Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
PROBLEM OF HISTORICISM
k
Using key texts by the German architect and theorist Gottfried
Semper, Mari Hvattum offers a reinterpretation of historicism, viewed
both as a philosophical outlook and as an architectural problem.
Hvattum focuses on Sempers two major concerns: his sensitive understanding of the ontological signicance of art and architecture, and his
ambitious rendering of art and architecture as the objects of scientic
investigation and prediction. Hvattum investigates the background and
implications of these conicting concerns. By examining the historicist
fusion of romanticism and positivism, the book seeks to understand
the nature as well as the limits of the modern dream of an architectural
method of inventing. More than an intellectual biography, Gottfried
Semper and the Problem of Historicism explores the continued inuence
of historicism on modern architectural discourse and practice.
Mari Hvattum is Senior Lecturer in architectural history and theory at the Oslo School of Achitecture, Norway. Co-editor of Tracing
Modernity, she has written widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century
architectural discourse and practice.
GOTTFRIED SEMPER
AND THE PROBLEM OF
HISTORICISM
k
M A R I H VAT T U M
Oslo School of Architecture, Norway
isbn-13
isbn-10
978-0-521-82163-6 hardback
0-521-82163-0 hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
CONTENTS
k
page xi
List of Figures
Prolegomenon
7
9
18
22
PA RT I : T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
vii
29
30
35
42
47
48
52
CONTENTS
57
64
64
72
75
PA RT I I : P R A C T I C A L A E S T H E T I C S
87
88
102
107
114
115
123
133
137
138
142
PA RT I I I : T H E A P O R I A S O F H I S T O R I C I S M
149
150
154
158
162
162
CONTENTS
168
170
175
176
180
Epilogue
189
Notes
193
249
Bibliography
253
Index
269
ix
FIGURES
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1 The Assyrian Central Saloon at the British
Museum, c. 1854.
page 2
3
4
8
12
17
32
36
40
41
44
45
50
55
57
FIGURES
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Botticher,
Die Tektonik der Hellenen, 1852.
Wreaths and rhythmic ornaments. Gottfried Semper,
Der Stil, 1878.
Knots and braids. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil, 1878.
Snake ornaments from Greece, Ireland, Egypt, and
Scandinavia. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil, 1878.
Techniques of weaving. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil, 1878.
Techniques of knitting and croche. Gottfried Semper,
Der Stil, 1878.
Assyrian stone panel decorated with carpet patterns.
Gottfried Semper, Der Stil, 1878.
Delphian sacricial dance. Gottfried Semper,
Der Stil, 1878.
Assyrian sacred tree. Gottfried Semper, Prolegomenon
to Der Stil, 1878.
Egyptian necklaces. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil, 1878.
Egyptian headdresses. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil, 1878.
Assyrian warrior with armrings. Gottfried Semper,
Der Stil, 1878.
Flowers and snow crystals. Gottfried Semper,
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, 1878.
Axial symmetry as found in natural form. Gottfried
Semper, Prolegomenon to Der Stil, 1878.
Gottfried Semper, sketch of a womans head from the
Parthenon Frieze.
Gottfried Semper, sketch of female gures from the
Parthenon, eastern pediment.
Radial symmetry in architecture. Gottfried Semper,
Der Stil, 1878.
Persian bullneck capital. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil, 1878.
xii
60
61
62
67
68
69
70
71
74
80
82
89
90
91
93
94
97
98
101
104
FIGURES
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
xiii
106
111
112
116
118
119
121
122
124
126
128
152
153
155
186
PROLEGOMENON
k
In October 1848, the British Museum received a remarkable shipment
from Constantinople. Austen Henry Layard adventurer, archaeologist, and diplomat had started his Middle Eastern excavations in
November 1845, in erce competition with the French archaeologist Paul Emile Botta. Less than two months later, he unearthed a
monument last mentioned in the Old Testament: King Ashurnasirpal
IIs palace in Calah.1 In the years that followed, until 1854 when the
Crimean War put an end to such nancial extravaganza, an extraordinary collection was assembled in London. With the magnicent
sculptures and bas-reliefs depicting hunts, battles, and sacrices, the
Assyrian treasures formed a pictorial chronicle of a forgotten civilisation
(Figure 1).2
The arrival in London of Layards Assyrian nd caused both celebration and unease. It strengthened the status of the British Museum as
a seat of ancient art, but it also threatened the classical principles upon
which both the institution itself and its recently inaugurated building were based. The event challenged the view of ancient Greece as
the autochthonous cradle of art, indicating that Greek classicism
widely regarded as a symbol of the dignity and superiority of Western
culture had its roots in the barbarian East.3 Layards collection
shook nineteenth-century art history to its foundations and had a profound effect upon the incredulous audience who witnessed its arrival in
Bloomsbury. Among the audience was a German architect temporarily
stranded in London: Gottfried Semper.
1
c Copyright
Figure 1. The Assyrian Central Saloon at the British Museum, c. 1854.
The British Museum.
PROLEGOMENON
Figure 2. Assyrian stool. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1, p. 353.
Edinburgh University Library.
Semper explained, crowning and completing the harmonious composition of the stool.5 These motifs, he told his readers, symbolise primordial ritual acts of binding, joining, and completing.6 Over time, they
had been gradually translated from their origins in textile art, metamorphosing into ceramics, metalwork, or masonry, and somewhere along
the way nding their tectonic expression in the stool.7
Sempers little excursus on Assyrian furniture indicates why Der
Stil, despite its tortuous prose, was considered one of the most important contributions to the theory of art and architecture in the
nineteenth century. Through a simple description of some chair legs,
Semper seemed simultaneously to outline the history of Middle Eastern
civilisation, to present a tale of the origin and development of art, and
to put forward a theory of symbolic form. By tracing structural and
decorative features back to their origins, he hoped to reveal the full signicance of the artwork and to grasp the correspondence that exists between artistic form and its history of becoming [Entstehungsgeschichte].
3
Figure 3. King Ashurnasirpal II on his throne with winged deities. Throne room,
c Copyright The British Museum.
North West Palace, Calah, 9th century BC.
PROLEGOMENON
van Eck for her valuable input and Roberto Torretti for good advice. More than anything, however, this work is indebted to friends
and colleagues in Britain and abroad, without whose friendship, help,
and sym-philosophising it would never have been realised. Anthony
Gerbino, Christopher Schulte, Diana Periton, Mary Bosworth, Ines
Geisler, Gabriella Switek, Gabriele Bryant, Renee Tobe, and many
others made crucial contributions to the long process of thinking and
writing, and the even longer one of rethinking and rewriting.
Many more thanks are due. The friendly reception I was given
INTRODUCTION
GOTTFRIED SEMPER
TEXTS
A N D I N T E R P R E TAT I O N S
his study concerns a dilemma that for a long time has both disturbed and conditioned modern discourse on architecture. It is a
dilemma played out in the tension between continuity and innovation:
the desire to maintain tradition while at the same time nd genuine
expressions for contemporary culture. A body of work displaying this
tension with particular incisiveness is that of the German architect and
theorist Gottfried Semper (180379) (Figure 4). Semper struggled his
whole life to formulate a fundamental principle of invention, that with
a logical certainty could lead to true form.1 Yet, at the same time, he
emphasised the need for historical continuity as an ontological basis
for society and a creative source for architecture. The conict between
upholding tradition and simultaneously wishing to invent it by will is
painfully present in his work, as it is in the history of modern architecture. It is this ne ambiguity of Sempers system2 that makes it so
relevant for our present-day situation.
The ambiguity of Sempers position is mirrored in the multifarious
ways his work has been interpreted. He has been labelled a materialist as well as an idealist, seen as a proto-functionalist who anticipated
the Sachlichkeit of the modern movement, or as an eclecticist, legitimising nineteenth-century stylistic licentiousness. Some have seen him as
a Marxist revolutionary: a heroic rebel whose aim it was to displace
the institutional location of architecture; whereas others have dismissed him as a petit bourgeois and a defender of liberal capitalism.3
As a recent study on Semper points out: No theorist in modern
7
Geschichte und Theorie der ArFigure 4. Gottfried Semper, circa 1874. Institut fur
INTRODUCTION
architectural history has had his doctrine judged more mundane, nor
more enigmatic.4
The purpose of this study is not to produce support for any
one of these labels, nor is it my primary intention to dispute them.
I aim rather at investigating some seemingly irreconcilable elements in
Sempers body of writings and identifying the common ground that
connects them. It is this ground composed of the sundry grain of
nineteenth-century historicism that is the topic for this book, which
is consequently less a book about Semper himself than about the very
conditions that made his project possible. Semper is nevertheless an
apt vehicle for this exploration. His ambiguous position between historicism and modernism, idealism and materialism, makes him an ideal
medium to bring the conicting sentiments of modern architectural
thinking to visibility. Sempers work anticipated with surprising precision the dichotomies that continue to haunt architectural discourse
throughout the twentieth century, our self-proclaimed postmodernity
included.
S E M P E R S W R I T I N G S
These otherwise unremarkable musings contain an important definition. Art and Semper included architecture in this category is
rst and foremost an ordering activity. Its subject matter is the human
condition. Art is the result of mans attempt to come to terms, in a
tangible and spatial manner, with his place in the world.
Further on in his Dresden lecture, Semper identied the rst
and simplest manifestations of the ordering activity of art. He labelled
them motifs [Motiven]: recognisable congurations in adornments and
artefacts that express basic aspects of human time and space.7 These
motifs are modied according to particular historical conditions, yet
they always remain the fundamental vocabulary of art. In this sense, art
copies neither nature nor history, but rather has its own store of forms
and its own logic for their application. Form-making is not subject to
the arbitrary whim of the artist, but rather is governed by laws analogous
to those of nature. A study of the history of art may reveal these laws and
may, in this way, lead the artist to a deeper understanding of his task.
The duty of the artist-historian the dual role that Semper assumed
in all his writings is to understand the transformation of the motifs
through history and to adhere to its underlying laws.
Despite its convoluted style, Sempers rst Dresden lecture presented in embryonic form the themes that would occupy him throughout his life as an architect, teacher, and writer. First, to seek the origins
of art in some primordial human condition; and, second, to reveal the
development of art as a metamorphosis of motifs: these were key points
in Sempers thinking on art. From these two points, moreover, sprang a
third. If Sempers reections on origins and evolution were concerned
with the essential nature of art, then the third point concerned the way
in which this nature may be comprehended. Put in a different way:
whereas Sempers musings on origins and development constituted an
ontology of art that is, a reection on its essential purpose then
the third point constituted an epistemology of art, an inquiry into its
knowability.8 Both levels of inquiry were pursued constantly and simultaneously throughout Sempers writings. His approach would vary
and his emphasis change, but the themes of origins, development, and
possible comprehension of art and architecture remained the framework within which his thinking continually moved.
10
INTRODUCTION
bemalte Architektur und Plastik bei den Alten (1834), on the strength of
which he earned his early professorship in Dresden.9 This essay was
based on material gathered during his travels to the classical south
from 18303.10 It was a contribution to the polychromy controversy
of the 1830s in which Semper took the side of his Parisian teachers
and colleagues, Hittorf and Gau, arguing that classical architecture
the Greek temple included had been covered by stucco and paint.11
The argument was signicant for several reasons. It implied a radical break with neoclassicism, for whom the white grandeur of classical architecture constituted an aesthetic principle.12 More important,
however, the study of polychromy carried with it a tacit hypothesis
about the historical development of art. Could it be, Semper speculated, that the painted surfaces of classical architecture are the metamorphosed remnants of more primordial motifs? Could the history of
art be understood as a process of Stoffwechsel [material metamorphosis],
in which the motifs of art are gradually translated from one material to another, while retaining their original signicance? Although
no conclusive answer was reached in this early essay, it constituted
the rst of many attempts at mapping the mysterious development
of art.
When the young Semper was summoned to Dresden, therefore, he had already established his course of inquiry. The Dresden
post in itself did not give much opportunity for theoretical reection.
Semper enjoyed instead one of his most productive periods as an architect, receiving commissions for such prestigious projects as the Dresden
Hoftheater, the Picture Galleries of the Zwinger Palace, a synagogue,
and several townhouses and villas (Figure 5). He engaged in an active social and political life in the circle around Richard Wagner, and
perfected his encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of art through
reading and lecturing.13 According to Semper, these lecture courses
furnished an extensive review . . . of the total eld of monumental
architecture,14 and were planned for publication under the title
11
Figure 5. Gottfried Sempers rst Dresden Hoftheater, north front. Christian Gott
lob Hammer, watercolor, c. 1845. Stiftung Preuische Schlosser
und Garten BerlinBrandenburg.
Vergleichende Baulehre. The project remains a voluminous but unnished manuscript in the Zurich archives.15
INTRODUCTION
history of art as stable forms with primordial meaning, yet are constantly modied according to different needs.
Around the hearth, the other elements of architecture were assembled: the earthwork mound, the woven enclosure, and the wooden roof.
The rst dwelling was formed. In Sempers history of architecture, the
dwelling was not the rst creation of primitive man. Rather, the hut
was composed of the four primary elements, each already developed
in their representational and utilitarian capacity as motifs of industrial
arts. The history of Architecture begins with the history of practical art, Semper wrote.22 The history of practical art, in turn, begins
with the motifs, simultaneously embodying function, technique, and
ritual action. The motifs remain constant through changes of material,
technique, and historical context: However remote . . . from [their]
point of origin, [the motifs] pervade the composition like a musical
theme.23
Sempers remark on the origins of architecture in the practical
arts stems from the rst in a series of lectures given at Marlborough
House in London between 1853 and 1854, fortunately recovered and
published in their original English by Mallgrave.24 Despite their idiosyncratic language and convoluted argument (memorably described
by Nikolaus Pevsner as profound rather than clear and just a little
cranky25 ), these lectures set out the key themes of Sempers thinking. Art, he insisted, must be considered in a genealogical manner, by
tracing its origin and evolution. This genealogy was to provide the
foundation for a true science of art, establishing a clear insight over
its whole province and perhaps also . . . form a doctrine of Style.26 This
new science, Semper enthused, was to facilitate the understanding of
art and provide a practical guide for the artist: a practical aesthetics, as he would later coin it.27 Far from a conventional art history,
Sempers practical aesthetics was meant as a genealogy of artistic making, an overview of all factors inuencing the development of art
through history.28
The London lectures highlight Sempers epistemological ambitions in a particularly clear manner. By means of his practical aesthetics,
he attempted to explain the phenomenon of art past and present
as a result of the interaction between social, material, and historical
14
INTRODUCTION
the Eidgenossische
Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich. The explicit ambition of Der Stil was to provide an overview of all functional,
material, and structural factors that relate to the problem of style in
architecture and to investigate the most powerful factors of style in
architecture: the social structure of society and the conditions of the
time.31 Again, Semper structured his investigation around the four
primary elements of architecture: the wall, the hearth, the mound, and
the roof. Each of these elements, he implied, corresponds to a particular technique of making, developed both in a ritual and a functional
sense in the practical arts. The hearth originated with the ring of clay,
and corresponds consequently to the technique of ceramics. The enclosure originated in the wickerwork wall and, therefore, is associated
with the technique of weaving. Stonework, or stereotomy, corresponds
to the element of the mound; and carpentry, or tectonics, to the roof.32
Thus, starting from four primordial techniques of making embodied
in the four elements of architecture, Der Stil was to present a comprehensive mapping of art and architecture through time and place. It
15
INTRODUCTION
Figure 6. Gottfried Semper and Karl von Hasenauer, rst project for the Imperial
anyone.37 However, with an emerging polarisation between materialistic and psychological explanations in art history and aesthetics towards
the end of the century, Sempers insistence on integration appeared
increasingly untenable.38 As time passed, the different aspect of his
teaching would more often be considered in isolation, with the curious
result that Semper who so contemptuously dismissed contemporary
colleagues as materialists or historicists now became himself the
object of these labels.
To some extent, Semper had prepared this destiny for himself.
Due to the incomplete form in which it was published, Der Stil did
indeed give the impression that the development of art was driven by
material and utilitarian conditions. Alois Riegl consequently dismissed
Sempers thinking as materialist metaphysics, for whom a work of
17
R E C E N T I N T E R P R E TAT I O N S
INTRODUCTION
20
INTRODUCTION
The artistic appropriation of the mask with all its suggestive possibilities is what drives Sempers architectural theory.
The notion of the mask underlies his speculation that monumental architecture had its origin in the commemorative,
provisional stage and theatrical performance, where the
masking or denial of reality is fundamental to the religious
or secular event.54
The signicance of art, thus, resides in its theatrical essence: its
power to establish a second reality. Through this primordial masking, man, in Mallgraves words, comes to terms with the existential
human condition of alienation.55 Interpreting Sempers theory of the
origin and development of art in terms of this sense for theatricality, Mallgrave identies the ctional potential of art as the key to
Sempers overall thinking.56 Mallgraves reading succeeds in refuting
allegations of Semper as a materialist, functionalist, or Marxist. Emphasising Sempers reections on the origin of art, he draws focus to the
anthropological foundation of Sempers thinking and to the notion of
art as poetic ction. In doing so, Mallgrave targets one of the most crucial, mysterious, and neglected points in Sempers oeuvre, and my own
work is much indebted to his interpretation. I hope, however, to show
that although this poetic ction indeed lies at the heart of Sempers
architectural thinking, its signicance extends beyond simply a masking or denial of reality. The term itself gives us a hint of this: poiesis
in Greek signies making a making, as Aristotle tells us, informed
by a particular kind of knowing.57 This notion of poetic making was
one close to Sempers heart, as his emphasis on technique as a primordial link between ritual action and architecture demonstrates.58 For
Semper, the ontological signicance of art and architecture was constituted by this link. One of my ambitions in this work is to develop the
notion of artistic making as poetic ction and to reevaluate its signicance in Sempers work.
Sempers concern for art was twofold: it was a concern for the
essential nature of art (in which his reections on the origins, techniques, and motifs of art had their place), and a concern for the way in
21
which art could become the legitimate object of science. Rykwert and
Mallgrave focus on the former, locating an ontology of art in Sempers
thinking. Quitzsch, on the other hand, emphasise Sempers scientic
aspirations, identifying their epistemological underpinnings. These
interpretations are undoubtedly in conict, potentially construing
Semper as an idealist or a positivist, respectively. Yet, both interpretations are also undoubtedly true, targeting real and critical aspects of
Sempers thought. More important than to determine which of the two
readings is correct, therefore, is to identify this conict in Sempers
own thought and to see how it conditioned his overall theory of architecture. The tragic aw in Sempers thinking, puzzling so many of his
readers, appears here as a schism between his recognition of the ontological signicance of art and his desire for its methodical explanation.
Although neither of these pursuits is exclusive to Semper, my interest
is in the ambition and rigor with which he attempted to carry out both
sides of this conicting enterprise.
APPROACH
This study interprets Sempers writings in the context of nineteenthcentury architectural, philosophical, and scientic discourse. It does not
discuss his buildings but focuses on the interpretation of his texts.59 It
is also not a study based primarily on archival research. Most of the
material I use is well known and available in publication. Rather than
aiming to provide new facts, I hope to develop new understandings,
believing that despite an overwhelming availability of sources, critical
issues in Sempers work as well as in the intellectual context that
nurtured it remain unaddressed and misunderstood. By relating the
individual (and often contradictory) aspects of Sempers thought to a
larger context, I attempt to throw new light both on Sempers own
project and on the context itself, exploring along the way the curious
intellectual climate of nineteenth-century historicism.
Sempers writings raise essential questions about the nature, the
history, and the methodology of art and architecture, some of which
we encountered previously. Yet, he rarely explicated his theoretical
22
INTRODUCTION
assertions. It should be remembered that Semper was not an architectural writer, but rather an architect who wrote, and that his associative
manner of writing, his idiosyncratic adaptations of theories, and his
sometimes underdeveloped arguments require a broad and synthetic
reading to make their signicance apparent. Attempting to develop
such a reading, I have applied the intellectual framework of contemporary hermeneutics, interpreting Sempers texts in light of the
nineteenth-century horizon or horizons of understanding.60 This
book is structured as a series of close readings in which critical issues in
Sempers writings are elucidated by means of related texts. The readings weave an interpretative web of references, each addressing a key
point in Sempers oeuvre. The selection of these texts does not aspire
to present a complete overview of Sempers theoretical sources. Many
central gures in Sempers life have been left out, and some of the ones
included were (most likely) unknown to Semper himself. What has
guided my selection is not so much direct links of inuence (although
in many cases such links certainly exist) as a desire to nd texts that may
help us understand Sempers own intentions and assertions.
This approach has its obvious limitations. Each of the texts chosen
would in itself deserve extensive study, and my selective reading will not
do full justice to their complexity. Neither will this reading always do
justice to Semper himself, insofar as it is more interested in capturing
an intellectual horizon than presenting a scrupulous biography. Yet,
the approach also has benets: it allows me to use Semper as a vehicle
to address overriding issues in modern architectural discourse and to
interpret this discourse as part of a larger cultural context rather than
an isolated aesthetic domain.
Let me give some examples of this approach. When mapping
Sempers position vis-`a-vis the neoclassical discourse on architecture,
for instance, I use M.-A. Laugiers and A.-C. Quatrem`ere de Quincys
writings on origin and imitation, contrasting them with romantic imitation theories like those of J. W. Goethe and A. W. Schlegel. Sempers
understanding of the notions of origin and imitation goes beyond both
neoclassical and romantic aesthetics, however, and his emphasis on the
ontological rather than the formal meaning of art suggests analogies
with the Aristotelian notion of poetry as a mimesis of praxis. Interpreting
23
INTRODUCTION
25
PA RT I
k
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S
OF ARCHITECTURE
1 : T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
k
Any discourse should rst go back to the simple origin of the subject
under review, trace its gradual development, and explain exceptions
and variations by comparing them with the original state.
Gottfried Semper 1
29
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
The eighteenth century can be characterised in part by the growing interest for rst causes and the near obsession with origins, pursued in every discipline.6 At a time when traditional values and beliefs
were increasingly questioned, and when religious and political hegemonies were under radical transformation, the quest for certainty, as
Stephen Toulmin has coined it, became acute.7 In the spirit of Ren
Descartes, one searched for the single unquestionably certain thing:
the secure foundations on which to base judgement and action.8 This
search was pursued by philosophers and scientists alike, concerned
with regaining the epistemological legitimacy of their disciplines in the
30
T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
with mans rst building: a primitive building type from which all
architecture originates. This monogenetic origin theory tted well the
scriptural account of the genesis of man, making Adams house in paradise as well as Solomons temple legitimate ideals for emulation.14
32
T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
more than 100 years before.21 The afnity is more than a matter of
rhetorical style; Laugier wanted to formulate an axiom for architecture
akin to that which Descartes had formulated for human knowledge at
large.22 The domain of architecture, obscured by the relativity of taste
and sensation, was now to be brought into the daylight of reason. In the
same way that Baumgarten had tried to rescue the legitimacy of art by
conning it within the framework of Cartesian epistemology, Laugier
attempted to t architecture into the mould of rationalist aesthetics.23
In this way, he envisioned to save architecture from eccentric opinions
by disclosing its xed and unchangeable laws.24
Laugiers attempt to nd for architecture a natural origin which
could serve as its scientic axiom exemplies a common theme of enlightenment thinking. The new bourgeois society of the eighteenth
century sought in nature a clear and distinct idea which could ground
an increasingly fragmented discourse.25 Architecture was a vehicle for
this project, as Boulles and Ledouxs return to natural geometric form
indicates.26 The German historian Wilfried Lipp remarks that when
Boulle and Ledoux took classicism back to its origins, what lay behind
was a general return to nature as a source of historical legitimacy.27 The
genetic retracing of origins to a ctitious point of identity between nature and architecture was a crucial step towards a complete re-creation
of cultural and social order.28 When Boulle sought those basic principles of architecture and what is their source, he was no longer after a
paradigmatic model, but rather a theoretical principle for architecture, as
clear and distinct as a Cartesian axiom.29 In this way, Boulle completed
the epistemological position initiated by Laugier. Although still applying the Vitruvian metaphor, Laugiers primitive hut is not a curious
illustration of a distant past or factor of an evolutionary theory of architecture, but the great principle from which it now becomes possible
to deduce immutable laws.30
Laugiers origin, then, is a highly abstract idea, dressed up in the
metaphorical guise of the primitive hut. Although seeming to operate
within a Vitruvian tradition, Laugier transformed the notion of architectural origins into a Cartesian axiom. By postulating a rational nature
as the origin of architecture, Laugier was able to introduce a novel
conception of architectural meaning. Opposed to Vitruviuss concern
34
T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
H I S T O R I C A L O R I G I N S : Q U AT R E M E` R E D E Q U I N C Y
A N D T H E C A R A C T E` R E R E L AT I F
How falls it, that the nations of the world, coming all of one father,
Noe, doe varie so much from one another, both in bodie and mind?
du Bartas 32
Semper fully shared Laugiers dream of nding a secure principle upon
which to base a science of architecture. Yet, he repeatedly criticised
the Abb for his naive proposal that the origin of architecture could be
found in one prototypical building.33 Sempers principle was no longer
the timeless and universal axiom of Laugier. Rather, the origin and
principle of architecture was to be found in the historical particularity
of its inception. Part of a generation which endeavoured to explain
cultural phenomena in historical and anthropological terms, Semper
sought the roots of architecture in empirical facts. The primitive hut
for him was neither Adams house in paradise nor the secular axiom of
enlightenment theory. It was an empirical phenomenon, revealing not
a timeless principle, but rather the particular historical conditions from
which it originated.
Sempers favourite example of such an empirical origin type was a
Caraib hut that he had encountered at the Great Exhibition of 1851
in London (Figure 8). The hut embodied in an exemplary way the four
elements of architecture, and demonstrated the interrelationship between architecture and the motifs of practical art. Moreover, it was not
35
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 8. The Caraib Hut. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 2, p. 263.
Edinburgh University Library.
T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 9. The cave. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 17612, Campus Martinus antiqua
Urbis, Rome 1762, detail. Glasgow University Library, Department of Special
Collections.
understood the particular capacity of architecture to reect the geography and climate of its setting, as well as the beliefs of the people who
created it.53 With this tripartite origin theory, Quatrem`ere radicalised
Laugiers dream of an autonomous and secular theory of architecture. The origin of architecture, from his point of view, is found in
40
T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
Figure 10. The Primitive Buildings. William Chambers, A Treatise of Civil Architecture, 1759. Glasgow University Library, Department of Special Collections.
41
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
neither transcendental order nor universal law, but rather in the natural but particular condition of every nation. As Lavin has observed:
From now on, any architecture whether good or poor could be
seen as revelatory of human civilisation and thus as a profoundly social
phenomenon.54
Quatrem`eres reformulation would have interesting and radical
implications for the architectural discourse of the nineteenth century.
Struggling to uphold the authority of classicism, Quatrem`eres line of
argument also made it possible to view historical styles (or characters) as relative phenomena, potentially available to choice. By turning
Laugiers origin principle into a conventional type, Quatrem`ere unwittingly paved the way for the radical historicism that he had spent
his whole career trying to hold at bay. This relativism would be ea
gerly grasped by the generation that revolted against him at the Ecole
de Beaux-Arts in the 1820s and 1830s, for whom architectural history
was, as Bergdoll writes, nothing more than a lesson . . . in architectures
specicity to time and place.55 Architecture now could be treated as
a conventional entity, based on lempire de la ncessit ou celui de
lhabitude.56 Semper, a student in Paris at the time, was profoundly
inuenced by this idea.57
R I T U A L O R I G I N S : G U S TAV K L E M M A N D T H E
A N T H R O P O L O G Y O F A RT
T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E C U LT O F O R I G I N S
Figure 12. Facial tattoos. Gustav Klemm, Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit
(184351), vols. 34, fol. II. Glasgow University Library, Department of Special
Collections.
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
assertion: that the origin of architecture is not a formal type, but rather
an existential need, a Kunsttrieb. Against Laugiers Cartesian dogmatism and Quatrem`eres historical relativism, Klemm saw architecture
as a vehicle for mans eternal need for representation.70 Although still
referring to the cave, the tent, and the hut, Klemm went beyond Quatrem`eres formal origin types. The origin of art and architecture, he
implied, lies in mans urge to bring the structure of his world to articulation and to sustain this world through embodied representation.
Echoing Schiller, Klemm identied the human play impulse as the origin of art: the urge to appropriate a world through playful imitation.71
Klemms novel ideas on the origins of art and architecture were
not meant as a polemic contribution to the art-historical debate of the
nineteenth century. His interest in art was informed by a strictly anthropological perspective, from which point of view art was simply a useful
index to the progress of civilisations. His ideas, however, would form
an important weapon for a generation of thinkers Semper included
eager to overthrow certain neoclassical dogmas. Before turning to this
revolution, however, we need to investigate a notion closely connected
with that of origins: the doctrine of imitation.
46
2: THE DOCTRINE OF
I M I TAT I O N
k
Truth lives on in the midst of deception, and from the copy the
original will once again be restored.
Friedrich Schiller 1
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Tectonics is an art that takes nature as a model not natures concrete phenomena but the uniformity and the rules
by which she exists and creates. . . . Tectonics is a truly cosmic art; the Greek word kosmos, which has no equivalent in
any living language, signies cosmic order and adornment
alike. To be in harmony with the law of nature makes the
adornment of an art object; where man adorns, all he does
more or less consciously is to make the law of nature evident
in the object he adorns.4
Voiced in the 1850s, this was hardly an original stance. In rejecting imitation as a principle for architecture, Semper was echoing a view
long prepared by the Sturm und Drang writers, a view which had constituted a central aspect of idealist and romantic philosophy. However,
Sempers attitude towards these schools was not one of wholehearted
support. Although his idea of cosmic art clearly drew on an idealist
vision of nature as a cosmic totality, he was sceptical towards the abstract approach of idealist thinkers, loathing their tendency to trac[e]
the beauty of the phenomenal world back to the idea and dissect . . . it
into conceptual kernels.5 Far from promoting a romantic aesthetics of
genius, Sempers idea of the legislative support of art and his promotion of cosmic lawfulness as a paradigm for art and architecture point
towards neoclassical ideas of la belle nature rather than towards an ideal
of subjective creation. Furthermore, Sempers use of the term tectonics
indicates a rejection of both neoclassical and idealist aesthetics in favour
of a new emphasis on the structural autonomy of architecture, undoubt
edly inspired by the theory of Karl Botticher.
Drawing on these three
partly overlapping, partly conicting notions of imitation, Semper
supported neither and reformulated all, developing in the process a
highly original idea of imitation in architecture.
I D E A L I M I TAT I O N : Q U AT R E M E` R E D E Q U I N C Y
A N D L A B E L L E N AT U R E
T H E D O C T R I N E O F I M I TAT I O N
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 13. La Belle Nature. Claude Lorrain, Mercury and Argus (1662), etching.
c 2002 Board of Trustees, National Gallery
Rosenwald Collection, Photograph
of Art, Washington.
herself. It was nature improved and fullled by art: nature as she might
and ought to be (Figure 13).13 Insofar as nature presented herself
only in her particularity, her general and lawful essence can be encountered only in the work of man.14 La belle nature, then, was a cultural construct. Moreover, it was a construct that had attained perfection only once in the history of human culture: in the art of ancient
Greece.
The idea that la belle nature was paradigmatically embodied in the
works of classical antiquity had long been commonplace in thinking
50
T H E D O C T R I N E O F I M I TAT I O N
on art. One can nd support for this idea in the works of Bellori,
Batteux, Winckelmann, Sulzer, and numerous others.15 As Pope pinpointed: Those rules of old discovered, not devised, are Nature still,
but Nature methodised.16 From the Renaissance to the eighteenth
century, antiquity attained the status of a second nature, a universally
valid paradigm for imitation and emulation. Rather than studying nature directly a dangerous pursuit leading down a tedious and bewildered road17 the artist should turn to the eternal works of antiquity. In fact, to imitate Greek architecture is nothing other than to
know and to imitate nature.18 Greek art, insofar as it manifests natures potential for unity, harmony, and wholeness, gives body to la belle
nature itself.
In his assertions on art and imitation, Quatrem`ere comes across
as an apologist for enlightenment universalism. Upon closer inspection, however, his argument displays the same mixture of universalism
and historicism that I discussed in relation to his theory of origins.
Attempting to reconcile the relativism of Montesquieu with the neoclassical idea of universal standards, Quatrem`ere developed the following hybrid argument: Greek art embodies a universal standard of
beauty: la belle nature. It does so, however, due to the particular historical
and geographical conditions of ancient Greece. Due to its favourable
climate and its free and beautiful people, Greek culture offered the
artist perfect conditions for observing the human body: It is beyond
doubt that nowhere, and at no time, has the imitation of the human body been attended by circumstances and causes so favourable
to its study, as those met among the Greeks.19 With this line of argument, Quatrem`ere reached an interesting solution to a notorious
problem.20 Although retaining the universal validity of classicism, this
validity could itself be explained as a product of relative historical causes.
In this way, Quatrem`ere managed to combine an increasing sensitivity to the individual conditions of a culture with a claim for universal standards for culture and art alike. It was a fragile but ingenious
argument that served as a bridge between a universalising neoclassicism and the new emphasis on the historical and individual specicity
of art.
51
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
O R G A N I C I M I TAT I O N : G O E T H E , S C H L E G E L ,
A N D S C H A F F E N D E N AT U R
T H E D O C T R I N E O F I M I TAT I O N
Despite his sharp-witted polemic against the idea of art as an imitation of nature, Schlegel did not abandon imitation theory altogether.
Rather, he proposed a redenition: If nature is understood as an inner power rather than an external reality, and if imitation is seen as
a creative principle rather than mindless copying, then imitation may
still be considered the means and end of art.26 Quatrem`ere would not
have disagreed. In fact, Schlegels argument was remarkably close to
Quatrem`eres own, asserting that the model for imitation was to be
found not in natures appearances but rather in her inner principles,
and that mere copying contributes little to arts pursuit of the ideal and
essential. It was in the attempt to locate this ideal essence that their views
diverged. Whereas Quatrem`ere encouraged the artist to nd his model
in external, if idealised, nature, Schlegel advised him to search in his
own inner self. Man is a microcosm in which the world is contained,
Schlegel argued, and by seeking inwards the artist might capture the
whole. Art is the expression of an inner power: a microcosmic principle
of creativity which is situated in the individual but which mirrors the
cosmos.27
Lurking beneath Schlegels views on imitation was the ancient
notion of natura naturans [creative nature] and its counterpart, natura
naturata [created nature]. This binary opposition had been articulated
already by Thomas Aquinas when he demanded that art should imitate
nature in sua operatione.28 In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance,
art had been seen as mans means to comprehend the divine order.
Although creation is a divine power not granted man, he can participate
in the divine by imitating Gods creation.29 When Schlegel revitalised
natura naturans, however, far from returning to a premodern notion of
divine creation and its human imitation, he transformed both the notion
of nature and of imitation in a radical manner. For Schlegel, schaffende
Natur was no longer a transcendent power ultimately situated in God,
but rather an immanent force ultimately situated in man. Art, then,
equals both nature and the Creator in creativity:
. . . [art] should create as independently as nature, organised
and organising, produce living works that are complete in
themselves and moved, not by an alien mechanism like a
53
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E D O C T R I N E O F I M I TAT I O N
Figure 14. Strasbourg Cathedral, west front, begun 1277. Taken from P. Frankl,
Gothic Architecture, Penguin 1962.
organic whole: This . . . is the only true art. It becomes active through
inner, unied, particular and independent feeling, unadorned by, indeed unaware of, all foreign elements, . . . it is a living whole.37 The
principal task of Goethes mature writings was to develop this organic
55
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E D O C T R I N E O F I M I TAT I O N
Figure 15. Italian sketches. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Baukunst, 1795. Stiftung
Weimarer Klassik.
TTICHER
T E C T O N I C I M I TAT I O N : K A R L B O
AND THE AUTONOMY OF FORM
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Bottichers
point of departure was the correspondence between
external form and inner idea that he believed to be apparent in all natural phenomena. Nature, he insisted, expresses the inner essence of her
creations through form. A natural phenomenon is always a fully identical portrait of itself: a perfect expression of its underlying concept.49
Botticher
argued that the correspondence between form and concept
that characterised natural beings from their embryonic beginning to
their mature state should be present also in works of art.50 The ambition
of his tectonic theory, then, was to substantiate this argument and to
58
T H E D O C T R I N E O F I M I TAT I O N
form, Botticher
introduced the terms Kernform [core form] and
Kunstform [art form].51 He dened Kernform as the mechanical necessity, the statically effective schema of architecture, a structural core
with a purely static function.52 In this sense, Kernform is an abstract concept, a kind of Schopenhauerian lauter Wirken.53 Although the Kernform would be perfectly capable of performing its structural task alone,
being a pure concept, it lacks a visual expression of its own.54 It lacks, in
other words, a means by which to give visible form to its inner working.
This is the task of the Kunstform: an explanatory layer of ornaments55
which expresses the mute working of the core.56 Whereas the Kernform
simply acts to carry and uphold, the Kunstform as a symbolic dressing
represents the tectonic conict played out in the construction, making
visible the concepts of gravity and cohesion (Figure 16).57
For Botticher,
the reciprocal relationship between Kernform and
Kunstform constituted a dynamic interplay between the structure and
ornament of architecture. The classical orders provided him with a
valuable example of this. He described in great detail how the articulation of the base dramatises the force of gravity and compression in the
column, and how the concave and convex movement of the Echinus
articulates the weight of the entablature resting upon it (Figures 17 and
18).58 Architectural ornament, here, is understood as an expression of
the inner, static working of the tectonic body: nothing else than the
embodied image of its concept.59
Bottichers
demand for a correspondence between Kunstform and
Kernform presented architecture with an ideal that seemed to allow for
no historical development. With a closer reading of the Tektonik, however, it becomes clear that this correspondence is itself a historically
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
T H E D O C T R I N E O F I M I TAT I O N
pompously
principle.65 Only by respecting this principle, Botticher
61
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 18. Studies of the bending of leafs under burden. Karl Botticher,
Die
Tektonik der Hellenen, 1852, vol. 2. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
proclaimed, could yet another art . . . emerge from the womb of time
and . . . take on a life of its own.66
With Botticher,
architectural representation became a matter of correspondence between a structural concept and an allegorical dressing,
a hermetic relationship with no references to a reality outside the work
itself. In neoclassical aesthetics, the doctrine of imitation still served
as a link between art and reality, upholding if in a secularised and
intramundane way the ancient notion of art as representation. With
T H E D O C T R I N E O F I M I TAT I O N
63
he previous chapters outlined the way in which notions of origin and imitation conditioned architectural discourse in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Semper was profoundly inuenced by this discourse. He shared many of the prevailing neoclassical attitudes and framed his theoretical pursuits in terms of origins and
imitation. He also had a thorough knowledge of idealist and romantic
philosophy, and its inuence on his work is convincingly documented.1
Yet, Semper subjected the notions of origins and imitation to a radical
reformulation until they no longer had the same meaning as for his
neoclassical or romantic predecessors.
T H E P R I M I T I V E H U T R E B U I LT
We have already encountered Sempers scornful attitude to enlightenment theories of the origin of architecture. In his opinion, the obsession
with the primitive hut had produced merely fruitless speculations,
which have not seldom led to dangerous errors and false theories.2
Semper dismissed the wooden hut as the formal origin of the Greek
temple, and rejected Quatrem`eres fairy tale of the cave and the tent.3
Although recognising its importance, he refused to frame the question
of origins as a search for the original abode of man, concluding categorically that it is impossible to trace architecture, as the expression and
accommodation of social organisms, back to its earliest beginning.4
64
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
show up in mythology as the overcoming of chaos by means of order. By representing such lawfulness in his own activities, man establishes a domain of order in the midst of a mysterious and threatening
nature.10 When man adorns, Semper wrote, all he does, more or
less consciously is to make the laws of nature evident in the object he
adorns.11 In a word, art is born out of mans need to make sense of the
world:
He makes himself a tiny world in which the cosmic law is
evident within strict limits, yet complete in itself and perfect in this respect; in such play man satises his cosmogonic
instinct. His fantasy creates these images, but displaying, expanding, and adapting to his mood the individual scenes of
nature before him, so orderly arranged that he thinks he can
discern in the single event the harmony of the whole.12
We encountered this ordering activity of art in Sempers Dresden
speech, and again in the writings of Gustav Klemm. Now we can appreciate more fully what is meant by this activity itself and its embodiment
in the motifs of art. Like Klemm, Semper located the ordering activity
of art rst and foremost in the ritual; for instance, the reication of time
and movement into rhythm, dance, and musical expression. Through
ritual, Semper told his readers, man captures the creative law of nature
as it gleams through reality in the rhythmical sequence of space and
time movements.13 The ritual, in turn, nds its tangible embodiment
in the motifs of practical arts, is found once more in the wreath, the
bead necklace, the scroll, the circular dance and the rhythmic tone that
attends it, the beat of an oar . . . These are the beginnings out of which
music and architecture grew.14 (See Figure 19.) From its ephemeral
beginning in ritual movement, the ordering activity of art is embodied
in the artistic motifs, which in turn are fused in works of architecture. This afnity between natural and cultural order, Semper argued,
is perfectly expressed in the Greek notion of cosmos, signifying order
and adornment alike.15 The process of making and adorning is here
understood as a rhythmical reenactment of the cosmos: the ordering of
a world through its microcosmic representation. Klemm had already
66
Figure 19. Wreaths and rhythmic ornaments. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed.
1878), vol. 1, pp. 1316. Edinburgh University Library.
hinted at this connection, but what for him remained an isolated and
puzzling observation, constituted for Semper a key to the origins and
the meaning of architecture.
When seeking the simplest translation of ritual into tangible form,
Semper turned to textile art. This was the Urkunst, he explained, a primordial embodiment of the ritual act of joining parts into a whole.16
The knot was a privileged example of this: perhaps the oldest technical symbol and . . . an expression of the earliest cosmogonic ideas,
symbolising the primordial chain of being.17 (See Figure 20.) Being
simultaneously a functional technique and a symbolic means of representation, the knot was a mediating gure between the ritual act,
the technique of making, and the actual work of art or craft. In time,
the motif of the knot was developed further in the more complex techniques of the braid, the wreath, the seam, and the weave; all constituting
primordial symbols of ordering.18 As Semper wrote about the seam:
The seam [Naht] is an expedient [Nohtbehelf ] invented
to unite . . . pieces and surfaces, and which . . . through an
67
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 20. Knots and braids. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1,
pp. 16972. Edinburgh University Library.
ancient conceptual and linguistic fusion became the general analogy and symbol for every joining of originally
separate surfaces to one complete whole. In the seam, an
important . . . axiom of artistic practice appears in its most
primary, simplest and . . . clearest form the law, namely, to
make a virtue out of necessity.19
68
Figure 21. Snake ornaments from Greece, Ireland, Egypt, and Scandinavia. Gottfried
Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1, pp. 778. Edinburgh University Library.
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 22. Techniques of weaving. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1,
p. 177. Edinburgh University Library.
Figure 23. Techniques of knitting and croch. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed.
1878), vol. 1, pp. 1756. Edinburgh University Library.
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
I M I TAT I O N R E D E F I N E D
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 24. Examples of Bekleidung: Assyrian stone panel decorated with carpet patterns. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1, p. 51. Edinburgh University
Library.
link between the motifs of art and its origin in ritual action. This recognition unwittingly drew him close to the Aristotelian understanding of
art as mimesis of praxis. In the following section, I will explore this understanding, using it as a way to probe deeper into Sempers reections
on the origins of architecture.
Mimesis
Aristotle took his examples of mimesis from musical performance. This
might seem peculiar to modern readers because in the current understanding of the term, music is the one art (together with architecture, as
Semper argued) that does not imitate anything. To understand what
is meant by mimesis, therefore, we need to reappraise our easy equation of mimesis and imitation. Hermann Kollers study Die Mimesis der
75
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Praxis
If we have now established mimesis as the principle of participation
that structures both the human world and its cosmic setting, it is still
not quite clear what is being imitated. Platos Laws provides a partial
answer. Taking the question of mimesis back to the domain of music,
Plato wrote that rhythms and music . . . are a reproduction expressing
the moods of better and worse men.52 What is being imitated in musical and poetic performance, in other words, is human character in
its ethical and situational context.53 Aristotle took over this idea from
Plato, maintaining that Tragedy is the imitation of an action and that
the poet is a poet by virtue of his imitation.54 Far from being an
imitation of appearances, thus, mimesis is the representation of action:
a mimesis tes praxeos. All mimetic activity has this praxis as its object,
and varies only insofar as human action itself varies, within the eld of
ethical possibilities.55
Aristotles careful denition of praxis as the object of mimesis reveals something important about the term itself. Mimesis of praxis is
not a representation of just any action, but rather action as it is situated
within an ethical eld.56 When Homer wrote the Odyssey, for example,
he did not describe everything that ever happened to Odysseus, but
rather chose only what was necessary or probable and what formed a
77
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Mythos
If praxis denotes a eld of possibilities governed by necessity and probability, it remains to be asked how such a eld can be informing or
informed by art. To answer this question, we must turn to the third
key term in Aristotles Poetics: the notion of the plot, or mythos. The
imitation of the action is the plot,59 Aristotle wrote. Thus, what
happens that is, the plot is the end for which the tragedy exists.60
In Paul Ricoeurs analysis of the Aristotelian mythos, he starts by dening mimesis not as the redoubling of presence . . ., but rather the break
that opens the space for ction.61 Ricoeur argues that this opening
is the primary role of the poetic work. It involves a threefold process,
referred to by Ricoeur as mimesis 1, 2, and 3.62 I will not adopt this terminology, but will rather translate Ricoeurs threefold mimesis into two
simple questions: How does the mythos come about, and what purpose
does it serve?
The rst step in the mimetic process concerns the way in which
praxis can become the object of art; how, in other words, it is congured
into a plot. Aristotle insisted that in order to make a plot, one needs to
know not only a multitude of human actions, but also what gives them
unity.63 Ricoeur writes: The composition of a plot is grounded in a
pre-understanding of the world of action, its meaningful structures, its
symbolic recourses, and its temporal character . . . If it is true that plot
is an imitation of action, some preliminary competence is required:
the capacity for identifying action in general by means of its structural
78
Poiesis
Semper, in one of his late essays, asked the following fundamental question: In a most general way, what is the material and subject matter of
all artistic endeavour? He answered the question himself: I believe
it is man in all his relations and connections to the world.73 Sempers
emphasis on these relations and connections brought him close to the
Aristotelian notion of praxis. Rejecting a notion of art as a matter of
79
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 25. Delphian sacricial dance. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878),
vol. 1, p. 24. Edinburgh University Library.
been thrown by our birth and within which we try to orient ourselves
by projecting our innermost possibilities upon it, in order that we dwell
there, in the strongest sense of the word.76
Semper was, as we have seen, interested not so much in art and
architecture as a formal product as he was in the process of making art.
This was not a technical concern in the modern sense, although Der
Stil undeniably ended up as something like a catalogue of techniques.
I believe Sempers notion of making has more in common with what
Aristotle would call poiesis: a particular mode of making informed by a
particular kind of knowledge. This poetic knowledge was precisely what
Aristotle required of the poet: the capacity to recognise and represent
the concealed unity of human action. Architecture, in Sempers view,
involves precisely such a thoughtful making: a making informed by
81
T O WA R D S A P O E T I C S O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
Figure 26. Assyrian sacred tree. Gottfried Semper, Prolegomenon to Der Stil (2nd ed.
1878), vol. 1, p. 73. Edinburgh University Library.
83
PA RT I I
k
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
empers sensitive recognition of the social and symbolic signicance of architecture made the shortcomings of contemporary
architectural discourse and practice all the more obvious to him.
Notwithstanding our many technical advances, we remain far behind
them (our ancestors) in formal beauty, and even in the feeling for the
suitable and the appropriate, he wrote, a complaint frequently repeated throughout his work.1 Yet, the state of decay in the arts was not
merely the fault of the artists. Semper saw the Babel-like confusion
confronting him at the Great Exhibition of 1851 as nothing more than
the clear manifestation of certain anomalies within existing social conditions, whose causes and effects up to now could not be seen by the
world so generally and so distinctly.2 Semper conceived the question
of style not simply as an aesthetic problem, but also as a political, ethical, and philosophical issue with critical implications for contemporary
society.
The second step of Sempers theoretical project was intended to
address this critical state of affairs. He alleged that to counter the contemporary crisis, it was necessary to systematise architectural design
into a logical method of inventing.3 Opposed to the characterless
schematism and thoughtless caprice4 of the architecture of his day,
Sempers method was to teach how to make artistic use of our social
needs as factors in the style of our architecture in the same way as has
been done in the past.5 This procedure would contribute towards
87
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
T H E T H E O RY O F F O R M A L B E A U T Y
Little discussed in contemporary scholarship, Sempers theory of formal beauty [Theorie des Formell-Schonen10 ] has often been regarded as
irrelevant and incomprehensible a curious mixture of Naturphilosophie
and abstract aestheticism, with a rather dubious connection to Sempers
overall project. This judgement is undoubtedly caused by the obscurity
of the theory itself. Deeply ambiguous and at times desperately tedious,
Semper never managed to integrate it successfully into his main body of
work. Nor, for that matter, did he complete it as a coherent argument.
Although the theory of formal beauty enjoys a prominent presence
in Sempers writings, its various presentations are full of discrepancies, presenting considerable difculties for the reader. Yet, it may be
that these discrepancies and the intellectual struggle that gave rise to
them should make us pay more attention rather than less, and that a
88
Figure 27. The adornment of the human body: Egyptian necklaces. Gottfried
Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1, p. 14. Edinburgh University Library.
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Figure 28. The adornment of the human body: Egyptian headdresses. Gottfried
Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1, p. 198. Edinburgh University Library.
adorning only a small part of the body (i.e., the earlobe), the Behang
establishes a local symmetry which contrasts with the body as a whole.
In this way, it makes manifest the relationship between part and totality. As Semper lyrically described it: Thus the ear-ring, by making
manifest the vertical pull of gravity, accentuates the soft, . . . gravitydefying curve of the neck.16 Originating in the universal human
desire to imitate the wholeness of the cosmos, the Behang establishes the body as a dignied totality by means of a contrasting
symmetry. The other categories of adornment work in similar ways
but with different means. Whereas the ring emphasises the bodys
proportionality (e.g., the arm-rings of the Assyrian warriors), the
Richtungsschmuck emphasises direction and movement, as the seemingly
weightless ight of garlands contrasts and heightens the bodys line of
gravity (Figure 29).17
The three categories of adornment embody three particular motifs of art and represent, as such, three distinct kinds of order. So far,
we are within the framework of Sempers origin theory; however, in
the attempt to establish a scientic basis for his practical aesthetics,
Semper went one step further. He extracted from the motifs certain
90
Figure 29. The adornment of the human body: Assyrian warrior with armrings.
Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1, p. 22. Edinburgh University Library.
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Figure 30. The eurythmic principle of conguration as found in owers and snow
crystals. Gottfried Semper, Prolegomenon to Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1, pp. xxvvi.
Edinburgh University Library.
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Figure 31. Axial symmetry as found in natural form. Gottfried Semper, Prolegomenon to Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1, p. xxxi. Edinburgh University Library.
enclosure erected around the hearth are both manifestations of microcosmic eurythmy, expressing the absolute concept of encirclement
symbolically, and therefore allud[ing] to the encircled as the proper
object, and the centre of the eurythmic order.27
One by one, and in obsessive detail, Semper examined the Gestaltungsmomente and their manifestations in nature as well as art. Axial
symmetry, found in higher organisms like plants and animals, is a manifestation of the relationship between part and whole, Semper explained
(Figure 31).28 It is a macrocosmic principle of conguration which always refers to a larger whole.29 The same is the case for the principle of
proportion, whose domain is the orderly relationship between parts.30
Sempers use of the terms microcosm and macrocosm echoed a long
intellectual tradition. The idea of the human body as a mikros kosmos a
little world which participates in and makes manifest a larger whole
is ancient, running through Greek philosophy as well as Christian
theology as a fundamental paradigm of order.31 In this tradition, the
94
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Figure 32. The human head as a manifestation of the equilibrium of forces. Gottfried
Geschichte
Semper, sketch of a womans head from the Parthenon Frieze. Institut fur
97
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Figure 33. The human body as a manifestation of the equilibrium of forces. Gottfried
Semper, sketch of female gures from the Parthenon, eastern pediment. Institut fur
98
99
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PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
into the domain of ethics. This is the highest level of formal beauty in
which pure Gestalt takes on the role of a moral symbol.
Semper is here at his most impenetrable, leaving the reader to
extrapolate his half-developed notions and contradictory distinctions.
Still, some conclusions can be drawn. Semper presented purposiveness as a result of the interaction of the Gestaltungsmomente. Purpose,
in other words, is no longer understood as that for the sake of, but
rather as an immanent property of form. This immanentisation of purpose is perhaps the most critical implication of Sempers theory of formal beauty. It prepares a notion of art as an autonomous microcosm:
an aesthetic totality with its own organic principles of conguration,
separated from human reality in everything but as a formal symbol.
This line of argument is close to modern aesthetics as it had culminated in Kant, and I will return to its signicance in later chapters. A
more immediate question must be addressed rst, however namely,
of how it was possible for Semper to reconcile his theory of formal
beauty with his anthropological notion of architectural origins. How
could the motif understood as mimesis of praxis suddenly be equated
with a system of forces and seen as a product of formal laws? Although
Semper never answered this question satisfactorily, he did make some
interesting attempts, the most coherent of which is found in his theory
of symbolic form.
T H E T H E O RY O F S Y M B O L I C F O R M A N D T H E
A E S T H E T I C E V O L U T I O N O F A RT
Semper made several attempts at classifying and systematising the notion of symbol. In his London lectures, for instance, he drew a threefold distinction between natural, technical, and mystical symbols.63
Natural symbols, he explained, are derived from analogies in nature
and [are] self-understanding [sic] for every one who has some feeling for nature and the dynamical signicance of natural forms.64 The
motifs of art e.g., the wreath, the knot, the bead are all examples of such natural symbols: primordial manifestations of the human Nachahmungstrieb.65 Technical symbols are closely related to their
102
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Figure 35. Persian bullneck capital. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878), vol. 1,
p. 358. Edinburgh University Library.
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Figure 36. The Greek cyma as structural symbol. Gottfried Semper, sketch from Karl
equilibrium of forces, governed by the laws of formal beauty and composed by means of symmetry, proportion, and direction. As a spiritualisation [Vergeistigung] of traditional motifs of art, Greek architecture
displays a purposiveness without purpose, and presents as such a universal expression of formal beauty.85
By construing architectural history as a gradual spiritualisation
of the motifs of art, Semper established an important vehicle for his
practical aesthetics. Although originating in the mimesis of praxis, art at
its highest stage metamorphoses into a purely formal beauty, in which
its reference to praxis has been fully spiritualised. This spiritualisation
or sublimation takes place through a historical evolution whereby the
origin of art in praxis is gradually reied as pure form. Such a formalisation was a necessary presupposition for the practical aesthetics. Only
if it is possible to extract positive laws of conguration from the motifs
of art could a method of invention be formulated. Far from an isolated
oddity in Sempers texts, therefore, the theory of formal beauty with
its accompanying notion of symbolic representation forms an integral
part of the practical aesthetics.
THE FORMULA FOR STYLE
If the theory of formal beauty dened the formal laws governing the
artistic motifs, it was clearly not enough to explain the complex phenomenon of art. To do so, it would be necessary to grasp not only
the formal conguration of the motif, but also the way this conguration was modied according to particular circumstances. The theory
of formal beauty, thus, was merely the rst step towards a practical aesthetics. Recognising that the work of art was not merely Gestalt, but
also a cultural product, Semper admitted that his practical aesthetics
was incomplete without a theory of style that could
comprehend in detail the law-like character [Gesetzlichkeit]
that becomes apparent in art during the process of becoming,
to deduce generally valid principles from what one has found,
and in accordance with them to establish the basic features
of an empirical theory of building.86
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PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
conditions. Semper had produced a kind of ultimate test for rating the
truth content of architecture, and was indeed approaching the fundamental principle for invention that he had sought for so long.99
Semper never attempted to implement the formula directly. He
saw it as a crutch, an idealised expression for the complex reality of
art.100 Even on an analogical level, however, the formula reveals an ambitious dream: that of capturing the history of art as a system in which
all components are fully accessible to the historian. This dream presupposes a transparency of history and culture, implying that if one
only understands society well enough, one can calculate its artistic
expression and vice versa: from a given style one can deduce the
cultural conditions that produced it. Art, then, becomes a document of
cultural history, an account, as Semper wrote, of the state of civilisation and of the character of bygone generations, like the fossil shells
and the coral trees give us an account of the low organisations, which
once inhabited them.101
An extraordinary example of this idea of correspondence between
artistic expression and cultural conditions is found in Sempers wellknown comparison between the Egyptian situla and the Greek hydria
(Figure 37). Both are ceramic vessels made to collect and carry water;
yet, they utilise the formal and purposive repertoire of art in very different ways. Shaped to fetch water from the shallow banks of the Nile,
the situla is vertical and smooth with a simple form. It has a low balancing point and a slender, hinged handle, making it suitable to carry on a
yoke a feature conrmed in its lack of a foot or base. The signicance
of these features transcends a purely functional level, however. The
rounded, drooping vessel of the situla is typical of the monolithic and
unidirectional Gestaltungsmoment that in Sempers view characterises
Egyptian art. In the hanging vessel, the three axes governing Gestalt
were not yet fully and freely expressed, but rather compressed into
a simple manifestation of gravity. This corresponds, Semper implied,
to the hierarchical structure of Egyptian society, with its principle of
subordination and religious dogmatism.
The Greek hydria, on the other hand, with its upward-striving
posture and articulated foot and mouth, represents the three directional forces in their full articulation. The hydria was shaped to fetch
110
Figure 37. Greek hydria and Egyptian situla. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed.
1878), vol. 2, p. 4. Edinburgh University Library.
water from springs rather than riverbeds; hence, its generously receiving mouth (Figure 38). It was meant to be carried on the head rather
than on a yoke; hence, its stable proportions and its wide foot. Yet, the
hydria does more than simply full its function. The Gestalt of the vessel
takes on the role as a national emblem, signifying the moral perfection
of Greek art and society alike.102 Semper enthusiastically espoused the
value of the hydria at the expense of its Egyptian counterpart:
In what meaningful way did this insignicant artwork express symbolically the oating spirit and clear essence
of the spring-loving Greeks; compared to the situla, in
which . . . gravity and equilibrium created a quite opposite
expression, yet no less representative of the spirit of the
Egyptian people . . . The essence of all Egyptian architecture
seems to be contained within this product of the Nile, like in
an embryo, a relationship equally apparent between the form
of the hydria and certain types of Doric architecture!103
111
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Figure 38. Greek women carrying hydrias. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil (2nd ed. 1878)
vol. 2, p. 5. Edinburgh University Library.
113
5 : T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
k
In raschem Siegeslauf hat die vergleichende Methode ein Gebiet des
Erkennens nach dem anderen ihrer Herrschaft unterworfen und mit
wie herrlichem Erfolg.
E. Zitelmann 1
T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
C O M PA R AT I V E A R C H I T E C T U R E
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Figure 39. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Entwurf einer historischen Architektur, Vienna 1721, book III, fol. XV. By permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
Figure 40. The historical development of temples. Julien-David Leroy, Les Ruines des
plus beaux monuments de la Gr`ece (2nd ed. 1770), fol. 1. By permission of the Syndics of
Cambridge University Library.
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T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
combinatoria governed by the demands of the type and the law of utility
and economy.31 As he wrote:
[Architecture is] the composition of the whole of buildings
which is nothing other than the result of the assemblage
of their parts. It is necessary to know the former before
occupying oneself with the latter; as these parts are solely
a compound of the basic elements of buildings, and as all
particular principles must be derived after the study of general principles, it will be these basic elements that constitute
the prime object of the architects study.32
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PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Semper found Durands practical ambitions compelling, and readily agreed that architecture could be classied according to its simplest
elements.33 He might even have agreed with Durands denition of
architecture as an assemblage of . . . parts had it not been for their
very different notions of the nature and interaction of these parts. For
Durand, they were simply formal elements, stripped to a pure geometrical form and combined to full a functional task. For Semper, on the other hand, they were the motifs of art: a primordial
merging of functional needs and symbolic representation. Moreover,
in Sempers view, these parts were not simply assembled; rather,
they were products of a complex interaction between historical and
122
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C O M PA R AT I V E A N AT O M Y
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c Biblioth`eque centrale
Figure 44. Galrie danatomie compare, Paris c. 1830.
M.N.H.N. Paris.
A contemporary of Durand in Paris, Cuvier has often been dismissed as a last xist, uneasily situated between the class-based taxonomies of Linnaeus and Buffon and Darwins evolutionism.39 Far from
being a reactionary leftover, however, Cuvier was situated at the very
centre of biological research of his day, establishing the anatomical collection in the Jardin de Plantes (Figure 44) alongside such scholars as
T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
126
T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
128
T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
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T H E C O M PA R AT I V E M E T H O D
C O M PA R AT I V E L I N G U I S T I C S
Kants notion of organic systems formed a paradigm not only for the
new science of biology, but also for other disciplines striving for scientic legitimacy. A prominent example can be found in the study of
language. As Friedrich Schlegel enthused: . . . comparative grammar
furnishes as certain a key to the genealogy of language as the study
of comparative anatomy has done to the loftier branch of natural
science.78 Comparative linguistics was dened by one of its founders as
the examination of the language-organism and . . . its development.79
Semper adopted this denition almost literally, replacing language
with art:
Just as contemporary linguistics is trying to demonstrate
the family relationships between different human idioms,
to trace the transformation of individual words through the
centuries and to identify their original roots; just as linguistics in this way has succeeded in elevating itself to a real
science . . . we may justify a similar ambition in the domain
of art, which would focus its attention on the development
of the art-forms from the germs and roots, out of which they
were undoubtedly born.80
By moulding his comparative project on the methodological ideal
of linguistic and biology, Semper sought to give to architecture the
scientic legitimacy that in his view it so desperately needed.
Comparison was not a new principle in the study of languages.
As in natural history, it had long been an important methodological
device. Leibniz had promoted the comparison of languages as a useful
means to understand the nature of the human spirit.81 Belonging to
a tradition by which language was understood not as a conventional
system, but rather as a set of substantial signs, Leibniz saw linguistics
as a means to unravel the real meaning of things.82 The study and
comparison of languages was a key to the original unity between sound
and signicance: a unity lost gradually in the course of time or removed
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by a jealous God at the Tower of Babel. From this point of view, traces
of the lingua paradisiaca still glimmer through contemporary languages
and can be uncovered through careful comparison.83 The vehicle for
such comparison was etymology.84 By following the transformation
of words backwards in time, one could approach the true meaning
and essence of reality itself. As such, the study of language was not
a linguistic, but rather a metaphysical pursuit, important only insofar
as it, in Leibnizs words, gives us the opportunity to nd eternal and
universal truths.85
By the early nineteenth century, the notion of language had
changed and, with it, the scope and objectives of its study. Linguistics,
like anatomy, sought to free itself from the emblematic worldview upon
which it had been based and to establish itself as an autonomous science. As in anatomy, this emancipation would be propelled by a new
notion of type. Rather than categorising languages in terms of etymological roots, nineteenth-century linguists such as Friedrich Schlegel
(17721829), Franz Bopp (17911867), and Wilhelm von Humboldt
(17671835) turned their focus to grammatical structure. Two main
types of language became apparent from this point of view: the rst
consisted of languages that expressed modication of meaning (e.g.,
change of tense, gender, case) by changing the root sounds of words or
sentences;86 the second included languages that expressed such change
by adding new sounds or words. Respectively labelled inectional and
afxional languages,87 the former type included Sanskrit, Latin, and
Greek, whereas the latter consisted of Chinese, Semitic, and Arab languages, as well as the primitive languages of the American Indians and
the Malays.88
It is immediately apparent which type is being introduced here;
no longer etymologically induced, type was now dened according to
a set of inner relations within language itself. Rather than focusing
on the word and its reference, one studied grammatical structure with
no reference to the outside, as it were.89 The theory of inection
shifted the emphasis from etymology to grammar and, as such, it implied much in parallel with Cuviers new anatomy a move from
a substantial to a relational understanding of its subject matter.90 As
Wilhelm von Humboldt pointed out, inection itself is completely
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PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
Let me sum up the points raised in this chapter and bring the
discussion back to Sempers practical aesthetics. Semper redened
the notions of type and comparison from the mechanistic model of
Durand which used form as a basis for comparison to an organic model, comparing according to functional and structural relationships. In doing so, he followed the precedent of Cuvier, Schlegel,
and Humboldt, whose shift from a substantial to a relational understanding of life and language seemed to promise a science of organic
wholes. This notion of organic systems, adapted from Kantian philosophy, furnished the comparative method with a new tertium comparationis.
No longer referring to a reality to which the organic system belongs,
the comparative disciplines formulated immanent criteria for meaning and truth, thus opening the possibility of an autonomous science
of life, language, and art. In this way, the comparative method with
its claim for commensurability challenged the traditional notion of
art and science as modes of representation of a world order. Within
the comparative matrix, the world order itself had become an abstract
set of coefcients, potentially open for scientic explanation. Sempers
ambitions on behalf of the practical aesthetics must be understood in
this light. By seeing the work of art as an organism which at its highest level has shed its links to praxis for an immanent interaction of
Gestaltungsmomente, Semper sought to formulate a science of art.
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OF INVENTING
k
Comparative theory of building therefore presents a logical method
of inventing, which we vainly seek in rules of proportion and obscure
principles of aesthetics.
Gottfried Semper 1
empers practical aesthetics was meant to provide a vehicle for historical interpretation, a basis for educational reform, and a logical
method of inventing. In short, it was to provide a total method for the
interpretation, diffusion, and production of architecture and art. So far,
I have examined only the rst part of this diverse ambition: the comparative method as a vehicle for explaining the historical development of
art. Now it is time to approach the nal step of the practical aesthetics:
the dream of a method to guide not only the interpretation, but also
the production of architecture.
Sempers hope of moving from a descriptive to a prescriptive theory of architecture relied on the framework of the comparative method.
Although comparative anatomy and linguistics had provided a model
for the interpretation of organic wholes, they had been less explicit
about the possibility for systematic prediction. The disciplines in which
this ambition was formulated most explicitly were neither anatomy nor
linguistics, but rather the new sciences of man: sociology and political
science. By means of comparison, these disciplines aimed to progress
from explanation and description to experimentation and prediction,
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C O M PA R I S O N A S E X P E R I M E N T : C O M T E A N D
LA PHYSIQUE SOCIALE
T O WA R D S A M E T H O D O F I N V E N T I N G
complex areas of reality, however the domain of life and society these
methods no longer sufced. As Comte explained: If biological phenomena are incomparably more complex than those of any preceding
science, the study of them admits of the most extensive assemblage of
intellectual means (many of them new) and develops human faculties
hitherto inactive or in a rudimentary state.6 This extensive assemblage encompassed, rst and foremost, the methodological principle
of comparison, a principle inaugurated in biology and coming to full
fruition in the new sociology.7 Just as the biologist compares different
stages in the development of organisms, the student of society must
investigate
. . . as profoundly and completely as possible, all the states
through which civilization has passed, from its origin to the
present time. We must consider their coordination and connection and how they can be combined under general heads
capable of furnishing principles, making manifest the natural
laws of the development of civilization.8
In this schema, the comparative method represented the highest
stage in the methodological development of positive science. Similar
to the way in which physics and chemistry rened the techniques of
observation by means of experiments, social science was to develop
experimentation further by means of comparison. By establishing a
matrix within which different social and political structures could be
studied in parallel, comparative sociology could be regarded as the real
experiments in social physics, even better tted than pure observation
to manifest or conrm the natural laws that preside over the collective
progress of mankind.9
The comparative method thus established an experimentum mentis
in the realm of history. By providing a framework within which society
could be observed through time and place, the comparative method
furnished the scientist-historian with a predictive device equivalent to
the experiment in natural science. In the laboratory-like condition of
the comparative matrix, the historian could generate and test his hypotheses and, in this way, unravel the laws of social organisation. Comte
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was inspired by the precedent of Cuvier, who had himself seen comparison as experiments ready prepared by the hand of nature.10 Comparison was the means by which the student of organic wholes could
gain control over his subject matter, equal to that of his colleague in
physics or chemistry.
This idea would have a great impact on the new comparative
disciplines of the nineteenth century. In anthropology, for instance,
the comparative method was explicitly described as a form of experimentation. The vast range of societies open to observation and the
history of institutions experiment for us, one prominent spokesman
for comparative anthropology proclaimed.11 The cultural scientist,
in this view, does not so much conduct experiments as observe within
the laboratory of history experiments being conducted.12 This is
the tacit positivism at the heart of early social science, presupposing
an epistemological model within which human culture in all its aspects is rendered an accessible object of analysis and explanation.13
Sempers practical aesthetics shared these ambitions to a large extent. If the comparative method of biology and linguistics provided
him with a notion of art as an organic system potentially open for
explanation, then his notion of invention and its methodology (presented in Chapter 4) came remarkably close to Comtes experimental
comparison.
The modern notion of experiment entails certain presuppositions.
An experiment depends on the possibility to abstract the object of study
from its entanglement with the world, to isolate it in an ideal condition
in which all factors working upon it and within it can be observed, and
their laws and regularities explained.14 Such idealisation insofar as it
succeeds grants the possibility to extend the scope of the experiment;
from observing and explaining the object as it appears here and now,
one can move on to predicting and planning the way it will develop
in the future. The possibility of such an extension was paramount to
Comtes denition of science. From science comes prevision, from
prevision comes action, he proclaimed.15 This dictum holds for all the
positive sciences, not least for social physics, which in Comtes view
was the most advanced of them all.16 Social phenomena are susceptible
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141
PRACTICAL AESTHETICS
P O I E S I S A N D P R O D U C T I O N I N S E M P E R S
METHOD OF INVENTING
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T O WA R D S A M E T H O D O F I N V E N T I N G
145
PA RT I I I
k
THE APORIAS OF
HISTORICISM
k
The great question is, are we to have an architecture of our period,
a distinct, individual, palpable style of the nineteenth century?
T. L. Donaldson 1
evolve according to laws and manifest themselves by means of style. Although these assertions sound self-evident to twenty-rstcentury ears,
they actually signalled a great intellectual shift and constituted key aspects of the intellectual framework of historicism. The present chapter
approaches this issue by looking at the nineteenth-century dilemma of
style and Sempers entanglement in it.
The term style, or stile, had been used since the Renaissance to denote the particular characteristics of an artist, but made its way into
architecture only in the rst half of the eighteenth century.4 As van
Eck has shown, the eighteenth-century notion of style was closely
linked to concepts taken from rhetoric, such as caract`ere, maniera, and
genre.5 In the same way that poetry could be tragic, comic, or bucolic, architecture also had its genres, expressed by means of style.6 In
this context, style was understood as variations within the universally
valid architectural language of classicism.7 The rhetorical notion of
style received its rst serious challenge in the late eighteenth century,
from the emerging discipline of art history heralded by Winckelmann
and Quatrem`ere de Quincy. Although the universal validity of classicism was still being upheld, the arguments used to defend it underwent signicant changes, some of which were examined in Chapter 2.
Classicism was now seen as valid not because it represented an a priori embodiment of beauty, but rather because it manifested the best
possible conditions and the noblest possible men. While struggling to
retain an absolute notion of style, the art historians of the late eighteenth
century unwittingly made it a relative expression of particular historical
conditions.8
By the early nineteenth century, the relative notion of style
had come to be taken for granted. Whereas in the eighteenth century style presupposed a given language from which one could draw,
nineteenth-century architects saw each style as a language in itself that
is, an autonomous system of meaning with its own particular logic.
Different historical styles were conceived as different but analogous
150
the new German state (Figure 47).11 Friedrich Gilly and Karl Botticher,
on the other hand, emphasised the structural economy of classicism,
seeing its aesthetic rationality as a model for modern society.12 In either case, classicism was justied as the appropriate self-expression of
the modern nation state, manifesting its rationality and improving its
morality in one simultaneous effect.
A similar duality between a moral-symbolic and a structuraleconomic argumentation was found among the medievalists. EugneEmmanuel Viollet-le-Duc saw in Gothic a structural principle suitable
for modern iron construction, an argument similar to that presented by
Heinrich Hubsch
on behalf of a byzantinesque Rundbogenstil.13 However, the medievalists tended more often to emphasise the moral and
didactic aspects of style. Echoing the ecstatic tone of Goethes
Deutsche Architektur, they hailed Gothic as a source of spiritual
renewal for a corrupt modernity. By adopting the Gothic style, one
151
Figure 48. The Present Revival of Christian Architecture. Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England, 1843.
new artistic expression for a new time.16 This was the position informing King Maximilian II of Bavarias unprecedented architectural
competition, the purpose of which was to invent a new style.17 The
competitors were encouraged to apply all known architectural styles
in a synthetic attempt to express the character of the time.18 Similar ambitions were expressed by Saint-Simonian theorists who saw
stylistic synthesis as the inevitable outcome of the progress of history.19
The typological eclectics, on the other hand, took a different position:
rather than encouraging the fusion of styles, they promoted the use of
different styles for different building types.20 The Ringstrasse in Vienna
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S E M P E R : S T Y L E A S R E S U LT
city, in his view, was turning into a pretentious assemblage of lies and
idiosyncrasies (Figure 49):
The young artist traverses the world, crams his notebooks
full of pasted on tracings of every kind, then returns home
with the cheerful expectation (taking care to show his
155
156
157
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N E W S Y N T H E S I S O F A RT
Having looked at Sempers demands for style as a result, we still have not
come any closer to understanding how, in Semper view, the artist was to
tap into his own time and embody it by means of style. Semper tried to
approach this question in A Critical Analysis and Prognosis of PresentDay Artistic Production, an essay prepared as a preface to the Theory
of Formal Beauty. Semper started the analysis with a lyrical description of the balance between destruction and regeneration of the cosmos a suitable analogy, he proposed, to describe similar phenomena
on the horizon of art.34 The ambiguous state of cosmic nebulas makes
it impossible to determine whether they are age-old systems robbed
of their centres . . . , or whether they are cosmic dust being formed
around a nucleus.35 Most probably, Semper concluded, both these
processes are present simultaneously. Formation and destruction oscillate in a dialectical process, the synthesis of which is the birth of a new
system.
This observation may be useful when the contemporary state of
the arts is to be assessed, he suggested. Society and art are undoubtedly
in the midst of a crisis. But does this crisis necessarily imply a nal
disintegration into chaos? Semper believed that it did not. Just as the
disintegration of cosmic systems always pregures the advent of a new
order, so does the present artistic confusion contribute to the formation
of a new system of art and society alike. The conditions of contemporary
art are visible as mysterious fog patches on the horizon of art history.
They signal the disintegration of monumental art and . . . the reversion
of its elements into a general and indifferent state of being. Yet, they
also indicate new art formations that, slowly emerging from the chaos
of wrecked worlds of art, suddenly crystallise at the moment of coming
to life around a new centre to which everything relates.36
Sempers cosmic analogy should be examined carefully because it
contains his solution to the dilemma of style. From his point of view,
a new style could only emerge out of the complete disintegration of
the old. In terms of architecture, this disintegration implied the breaking down of monumental styles into their elementary motifs which, in
158
turn, served as starting points for a new unity. It was in this turbulent
situation unpleasant to observe but rich in possibilities that Semper
situated the contemporary crisis.37 Semper did not criticise his fellow
artists for distorting the motifs they borrowed from history. On the
contrary, he criticised them for not distorting them enough, for not
disintegrating them according to the need of the present:
What about our magnicent monuments with their frescos,
painted glass, statues, pediments, and friezes! They do not
belong to us. Out of their elements nothing new has arisen
that we could possibly call our own. They have not become
part of our esh and blood. Although they are presently being collected with great care, they have not yet disintegrated
sufciently, let alone has anything new been created.38
Sempers conception of the artistic motifs and their metamorphosis implied that architecture consists in the constant reappropriation of
ancient motifs according to present conditions. According to Semper,
then, the solution to the contemporary crisis lay neither in the invention
of a new style nor in the uncritical adaptation of past styles, but rather
in the modication of traditional motifs according to forces active in
the present. Only in that way, he insisted, could art and architecture
become our own esh and blood rather than borrowed garments.39
This appropriation involved the disintegration of the motif: the gradual transformation, recombination, and spiritualisation of traditional
elements.40 Only by means of such disintegration could the needs and
spirit of today be translated into a coherent style. This might not be a
completely new style, but it would nevertheless be unique, as long as
contemporary conditions material, industrial, social, and political
pressed their unmistakable ngerprint on the ancient motifs.
From this perspective, the Babel-like confusion of the modern
age did not merely signify crisis and decay; rather, it signied the necessary reorganisation of society and art alike, preparing the ground
for a new unity. The present chaos represented a period of disintegration necessarily preceding a new synthesis: a new union of life and art.
The artist played an important role in this process. Although he alone
159
161
8 : H I S T O RY A N D H I S T O R I C I S M
k
FROM GESCHICHTEN TO GESCHICHTE: THE
O R G A N I C U N I T Y O F H I S T O RY
H I S T O RY A N D H I S T O R I C I S M
abstract unity. The object and essence of history was no longer the
events themselves, but rather the form which adheres to the events.
For Humboldt and his generation, history had taken on a new level of
autonomy over and above the eld of concrete experience.
Having already examined the Kantian notion of organic systems,
Humboldts understanding of history as a set of inner causal connections has an unmistakably familiar ring. History was now understood
as a system, characterised by internal coherence, autonomy, and unity,
and growing from within rather than by a process of external addition.11
Kant himself had anticipated the possibility of replacing the aggregate
of histories with a system of history in his Ideas for a Universal History
from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784).12 It was this possibility
that Humboldt had in mind when he advised the historian to seek the
creative powers of history,13 to respect its living breath and articulate its inner character.14 The identication of the organic, system-like
character of history was what allowed the historian to reach beyond individual events to history itself. From this point of view, history is a
living, individual totality with its own inner purpose, the articulation
of which is the task of the historian.15
The organic notion of history had been anticipated already by
the German Sturm und Drang writers.16 For Johann Gottfried Herder
(17441803), for instance, history was the fermentation of human
powers, bound together not as an intellectual aggregate, but rather as
a living whole.17 Although still echoing the classical notion of history
as a cycle of birth, growth, and decay, Herders historical organicism
took on a new dimension. No longer signifying the eternal recurrence
of stages of civilisation, Herder used the organic metaphor to express
the uniqueness of each such stage while also emphasising their lawful succession. The organic metaphor thus allowed him to unite two
seemingly opposite concepts: unique individuality and absolute lawfulness. If history could be seen as an organic system, complete at any
stage of its development, then individuality and lawfulness would be
reconciled.18 This congenial fusion would constitute the framework of
historicist thinking, making Herders Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte
zur Bildung der Menschheit in Meineckes words a splendid charter
of historism.19
164
H I S T O RY A N D H I S T O R I C I S M
H I S T O RY A N D H I S T O R I C I S M
T H E A RT W O R K O F T H E F U T U R E
The epochal consciousness emerging with nineteenth-century historicism was not directed backwards but rather forwards. If, as Humboldt
insisted, the historians task was to grasp and articulate the organic unity
of the past, he was closely complemented by another gure, whose task
it was to realise this unity in the present and to provide direction for the
future: this was the role of the artist.34 Charged with manifesting the
spirit of the age, the artist was to give a tangible expression to his own
time, and thus to realise it as an epoch proper. The modern age posed
certain difculties for such a realisation, however, because it seemed
to lack the organic unity that would allow a true style to emerge. It
was in response to this problem that the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk assumed such importance in nineteenth-century philosophy and
aesthetics.
The term Gesamtkunstwerk suggests a synthesis of individual arts
into one total artwork.35 For Semper, as Mallgrave has pointed out,
architecture was a Gesamtkunstwerk by its very nature, fusing arts and
craft into a higher unity.36 Yet, when Semper evoked the grand allembracing artistic whole37 of the Gesamtkunstwerk, he had in mind
something more than a synthesis of individual art forms. He aimed
at a cultural synthesis, a unication of modern culture into an organic, epochal whole. Sempers friend and compatriot, Richard Wagner
(181383), was an important source for these visions, and Wagners
essay The Artwork of the Future (1849) coined the term Gesamtkunstwerk in its modern sense. Reading more like a political manifesto than
an aesthetic treatise, the essay proclaimed that the artwork of the future would rescue man from the baleful state of modernity.38 Whereas
enlightenment thinkers had conned art to an isolated domain of aesthetics severed from life and fragmented into art varieties the artwork of the future was to fuse art and life into a new aesthetic-political
168
H I S T O RY A N D H I S T O R I C I S M
synthesis and thus save man from the errors, perversities, and unnatural distortions of modern life.39
Wagner often returned to his diagnosis of the present as somehow
un-natural.40 He argued that the modern age had not yet grasped the
necessity by which it could be inaugurated as a true epoch. Echoing
Saint-Simon and Comte, Wagner regarded the nineteenth century as
a critical period, characterised by bad coherence.41 Only an artwork
sprung from the actual needs and forces of the present could amend this
disintegration, yet these needs and forces were all but clear: Where
are the life-conditions which shall summon forth the Necessity of this
Art-work and this redemption?42 Wagner, like Semper, appealed to
the present to grasp its own epochal conditions and to realise them
and thus itself through art:
In common . . . shall we close the last link in the bond of holy
Necessity; and the brother-kiss that seals this bond, will be
the mutual Art-Work [Gesamtkunstwerk] of the Future. . . .
for in this Art-work we shall all be one heralds and supporters of Necessity, knowers of the unconscious, willers of
the unwilful, betokeners of Nature blissful men.43
This passage sums up Wagners and Sempers notion of the
Gesamtkunstwerk. The true work of art is an organic expression of its
time, out of whose needs it grows. Such art is natural in the sense that it
is a necessary rather than arbitrary expression of the present conditions.
The future will settle everything,44 Semper enthused. The shackles would fall by themselves if the urge that drives the present became
more generally aware of its aim. Here is victory and freedom!45
The Gesamtkunstwerk, as envisioned by Wagner and Semper, was
simultaneously a manifestation and an actualisation of modern society,
sublimating it into an aesthetic totality. Through the Gesamtkunstwerk,
the modern nation was to be constituted aesthetically; the hidden depth
of the Volk was to be articulated in the total work of art. The dream
was to merge art and life, making art the ultimate expression for the
Lebensgefuhl
of the time, and joining the disintegrated arts together
again in a higher unity. This was an idea deeply rooted in romantic
169
philosophy. Friedrich Schlegel anticipated it when he called for a universal poetry that could vitalise poetry and poeticise life.46 Against
the aesthetic differentiation of the Enlightenment, art was called upon
to transcend its aesthetic connes in order to serve as a transformatory
power for life and society.47 As Wagner proclaimed: It is for Art . . . and
Art above all else, to teach this social impulse its noblest meaning, and
guide it towards its true direction.48
A curious reciprocity reveals itself here between art and the conditions from which it springs. The Gesamtkunstwerk was to emerge out
of the depth of a united Volk, yet it was also to serve as the means
by which to bring about such a unity. The aesthetic revolution that
Wagner envisioned was not simply a consequence of a future Manhood
of Humanity, but also the very event that would create such a future. The Gesamtkunstwerk was a means of redemption, a vehicle for
salvation from the baleful state of modernity, actualising the new
conditions of humanity and fullling its deliverance to the promised
land.49 The task of the artist was to transform contemporary society
from a critical to an organic epoch in the Saint-Simonian sense. His
mission was to bring about a metamorphosis of the mass into a Volk,
a civilisation into Culture.50 In this Art-work we shall all be one,
Wagner wrote a united Volk fully in charge of its own future.51
Sempers prophetic statement sums up this argument:
For everything will only remain an eerie phantasmagoria
until our national life develops into a harmonious work of
art, analogous but richer than Greek art in its short golden
age. When this happens, every riddle will be solved! Where
are they who have thought of the possibility!52
T H E F U T U R E A S A W O R K O F A RT
H I S T O RY A N D H I S T O R I C I S M
of the epoch: an organic whole potentially open for description, explanation, and implementation. The topos of history as a work of art had
already been elaborated by Giambattista Vico (16681744). In the New
Science (1725), Vico divided reality into two principal spheres: divine
and human. Whereas God is the creator of the natural world, man
is the maker of civil society. Whoever reects on this, Vico wrote,
cannot but marvel that the philosophers should have bent all their
energies to the study of the world of nature, which, since God made
it, He alone knows; and that they should have neglected the study of
the world of nations, or civil world, which, since men had made it,
men could come to know.53 A complete knowledge of Gods creation
is not granted man; he can fully understand only what he has made
himself.
Vicos ideas may sound deceptively modern, heralding ideas of
what Koselleck coined the constructability of history: that history
is ours to make.54 However, for Vico, human history still belonged
within a transcendent order and was not yet seen as history in and for
itself.55 When the constructability of history was invoked at the end
of the eighteenth century, this understanding had changed, a transformation linked to the shift from Geschichten to Geschichte.56 Whereas
Vico considered human history a set of exemplary events and institutions still deriving their meaning from a telos outside history itself, the
late eighteenth century increasingly saw history as an immanent and
self-regulating system. The demand for its constructability was thus
radically extended. It no longer concerned only man-made institutions
situated in history, but also included the making of history itself.57 Man
has a history not because he participates in it, but because he produces
it, Schelling wrote in 1798.58 Conceiving history as a comprehensible
system whose workings do not depend on divine providence but rather
on human prevision, history was rendered a malleable material for the
crafting of progress.59 In Engelss words, history was ours to make:
The extraneous objective forces that hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that
time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his
own history only from that time will the social causes set
171
H I S T O RY A N D H I S T O R I C I S M
improve its status, the Romantics adopted this same principle of aesthetic autonomy only to raise art from here onto a
level above all other spheres of knowledge and experience,
neatly separating it from the other lower aspects of life.63
By projecting an already isolated aesthetic paradigm onto the
whole world, the aesthetic revolution of the romantics paradoxically
conrmed the very differentiation it was trying to overcome. Gadamer
articulates this succinctly : The experimental search for new symbols
or a new myth that will unify everyone may certainly gather a public
and create a community, but since every artist nds his own community,
the particularity of such communities merely testies to the disintegration that is taking place.64 This comment is relevant with regard to
Wagners and Sempers shared vision of the Gesamtkunstwerk. For them,
the Gesamtkunstwerk was a precursor of redemption: the means by
which the new epoch was to crystallise.65 It was an aesthetic project,
carefully designed to unify a fragmented modernity. With this idea
which for Semper implied a dream not only of a total artistic expression,
but also of a method that could secure the correctness of this expression itself he radicalised the romantic quest for aesthetic totality and
approached a Comtean idea of the makeability of history. Although romantic aesthetics conceived art as refuge and redemption from the disenchanted world of reason, the dream of an aesthetic revolution relied
itself on an unsurpassed instrumentality, in which the Gesamtkunstwerk
of the future had become a matter of prognosis and implementation.
Conceived as both a product of and an instrument for a new aesthetic synthesis, the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk testied to the
close afnity between positivism and romanticism within the framework of historicist thinking. Sempers practical aesthetics bears out this
afnity particularly clearly. It was more than an attempt to systematise
architectural design procedures it was, in fact, a radical assertion of
the makeability of history, an assertion presupposing that history could
be rendered transparent to the designs of reason. Here, the real impact
of historicism on Sempers thinking becomes visible. Far from being
simply a matter of stylistic choice, historicism has to do with the way in
which history is envisioned as being available to the present. Sempers
173
174
W I L H E L M D I LT H E Y : H I S T O R I C I T Y
AND HISTORICISM
which structures not only the individual psyche, but also the historical world. In fact, the historical world exists nowhere else but in the
representations of such an individual.14
Historical knowledge, then, springs from the depth and totality of
human self-consciousness, and any science of man must begin there.15
Starting from the individuals experience of life, the Geisteswissenschaften
were to gradually expand their scope until they achieved the analysis
of our total lived experience of the human world.16 The possibility
for such an expansion was given by the afnity between individual and
world: The rst condition for the possibility of a Geisteswissenschaft lies
in the consciousness that I am myself a historical creature,17 Dilthey
declared:
I myself, who experience and know myself from within, am a
constituent of this social body . . . the other constituents are
similar to me and are thus for me likewise comprehensible
in their inner being. I understand the life of society.18
With our recent discussion of Vicos human history in mind,
Diltheys statement sounds familiar. Mans comprehension of the life of
society is different from his comprehension of nature.19 Whereas nature is known as an object experienced from the outside, the historical
world is known, as it were, from within. Because man is himself a part of
a historical world, he knows that world by its afnity to his own being.20
This participation was, for Dilthey, the epistemological guarantee for
historical knowledge: I understand the historical world because I am
myself a historical creature. Yet, this insight is only the starting point
for a science of history. If historical knowledge is to be elevated to a
science proper, it cannot remain a matter of subjective intuition. The
extrapolation that links self-consciousness to the consciousness of others cannot merely be spontaneously given, but rather must be achieved
through a systematic procedure. Only by means of such a procedure
can the historian transcend the particularity of his own life and grasp
an ever-expanding horizon of historical understanding. We may attain
historical knowledge, in other words, only by means of a method of
interpretation.21
178
The afnity between Dilthey and Semper is striking: they both recognised the depth and complexity of historical expressions; they both
sought a scientic procedure that could encompass this complexity
180
is rooted.33 For Semper, the kind of making that takes place in art,
craft, and architecture testied to this supportive ground of history.
It is a mode of history never directly available for observation, yet it
exercises a continuous effect on our thinking and making.
Art, in Sempers sense of the term, embodies history as it works on
the present and, in doing so, establishes a reinterpretation of both the
past and the present itself. It is in this sense that art can be described as
mimesis of praxis: a creative interpretation of a human world. Ricoeur,
following Aristotle, described the working of art as emplotment: the
conguration of reality into world.34 This emplotment involves history insofar as what it reveals is a historical world. Yet, this does not
mean that the artwork is concerned only with the past. On the contrary,
the work of art, as Ricoeur points out, makes it clear that the past is no
longer something over and done with . . . but something that . . . is now
preserved in the present.35 Semper knew this when he emphasised the
constant need to reappropriate the ancient motifs of art, to transform
them and make them our own esh and blood.36 For him, the past
was a necessary and inalienable presence, and the task of art was the
constant interpretation and reinterpretation of this historicity.
As mimesis of praxis, the work of art brings something to visibility
that would otherwise remain unseen. It does not only reproduce an
already existing reality, but also brings forth something new. Ricoeur
talked about this double effect as the poetic capacity of art. When I
somewhat cautiously called Sempers reections on the origin and development of architecture a poetics, it had to do with this dual capacity.
Poiesis signies ction or fabrication. To talk about the poetic ction
of architecture is to suggest that architecture imitates human praxis in a
poetic fashion: at the same time revealing and transforming the word in
which it is situated.37 This was indeed what Semper suggested when he
emphasised the need to disintegrate and reappropriate the ancient motifs of art according to the needs of the present. For him, architecture
was something which both reveals and transforms the very ground of
human existence. This poetic ction did not imply a denial of reality
in any narrow sense.38 Rather than an aesthetic escape from reality, the
poetic ction of art represented in a certain sense a privileged access to
reality itself. The work of art which for Semper meant the process of
182
Figure 50. Sketch diagram for an ideal museum. Gottfried Semper, Practical Art in
Metals and Hard Materials: Its Technology, History, and Styles. Unpublished manuscript,
London 1852. V&A Picture Library.
188
EPILOGUE
189
EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
This all too brief glimpse into Kants epistemology can perhaps
shed light on the utopian nature of Semper and Diltheys mutual ambitions to make human expression the object of science. Our knowledge
of the world is based on something which itself cannot be known in
the strict sense of scientic knowledge. The historically given ground
upon which a cultural community rests is what determines our knowledge about the world, and cannot itself be objectied. As Gadamer
points out:
To be historically means that knowledge of one-self can never
be complete. All self-knowledge arises from what is historically pre-given, . . . because it underlies all subjective intentions and actions and hence both prescribes and limits every
possibility for understanding any tradition whatsoever in its
historical alterity.7
Let us return to Semper for a last reection. His thinking embodies a tension characteristic, I believe, for the modern period. It is a
tension between on the one hand an inescapable reliance on tradition and on the other a dream of a clean slate. Semper recognised
tradition as that which constitutes mans horizon of understanding, thus
governing his thinking and making. With this recognition, he testied
to an understanding of art as a poetic imitation and interpretation of
a life-world. The attempt to elevate a poetic interpretation into a scientic method, however, was one that inevitably cancelled the poetics
itself. The particular historicity of art, in which its poetic potential resides, can never be rendered transparent for a methodical explanation.
As Harries puts it:
Like a poem, no way of life is given so transparently that it
unambiguously declares its meaning. There can be no denitive statement of that meaning; it must be established, ever
anew and precariously, in interpretation. All building, and
more self-consciously architecture, participates in this work.
Building is a response interpreting a way of life.8
191
EPILOGUE
192
NOTES
k
PROLEGOMENON
1
2
6
7
8
Genesis 10:1112.
On the excavation and reception at the British Museum, see R. D. Barnett and
A. Lorenzini, Assyrian Sculpture in the British Museum, Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart 1975, p. 20; and E. Miller, That Noble Cabinet, A History of the British
Museum, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press 1974, pp. 21320.
For an account of the debate that ensued, see I. Jenkins, Archaeologists &
Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 18001939, London:
British Museum Press 1992, pp. 15170.
The notion of motif [Ger. Motiv] is key in Sempers architectural thinking,
and will be central in the following discussion. It is not easily translatable, as
the German Motiv is used in a very wide sense, encompassing both artistic
motifs and human motives as these terms are used in English. However,
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionarys denition of motif as a distinctive
feature or element in a design or composition . . . also, the dominant idea of
a work. . . . a leading gure or short phrase, a subject or a theme is roughly consistent with Sempers own, and I will apply this term in the following discussion.
The notion of motif will be examined more closely in the introduction and in
chapter 3.
193
N O T E S T O P P. 4 9
10
11
12
British Museum, no. 1245646. For an iconographical analysis of the relief, see A.
Parrot, Nineveh and Babylon, trans. S. Gilbert and J. Emmons, London: Thames
and Hudson 1961, pp. 367.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory (London lecture,
11 November 1853), MS 122, fol. 17, in RES, Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics
6, Autumn 1983, pp. 532.
Georges Cuvier, Discourse sur les Rvolutions de la Surface du Globe (Paris 1828),
quoted in E. Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge, trans. W. H. Woglom and
C. W. Hendel, Yale University Press 1950, pp. 1301.
An expression borrowed from H. G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. J.
Weinheimer and D. G. Marshall, London: Sheed & Ward 1989, part II.I.2:
Diltheys Entanglement in the Aporias of Historicism.
INTRODUCTION
4
5
and Frolich
(eds.), Gottfried Semper und die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Basel:
Birkhauser 1976, p. 79.
It was A. Riegl in his Late Roman Art Industry (1901) who rst classied Semper
as a materialist (Rome: Bretschneider 1985, p. 9). E. Stockmeyer saw him as
promoting immanent idealism (Gottfried Sempers Kunsttheorie, Zurich: Rascher
Offentlicher
Lehrkursus uber
die allgemeine Geschichte der Baukunst,
MS 19. Published as Sempers Dresdner Antrittsvorlesung in H. Laudel,
Gottfried Semper: Architektur und Stil, Dresden: Verlag der Kunst 1991,
pp. 22134.
194
N O T E S T O P P. 9 1 1
7
8
10
11
12
The full quote is Die Geschichte der Kunst muss erlernt werden, weniger
um dieser gelehrten Richtung zu gehorchen, obgleich auch diese hier zu
berucksichtigen
ist, da nun einmal mit den Wolfen
geheult werden mu, aber
d. Architektur hat ihre Vorbilder zur Darstellung einer Idee nicht fertig in
195
N O T E S T O P P. 1 1 1 5
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Although incomplete, the inventory of Sempers Dresden library (MS 148, unpublished manuscript in the Semper archives) contains an impressive collection
of classical and contemporary authors, supporting Hans Sempers claim that his
father was exceptionally well read. Gottfried Semper, ein Bild, p. 12.
Prospectus to Vergleichende Baulehre (MS 52), in W. Herrmann (ed. and trans.),
Gottfried Semper: In Search of Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
1984, p. 168.
MS 5277, unpublished manuscript in the Semper archives.
For a detailed account of Sempers exile, see Herrmann, In Search, chapter 2.
Trans. The Four Elements of Architecture: A Contribution to the Comparative Study of
Architecture (1851), in Mallgrave and Herrmann, The Four Elements of Architecture
and Others Writing, pp. 74129.
Ibid., p. 102.
Ibid., p. 102.
On the Origin of Some Architectural Styles, (London lecture, December
1853), MS 138, fols. 123, in RES, Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 9, Spring
1985, pp. 5360. Semper wrote these lectures in English, a language he never
fully mastered. I do not attempt to correct Sempers mistakes when quoting from
the London lectures, but rather adhere to the texts as published.
Semper used element, motif , and type even idea and symbol more or
less indistinguishably, referring to archetypal Ur-formen or Urmotiven of art
and architecture. In some texts, however, he presented the motifs of art as a
potentially innite number of primordial themes in artistic making, whereas
the elements of architecture are motifs reied into the four basic architectural
congurations of mound, wall, hearth, and roof. See, for instance, The Four
Elements of Architecture, pp. 10126.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory, MS 122, fol. 9, p. 9.
Science, Industry, and Art, Proposals for the Development of a National Taste in Art at
the Closing of the London Industrial Exhibition (1852), in Mallgrave and Herrmann,
The Four Elements of Architecture and Others Writings, p. 136.
A selection of Sempers London lectures was published in RES, Journal
of Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 6, Autumn 1983; no. 9, Spring 1985; and
no. 11, Spring 1986.
N. Pevsner, Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Claredon
1972, p. 260.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory, MS 122, fol. 56, p. 9.
Semper introduced the term Practical Aesthetics in the title of Der Stil.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory, MS 122, fol. 32, p. 16.
Ibid., fol. 15, p. 11.
Ibid., fol. 6, p. 9.
Second Prospectus to Der Stil (MS 196 and MS 205), in Herrmann and
Mallgrave, The Four Elements of Architecture and Others Writings, p. 179.
Although this correspondence remains implicit in Der Stil, Semper spelled it out
clearly in The Four Elements of Architecture, pp. 1034.
196
N O T E S T O P P. 1 6 1 8
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
See Herrmann, The Genesis of Der Stil, 18401877, In Search, pp. 88117.
First Prospectus to Der Stil, quoted in Herrmann, In Search, p. 101.
In Search, pp. 104112.
The second edition of Der Stil was published by Bruckmann Verlag, Munich
1878; third edition by Maander Kunstverlag, Mittenwald 1977. Sempers essays
and lectures were edited by his sons, Hans and Manfred Semper, and published in
1884 as Gottfried Semper, Kleine Schriften, Berlin 1884; second edition Mittenwald:
Maander 1979.
W. Dilthey, The Three Epochs of Modern Aesthetics and Its Present Task (1893),
trans. M. Neville, in R. A. Makkreel and F. Rodi (eds.), Wilhelm Dilthey, Poetry
and Experience, Selected Works, vol. V, Princeton University Press 1985,
pp. 190204.
See H. F. Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou (eds.), Empathy, Form, Space: Problems in
German Aesthetics, 18731893, Santa Monica: Getty 1994, introduction.
Alois Riegl, Late Roman Art Industry (1901), p. 9. See also Riegls Stilfragen (1893),
trans. by E. Kain, as Problems of Style, Foundations for a History of Ornament,
Princeton University Press 1992, p. 4. Riegls emphasis on Sempers materialism
was later perpetuated by, among others, L. Venturi, History of Art Criticism, trans.
C. Morriatt, New York: Dutton 1936, pp. 2267; and W. Waetzold, Deutsche
Kunsthistoriker, Berlin: Hessling 1965, pp. 1309.
As Mallgrave points out, Richard Streiter applied the notion of Realism
borrowed from the literary genre associated with Zola, Flaubert, and others
to the new tendency in architecture in his Architektonische Zeitfragen (1898). Otto
Wagner, Modern Architecture, ed. and trans. H. F. Mallgrave, Santa Monica: Getty
1988, introduction, pp. 34.
Otto Wagner proclaimed that no less a person than Gottfried Semper rst
directed our attention to this truth (even if he unfortunately later deviated
from it); namely, that art is governed by necessity only. Modern Architecture,
p. 91. Hendrik P. Berlage similarly enthused: Like all the great spirits, Semper
looked toward the future; he is one of those who, as Heine says, nod to
each other over the centuries. Thoughts of Style in Architecture (1905), in
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Thoughts on Style 18861909, Santa Monica: Getty 1996,
p. 137. Hermann Muthesius hailed the brilliant Gottfried Semper, . . . one
of the most important writers on architecture of the century, in Style
Architecture and Building-Art, Transformations of Architecture in the Nineteenth
Century and its Present Conditions, trans. S. Anderson, Santa Monica: Getty
1994, p. 68.
As Berlage lamented: If only Semper, who said things of undying value in
Der Stil, had drawn the consequences in his architecture, how differently architecture would have developed under his inuence in Germany and here in
Switzerland. The Foundations and Development of Architecture, in Thoughts
on Style, pp. 2356. The modernist reading of Semper has received much critical
attention lately, and I will not discuss it further. For an account of the early
Semper reception, see Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper, Epilogue: The Semper
197
N O T E S T O P P. 1 8 2 3
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
Ruckkehr
aus dem zweiten Exil, in Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, no. 4, 1992, pp. 612;
and R. Haag Bletter, Gottfried Semper, in Macmillan Encyclopaedia of Architects,
vol. 4, London : Free Press 1982, pp. 2533.
Quitzsch, Die a sthetischen Anschauungen Sempers, p. 15. Laudel, Architektur und
Stil, pp. 201.
Quitzsch, Die a sthetischen Anschauungen Sempers, pp. 67. Laudel, Architektur und
Stil, pp. 1220.
Sempers most explicit criticism of capitalism is found in Science, Industry, and Art,
p. 135, where he describes the capitalist system as dangerous for the industrial
arts, decidedly fatal for the traditional higher arts.
Quitzch, Die a sthetischen Anschauungen Sempers, pp. 515.
Ibid., p. 36.
Basel: Birkhauser
1981.
198
N O T E S T O P P. 2 9 3 2
THE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
C U LT
OF
ORIGIN
den Ursprung der Sprache (Berlin 1772); Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749
1832), Die Italienische Reise (?178688), trans. W. H. Auden and E. Mayer, Italian
Journey; London: Penguin 1962.
Laugier, An Essay on Architecture (1753), trans. W. and A. Herrmann, Los
Angeles: Hennesey & Ingalls 1977, p. 11.
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 12.
See Rykwert, On Adams House, chapter 5, Reason and Grace.
199
N O T E S T O P P. 3 3 3 7
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
An Essay on Architecture, p. 1.
For more on the increasing relativisation of the notion of proportion in the
eighteenth century, see W. Herrmann, Laugier and Eighteenth-Century French
Theory, London: Zwemmer 1985, pp. 378.
Francois Blondel, Cours dArchitecture, Ensign dans lAcademie, Paris 1698.
Quoted in A. Prez-Gomez,
Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science, p. 47.
Laugier, An Essay on Architecture, pp. 3 and 78.
Ibid., avertissement to the second edition, p. 147.
Ibid., p. 4.
Discourse on the Method (1637), trans. R. Stoothoff, The Philosophical Writings of
Descartes, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press 1990, part two, pp. 11622.
Throughout the eighteenth century, Cartesian and Newtonian philosophy had
been diffused into common knowledge with the popular writings of Voltaire
(Elements de la Philosophie de Newton, Paris 1738) and Algarotti (Le Newtonianism
pour les Dames, Paris 1738), among others. Laugier was profoundly inuenced by
this academic fashion. See Herrmann, Laugier, pp. 368, and Rykwert, Adams
House in Paradise, chapter 3.
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Meditiationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad
Poema Pertinentibus (1735) trans. Reections on Poetry by K. Aschenbrenner and
W. Holther, University of California Press 1954; and Aesthetica, 1751.
An Essay on Architecture, pp. 23.
See Lipp, Natur, Geschichte, Denkmal, p. 15. See also Lovejoy on the eighteenthcentury conception of nature as a principle of uniformity. Essays in the History of
Ideas, p. 79.
As Boulle wrote: If I went back to the source of all the ne arts, I should nd new
ideas and thus establish principles that would be all the more certain for having
their source in nature. To Men Who Cultivate the Arts, in H. Rosenau (ed.)
Etienne-Louis Boulle, Architecture, Essay on Art, London: Academy 1976, p. 82.
Natur, Geschichte, Denkmal, pp. 2456.
Ibid., pp. 24750.
Architecture, Essay on Art, introduction, p. 83.
Herrmann, Laugier, p. 48.
C. van Eck, Organicism in Nineteenth-Century Architecture: An Inquiry into its Theoretical and Philosophical Background. Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura 1994,
p. 96.
Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas (154490), quoted in Margaret Hodgen, Early
Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, University of Pennsylvania
Press 1964, p. 207.
Der Stil, vol. 2, pp. 210 and 275.
200
N O T E S T O P P. 3 7 3 9
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
Ibid., p. 9.
For a presentation of the impact of travel literature on eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century thinking, see, for instance, B. M. Stafford, Voyage into
Substance, Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Accounts, 17601840,
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1984. See also M. Bell, Goethes Naturalistic Anthropology: Man and Other Plants, Oxford: Claredon 1994, pp. 35
41; and J. Honigmann, The Development of Anthropological Ideals, Homewood,
Illinois: Dorsey 1976, pp. 5460.
The French tradition of the Grand Tour was another important source of new
knowledge about antiquity. From 1778 onwards, the French Grand Prix pensionnaires in Rome were required to do an archaeological study of an ancient
monument rather than a treatise, a requirement contributing greatly to archaeological knowledge and interest. The Napoleonic expedition to Egypt in 1798
1800 likewise contributed to new historical and ethnological knowledge. See
Bergdoll, Lon Vaudoyer, p. 7.
See S. Lavin, Quatrem`ere de Quincy and the Invention of a Modern Language of
Architecture, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1992, p. 63.
Henry Home, Lord Kames (16961782), Sketches of the History of Man, Edinburgh
1779, vol. 1, p. 1. Quoted in F. Voget, Progress, Science, History and Evolution
in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Anthropology, Journal of the History of
Behavioral Sciences, vol. 3, 1967, p. 135.
The Spirit of the Laws, trans. T. Nugent, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica 1952.
Ibid., Book XIX, Of Laws in Relation to the Principles which Form the General
Spirit, Morals, and Customs of a Nation 1, p. 135.
A term borrowed from Lovejoy, Essays in the History of Ideas, pp. 7982.
See, for instance, The Spirit of the Laws, Book XIX, 4, On the General Spirit
of Mankind: Mankind are inuenced by various causes: by the climate, by the
religion, by the laws, by the maxims of government, by precedents, morals, and
customs; whence is formed a general spirit of nations. On his use of the term
character, see, for instance, Book XIX, 10: Of the Character of the Spaniards
and Chinese.
Ibid., Book XIV, 1: Of Laws in Relation to the Nature of the Climate. As he
continued in 2: We ought not, then, to be astonished that the effeminacy of
the people in hot climates has almost always rendered them slaves; and that the
bravery of those in cold climates has enabled them to maintain their liberties.
This is an effect which springs from natural causes.
201
N O T E S T O P P. 3 9 4 2
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
Lavin concludes that Quatrem`ere was perhaps the rst theorist to challenge
the theoretical tyranny of the primitive hut. Quatrem`ere de Quincy, p. 87.
Encyclopdie mthodique, vol. 3, p. 424, quoted in Lavin, Quatrem`ere de Quincy,
p. 21.
See, for instance, De larchitecture e` gyptienne considere dans son origine, ses principes
et son gout, et compare sous les memes rapports a` larchitecture grecque, Paris 1803,
whose rst section treats the diversity of architectural origins. Quoted in Lavin,
Quatrem`ere de Quincy, p. 56.
Ibid., p. 22.
In the Encyclopdie mthodique, Quatrem`ere identied two kinds of architectural
character: caract`ere essentiel and caract`ere relatif. Whereas the former denoted
universal and ideal types, the latter referred to the aspects of architectural expression relative to climate, ground, and government. As he wrote: Le caract`ere, quel quil soit dans la nature, considr dans son ensemble ou dans le
dtail de ses productions, est une qualit dpendante, soit du systeme gnral
auquel est subordonn lunivers, soit des causes accidentelles qui sont la suite
& le complment de ce systeme. Encyclopdie Methodique, vol. 1, p. 482, entry Caract`ere. See also Jaques-Guillaume Legrand, Essai sur lhistorie gnral
de larchitecture (1799). Legrand supported Quatrem`eres tripartite origin theory, and developed a theory of the correspondence between social, material,
and architectural form. As he wrote: Les memes besoins, diversement satisfaits dans dautres climats, des matriaux et des usages diffrens, ont nuancles
autres Architectures. Essai sur lhistoire gnrale de larchitecture, 2nd edn., Paris
1809, pp. 278. I am indebted to Anthony Gerbino for pointing out this passage
to me.
Lavin, Quatrem`ere de Quincy, p. 70.
Bergdoll, Lon Vaudoyer, p. 2. As Vaudoyer wrote in a letter to his father
(23 March 1830): A civilisations architecture should take its character from
1. its institutions, 2. its usages, 3. its climate, 4. the nature of materials. Quoted
in Bergdoll, Lon Vaudoyer, p. 107.
Legrand, Essai, p. 37, quoted in Gerbino, Imitation, Character, Typology: The
Concept of Style in the Architectural Theory of Jaques-Guillaume Legrand,
Unpublished essay, University of Cambridge 1994, p. 7.
202
N O T E S T O P P. 4 2 4 5
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
As Semper wrote: We believe we are fully justied in not admitting the grotto
as a motif of consequence to architecture and in disregarding it completely when
inquiring into the origins of architecture, in The Basic Elements of Architecture, p. 200.
ichen Hulfsmittel
sind die Knoten, die man aus Otdia in Schnuren knupfte,
um
sich Namen zu merken, die chronologischen Knoten der Neger in Kongo und
die Wampums der nordamericanischen Indianer. Endlich ist noch der Tanz
als Trager der Sage zu nennen; der Tanz doch nicht etwa in der Bedeutungslosigkeit der modernen Salonwelt sondern als plastische Darstellung,
als mimische Erzahlung einer Reihe Thatsachen. Ibid., pp. 23.
Der Schmuck dieser heiligen Statten erweckt die Kunst, namentlich Baukunst,
Tanz, Musik. Ibid., p. 23.
203
N O T E S T O P P. 4 5 4 9
70
71
THE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
aber der Nachwelt bewahrt und von dieser spater, nachdem die Schrift mit
alle Zeiten
Worten, Silben und endlich mit Buchstaben sich herausgebildet, fur
gerettet. Ibid., p. 3.
Klemm emphasised that architecture originated in the collective cult, not
in the individuals need for shelter: Auch die Architektur die im Suden
lediglich Erhohungen
gewesen zu sein, auf denen offentliche
Opfer, offentliche
Sitzungen und Versammlungen gehalten wurden. Wir nden auf mehreren
DOCTRINE
OF
I M I TAT I O N
204
N O T E S T O P P. 4 9 5 2
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Des beaux arts rduit, p. 25. Translated and quoted in Coleman, The Aesthetic
Thought of the French Enlightenment, p. 94.
An Essay on Imitation in the Fine Arts, p. 97.
Ibid., p. 202 (my emphasis).
Ibid., p. 216. Quatrem`ere distinguished between an ideal and a particular model,
a distinction he also used in the entry on imitation in the Encyclopdie Mthodique.
He would, however, sometimes substitute ideal model for type, as, for instance,
in the entry on type in the Encyclopdie Mthodique, vol. 3, p. 545.
For a presentation of the changing meaning of this term in enlightenment and
romantic art theory, see M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory
and the Literary Tradition, Oxford University Press 1953, chapter 2: Imitation
and the Mirror, pp. 3046.
An Essay on Imitation in the Fine Arts, p. 204.
As Quatrem`ere explained: as nature neither had furnished nor could furnish any
perfect and complete model for imitation, as regards art, so it remained for the
genius of the artist itself to complete by a judicious combination, the qualities
of the particular model. This the true imitator did, and he could alone do it by
generalising, through extensive observation, the study of nature and reducing it
to a system. Ibid., p. 223.
Panofsky has described this attitude thus: that classical art itself, in manifesting
what natura naturans had intended but natura naturata had failed to perform,
represented the highest and truest form of naturalism. Renaissance and Renaissances in Western Art, Stockholm: Almquist & Wikell 1960, p. 30. See also
J. Bialostocki, The Renaissance Concept of Nature and Antiquity in Acts of
the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, vol. 2, Princeton 1963,
pp. 1930.
Quoted in R. Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism, vol. 1, The Late Eighteenth
Century, London: Cape 1955, p. 13.
Winckelmann, On the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (1755),
trans. D. Irwin, in Winckelmann, Writings on Art, London: Phaidon 1972, p. 67.
Quatrem`ere de Quincy, Entry on autorit in Encyclopdie Mthodique, vol. 1,
p. 176. Quoted in Lavin, Quatrem`ere de Quincy, p. 104.
An Essay on Imitation in the Fine Arts, p. 264.
Already Winckelmann, inuenced by Montesquieu, had emphasised the role of
climate and constitution in the aesthetic perfection of ancient Greece. See On
the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, p. 61.
J.W. von Goethe, Maximen und Reexionen, quoted in H. von Einem, Beitrage zu
Jedoch setzte Aristoteles irriger Weise das ganze Wesen der schonen
Kunst in
die Nachahmung. Wir leugnen nicht, das wirklich ein nachahmendes Element in
ihr sey, aber das macht sie noch nicht zur schonen
Kunst; vielmehr liegt dies eben
205
N O T E S T O P P. 5 2 5 4
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Asthetik,
vol. 1
die Ausserlichkeiten
eines Menschen nachaffen, sondern sich die Weise seines
Handelns zu eigen machen, so ist nichts mehr gegen den Grundsatz einzuwen
den, noch zu ihm hinzuzufugen:
die Kunst soll die Natur nachahmen. Ibid.,
p. 258.
sich selbst seyn kann. Die Klarheit, die Energie, die Fulle,
zuruckgeht,
es auch fur
die Allseitigkeit womit sich das Universum in einem menschlichen Geiste abspiegelt, und womit sich wiederum dieses Abspiegeln in ihm spiegelt, bestimmt
206
N O T E S T O P P. 5 4 5 7
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
werden konnen.
Die Kunstlehre, p. 313.
von Einem convincingly argues that Goethes notion of metamorphosis in art
and architecture derived directly from his study of plants. Beitrage zu Goethes
Kunst-Auffassung, p. 90. A similar argument is made by van Eck, Organicism in
Nineteenth-Century Architecture, p. 110.
For a discussion on the immanentisation of art that takes place in
Goethes thinking, see von Einem, Beitrage zu Goethes Kunst-Auffassung,
p. 90, where he argues that Goethes notion of organic form made it
for the rst time possible to locate the meaning of art within the artwork itself: Damit konnte das Abhangigkeitsverhaltnis der Kunst von den
207
N O T E S T O P P. 5 7 5 9
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
Tektonik (Zimmerei),
second use, see Der Stil vol. 2, Siebente Haubtstuck.
p. 209.
Eine wirkliche innere Geschichte der hellenischen Tektonik, Die Tektonik der
Hellenen, 1st edition, Potsdam: Riegel 1852, p. xi.
Das Princip der hellenischen Tektonik ist nachweisbar ganz identisch mit dem
Principe der schaffenden Natur: den Begriff jedes Gebildes in seiner Form
auszusprechen. Aus diesem Principe allein entspringt ein Gesetz der Form,
lebenden Geschopfen,
der ihrem Dasein zu Grunde liegende Begriff, als ganz
208
N O T E S T O P P. 5 9 6 1
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
Form dann nichts anderes sein, als das materialisirte und verkorperte
Urbild des
ihren
welchem uberhaupt
tektonische Gebilde erzeugt werden konnen,
die fur
Begriff eben so wahr als in ihrer Form allgemein verstandlich sind: es hat gle
alle Erzeugnisse der Tektonik, vom kleinsten Gerathe bis
iche Gultigkeit
fur
zum grosten
Bauwerke. In diesem Gesetze ist nicht bloss der Weg zur Findung
209
N O T E S T O P P. 6 1 6 5
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
solche Korperform,
wenn sie ihrem Begriffe widerspricht: inhaltslos wenn gar
kein Begriff in ihr zu erkennen ist. Tektonik, 2nd edition, 4.4, p. 19.
SEMPER
1
2
3
AND
THE
POETICS
OF
ARCHITECTURE
See Bauer, Architektur als Kunst; in Bauer (ed.) Probleme der Kunstwissenschaft;
and Stockmeyer, Gottfried Sempers Kunsttheorie.
. . . fruchtlose Grubeleien
. . . die nicht selten zu schadlichen Irrthumern
und
der Holzhutte
herzuleiten und zu entwickeln, oder an den Irrthum, den selbst
ein Gau theilen konnte, dass der a gyptische Tempelbau dem Troglodytenthume
210
N O T E S T O P P. 6 5 6 8
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
mit grosserem
Rechte als die Sinnbilder ihrer heutigen Fremd und Heimath hat, sie die Urtypen orientalischer Baukunst zu
losigkeit gelten, als man dafur
nennen. Der Stil, vol. 1, p. 3.
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, in Mallgrave and Herrmann, The Four Elements of
Architecture and Other Writings, p. 183.
Ibid., p. 196.
For an insightful reading of this aspect of Sempers thinking, see Mallgrave,
Gottfried Semper, pp. 290302.
The Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 219.
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, p. 196.
Ibid., p. 196.
Ibid., p. 196.
The Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 219.
. . . weil sie sich dadurch gleichsam als Urkunst zu erkennen gibt, dass alle
anderen Kunste
. . . ihre Typen und Symbole aus der textilen Kunst entlehnen,
wahrend sie selbst in dieser Beziehung ganz selbstandig erscheint und ihre Typen
aus sich heraus bildet oder unmittelbar der Natur abborgt. Der Stil, vol. 1,
p. 13.
die fruhesten
und uber
Nothwendigkeit die a lter ist, als die Welt und die Gotter,
die alles fugt
Alles verfugt.
Der heilige Fitz ist das Chaos selbst, das verwickelte uppige,
sich
selbst verschlingende Schlangengewirr, aus welchem alle ornamentalen Formen,
die struktiv thatigen hervorgingen, in welches sie, nach vollendetem Kreislaufe
ursprunglich
getheilter Oberachen, zu einem festen Zusammenhange geworden ist. In der Naht tritt ein wichtigstes und erstes Axiom der Kunst-Praxis in
211
N O T E S T O P P. 6 9 7 2
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
J. Rykwert, Semper and the Conception of Style. See also Mallgrave, Gottfried
Semper, p. 292.
See Der Stil, vol. 1, 18, Die Nath, pp. 7884.
Science, Industry, and Art, p. 136.
The Four Elements of Architecture, pp. 1034. Original emphasis. See also Der
den ursprunglichsten
vertikalen raumlichen Abschluss den der Mensch erfand,
mochten
wir den Pferch . . . erkennen, dessen Vollendung eine Technik erfordert,
die gleichsam die Natur dem Menschen in die Hand legt.
See, for instance, If climatic inuences and other circumstances sufce to explain
this phenomenon of cultural history, and even if we cannot deduce from it that we
are dealing with a universally valid rule about the development of civilization, it
nevertheless remains true that the beginnings of building coincide with those of
weaving. . . . As the rst partition wall made with hands, the rst vertical division
of space invented by man, we would like to recognize the screen, the fence made
of plaited and tied sticks and branches, whose making requires a technique which
nature hands to man, as it were. The passage from the plaiting of branches to
the plaiting of hemp for similar domestic purposes is easy and natural. Der Stil,
vol. 1, p. 213, trans. Rykwert, Adams House, p. 30.
See Der Stil, vol. 1, pp. 27783. Sempers famous remark on enclosure and clothing is found in ibid., p. 227: Die Kunst des Bekleidens der Nacktheit des Leibes
(wenn man die Bemalung der eigenen Haut nicht dazu rechnet . . . ) ist ver
noch mehr hervor wenn wir die Lebensweise der Alten berucksichtigen
und
212
N O T E S T O P P. 7 2 7 6
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Far from having a secondary and ornamental role, thus, Semper argued that the
Bekleidung was a key feature of the Roman house. He even maintained that the
main task of the peristyle columns was to accommodate the textile partition.
Ibid., p. 283.
Rein symbolischen Andeutung des verschlossenen Raums. Ibid., p. 279.
213
N O T E S T O P P. 7 6 7 8
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
Plato, The Laws, Book II, 653d654a, trans. A. E. Taylor in E. Hamilton and H.
Cairns (eds.), Plato, the Collected Dialogues, Princeton University Press 1989. All
references to Plato are taken from this edition.
Signicantly, this rhythmical choir-song and dance is the only art allowed into
Platos ideal state. The Laws, Book VII, 816b817e.
Ibid., Book II, 655.
See, for instance, Timaios 2829, where imitation is presented as the principle
on which the world is created and maintained.
Parmenides, 130e131a.
Aristotle comments on this change of term in Metaphysics, Book 1, vi, 3. See also
S. Halliwell, Aristotles Poetics, London: Duckworth 1986, pp. 11516, and H. G.
Gadamer, Art and Imitation in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays,
Cambridge University Press 1986, pp. 1012.
Kunst und Mythos, Hamburg: Rowohlt 1957, p. 115. For a discussion of the role
of mimesis in Platonic cosmology, see L. Golden, Aristotle on Tragic and Comic
Mimesis, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars 1992, p. 59. See also Halliwell, Aristotles
Poetics, p. 118: Mimesis is both the means by which the eternal produces and
fashions the world and correspondingly the means by which the human mind
can ascend or aspire in its search for knowledge: mimesis carries an active philosophical and theological signicance.
The Laws, Book II, 668.
Plato drew here on Pythagorean ideas, more specically on the teachings of
Damon, a fth-century Pythagorean mystic to whom Plato refers specically
in the Republic, Book III, 400. Damon developed a theory of the analogous relation between the order of music (and numbers) and the order of the human
soul. From this point of view, the composition and performance of music involves an ethical choice. See Plato, The Laws, Book II, 668. For a presentation of
Damons teaching and Platos interpretation of it, see Koller, Die Mimesis der
Antike, p. 23.
Poetics, 1449b, 1450a, 1450b, and 1451b.
Ibid., 1448a.
As E. Grassi notes, praxeos, prattein, and the related pratonto (singular) and pratontas (plural) signify action and acting men as ethically situated. Theorie des Schonen,
pp. 1239. See also D. Vesely, Architecture and the Poetics of Representation,
Daidalos, September 1987, pp. 302.
Poetics, 1451a.
Die mimesis tes praxeos richtet sich demnach nicht auf jede beliebige
Handlung, die sich als Gegenstand der Mimesis darbietet, . . . Gegenstand der
den Menschen spezische Handlung sein, das
Mimesis darf vielmehr nur die fur
heit diejenige Praxis, die vom Ethos bestimmt wird und von ihm ihren Sinn
erhalt . . . Gegenstande der Kunst sind also die dem Menschen eigentumlichen
Moglichkeiten. Die Theorie des Schonen in der Antike, pp. 1278.
Poetics, 1450a.
Ibid., 1459a.
214
N O T E S T O P P. 8 9 9 2
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
215
N O T E S T O P P. 8 3 8 9
78
79
das gewohnliche
Sprache tut, sondern dieses Gedachte und Erlebte in sich
den Horer,
verkorpert,
mit ihm eins wird und fur
den Betrachter, eben das
ist, was sie vermitteln soll. Gestalt und Sprache des Kunstwerkes, Studien zur
Grundlegung einer nichtasthetischen Kunsttheorie. Mittenwald: Maander 1981,
p. 54.
SEMPER
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
11
AND
PRACTICAL
AESTHETICS
216
N O T E S T O P P. 8 9 9 2
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Uber
die formelle Gesetzmassigkeit des Schmuckes, Kleine Schriften p. 305.
Welches ist nun aber dieses kosmische Gesetz? Vielleicht lasst sich demselben
dadurch auf die Spur kommen, dass wir den Schmuck in bestimmte Kategorieen
217
N O T E S T O P P. 9 3 9 6
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
Uber
die formelle Gesetzmassigkeit des Schmuckes, p. 315. Semper is not consistent in his use of the terms microcosmic and macrocosmic. Whereas in Pro
legomenon to Der Stil and Uber
die formelle Gesetzmassigkeit des Schmuckes
he sees eurythmic order as microcosmic, in Attributes of Formal Beauty he
groups eurythmy under the heading On Macrocosmic Authority, p. 234.
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, pp. 2034.
Whereas the eurythmic order of the crystal is characterised by a self-sufcient
perfection, the symmetrical order of, for example, the leaf refers to the larger
whole of the tree. See Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 231, and Prolegomenon
to Der Stil, pp. 2035.
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, pp. 21112.
For a presentation of the history of microcosmic thinking, see G. P. Conger, Theories of Macrocosms and Microcosms in the History of Philosophy, Columbia University
Press 1922; and R. Allers, Microcosmus, from Anaximandros to Paracelsus, in
Traditio, Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion, vol. II, New
York 1944, pp. 319407.
As a Pythagorean text stated it: Man is a microcosm because he has in him
the four elements as well as all the powers of the cosmos. Photius, quoted in
Conger, Theories of Macrocosms and Microcosms, p. 19.
Neue Lehre von den Proportionen des menschlichen Korpers auch einem bisher unbekannt
gebliebenen, die ganze Natur und Kunst durchdringenden morphologische Grundge
setze, Leibzig: Weigel 1854, pp. 1 and 137: Das Rein-Schone.
Further on
Zeisings impact on Semper, see Laudel, Gottfried Semper: Architektur und Stil,
pp. 16473; and Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper, pp. 2712.
Similar speculations were presented by the botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (17781841), who based his organography on the principle of symmetry.
See Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge, p. 135.
Neue Lehre, part 2, pp. 14658: Von der Bedeutung der Proportionalitat im
Uber
die formelle Gesetzmassigkeit des Schmuckes, p. 311.
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, p. 206.
218
N O T E S T O P P. 9 6 9 8
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
Schopenhauer dened will as the vital force governing both body and mind of
living beings, and would probably not have approved of Sempers distinction
between will and vital force. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819), book 2,
18, pp. 11823. Semper was probably familiar with Schopenhauers philosophy
through Richard Wagner, who had discovered Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung
in 1854 (Wagner, My Life, London: Constable 1994, pp. 61417). Yet, Semper
did not make direct references to Schopenhauer, and his speculations on force
and matter could equally well derive from Schelling. For more on Semper and
Schopenhauer, see Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper, pp. 2716.
einem korperlichen,
bei dessen Gestaltung und Erhaltung Krafte thatig sind.
Uber
die formelle Gesetzmassigkeit des Schmuckes, p. 326.
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, p. 198. This idea echoes Schellings notion of gravity as he presented it in the introduction to Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature,
pp. 201.
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, p. 198. An elaboration of this idea can be found in
219
N O T E S T O P P. 9 8 1 0 3
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
Einheit hoheren
Grades hervorgeht, ist die Inhaltsangemessenheit, . . . Sie lasst
zugleich als gut and zweckentsprechend erscheinen.
das Formell-Schone
In Der Stil, this distinction appears in many different versions. Semper distinguished between technical, utilitarian, and tendentious symbols (vol. 1,
p. 377); between structural-functional and tendentious (vol. 1, p. 386); and
between real and tendentious symbols (ibid.). In On Architectural Symbols,
MS 140, MS 142, fols. 619, pp. 627, he distinguished between structural and
traditional symbols, equating the former with what he elsewhere called natural
symbols, fols. 68, p. 63.
On Architectural Symbols, fols. 67, pp. 623. By self-understanding, he
seems to mean self-explanatory or self-evident.
220
N O T E S T O P P. 1 0 3 1 0 6
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
hohere
Bedeutung als die des einfachen Zierrahts. Der Stil, vol. 1, p. 386.
Der Stil, vol. 1, p. 383 and pp. 3879.
On the Relation of Architectural Systems with the General Cultural Conditions, London lecture, 29 November 1854, MS 144, fols. 139, in RES, Journal
of Anthropology and Aesthetics 11, Spring 1986, pp. 4253. fol. 5, p. 44.
. . . setzt der hieratische Pharaonenstil das symbolische Ornament, das gleichsam aus einer Reihung von Hieroglyphen besteht, und dem nur selten zugleich
struktur-symbolischer Sinn innewohnt, Der Stil, vol. 1, p. 415.
See B. A. Srensen, Symbol und Symbolismus, in den a sthetischen Theorien des 18.
Jahrhunderts und der deutschen Romantik, Copenhagen: Munksgaard 1963, pp. 58
9. Srensens book offers a thorough presentation of the changing notions of
symbol and allegory in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century aesthetics, with particular reference to Herder and Goethe.
Uber
die bildende Nachahmung des Schonen (1788), pp. 4953, quoted in Srensen,
Symbol und Symbolismus, p. 82.
Semper here echoed Herder, who had lamented how in preclassical art . . . die
Schonheitsregeln.
hoheren
Kunst weist sie ihre neutralen Felder an, wo sie, von der Struktur und
dem nachsten materiellen Dienste des Systemes unabhangig, sich frei entfaltet.
Der Stil, vol. 1, p. 386. See also ibid., p. 348.
Die Kunst der Griechen wards gebildet, als Kunst zu sprechen ohne fremde
Attribute. Zerstreute Blatter, quoted in Srensen, Symbol und Symbolismus, p. 62.
On Architectural Symbols, fol. 1013, p. 64. See also Der Stil, vol. 1, p. 390,
221
N O T E S T O P P. 1 0 6 1 0 9
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
Ubereinstimmung
einer Kunsterscheinung mit ihrer Entstehungsgeschichte,
mit allen Vorbedingungen und Umstanden ihres Werdens. Ueber Baustile,
p. 402. In this instance, I do not follow Mallgrave and Herrmanns translation
in Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings.
Prolegomenon to Der Stil, p. 183. See also A Critical Analysis and Prognosis of
Present-day Artistic Production, p. 259: A theory of building based on these
principles will therefore be different from the theory of architecture. Reviewing
the eld of history, it will not apprehend and explain as facts the monuments of
different countries and different times, but will resolve them as different values
of a variable function of given variable coefcients; it will do this in order to
reveal the law and inner necessity that reigns throughout the world of art forms
as throughout nature.
The Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 241. The theory was presented for the
rst time in Outline for a System of Comparative Style-Theory, MS 122 and
124.
The Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 241.
Science, Industry, and Art, p. 136. For more on the discrepancies between
Sempers different denitions of style, see Mallgrave, Commentary on Sempers London Lecture, RES, Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 6, Fall 1983,
pp. 2331.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style-Theory, MS 124, fol. 5, pp. 89.
Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 242.
Ibid., p. 242. Semper was ambiguous in his description of the inner coefcients.
In a draft for Outline for a System of Comparative Style-Theory (MS 124),
purpose was presented as constituting the functional relation itself i.e., making
up the C in the formula (fols. 67). In a different version of the same lecture
(MS 122), however, Semper described purpose as one of the inner coefcients;
i.e., exercising a constant inuence in the functional expression, but only as
one of several coefcients within it. Hans Semper, when editing Kleine Schriften
after his fathers death, chose to merge the two manuscripts and include in
MS 122 the passages from MS 124 where Semper dened C as purpose. As
Mallgrave has pointed out, this has led to a simplied interpretation of Semper
222
N O T E S T O P P. 1 1 5 1 2 0
as a protofunctionalist: not only has the so-called rst class of variables come
to be perceived as exerting a controlling or dominant inuence over the second,
but with use (Zweck) deposited into this class, Sempers theory has been read
as blatantly purposeful, Commentary on Sempers November Lecture, p. 28.
I agree with Mallgrave that Hans Sempers version is misleading. Yet, Sempers
notion of purpose as an inner coefcient of the work is not without its own
problems, as long as it implies that purpose is a product of the immanent interaction of Gestaltungsmomente. I discuss this immanentisation more closely in
chapters 5 and 6.
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
The Gestaltungsmomente and the inner coefcients of art seem to be two ways
of grasping the same thing: namely, the inherent lawfulness governing form and
matter. Due to the considerable inconsistency in Sempers presentation of both, it
is difcult to claim that these concepts are identical, yet his seamless transition in
The Attributes of Formal Beauty from a discussion of the Gestaltungsmomente
(dened as the formal law and logic noticeable in the creation of artistic works,
p. 225) to the formula for style and its inner coefcients (dened as what is
contained in the work itself and that comply with certain compelling natural
and physical laws, p. 242) should be enough to alert us to their afnity. The
ambiguous role of purpose in the discussion of the inner coefcients likewise
mirrors Sempers curious introduction of purpose as a fourth Gestaltungsmoment,
discussed earlier in this chapter.
Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 242.
Ibid., p. 242.
On the distinction between natural and historical coefcients in Sempers formula, see F. Piel, Der Historische Stilbegriff und die Geschichtlichkeit der
Kunst in Bauer (ed.) Probleme der Kunstwissenschaft, pp. 289.
Fundamentalprinzip der Erndung, H. Semper: Gottfried Semper, ein Bild,
p. 12.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style-Theory (MS 124), fol. 6, p. 18: It
will be said, that an artistic problem is not a mathematical one, and that results in
ne arts are hardly obtainable by calculation. This is very true, and I am the last
to believe that mere reection and calculation may at any time succeed in lling
the place of talent and natural taste. Also I only wanted this schedule as a crutch
for leaning on it in explaining the subject. I therefore will be kindly allowed to
prosecute my proposition.
On Architectural Symbols, fol. 2, p. 61. Further on Sempers notion of architecture as a Lapidargeschichte of society, see, for instance, Der Stil, vol. 1,
pp. 212 and 406; Der Stil, vol. 2, p. 3; and Prospectus to Vergleichende Baulehre,
pp. 1701. See also his late criticism of the potential determinism implied in
this view, in On Architectural Styles (Zurich lecture, 4 March 1869), MS 280,
trans. Mallgrave and Herrmann, Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings,
p. 268.
Diese bedeutungsvollen Formen wurden als solche erkannt, und in Folge dessen
zu religiosen
und nationalen Emblemen erhoben. Der Stil, vol. 2, p. 5.
223
N O T E S T O P P. 1 1 1 1 1 5
103
104
105
THE
2
3
4
5
6
Wie bedeutsam tritt das schwebende geistige und klare Wesen der quellenverehrenden Hellenen schon aus dieser untergeordneten Kunstgestaltung sym
bolisch heraus, gegenuber
der Situla, bei welcher das physische Gesetz der
Schwere und der Gleichgewichts einen ganz entgegengesetzten, aber dem Geiste
des a gyptischen Volks nicht minder entsprechenden, Ausdruck fand! . . . Noch
[Ubereinstimmung],
see Bauer, Architektur als Kunst, pp. 1645. See
also Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art, Yale University Press 1991,
C O M PA R AT I V E
METHOD
Schule verband sich dann eine methodischer Fortschritt von der hochster
Bedeutung. Von der aristotelischen Schule ab hatte die Ausbildung der vergleichenden
deren
Methoden in der Biologie der Panzen und Tiere den Ausgangspunkt fur
Anwendung in den Geisteswissen schaften gebildet . . . Indem nun die historische
Schule die Ableitung der allgemeinen Wahrheiten in den Geisteswissenschaften
sie die vergleichende
durch abstraktes konstruktives Denkens verwarf, wurde fur
224
N O T E S T O P P. 1 1 5 1 2 0
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Gebaude, des Alterthums und fremdes Volcker, (Vienna 1721), trans. Thomas
Lediard, preface to the rst English edition, London 1737.
Entwurf, Vorrede. Further on the question of relativism in Fisher von Erlachs
work, see H. Sedlmayr, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Munich: Wien 1956,
225
N O T E S T O P P. 1 2 0 1 2 3
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
Durand himself never used the term type, but referred instead to genre. For
the changing notion of type and genre in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, see Lavin, Quatrem`ere de Quincy; and A. Vidler, The Idea of Type:
The Transformation of the Academic Ideal, 17501830, in Oppositions, no. 8,
1977.
See, for instance, Durands recommendations for circular plans on the ground of
The implications of this shift have been discussed, for instance, by Prez-Gomez,
Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science, chapter 9, Durand and Functionalism, pp. 198326.
Prcis, vol. 1, p. 28. Quoted from the 1823 edition in Villari, J. N. L. Durand,
p. 59.
See Outline for a System of Comparative Style-Theory, MS 122, and Prospectus to Vergleichende Baulehre. A student in Paris in the 1820s, Semper probably
knew Durands work well, through both his tutor Gau and his contacts with the
Ecole
Polytechnique and Ecole
de Beaux Arts. See Mallgrave, Introduction to
The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, note 7.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style-Theory, MS 122, fol. 7, p. 9.
Ibid., fol. 7, p. 9.
See, for example, Prospectus to Vergleichende Baulehre, p. 169.
See, for example, Goethes letter from Italy to Frau von Stein: As I have looked
upon nature, so do I now look upon art, and I am now achieving what I have
striven for so long, a more perfect conception of the highest things which men
have made. Quoted in Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, p. 206. For more on
the aesthetic organicists, see ibid., German Theories of Vegetable Genius.
On Herders vitalism, see F. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from
226
N O T E S T O P P. 1 2 3 1 2 7
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
Kant to Fichte, Harvard University Press 1987, pp. 12760. On the use of biological metaphors in historiography, see, for example, A. D. Breck, The Use of
Biological Concepts in the Writing of History, in Breck and Yourgrau (eds.),
Biology, History and Natural Philosophy, London: Plenum 1972.
Prospectus, Vergleichende Baulehre, p. 170.
For biographical data on Cuvier, see W. Coleman, Georges Cuvier, Zoologist,
Harvard University Press 1964, pp. 525. For a discussion of Cuviers relation to Aristotelian and Darwinian biology, respectively, see Cassirer, The
Problem of Knowledge, pp. 11836; W. Coleman, Biology in the 19th Century,
Cambridge University Press 1977, pp. 1719; and M. Foucault, The Order
of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, London: Routledge 1970,
pp. 26379.
See Mallgrave, Introduction to The Four Elements of Architecture and Other
Writings, p. 31.
Prospectus, Vergleichende Baulehre, p. 170, and Outline for a System of Comparative Style-Theory, MS 122, fol. 3, p. 8.
See Rykwert, Gottfried Semper and the Conception of Style, pp. 747. In
contrast, Mallgrave has been critical of what he sees as the exaggerated emphasis
on Cuvier in recent Semper research. A Commentary to Sempers November
Lecture RES, Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 6, Fall 1983, p. 26.
Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 264.
Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge, p. 138, my emphasis.
See Coleman, Georges Cuvier, pp. 3 and 98107.
Cuvier, Le rgne animal distribu dapr`es son organisation (1817), vol. II, p. 28,
quoted in Coleman, Georges Cuvier, p. 63.
Cuvier, Animal, Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles (1816), vol. II, p. lii, translated
and printed in Coleman, Georges Cuvier, p. 74.
Cuvier, Rapport Historique sur le progr`es des sciences naturelles, pp. 32930,
quoted in Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 270.
Georges Cuvier, Discourse sur les rvolutions de la surface du globe (Paris 1828),
quoted in Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge, pp. 1301.
The Order of Things, p. 268.
C. Linnaeus, The Elements of Botany, trans. H. Rose, London 1775, p. 231, quoted
in Coleman, Georges Cuvier, p. 20. On articial versus natural systems of classications, see Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge, pp. 1279.
As he wrote: If . . . the Maker of all things, who has done nothing without design,
has furnished this earthly globe, like a museum, with the most admirable proofs
of his wisdom and power; if, moreover, this splendid theatre would be adorned
in vain without a spectator; and if he has placed in it Man, the chief and most
perfect of all his works, who is alone capable of duly considering the wonderful
conomy of the whole; it follows, that Man is made for the purpose of studying
the Creators works, that he may observe in them the evident marks of divine
wisdom. Reections on the Study of Nature, London: Nicol 1785, pp. 1314.
Ibid., p. 4.
227
N O T E S T O P P. 1 2 7 1 3 1
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
Ibid., p. 17.
For a study of the emblematic worldview of early natural history, see W. B.
Ashworth; Natural History and the Emblematic Worldview, in D. C.
Lindberg and R. S. Westman (eds.), Reappraisals of the Scientic Revolution,
Cambridge University Press 1990, pp. 30332. Linnaeus was strongly inuenced by hermetic philosophy, particularly Count Gustaf Bonde, whose
Clavicula Hermetic Scienti was published in 1732. Further on Linnaeus and
hermeticism, see K. R. V. Wikman, Lachesis and Nemesis: Four chapters on the
Human Condition in the Writings of Carl Linnus, Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell
1970.
As Linnus wrote, Should I not from the perpetual movement and order of
the stars see the Conservator and from the reproduction of animals and plants,
when they are referred back to the unity, see the Creation? Lachesis Naturalis
qu tradit Ditam naturalem and Nemesis Divina, quoted in Wickman, Lachesis
and Nemesis, p. 100.
Cassirer, The Problem of Knowledge, p. 131.
See, for instance, Goethes Metamorphosis of Plants, in Scientic Studies, ed. and
trans. D. Miller, New York: Suhrkamp 1988, vol. 12, p. 94. See also Cassirer,
The Problem of Knowledge, p. 156; and Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 140.
Further on the idea of a chain of being, see A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of
Being, A Study of the History of an Idea, Harvard University Press 1964.
Biology was not introduced as a term until about 1800, when it came to replace
Natural History as a comprehensive label for botany, zoology, palaeontology,
etc. See Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 269.
Immanuel Kant (17241804). Cuvier had a thorough knowledge of Kant through
his colleague and teacher in comparative anatomy at the Stuttgart Karlschule,
Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (17651844). Kielmeyer explicitly relied on Kants
notion of organic systems when developing his function-based comparative
anatomy, stating that the organs stand in purposeful relationship to one
another . . . each is the effect and cause of the other, and for us, therefore, the relationship is purposeful and not mechanical. Gesammelte Schriften, F. H. Holler
(ed.), Berlin 1938, p. 228. Quoted in C. Coulston Gillispie (ed.), Dictionary of
Scientic Biography, vol. VII, New York: Schribners 1973, pp. 3669. For more
on the relation between Cuvier and Kielmeyers Kantianism, see Cassirer, The
Problem of Knowledge, p. 128.
See, for example, the First introduction to the Critique of Judgement, especially
section IX: On Teleological Judging. In Critique of Judgement, trans. W. S.
Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett 1987, pp. 421 ff.
Critique of Pure Reason, A642648, B670676, trans. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood,
Cambridge University Press 1998. Further on Kants regulative ideas, see J. D.
McFarland, Kants Concept of Teleology, University of Edinburgh Press 1970, p. 25.
Critique of Judgement, 77: On the Peculiarity of the Human Understanding
That Makes the Concept of a Natural Purpose Possible for Use, pp. 28894.
Critique of Pure Reason, A6456/B6734.
228
N O T E S T O P P. 1 3 1 1 3 3
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
Ibid., A61619/B6447.
In other words, it must be a matter of complete indifference to us, when we
perceive such unity, whether we say that God in his wisdom willed it so, or that
nature has wisely arranged it thus. For what has justied us in adopting the idea
of a supreme intelligence as a schema of the regulative principle is precisely this
greatest possible systematic and purposive unity a unity which our reason has
required as a regulative principle that must underlie all investigation of nature.
Ibid., A699/B727.
Ibid., A6857/B71315: The highest formal unity that alone rests on concepts
of reason is the purposive unity of things; and the speculative interests of reason
make it necessary to regard every ordinance of the world as if it had sprouted
from the intention of a highest reason. Such a principle, namely, opens up for our
reason, as applied to the eld of experience, entirely new prospects for connecting
up things in the world in accordance with teleological laws, and thereby attaining
to the greatest systematic unity among them.
First introduction to Critique of Judgement, part II, p. 393.
What is presupposed [in empirical judgements on nature] is that nature, even in
its empirical laws, has adhered to a certain parsimony suitable for our judgement,
and adhered to a uniformity which we can grasp; and this presupposition must
proceed all comparison, as an a priori principle of judgement. First introduction
to Critique of Judgement, part V, p. 401.
Kants principle of the reective judgement is that nature is purposive for our
knowledge of it. This principle is a transcendental principle and requires as such
a transcendental deduction. See McFarland, Kants Concept of Teleology, p. 83.
First introduction to Critique of Judgement, part II, p. 394. See also Critique of
Judgement, 75, p. 280.
Critique of Judgement, 62. For a comment on this point, see McFarland, Kants
Concept of Teleology, p. 78.
See Critique of Judgement, 15, p. 73, and General Comment on the First
Division of the Analytic, p. 92.
The purposiveness without purpose is for Kant the link between the teleological and aesthetic judgement. In the latter, the work is purpose only with respect
to our strictly disinterested pleasure in being exposed to the free play of our
cognitive faculties. In the former, nature is purposive strictly for our cognitive
demand of wholeness. See, for instance, Critique of Judgement 15, p. 73: It is
already evident that the beautiful, which we judge on the basis of merely formal
purposiveness, i.e., a purposiveness without a purpose, is quite independent of
the concept of the good.
Critique of Judgement, 64, p. 249.
Critique of Pure Reason, B8601.
The full quote is Jener entscheidende Punct aber, der hier alles aufhellen wird,
ist die innre Structur der Sprachen oder die vergleichende Grammatik, welche
229
N O T E S T O P P. 1 3 3 1 3 4
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
ruckw
arts zu verfolgen und sie auf einen oder mehrere Punkte zuruckzuf
uhren,
woselbst sie in gemeinsamen Urformen einander begegnen, wie es ihr auf
diesem Wege gelungen ist, die Sprachkunde zu einer a chten Wissenschaft
zu erheben . . . eben so lasst sich ein analoges Bestreben auf dem Felde der
Kunstforschung rechtfertigen, welches der Entwicklung der Kunstformen aus
ihren Keimen und Wurzeln, ihren Uebergangen und Verzweigungen diejenige
der Ursprunge
des vergleichencomparationis: Eine Philosophische Erorterung
den Sprachstudiums bei Leibniz und Humboldt; and R. H. Robins, Leibniz
and Wilhelm von Humboldt and the History of Comparative Linguistics, both
in T. de Mauro and Formigari (eds.), Leibniz, Humboldt, and the Origins of Comparativism. Amsterdam: Benjamin 1990.
Robins, Leibniz and Humboldt, p. 87.
Borsche sums up Leibnizs notion of the Ursprache in Die Sakularisierung des
Gottes erkanTertium comparationis, p. 104: Adam als unmittelbares Geschopf
nte die Dinge und benannte sie mit ihren wahren Namen. In dem Mass, in dem
wir uns von unserem Stammvater entfernen, degeneriert die Erkenntnis, und
mit der Zeit wird auch die Sprache korrumpiert. Erneuerung ist nur von einer
Ruckkehr
zu den Ursprungen
zu erwarten, zur adamitischen Ursprache.
See, for instance, Court de Gebelins Histoire naturelle de la parole (1776), who
asserted that Only comparison of the greatest possible number of languages
can lead to the primitive language and to the true etymology of each word.
Quoted in S. Auroux, Representation and the Place of Linguistic Change Before
Comparative Grammar, in de Mauro and Formigari (eds.), Leibniz, Humboldt,
and the Origins of Comparativism, pp. 2334.
. . . uns gelegenheit gebe, ewige und allgemeine wahrheiten zu nden, so in
allen weltkugeln, ja in allen zeiten, und mit einem worth bey Gott selbst gelten
mussen,
von dem sie auch bestandig hehriessen . . . [sic]. G. W. Leibniz, Die
Philosophische Schriften, Berlin 187590, vol. VII, pp. 11415, quoted in Borsche,
Die Sakularisierung des Tertium comparationis, p. 110.
230
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86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
Hulfsverba,
sondern durch Flexion, d. h. durch innre Modication der Wurzel
zu erkennen zu geben. Ibid., book 1, chapter 3, p. 35.
See H. M. Hoenigwald, Etymology Against Grammar in the Early 19th Cen
tury, in HEL: Histoire, Epistemologie,
Langage, vol. 6, no. 2, 1984, pp. 95100.
In this sense, romantic linguistics anticipated the structuralist view of language as
a set of relations. Further on this afnity, see Cassirer, Structuralism in Modern
Linguistics, in Word, Journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York, vol. 1, no. 2,
August 1945, pp. 99120.
The true grammatical form, Humboldt continued, contains the expression of
the relationship purely, and contains nothing substantial according to which
the understanding could deviate. In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. IV, Berlin 1903,
p. 3048, quoted in M. L. Manchester, The Philosophical Foundation of Humboldts
Linguistic Doctrines, Amsterdam: Benjamin 1985, p. 138.
In pointierter Wendung gegen die traditionelle Sprachauffassung, wie sie auch
von Leibniz noch vertreten wurde, lat sich mit Humboldt festhalten: Es gibt
keine ewigen Ideen in den Sprachen oder hinter den Sprachen, es gibt keine
naturliche
universelle Bedeutung. Borsche, Die Sakularisierung des Tertium
comparationis, p. 112.
On Dramatic Art and Literature (1808), quoted and translated in M. H.
Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, p. 213.
This has been called the inectional superiority thesis. See Manchester, The
Philosophical Foundation of Humboldts Linguistic Doctrines, chapter 7. The implicit
racism in this line of thinking is investigated by M. Olender; The Language of
Paradise, trans. A. Goldhammer, Harvard University Press 1992.
Uber
die Sprache und Weisheiten der Indier, book 1, chapter 4, pp. 501: In der
indischen oder griechischen Sprache ist jede Wurzel wahrhaft das, was der Name
sagt, und wie ein lebendiger Keim, denn weil die Verhaltnissbegriffe durch innre
Veranderung bezeichnet werden, so ist der Entfaltung freier Spielraum gegeben,
die Fulle
der Entwicklung kann ins Unbestimmbare sich ausbreiten, und ist
231
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97
98
Ibid., p. 51: . . . kein fruchtbarer Same, sondern nur wie ein Haufen Atome, die
jeder Wind des Zufalls leicht aus einander treiben oder zusammenfuhren
kann;
der Zusammenhang eigentlich kein andrer, als ein bloss mechanischer durch
a ussere Anfugung.
Ibid., p. 44: kunstreiche Einfachheit.
T O WA R D S
1
2
3
METHOD
OF
INVENTING
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7
8
9
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12
13
is evident that in astronomy we can only use the rst. Ibid., book 2, chapter 1,
p. 132.
Ibid., book 5, chapter 1, p. 166.
The historical comparison of the consecutive states of humanity is . . . the chief
scientic device of the new political philosophy. Ibid., book 6, chapter 3, p. 248.
Plan of the Scientic Operations Necessary for Reorganizing Society (1822),
in Lenzer, August Comte and Positivism, p. 47. As Comte continued: This science,
like all others, possesses general recourses for verication, even independently
of its necessary relation with physiology. These recourses are based on the fact
that the present condition of the human race considered as a whole, all degrees of
civilisation coexist on different points of the globe, from that of the New Zealand
savages to that of the French and English. Thus, the connection established by
the succession of epochs can be veried by a comparison of places. Ibid., p. 65.
Ibid., pp. 656.
The full quote is Calculation, as it were, commands nature, and determines her
phenomena more accurately than observation can make them known. Experiment forces her to unveil, and observation watches her when refractory, and is
always on the alert to surprise and detect her . . . Mere observation will, however,
avail but little without comparison; we must observe attentively the same body
in the various positions in which it is at different times placed by nature; and
we must compare different bodies with each other, until we can recognise any
invariable relation which may exist between their structure and the phenomena
which they exhibit. Thus may such bodies, when diligently observed and carefully compared with each other, be considered experiments ready prepared by
the hand of nature, who may be supposed to add to or subtract from each other
in the manner the experimentalist does in the laboratory with the inert material
subject to his control, and herself to present us with the result of such additions
or subtractions. Cuvier, The Animal Kingdom Arranged in Conformity with its
Organisation with Additional Description of all the Species Hitherto Named, and of
Many not Before Noticed, trans. and ed. E. Grifth and G. B. Whittaker, London
1827, vol. 1: The Class Mammalia, introduction, pp. 46. On Comtes reliance
on Cuvier, see L. Kolakowski, Positivist Philosophy from Hume to the Vienna Circle,
Harmondsworth: Penguin 1972, pp. 717.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Comparative Method in Social Anthropology, in
Evans-Pritchard (ed.), The Position of Women in Primitive Societies and Other Essays
in Social Anthropology, New York: Free Press 1965, p. 33.
For more on the positivist implications of the comparative method in social
anthropology, see L. Holy, Introduction, in Holy (ed.), Comparative Anthropology,
Oxford: Blackwell 1987, pp. 13. Further on the experimental role of comparison
in social anthropology, see F. Eggan, Some Reections on Comparative Method
in Anthropology, in Context and Meaning in Cultural Anthropology, Melford E.
Spiro (ed.), New York: Free Press 1965, pp. 35771.
Comtes debt to enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu, Turgot,
and Condorcet is clearly visible in his attempts to formulate a social physics.
233
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15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
See J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, New York: Dover 1960, pp. 14758 and
290312.
On the idealisation implied in experiments and the role of this idealisation in
modern science, see, for instance, E. McMullin, The Conception of Science
in Galileos Work, in R. Butts and J. Pitts (eds.), New Perspectives on Galileo,
Dordrecht: Reidel 1978.
Cours, introduction, chapter 1, p. 88.
Ibid., book 2, chapter 1, p. 133.
Ibid., book 6, chapter 3, pp. 222 and 239. See also ibid., p. 137: . . . The universe
is not destined for the passive satisfaction of man, but that man, superior in
intelligence to whatever else he sees, can modify for his own good, within certain
determinate limits, the system of phenomena of which he forms a part being
able to do this by a wise exercise of his activity, disengaged from all oppressive
terror, and directed by an accurate knowledge of natural laws.
Plan of the Scientic Operations Necessary for Reorganising Society, p. 47.
Cours, book 6, chapter 1, p. 210.
Ibid., introduction, chapter 1, p. 83.
On Comtes intramundane eschatology, see E. Voegelin, From Enlightenment to
Revolution, Duke University Press 1975, pp. 13690.
Comtes positive religion prescribed a system for collective and individual commemoration and worship, and was set out in Syst`eme de politique positive, ou trait
de sociologie instituant la religion de lhumanit (185154), in Lenzer, August Comte
and Positivism, pp. 309458. For more on Comtean religion, see T. E. Wright,
The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Philosophy on Victorian Britain,
Cambridge University Press 1986. For a discussion on the relationship between
Comtes early positivism and his later theology, see Voegelin, From Enlightenment
to Revolution, p. 136. Note also Comtes own insistence on the continuity between
his early and late work, in the Preface to the Early Writings from 1854. This
publication reissued Comtes early writings (including the Saint-Simonian) and
was especially intended to demonstrate the perfect harmony that exists between
my youthful efforts and my matured concepts . . . I devoted the rst half of my
career to constructing, out of the materials supplied by the sciences, a truly positivist philosophy, this being the only possible basis of a universal religion. In
Lenzer, August Comte and Positivism, p. 3.
Syst`eme de politique positive, vol. 1, chapter 1, p. 328.
Ibid., p. 331.
Ibid., chapter 6, p. 381.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory, MS 122, fols. 56, p. 9.
Both topic and invention are familiar concepts in classical rhetoric. Topic
comes from the Greek topos (place) and signies both the art of nding arguments
and the places or commonplaces (topi koinoi) where such arguments could be
found. Inventio, correspondingly, denotes the conceiving of topics either true or
probable, which may make ones cause appear probable (Cicero, De Inventione,
trans. C. D. Yonge, London: Bell 1888, book 1.7). With his thorough classical
234
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29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
Bildung, Semper would undoubtedly have been aware of this connection. Yet,
he did not comment on it, reshaping instead these classical concepts in the
mould of modern science by choosing the new comparative sciences of anatomy,
linguistics, and politics as his methodological ideals (Science, Industry, and Art,
p. 133; and Prospectus, Vergleichende Baulehre, p. 170). This tension in Sempers
thinking between method and topic inventio and invention was lucidly
discussed by H. Hipp in a lecture titled, Eine Art Topik zu Semper (Sempers
Kosmos, symposium, ETH, Zurich, June 2002), to whom I am indebted. I am
also grateful to D. Leatherbarrow, whose incisive comments on this point have
been helpful. See the latters discussion of inventio as an architectural topic in The
Roots of Architectural Invention: Site, Enclosure, Materials, Cambridge University
Press 1993.
See, for instance, Prolegomenon, Vergleichende Baulehre, p. 170: A method analogous to that which guided Cuvier in his comparative osteology, but applied
to architecture, will by necessity greatly facilitate an overall view of this eld
and . . . will also permit an architectural theory of invention to be based on it.
Ibid., p. 171.
Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution, p. 95. On the radical utilitarianism
implied in positivist thinking, see Kolakowski, Positivist Philosophy, pp. 158200.
F. A., Hayek, The Counter Revolution of Science, London: Collier-Macmillian 1955,
p. 95.
Ibid., p. 97.
For a further discussion of this issue, see H. Arendt, The Concept of History,
in Between Past and Future, Eight Exercises in Political Thought, New York: Penguin
1993, p. 59: The comparatively new social sciences, which so quickly became to
history what technology had been to physics, may use the experiment in a much
cruder and less reliable way than do the natural sciences, but the method is the
same: they too prescribe conditions to human behaviour, as modern physics prescribes conditions to natural processes. If their vocabulary is repulsive and their
hope to close the alleged gap between our scientic mastery of nature and our
deplored impotence to manage human affairs through an engineering science
of human relations sounds frightening, it is only because they have decided to
treat man as an entirely natural being whose life process can be handled in the
same way as all other processes.
For a presentation of the transition from the Greek theoria, signifying participatory observation, to the modern conception of theory as a procedure for
production, see H. G. Gadamer, What Is Practice? The Conditions of Social
Reason, in Reason in the Age of Science, trans. F. G. Lawrence, Cambridge: MIT
Press 1981, pp. 6987.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory, MS 122, fol. 21, p. 13.
First introduction to Critique of Judgement, part I, On Philosophy as a System,
p. 386 (my emphasis).
See D. Vesely, Architecture and the Conict of Representation, AA Files 8,
1987, p. 24.
235
N O T E S T O P P. 1 4 4 1 5 1
38
Heinrich Hubschs
(17951863) essay, In Which Style Should We Build (1828),
is perhaps the most famous of these contributions. For a thorough presentation
of the German debate on style, with translations of its key contributions, see
W. Herrmann (ed.), In What Style Should We Build? The German Debate on Architectural Style, Santa Monica: Getty 1992.
For a presentation of the German promoters of Greek revival, see M. Schwarzer,
German Architectural Theory and the Search for Modern Identity, Cambridge University Press 1995, pp. 3847. For a particular investigation of classicism in
relation to German nationalism, see D. Watkin and T. Mellinghoff, German
Architecture and the Classical Ideal 17401840, London: Thames and Hudson
1987.
alle Zeiten. Leo von Klenze (17841864), Versuch einer
. . . ein festes Princip fur
Wiederherstellung des toskanischen Tempels nach seinen technischen und historischen
Analogien, Munich 1824, quoted in Kruft, Geschichte der Architekturtheorie, p. 350.
Karl Botticher,
The Principles of the Hellenic and Germanic Way of Building
with Regard to Their Application to Our Present Way of Building (1846),
in Herrmann, In What Style, pp. 14767. Friedrich Gilly (17721800), Einige
Gedanken uber
die Nothwendigkeit, die verschiedenen Theile der Baukunst
SEMPER
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
10
11
12
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14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
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27
zweckmassigen Losung
der vorliegenden Aufgabe bedienen, damit die zu
erwahlende Bauart keinem der bekannten Baustyle ausschliesslich und speziell
angehore.
Brief for Maximilian IIs competition for a new style, quoted in Kruft,
Geschichte der Architekturtheorie, p. 354.
For instance, Lonce Reynaud, Lon Vaudoyer, and Hippolyte Fortoul.
See Schwarzer, German Architectural Theory, p. 63; Bergdoll, Lon Vaudoyer,
pp. 11419; and Middleton, The Rationalist Interpretations of Classicism.
Kruft traces this approach to, among others, Christian Ludwig Stiegliz (1756
1836) and his Beitrage zur Geschichte der Ausbildung der Baukunst (1834), in
Geschichte der Architekturtheorie, p. 333.
See C. Schorske, Fin-de-si`ecle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Cambridge University
Press 1979, chapter 2.
These categories can be encountered with some variations in many of
Sempers essays and lectures; for instance, A Critical Analysis and Prognosis
of Present-Day Artistic Production, Inuence of Historical Research, and
Prolegomenon to Der Stil. In the latter he added Purists, Schematists, and
Futurists to his list.
A Critical Analysis and Prognosis of Present-Day Artistic Production, p. 255.
Inuence of Historical Research on Trends in Contemporary Architecture,
pp. 1934.
A Critical Analysis and Prognosis of Present-Day Artistic Production, p. 256.
Ibid., p. 257.
Preliminary Remarks on Polychrome Architecture, pp. 467. See also On Architectural Styles, p. 268.
237
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29
30
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33
34
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36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
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N O T E S T O P P. 1 6 2 1 6 4
HISTORY
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
AND
HISTORICISM
Orient bis Rom wars Stamm: jetzt gingen aus dem Stamme Aste
und Zweige;
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19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
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45
the temporal and spiritual forces which must come into play have emerged from
their inertia. On the Industrial System, p. 153. See also Ibid., p. 175: So long
as the political order does not conform to this national tendency, society will
necessarily be in a state of crisis.
As Leopold Ranke wrote in his Weltgeschichte: I imagine the Deity if I may
allow myself this observation as seeing the whole of historical humanity in its
totality (since no time lies before the Deity), and nding it all equally valuable.
IX parts 2, 5, 7, quoted in Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 210.
Mallgrave points out the Saint-Simonian connection and argues convincingly
that Sempers frequent use of the term organic in describing the social, political,
and artistic situation of ancient Greece suggests familiarity with Saint-Simonian
ideas. Gottfried Semper, p. 56.
Dilthey, Three Epochs of Modern Aesthetics, in Dilthey, Poetry and Experience; Selected
Works, vol. 5, p. 216.
See W. von Humboldt on the afnity between the artist and the historian. On
the Task of the Historian, pp. 109111.
On the modern notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk, see R. M. Bisanz, The Romantic
Synthesis of the Arts: Nineteenth-Century German Theories on a Universal
Art, Konsthistorisk Tidsskrift, xxxxiv, 1975, p. 39. The notion is also discussed
lucidly in G. Hauslers unpublished thesis, In the Artwork We Become One. The
Problem of the Gesamtkunstwerk in the Visual Arts of the Early Twentieth Century,
Cambridge 1989.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory, MS 122, fols. 1314,
p. 10. Mallgrave has an in-depth discussion of the role of the Gesamtkunstwerk
in Sempers thinking in Gottfried Semper.
The Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 225.
The Artwork of the Future, in Richard Wagners Prose Works, trans. W. A. Ellis,
vol. 1, London: Reeves 1895, p. 77.
Ibid., p. 71. See also ibid., p. 182: . . . our modern art is a mere product of culture
and has not sprung from Life itself; therefore, being nothing but a hothouse plant,
it cannot strike root in the natural soil or ourish in the natural climate of the
present.
Ibid., pp. 6972 and 7788. Wagner equated nature with necessity, as the
following passage indicates: Nature engenders her myriad forms without caprice
or arbitrary aim, according to her need, and therefore of Necessity. The same
Necessity is the generative and formative force of human life. Only that which is
un-capricious and un-arbitrary can spring from a real need; but on Need alone
is based the very principle of Life. Ibid., p. 69.
Ibid., p. 81. Wagner located this discrepancy on political, individual, and aesthetic
levels in modern society. Ibid., pp. 86, 914, 1823, 195, and 207.
Ibid., p. 195.
Ibid., p. 77.
Science, Industry, and Art, p. 148.
Ibid., p. 130.
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N O T E S T O P P. 1 7 0 1 7 1
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
. . . die Poesie lebendig und gesellig, und das Leben und die Gesellschaft poetisch machen. Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaum Fragmente, in Kritische Friedrich
Allgemeine Ubersicht
der neuesten Philosophischen Literatur, Philosophisches
Journal, no. 8, 1798, quoted in Koselleck, Futures Past, p. 202.
Ibid., pp. 2047. Koselleck quotes Robespierres speech on the Revolutionary
Constitution, 10 May 1793: The time has come to call upon each to realise
242
N O T E S T O P P. 1 7 1 1 7 6
60
61
62
63
64
65
his own destiny. The progress of human Reason has laid the basis for this
great Revolution, and the particular duty of hastening it has fallen to you.
Ibid., p. 7.
Socialism, Utopian and Scientic, trans. E. Aveling, in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Selected Works in Three Volumes, Moscow: Progress 1983, vol. 3, pp. 149
50.
For a discussion of this inversion, see Arendt, The Concept of History, p. 77:
Although [Marxs notion of making history] is closely connected with Vicos
idea that history was made by man, as distinguished from nature which was
made by God, the difference between them is still decisive. For Vico, as later
for Hegel, the importance of the concept of history was primarily theoretical.
It never occurred to either of them to apply this concept directly by using it as
a principle of action. Truth they conceived of as being revealed to the contemplative, backward-directed glance of the historian, who, by being able to see the
process as a whole, is in a position to overlook the narrow aims of acting men,
concentrating instead on the higher aims that realise themselves behind their
backs (Vico). Marx, on the other hand, combined this notion of history with
the teleological political philosophies of the earlier stages of the modern age,
so that in his thought the higher aims which according to the philosophers
of history revealed themselves only to the backward glance of the historian and
philosopher could become intended aims of political action.
Semper, The Attributes of Formal Beauty, p. 225.
In the Artwork We Become One, p. 14.
Truth and Method, p. 88. See also ibid., p. 70.
I borrow this term from G. Bryant (ne Hausler) paraphrasing Peter Behrens.
Art as Precursor of Redemption , Mac Journal 5, 1999.
BETWEEN
2
3
4
5
6
POETICS
AND
PRACTICAL
AESTHETICS
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21
Erkenntnis moglich
und welche Mittel haben wir, sie zu erreichen?, Die Entstehung der Hermeneutik (1900), in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V, p. 317.
Introduction to the Human Sciences, preface, p. 50. For more on Diltheys Kantian
ambitions, see M. Ermarth, Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason,
Chicago University Press 1978; and Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 21921.
Truth and Method, p. 220. My interpretation of Dilthey is much indebted to
Gadamer, especially Truth and Method, part 2.1.2: Diltheys Entanglement in
the Aporias of Historicism, pp. 21841.
As Dilthey wrote: In the human world the individual is an intrinsic value
indeed the only intrinsic value we can establish indubitably. Other Persons
and Their Expressions of Life, trans. K. L. Heiges, in W. Dilthey, Descriptive
Psychology and Historical Understanding, The Hague: Nijhoff 1977, pp. 1301.
Gesammelte Schriften, vol. VII, p. 177, quoted and translated in Gadamer, Truth
and Method, p. 223.
Introduction to the Human Sciences, book 1, p. 81.
Ibid., book 1, p. 58.
Ibid., book 1, p. 61.
Gesammelte Schriften, vol. VII, p. 278, quoted and translated in R. Makkreel,
Dilthey: Philosopher of the Human Studies, Princeton University Press 1975, p. 25.
Introduction to the Human Sciences, book 1, p. 89.
Ibid., book 1, p. 88.
Ibid., book 1, p. 158: These sciences [i.e., the human sciences] have a wholly
different foundation and structure than the natural sciences. Their subject matter is composed of units that are given rather than inferred units that are
understandable from within. Here we start with an immediate knowledge or
understanding in order to gradually attain conceptual knowledge. See also Ideas
Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology (1894), in which Dilthey wrote:
Just as the system of Culture economy, law, religion, art, and science and
the external organisation of society in the ties of family, community, church, and
state, arise from the living nexus of the human soul, so can they be understood
only by reference to it. Trans. R. M. Zaner, in Descriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding, p. 31. Dilthey drew here on Schleiermachers notion of the
individual as a manifestation of universal life. See A. Nabrings, Historismus als
Paralyse der Geschichte, pp. 701.
Introduction to the Human Sciences, book 1, pp. 1629.
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28
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31
vol. 4, Tubingen:
Mohr 1987, p. 411. Following Makkreel and Rodis translation
in Wilhelm Dilthey Selected Works, vol. 1, p. 505, I have translated Zusammenhang
as system rather than the more literal connection.
Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 2334.
Ibid., p. 234.
Paul Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, Briefwechseln (1923), p. 193. Quoted and translated in Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 451. The quote continues: Windelband
assigns patterns to history. . . . For Windelband, history is a series of pictures,
of individual patterns an aesthetic demand. To the natural scientist, there remains, beside his science, a kind of human tranquilliser, only aesthetic enjoyment. But your conception of history is that of a nexus of forces, of unities of
force, to which the category of pattern is to be applicable only by a kind of
transference.
Comte, Cours, book 2, chapter 1, p. 133. Further on the operative ambitions of Diltheys Geisteswissenschaften, see Gadamer, Truth and Method,
p. 239; and Das Problem Diltheys: Zwischen Romantik und Positivismus,
p. 41819: die Prognosen und Planungen der Gesellschaftswissenschaften der
Zukunft ware das die erfolgreiche Objektivierung jener Selbstbesinnung, die
Dilthey als Ziel vorschwebt? . . . Es ist nicht zu leugnen, da Dilthey wirklich an
Uberzeugung
seiner Jugend festgehalten hat, da es in den Wissenschaften und
die Ideale
Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V, p. 64] Er teilt mit dieser Uberzeugung
der modernen Aufklarung. Ibid., pp. 41819.
Gadamer follows Heidegger on this point. See Being and Time, division 2, section
V: Temporality and Historicality, p. 428: The existential-ontological constitution of human historicality has been covered up by the way Daseins history is
ordinarily interpreted.
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 234.
Ibid., p. 240.
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47
The comparison between Sempers starting point in the motifs and Diltheys
starting point in the notion of Erlebnis should be made with caution, however.
Erlebnis for Dilthey is a purely psychological phenomenon. Semper, on the other
hand, never approached a psychological understanding of art (as Schmarsow
would do some years later, based on ideas borrowed from Semper), but rather
saw it as a strictly objective phenomenon.
Truth and Method, p. 297.
Grassi, Kunst und Mythos, p. 115.
Narrated Time, trans. R. Sweeney, in A Ricoeur Reader: Reection and Imagination, ed. M. J. Valds, University of Toronto Press 1991, p. 345.
A Critical Analysis and Prognosis of Present-Day Artistic Production, p. 253.
See Ricoeur, Metaphor and the Main Problem of Hermeneutics, in A Ricoeur
Reader, p. 317.
See my discussion of this much-misunderstood quotation in chapter 3, note 74.
Vergleichende Baukunde, fol. 1, quoted and translated in Herrmann, In Search,
p. 161.
As Heidegger puts it: Method is no longer simply a sequence arranged somehow into various stages of observation, proof, exposition, and summary of knowledge and teachings . . . Method is now the name for the securing, conquering
proceedings against beings, in order to capture them as objects for the subject.
Heidegger, Nietzsche, trans. F. A. Capuzzi, San Francisco: Harper & Row 1979,
vol. 4, p. 120.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory, fol. 5, p. 9.
Comte, Cours, p. 85.
As Ricoeur sums up Diltheys project: At the same time that Dilthey brought
to reection the great problem of the intelligibility of the historical as such, he
was inclined . . . to search for the key to a solution, not on the side of ontology
but in the reform of epistemology itself. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences,
Cambridge University Press 1982, p. 48.
J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, London: Heinemann 1972,
part 2; Positivism, Pragmatism, Historicism, p. 67. See also M. Murray, Modern
Philosophy of History: Its Origin and Destination, The Hague: Nijhoff 1970, p. 24,
where Murray argues that historicism is dened by precisely this conation:
A source of confusion permeating most discussions of history comes from the
academic conation of history with historiography, a conation which ranges
from mere carelessness to an explicit philosophical program. This confusion,
implicit or explicit, we shall call historicism. Epistemologically expressed, historicism claims that all serious questions about history can be reduced to questions about the methods and disciplines of historiography.
Knowledge and Human Interests, p. 3.
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 299.
Practical Art in Metals and hard Materials; its Technology, History and Styles,
introduction, 8. Unpublished manuscript in the Victoria and Albert Museum
Library. The work was commissioned by Henry Cole in 1852 to give theoretical
246
N O T E S T O P P. 1 8 5 1 9 1
48
49
50
51
52
53
support to his reform of British art education, and earned Semper a professorship
in Coles new Department of Practical Art. I have not corrected Sempers English
grammar or his idiosyncratic use of capital letters.
On nineteenth-century criteria for the arrangement of art collections, see
Jenkins, Archaeologists & Aesthetes, chapter 4, pp. 56102.
Practical Art in Metals and hard Materials; its Technology, History and Styles,
introduction, 17.
Ibid., 10.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 10.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style Theory, MS 122, fol. 5, p. 8.
EPILOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
247
k
A complete bibliography of Sempers writings will be available in Harry Francis
Mallgrave and Michael Robinsons forthcoming translation of Der Stil into English:
Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics: A Handbook for Technicians, Artists, and Friends of the Arts. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, in
press.
MS numbers refer to Wolfgang Herrmanns classication of manuscripts held at
Offentlicher
Lehrkursus uber
die allgemeine Geschichte der Baukunst, Dresden Lecture (1834), MS 19. Published as Sempers Dresdner Antrittsvorlesung
in Heidrun Laudel, Gottfried Semper. Architektur und Stil. Dresden: Verlag der
Kunst 1991, pp. 22134.
Vorlauge Bemerkungen uber
Katalog und Kommentare. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag 1981, pp. 1804. English translation:
Inuence of Historical Research on Trends in Contemporary Architecture. In Wolfgang Herrmann (trans. and ed.), Gottfried Semper, In Search of
Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1984, pp. 18995.
Einleitung, Vergleichende Baulehre (1850), MS 58, fols. 1530. In Wolfgang
Herrmann, Gottfried Semper, Theoretischer Nachlass an der ETH Zurich,
Katalog
und Kommentare. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag 1981, pp. 18590. English translation:
249
Katalog und
Kommentare. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag 1981, pp. 20516.
Wissenschaft, Industrie, und Kunst: Vorschlage zur Anregung nationalen Kunstgefuhles.
Brunswick: Vieweg und Sohn 1852. English translation: Science, Industry, and
Art: Proposals for the Development of a National Taste in Art at the Closing of the
London Industrial Exhibition. In Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang
Herrmann (eds. and trans.), The Four Elements of Architecture and Others Writings,
Cambridge University Press 1989, pp. 13067.
Practical Art in Metals and Hard Materials; its Technology, History and Styles (1852).
Unpublished manuscript, National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.
Outline for a System of Comparative Style-Theory (London lecture,
November 11, 1853). MS 122, fols. 137 and MS 124, fols. 528. In RES, Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 6, Autumn 1983, pp. 532. German translation:
Entwurf eines Systems der vergleichenden Stillehre, in Hans and Mannfred
Semper (ed. and trans.), Kleine Schriften (Berlin and Stuttgart 1884), Mittenwald:
Maander Kunstverlag 1979, pp. 25991.
The Development of the Wall and Wall Construction in Antiquity (London
lecture, 18 November 1853). MS 129, fols. 124. In RES, Journal of Anthropology
and Aesthetics 11, Spring 1986, pp. 3341. German translation: Entwicklung der
250
in Hans and Mannfred Semper (ed. and trans.), Kleine Schriften (Berlin and
Stuttgart 1884), Mittenwald: Maander Kunstverlag 1979, pp. 36981.
On Architectural Symbols (London lecture, autumn 1854). MS 142, fols. 119;
MS 141, unpaginated. In RES, Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 9, Spring
1985, pp. 617. German translation: Ueber architektonische Symbole, in Hans
and Mannfred Semper (ed. and trans.), Kleine Schriften (Berlin and Stuttgart
1884), Mittenwald: Maander Kunstverlag 1979, pp. 292303.
On the Relation of Architectural Systems with the General Cultural Conditions (London lecture, 29 November 1854). MS 144, fols. 139. In RES,
Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 11, Spring 1986, pp. 4253. German
translation: Ueber den Zusammenhang der architektonischen Systeme mit
allgemeinen Kulturgeschichte, in Hans and Mannfred Semper (ed. and trans.),
Kleine Schriften (Berlin and Stuttgart 1884), Mittenwald: Maander Kunstverlag
1979, pp. 35167.
Inventory of Sempers Dresden library (incomplete, date unknown). MS 148.
Unpublished manuscript, Archiv Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, ETH
Hongerberg,
Zurich.
Ueber die formelle Gesetzmaigkeit des Schmuckes und dessen Bedeutung
als Kunstsymbol (1856). MS 1634. In Hans and Mannfred Semper (ed.
and trans.), Kleine Schriften (Berlin and Stuttgart 1884), Mittenwald: Maander
Kunstverlag 1979, pp. 30443.
Vorwort, Theorie des Formell-Schonen (18569). MS 178, fols. 129. In Wolfgang
Herrmann, Gottfried Semper, Theoretischer Nachlass an der ETH Zurich,
Katalog
und Kommentare. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag 1981, pp. 23849. English translation:
A Critical Analysis and Prognosis of Present-Day Artistic Production. In
Wolfgang Herrmann (trans. and ed.), Gottfried Semper, In Search of Architecture;
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press 1984, pp. 24560.
Einleitung, Theorie des Formell-Schonen (18569). MS 179, fols. 146. In Wolfgang
Herrmann, Gottfried Semper, Theoretischer Nachlass an der ETH Zurich,
Katalog
und Kommentare. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag 1981, pp. 21737. English translation:
The Attributes of Formal Beauty, in Wolfgang Herrmann (trans. and ed.),
Gottfried Semper, In Search of Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press
1984, pp. 21944.
First Prospectus, Der Stil (1859). MS 195. Unpublished manuscript, Archiv
251
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267
INDEX
k
adornment, 20, 44, 48, 66
of the human body, 8992, 89f, 90f,
91f, 93
see also Gestaltungsmomente
allegory, theory of, 103106
Aquinas, Thomas, 53
Aristotle, 21, 234, 52, 7583, 1445,
182
Ashurnasirpal II, King, 1, 4, 4f
authority, 96, 100
Bartas, Guillaume Salluste du, 35
Batteux, Charles, 49, 51, 52, 75
Bauer, Hermann, 30
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 34
Bekleidung, Sempers theory of, 63, 701,
723, 74f, 185, 213n37
Bellori, Giovanni Pietro, 51
Bergdoll, Barry, 37, 42, 117
Berlage, Hendrik Petrus, 18
Blake, William, 52
Blondel, Francois, 33
Bopp, Franz, 134
Botta, Paul Emile, 1
Botticher,
Karl, 48, 5763, 59f, 60f, 61f,
74, 106, 151
Boulle, Etienne-Louis,
34
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerce, Comte
de, 124
Condillac, Etienne
Bonnot de, 31
Cuvier, Georges Baron, 5, 24, 12330,
124f, 126f, 132, 134, 136, 140, 166,
179
dance, 445, 66, 70, 76, 80f
Darwin, Charles, 124
269
INDEX
Frohlich,
Martin, 20
functionalism
in anatomy, 1256
in architecture, 7, 21, 144
Habermas, Jurgen,
184
Harries, Karsten, 191
Hasenauer, Karl von, 17f
Hausler, Gabriele, 1723
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 60
Heidegger, Martin, 79, 80, 175, 183
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 25, 30, 38,
103, 106, 123, 1646
Herrmann, Wolfgang, 16, 20
Hirt, Aloys, 151
historicism, 9, 17, 22, 25, 37, 145, 161,
1627, 168, 1704, 175, 180, 181,
1845
aporias of, 5, 25, 1657, 1756, 180,
181, 185, 187
in architecture (see also style), 1504,
1547
historicity (see also Gadamer on
Wirkungsgeschichte), 1756, 1805,
187, 1912
Hittorf, Jaques-Ignace, 11
Homer, 7778
Hubsch,
Heinrich, 151, 154
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 25, 1346,
1624, 165, 168
Hume, David, 31
270
INDEX
271
INDEX
Ecole
polytechnique, 117, 120, 143
Jardin de Plantes, 124, 124t
Pevsner, Nikolaus, 14
Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 40f
Plato, 73, 767
play, 46, 65, 66
plot, see mythos; Ricoeur on
emplotment
272
INDEX
Rousseau, Jean-Jaques, 31
Rykwert, Joseph, 20, 69
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri, 153, 166,
169, 170
Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 115
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 56,
98, 171
Schiller, Friedrich, 46, 47
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 151, 154
Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 23, 524, 57,
62, 74, 95, 135
Schlegel, Friedrich, 24, 1336, 170
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 59, 96
science of art (see also method; practical
aesthetics), 15, 19, 25, 114
seam, see textile art
Semper, Gottfried, writings by
A Critical Analysis and Prognosis of
Present-Day Artistic Production,
47, 73, 107, 154, 157, 1589, 168,
182, 237n22
Der Stil, 24, 14, 1518, 30, 33, 356,
36f, 47, 48, 58, 64, 65, 66, 67, 67f,
68, 68f, 69f, 70, 70f, 71, 71f, 723,
74f, 80f, 82f, 87, 88, 89f, 90f, 91f,
92, 93, 93f, 94, 94f, 96, 98, 99, 100,
101f, 102, 103, 104f, 105, 106, 107,
108, 11011, 111f, 112f, 133, 145,
185, 189, 212n23, 220n57, 220n63,
220n667, 237n22, 238n34
First Prospectus, Der Stil, 16; Second
Prospectus, Der Stil, 15, 115,
156
Inuence of Historical Research on
Trends in Contemporary
Architecture, 117, 154, 237n22
Offentlicher
Lehrkursus uber
die
allgemeine Geschichte der
Baukunst, 910, 66
On Architectural Styles, 79, 108,
157, 237n27
On Architectural Symbols, 1023,
106, 110
St.-Hilaire, Etienne
Geoffrey, 124
stereotomy, see masonry
Stockmeyer, Ernst, 112
Stoffwechsel (see also metamorphosis;
motifs: transformation of), 11, 56,
73
273
INDEX
style, 14950
dilemma of, 612, 1504, 156, 157,
158, 1667
Sempers formula for, 15, 88, 10710,
11213, 114, 130, 142, 144, 149, 183
Sempers theory of, 4, 15, 87, 108,
11213, 114, 1547, 15861, 174,
1834, 188
see also historicism
Sulzer, Johann Georg, 51
symbols, theory of, 88, 1027
symmetry, see Gestaltungsmomente
taxonomy
in Cuvier, 12530, 132
in Linnaeus, 1259
in Semper, 12930, 132
Taylor, Charles, 54
tectonics (see also elements of
architecture), 15, 16, 48, 58, 62,
5763, 193n7
tent, as the origin of architecture (see also
origin theory), 39, 42, 43, 64
textile art, 2, 16, 67, 67f, 71f, 74f, 185
knots, 445, 678. 68f, 102
seam, 679
weaving, 15, 67, 701, 70f, 80, 181
see also elements of architecture;
Bekleidung
Thucydides, 163
topic (see also method; rhetoric), 15, 142,
2345n27
Toulmin, Stephen, 30
274