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Being specific: limits of contextualising (architectural) history

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602365.2011.636985

1466-4410

Carmen Popescu,

Urbanization and City Planning

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes ‘The End of History?’ was first published as an essay in The National Interest, 16 (Summer, 1989), pp. 3–18; subsequently, it was enlarged and turned into a book: The End of History and the Last Man (New York, The Free Press Macmillan Inc., 1992). What ended with the ‘end of history’, as Fukuyama argued, was the ideological clash: Fukuyama, ‘Second Thoughts’, The National Interest, 56 (Summer, 1999), p. 16. According to the synopsis of Ulysses' Gaze: http://www.theoangelopoulos.com/ulyssesgaze.htm (accessed 03.02.11). On 1st November, 2009, the statue was unveiled in the presence of President Bill Clinton: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8336789.stm (accessed 03.02.11). Walter Benn Michaels, The Shape of the Signifier (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 20. I use the term ‘Balkans’ to refer to a territory that might evolve within the chronological span of this paper, which covers (more or less) southern-eastern Europe. But as well as a geographical reality, I use it as an intellectual concept, as forged by the western gaze which saw in it ‘otherness’: backwardness, barbarity, exoticism, etc.; see Dusan I. Bjelic, Obrad Savic, eds, Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2002). Carmen Popescu, ‘Un patrimoine de l'identité: l'architecture à l’écoute des nationalismes’, Etudes balkaniques, 12 (2005), pp. 135–172. I use the term ‘historicity’ in the Foucauldian sense of the process of framing history. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York, Oxford University Press, 1997). Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 158. Banister Fletcher, Architecture and Its Place in General Education (London, B. T. Batsford, 1930), p. 1: the text was first given as a discourse held before the Seventh International Congress of Architects, London, 1906. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London, George Allen, 1901), pp. 335, 336. See, for instance, Friederich Achleitner, ‘The pluralism of modernity: The “Architectonic Language Problem” in Central Europe’, in, Eve Blau and Monika Platzer, eds, Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe (Munich, Prestel, 1999), pp. 94–106; Anthony Alofsin, When Buildings Speak: Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and Its Aftermath, 1867–1933 (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2006). See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2008). ‘The philosophical traveller, sailing to the end of the earth, is in fact travelling in time’, Joseph-Marie de Gérando, Observation of Savage Peoples (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 63. Ibid. M. Todorova, op. cit., p. 63. ‘Outre l'architecture du pays, représentée par la construction même, la décoration intérieure avec des tapis, des étoffes et des poteries roumaines très curieuses, le cabaret roumain à cette particularité qu'il reproduit fidèlement une partie de la vie nationale roumaine et que le public s'y croit vraiment transporté sur les bords du Danube, à trois mille kilomètres [sic] de Paris. Tout concourt à donner cette illusion: la musique des lautars d'abord, cette musique qui fait tourner bien des têtes […]; les jeunes filles roumaines, qui sont toutes authentiques.’: Les merveilles de l'exposition de 1889 (Paris, A la Librairie illustrée, 1890), p. 855. For the ‘Boone and Crockett Club’ (also named the hunter's cabin), see Christine Macy, Sarah Bonnemaison, Architecture and Nature—Creating the American Landscape (London, Routledge, 2003), pp. 35–39. See Carmen Popescu, ‘Le paradoxe de l'orientalisme balkanique entre géopolitique et quête identitaire’, in, Nabila Oulebsir, Mercédes Volait, eds, L'orientalisme architectural. Entre imaginaires et savoirs (Paris, CNRS/ Picard, 2009), pp. 253–272. ‘C'est grâce à la langue française que j'arrive à adoucir le lourd heritage d'un language aggressif’: L. Mitsitch, Barbarogénie le décivilisateur (Paris, Aux Arènes de Lutèce, 1938), p. 15. The author provided the orthography of his name in order to facilitate its pronunciation in French. ‘There are few countries in the less civilized portions of this globe which do not possess their “Paris” or some town so called on account of its resemblance to the French capital—which resemblance generally exists solely in the imagination of the inhabitants.’: Harry de Windt, Through Savage Europe (London, Collins’ Clear-type Press, 1907), p. 279. De Windt named both Belgrade and Bucharest as being a ‘little Paris’ of the Balkans, finding that there is ‘some reason to the simile’ by comparison with other peripheral cities, such as Saigon, Batavia and Irkutsk, which had their own pretentions to this title. Ibid., p. 287. ‘L'architecture est futile comme la vie d'ici […] de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts partout, car seuls les architectes diplômés de Paris travaillent ici’: Le Corbusier, Le Voyage d'Orient (Paris, Forces Vives, 1966), p. 50. ‘Il faut avouer cependant notre désillusion première: les Balkans sont verts et nous les avions rêvés rouge [sic]. Rouge comme de la brique sur laquelle darde le soleil; secs, arides sans végétation. Nous n'osions pas même espérer être attaqué par des brigands puisqu'on nous avait dit qu'il n'en était point.’: Le Corbusier, Voyage d'Orient, carnets (Milan, Electa/Fondation Le Corbusier, 2002), pp. 74, 75. See, for instance, different items listed in his notebooks, representing objects sent to La-Chaux-de-Fonds : ‘1 petit tapis carré macedoine [sic]’, ‘1 chale [sic] Budapest’, ‘pots Baja’, ‘pots Knajewatz’, icones [sic] Gabrovo’, ‘tapis brodé Bocchara’ [sic], etc.; Le Corbusier, Voyage d'Orient, carnets, op. cit., notebook I, pp. 52–55. La Fontaine, Le paysan de Danube, fable 7, book XI (Paris, Claude Barbin et Denys Thierry, 1679):Son menton nourrissait une barbe touffue,Toute sa personne velueReprésentait un Ours, mais un Ours mal léché.Sous un sourcil épais il avait l'oeil caché,Le regard de travers, nez tortu, grosse lèvre,Portait sayon de poil de chèvre,Et ceinture de joncs marins. D. Chakrabarty, op. cit., p. 8. Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Making: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle, University Of Washington Press, 2001). On a more limited scale within national policy and boundaries, see the case of Croatian architecture in, Ljljana Blagojević, Modernism in Serbia: The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture 1919–1941 (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2003). The Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (L'Institut de cooperation intellectuelle), organised under the authority of the Society of Nations in the 1920s, considered ‘folk arts’ as a privileged domain of action in art historiography. Its influence was crucial in shaping the discourse of art history in the interwar years. See Daniel Maksymiuc, ‘L'engagement au sein de l'Institut de cooperation intellectuelle’, in, Christiand Briend, Alice Thomine, eds, La vie des formes. Henri Focillon et les arts (Ghent, Snoeck, 2004), pp. 283–291. ‘Motivare’, in Fl. Stănculescu, Contribuţii la afirmarea arhitecturii româneşti (Bucharest, Editura Ştiinţifică şi tehnică, 1987), p. 48. Text quoted in Alberto Ferlanga, Pikionis 1887–1968 (Milan, Electa, 1999), p. 84. See, for Eldem's ‘matrix house’, Sibel Bozdoğan, Suha Özkan, Engin Yenal, Sedad Eldem: Architect in Turkey (Oxford, Butterworth Architecture, [1987] 1989), p. 45. See Heleni Fessas-Emanouil, ‘Reconciling modernity and tradition: The Balkan relevance of Aristotelis Zachos (1871–1939)—Architectural approach and work’, in. C. Popescu, ed., National and Regional in Architecture: Between History and Practice (Bucharest, Simetria, 2002), pp. 142–149. Ljubinka Stoilova, Petar Iokimov, ‘The search for identifiably national architecture in Bulgaria at the end of the Nineteenth Century and during the early Twentieth century’, in, C. Popescu, ed., National and Regional, op. cit., pp. 96–105. ‘Ce que recherche l'architecture d'aujourd'hui et ce que beaucoup d'esprits ne comprennent pas encore, est justement qu'elle tende à tenir compte du terrain, et qu’à la fois, elle dresse fièrement l’édifice abstrait, tel qu'il est ici réalisé’: Siegfried Giedion, ‘Pallas Athéné ou le visage de la Grèce’, Cahiers d'Art, nos 1–4 (1934), pp. 77–80; 78. D. Pikionis, quoted in A. Ferlanga, op. cit., p. 47. Ibid., p. 40. G. M. Cantacuzino, ‘Arhitectura şi peizajul’, Simetria, no. I (1939), pp. 26–31. ‘Expérience et pauvreté’, in, Walter Benjamin, Œuvres, II (Paris, Gallimard, 2000), pp. 364–372. L. Blagojević, op. cit., p. 8. ‘Mon peuple est crucifié au nom de la civilisation […] C'est pourquoi: à bas cette civilisation !’, L. Mitsitch, Après Saraïévo. Expédition punitive (Paris, Aux Arènes de Lutèce, 1933). ‘La civilisation est trop sauvage pour qu'elle soit humaine’ : this was the title of one of the chapters of Mitsitch's Barbarogénie le décivilisateur, op.cit. Ibid., p. 19: ‘On cherche un homme nouveau au génie barbare!’. Zeniton, embodying the solar energies, was described by Micić in his novel as the ‘Unknown’ or the ‘Last Serbian Hero’. See Felipe Hernandez and Lea Knudsen Allen, ‘Post-colonizing the primitive’, in, Jo Odgers, Flora Samuel, Adam Sharr, eds, Primitive: Original Matters in Architecture (New York, Routledge, 2006), pp. 73–85. ‘Le barbare est essentiellement particulariste’, affirmed a character in Micić's novel, ‘mais à ce compte, presque tous les peuples se ruent aujourd'hui à la barbarie’: Mitsitch, Barbarogénie le décivilisateur, op. cit., p. 25. See Rémi Labrusse, ‘Délires anthropologiques : Josef Strygowski face à Alois Riegl’, in, Thierry Dufrêne, Anne-Christine Taylor, eds, Canibalismes disciplinaires. Quand l'histoire de l'art et l'anthropologie se rencontrent (Paris, Musée du Quai de Branly/INHA, 2010), pp. 149–162. George Oprescu, Arta ţărănească la români (Bucharest, Cultura Naţională, 1923); Peasant Art in Roumania, special autumn issue of The Studio (1929); L'art du paysan roumain (Bucharest, Académie roumaine, 1937), etc. The Foreword for this last publication was written by Oprescu's friend, the French art historian Henri Focillon. ‘L’étude des cultures montre qu'il existe, à la frontière des classes, des zones de pénétrabilité, des espèces de banlieues où se rencontrent des éléments qui tendent à s'amalgamer et à former […] un fonds commun’: H. Focillon, ‘Introduction’, in Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle, Art Populaire (Paris, Editions Duchartre, 1931), pp. VII–XVI. See the comments on these mixed influences by Leo Schubert, La villa Jeanneret-Perret di Le Corbusier 1912—la prima opera autonoma (Vicenza, Marsilio, 2006). See also Klaus Spechtenhauser, ‘The maison blanche: Late rediscovery of a masterpiece? Remarks on the history of the reception of the Villa Jeanneret-Perret’ and Catherine Courtiau, ‘The history of transitional work’, both in, Klaus Specthenhauser, Arthur Rüegg, eds, Maison Blanche Charles-Edouard Jeanneret Le Corbusier. History and Restoration of the Villa Jeanneret-Perret 1912–2005 (Basel/ Boston/ Berlin, Birkhäuser, 2007), pp. 12–25; 26–51. See, for a detailed analysis, C. Popescu, ‘Modernity in context’, in, C. Popescu, ed., (Dis)continuities: Fragments of Romanian Modernity in the first half of the 20 th century (Bucharest, Simetria, 2010), pp. 11–100; 48–51. ‘Le béton armé et l'orientalisme dominé, et l'amour du neuf impliquant la très forte compréhension des ancêtres, voilà où retournent mes pensées’: letter to W. Ritter, undated [1912], quoted in L. Schubert, op. cit., p. 100. Quoted in A. Ferlanga, op. cit., p. 68. The term was coined by Giedion in 1954, in an essay with the same title, ‘New regionalism’, published in S. Giedion, Architecture, You and Me (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 138–151. Ibid., p. 141. S. Giedion, ‘Aesthetics and the human habitat (proposals of Commission II on aesthetics at CIAM 9, Aix-en-Provence, 1953)’, in Architecture, You and Me, op. cit., pp. 93–98. Kenneth Frampton, ‘Greek regionalism and the modern project: A collective endeavour’, introductory study to Liane Lefaivre, Alexander Tzonis, Atelier 66: The Architecture, of Dimitris and Suzana Antonakakis (New York, Rizzoli, 1985), pp. 4–8. W. B. Michaels, op. cit., p. 90. Simon Sadler, ‘Foreword’ to Adam Sharr, Heigdegger's Hut (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2006), pp. IX–XIV. B. Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1969), np. [second page]. Felicity Scott, ‘Bernard Rudofsky: Allegories of nomadism and dwelling’, in, Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Réjean Legault, eds, Anxious Modernism. Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2000), pp. 215–237. Ibid., p. 216. Kai Vöckler, ‘“Balkanology” and the future of the European city’, S AM, no. 6 (2008): special issue, ‘Balkanology. New architecture and urban phenomena in South eastern Europe’, pp. 8–11. D. Chakrabarty, op. cit., p. 3. J. L. Luzkow, The Revenge of history—Why the Past Endures (Lewiston, NY, Elvis Mellen Press, 2003).