialism sprang from the not so happy side effect of relativism which is: since everything is relative to a time and place and nothing can be claimed to be authentically enduring, why do we believe what we believe? why eat lunch? why wear pants? why value money and stability?
we are today just a few steps removed from the latest battles between the belief in the primacy of reason and the belief that the emphasis on reason has not only led us astray and caused resoundingly awful things (holocaust, ruination of our planet, worhip of money, reliance on technology).
these french poststructuralists (foucault, derrida) were/are pitted against others who believe that reason never 'lost' the war, that in fact a thorougher accounting and a closer look will show that we're in a detour currently and just have to get back to a more rigorous, disciplined appraisal of rational thought structures. that at bottom we CAN undertsand ourselves and nature communally and with agreement, that is without the denial of transcultural and transcultural claims. these arguments emanated first from the frankfurt school (jurgen habermas most notably) and the lineage extended to some americans like richard rorty.
so that is the broadstroke context of current philosophical discourse. postmodernism, in sum, is at root the belief in the insistence of history and sociology, literature, and anthropology that man never really had it all down cognitively. that we must, to be authentic, heed our ultimate impotence.
obviously this stance applies to architecture most readily in the denial of the functionalist assertions of 20s modernism. but oddly, unlike literary or philosophical postmodernism, architectural postmodernism was happy to embrace the forms and symbols of a dead western past.
at the end of the day it is telling that building construction with its incredible exigencies (particular to itself only) of staging dwelling as a existential act, of defining our cultural and physical posture on the horizontal plane of this here earth, and projecting personal and cummunal priorities and yearnings, eludes the clarity of categorization and ready summation. those who claim to be able to do this do not create and i would argue do not understand the irrationality of the creative impulse. building correctly is not black magic but it does need to embrace the uncertain and the undefinable. there is no linguisitc clarity, no rhetorical recourse to logical eradication of faulty systems.
in sum architecture, i believe, is so complex and yet so rudimentary in its mission that the act of intelligent construction may simply in the end be one of the most authentic, life-affirming acts possible by man.
ok. i'm helping revive this discussion because i was mostly 'out' the week it took place and i'd like to keep reading more of this.
...although it's intimidating to go behind pedromartinez [this has to be an alias for someone else, 0 entries 1 comment?] i'll give it a try....
modernism: search for the purity and autonomy of the arts [of each art in itself]. hegel --> adorno --> greenberg --> eisenman, in different degrees. the question with eisenman becomes, what is *only* architecture, or purely architecture, and nothing else? for him, the answer is space.
but also for eisenman, of course, all modernism was really part of the classical... he sees his first cardboard houses as the beginning of *real* modernism.
i'm coincidentally reading hilde heynen's architecture and modernity: a critique, an excellent read for this topic.
...but i'm not advancing heynen's argument here, by the way. these are just conclusions from previous reads/courses.
aml, i think equating modernism in architecture with attempts to see the discipline as autonomous is an interesting but difficult claim to make. someone like demitri porphyrios or quinlan terry would argue that architecture of modernism has tended to rely almost completely on anti-architectural methods and forms (engineering- 'house as machine'; or sociology- 60's flow chart architecture; or literary critique - 'eisenman taking linguistic theories and using them as a basis for formmaking; or, most commonly, art - building as sculpture).
traditional urbanists would argue that architecture once responded to an entire body of knowledge specific to itself that was at the service of one common goal: good construction that heeded the creation of a meaningful and effective public sphere. they would add that modernism fails partly because these ultimate concerns are not effectively addressed.
so many, i think, would counter your autonomy definition of architecture and modernism.
Proud of my boy Pedro, will throw my hat in in a little bit...
[...and although Heynen found the notion of reenactment in architecture intriguing, she also found it threatening to her thesis--which translates: it scars the shit out of her that someone other than Tafuri knows what the Ichnographia Campi Martii is really all about. Oh, and that look on her face when I too arrived for Thanksgiving dinner at the Zenghelis/Gigantes' was priceless!]
[Tafuri's mistakes regarding Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii -- a set of nine webpages first published at www.quondam.com 1999.05.17.]
pedro, my argument is that they were striving for autonomy- i don't think they ever got there, but that was the drive behind eisenman's search when looking at linguistics. there is of course a contradiction here, since he was looking outside the discipline and then trying to mimic processes into architecture in striving to separate the discipline, but ultimately he -i think- was striving to find the irreducible essence of architecture -form, for him- although he 'instruction manual' came from other sources.
others tried to find that irreducible essence in function, others in structure.
rita, i can't discuss heynen yet because i'm 1/3 through... i haven't gotten to her mentioning tafuri yet but we'll see. not that i believe tafuri is faultless, just in case. in fact, he confused the dates of his benjamin quotes, believing 'the author as producer' was an evolution, done after 'the work of art in the age...etc', when in fact it was written before.
oh, and by the way thanks captain eo for getting this discussion started... it was not a generic and uninspired question, i've enjoyed reading the posts very much. but i did notice you sort of got everybody started and backed out.
aml,
i think eisenman's investigations were very interesting. for many reasons. but i am not willing to grant that they were, at base, a genuine attempt at claiming autonomy for architecture.
but lets say for the sake of argument that thats exactly what eisenman desired and accomplished.
is that autonomy unique to modernism?
i am curious as to why the insularity of autonomy would be a modern characteristic.
hey- not accomplished. i never said he accomplished anything..
autonomy of media as unique of modernism- and i'm willing to bend here- could you give me an example outside modernism?
i think it probably exists but this was a time period when autonomy 'exploded' and was pushed further, basically through adorno and then greenberg. fields like architecture have echoes of this search, but in a distorted manner.
aml, i think, as pertains to the issue at hand, we might be differing on our definitions of autonomy. i have not read adorno or greenberg, could you elaborate?
bear in mind i will not do either justice, just off the top of my head...
adorno, in 'the fetishization of music and regressive listening' argues for a 'work of art' that needs to exist only in its structural form... this is the only way it will not be tainted or contaminated by consumerism... 'recognized' pieces of music, like let's say beethoven, are easily fetishized and made part of popular culture, 'cheapened' in adorno's head, devoid of their true significance, turned into jingles and whatnot. therefore, the only composition that will withstand this sort of consumption will be the one that is only based in the rules of the discipline. he cites a composer [don't remember name] that later denied he had any intention of doing that.
clement greenberg, 'avant garde and kitsch' and another writing [don't remember title, too lazy to look] argues for modernity in painting... as reducing it to the medium of painting, in this case, the fluidity of the actual paint, the texture of the canvas... jackson pollock. the medium is then reduced to 'only painting', it's not referential to literature [such as figurative painting], space, or anything other than the process of making it.
extrapolating, some might interpret this process of making in architecture as structure and construction [frampton], others as the process of design [eisenman, particularly in the detailed axonometrics showing the design process of the cardboard houses].
[and i'm backing up again- yes eisenman accomplished some things, just not necessarily modernity]
is a better word 'fragmentation' rather than autonomy? one of the traits unique to disiplines, especially academic ones, in modern times is the insistent claims toward specialization.
wait we posted at the same time... could you elaborate on fragmentation? i don't think that's what i was getting at...
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