ON CLASSICISM

C. Domus Aurea

Classical and romantic. The classically disposed spirits no less than those romantically inclined - as these two species always exist - carry a vision of the future: but the former out of the strength of their time: the latter out of its weakness.

Friedrich Nietzsche The Wanderer and His Shadow

TEMONOS

For centuries classical architecture, due to its vernacular (archetypal) origins, was capable of conveying meaning to a wide audience. What was that meaning? it answered the elemental human question - what is our placement in the cosmos? Order. the fundamental need for mankind to fathom and order his chaotic surrounds Nature (taxis). mastery of the persistent physical laws of mechanics, a capacity to shelter oneself from the elements using primary structural relationships (tectonics) a place of order between earth and sky - Man between God and Creation. a statement for the triumph of humanity over his surrounds - a place for him in the chaotic scheme of things - a place of comprehension, a place approaching perfection. The universe remodeled on Human terms. A statement of confidence about Humanity's place in the Cosmos, the use of His form, both literal (column) and abstract (proportional) - again an ordering of what is found. a place that answers with confidence the existential quandary - where does man fit in? the classical temple says clearly, Here, between god and creation. capacity for collective communication based on human and vernacular (archetypal) sources. the vernacular belongs to all of us. the primitive hut, the fundamental tectonic composition. column and beam in shadow, whether Greek, Mayan, Cambodian, stirs primitive/primary/archetypal/universal/global/human emotion in that it recalls our primary departure from the beast of the field. the beginnings of our confidence in the capacity of our intellect. it is primary, cross cultural, human, never once forgotten by the Greeks - it is this that makes Greek thought Human and not necessarily Western. the triumph of the west can therefore be read as the triumph of the human. the ability of classical architecture to convey meaning to a collective audience was/is due to its vernacular lineage and its elaboration on the human theme. a perfect place within the chaos of the found conditions of the universe. this was the objective, the logical conclusion of the first move of shelter. its capacity to convey meaning begins with the vernacular archetype and proceeds through to representation; column, base capital - feet, body, head - dentils represent vernacular wooden construction. clear distinctions between vertical and horizontal members, beginning, middle, end (life) spatial representation - can every classical building be read , like the Pantheon, as the universe re-proposed in ideal, understandable, digestible, recognizably human dimensions, form? the ground plane has been flattened, ordered. the heavens likewise, have been ordered, coffers, oculus. man, between earth and heaven , brought together in civilization, is the critical link between the two realms - columns, pilasters, architrave. it is a statement of faith in the capacity of humanity to order the chaos of the existing cosmos.

The Fall. man realized the magnitude of disorder in the world and his capacity to control his environment was fundamentally challenged. the classical was never intended to represent things as they are. in fact, the meaning was generated by how different the classical interior was from the chaos out there. it was a proposal of what could be. its basis was faith - faith in human reason. it represented, quite deliberately, an ideal. it had no misconceptions about the reality of its surroundings, war, pestilence, plague. it offered hope it offered an oasis of order in the desert of chaos, and island of comprehension in a sea of confusion. the irony is that the need for such and island now is far more profound. now that the universe had proved far more incomprehensible than we imagined, the gods of the past were slain, the Trojan wars, even the French revolution, seem as catfights compared to the total annihilation how at our disposal. if uncertainty is the order of the day, does not man, a creature who seeks order and comprehension, demand a reasonable built environment? the new island of hope, the new temple of human reason, how is it to be conceived? in order to communicate to a larger audience, it must be, like the classical, derived from the vernacular. the farther from the vernacular, the more exclusive the audience. the primitive hut, archetypal, primary, universal, global. it must be primarily a question of space. enclosure, distinction separating here from there, inside from outside, public from private. the making of place - other than the outside world, a different place, a temple to reason, the new understanding of reason - not necessarily rational, linear. our understanding of the cosmos has dramatically changed. have we changed with it? are we not still governed by a primary palette of human emotions? fear, passion, hate, love envy pride glory compassion? an elaboration/ perfection of a given natural artifact, be it human body, human soul, human dwelling. this was the objective of the Greeks. the ideal was set as the point of reference, not to be attained in this cosmos, but to be confidently approached. why? man as image of the divine (the ideal) can approach his maker, but never become him. to fix his location within the order of things. to understand himself relative to the rest of creation as unique. to assign meaning to the potentially incomprehensible universe. How can one still believe in human nature after the 20^th C? with a new reappraisal of reality. man is both good and evil in his natural (savage) form. nature can be ordered. the human soul, through intellectual rigor, can be ordered. virtue is the device through which the passions are diffused. virtue allows the synthesis of man's two sides, appolonius and dioynisis. The Greeks knew these lessons well. the modification of the given chaotic artifact into a thing of beauty through order, striving toward an unreachable but approachable ideal.

NORTH AND SOUTH

Loos isn't remotely ambiguous. So northern. tattoos belong to criminals - ( it would be absurd if it wasn't so true) and yet, what would the architecture of the west be without the pilaster, which, in terms of function, is pure tattoo! no palazzo Del Te, no laurentian vestibule, and even, no seagram's tower (which we could do without) so puritan, so linear. no room for the south, for dionysis, for the baroque. the dictatorship of the functional. you see, we need the criminal, the marginal, the dark side. the real issue is how we deal with this condition. in loos' puritan world, swiss watchmakers ride Spartan streetcars to their pristine cubic confines. (corb was a maniac about hygiene - one could argue that foul hygiene was the engine that drove the ville radiusse) the problem with this solution is that it is not reality based. in refusing to acknowledge the marginal, the irrational, ultimately Eros and dionysis, our watchmaker is setting himself up for disaster....soon enough we find him snooping through his wives' hamper (she lives on the other side of the cube) for selective undies to match the dog chain he has indelibly fashioned to his pale buttocks with an overripe pomplemousse. that dangerous irrational streak of northern peoples, most clear in the Germans, but likewise the English. Perhaps because of their proximity to the Gaelic peoples, whose passionate Humanity was never really choked into unnatural forms, as much as the Catholic church tried, the English are a little more stable. Now the people of the Mediterranean.........this is another story entirely. why is Italy the most visited country in the West, if not the world? why do those damn barbarians from the North re-invade Rome year after year, as if fulfilling some pilgrimage that began with the fall of the Empire? because somewhere between Rome and Paris people have figured out the age-old question of the mind-body paradox. the dark side can be controlled...not tamed, mind you, but harnessed.....this is the essence of the classical education.....the lowest in man is considered intrinsically linked to the highest...that is, the bodily and the spiritual. classical music is a brilliant fusion of man's primitive impulses (mating and fighting) with his highest impulses (immortality, transcendence). the fast-food disposable nature of pop music is thus revealed....by and large pop music is exclusively about mating and fighting. even if the lyrics say otherwise, the hypnotic rhythms of rock music will always have one source. as such it is fast-food...only half the experience it could be. so know this....the classicist is the educated pervert...demanding both the highest and the lowest from the aesthetic experience, and making it twice what it otherwise could be. so Italy and France.....heart of the classical tradition. no coincidence that eating is likewise part of this aesthetic experience....the highest (art) mixed with the lowest(appetite). and alas, architecture....mother of the arts. man's lowest (shelter) and his highest (sculpture) the classical orders, though elaborately sculpted, never depart from the logos of structure from which they were initially conceived.....indeed it is the poetics of structure itself...(notice the fusion - pure structure and pure poetry) that forms the tectonic essence of the classical aesthetic. look carefully at an attic base....always fluid, carved, exquisite - never violating the downward force of the column, but in fact expressing, in sculpture, that very force. entasis? the very same. as in all things classical, eros is not far. indeed, like the force of gravity, the pangs of Eros, like so many notes from a Grecian lute, whisper between the metapees and capitols of the Hellenic temple.