And so the process of analysis begins…
Architects have forever wondered of the origins of classical form. And this is usually presented as a story of transformation, of development from ‘primitive hut’ to Doric Temple. This gives us a means of interpreting what appear to be highly or purely decorative forms as previously having had ‘use’ - and of seeing the classical language of architecture as a stylisation of functional elements (the exposed end of roof beams become triglyphs for example).
Once we have understood, or ‘interpreted’, the nature of the shapes that make up classical architecture, we can measure them - to learn of the specific relationships between the individual parts and the whole. And many have, from Vitruvius, through Leonardo, Palladio, et al.
The golden section is a line segment sectioned into two according to the golden ratio. The total length a + b is to the longer segment a as a is to the shorter segment b. See more about this at http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/GoldenSection.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
It turns out that the Golden Section is a very special ratio. It can be defined easily graphically, but not so easily mathematically as a whole number. It has an infinite set of results – small and big (the Fibonacci series is one expression of golden ratio proportions), and this means it can be used to generate relationships between things of entirely different scales: from the size of a sculpted icanthus leaf to the size of a city for example, or to put it another way: from the human to the urban.
Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man
And this is where Architects and Artists can get waylayed. Because all of a sudden, we believe we can almost see it – a system of measurement, of understanding, that encompasses everything – Art that consumes Science!
Fractal image
Illustration on the origins of the Doric Order from Bannister Fletcher’s ‘A history of Architecture’ the seminal work of Architectural History still used today.
Modern architects sometimes use the ‘deconstruction’ of the origins of classical language in modern buildings – this view of the rear of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden shows the ‘doric’ language of the collanade ‘disintegrating into the language of the primitive hut for the ‘loggia’ at high level.
Once we have understood, or ‘interpreted’, the nature of the shapes that make up classical architecture, we can measure them - to learn of the specific relationships between the individual parts and the whole. And many have, from Vitruvius, through Leonardo, Palladio, et al.
Illustration from Le Corbusier’s ‘Towards A New Architecture”
Illustration from Palladio’s Four books on Architecture
Through this process of measuring and comparing, we discover that there really is a very sophisticated set of relationships, of proportions, which govern the language of classical architecture. And this is where it gets interesting. Because we discover that one of the fundamental ratios used in classical art and architecture is that of the Golden Section (golden ratio). It can be found throughout the buildings, from the proportions of the plan of a room, to the shape of windows, distances between columns etc. etc.
Illustration from Palladio’s Four books on Architecture
Through this process of measuring and comparing, we discover that there really is a very sophisticated set of relationships, of proportions, which govern the language of classical architecture. And this is where it gets interesting. Because we discover that one of the fundamental ratios used in classical art and architecture is that of the Golden Section (golden ratio). It can be found throughout the buildings, from the proportions of the plan of a room, to the shape of windows, distances between columns etc. etc.
The golden section is a line segment sectioned into two according to the golden ratio. The total length a + b is to the longer segment a as a is to the shorter segment b. See more about this at http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/GoldenSection.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
It turns out that the Golden Section is a very special ratio. It can be defined easily graphically, but not so easily mathematically as a whole number. It has an infinite set of results – small and big (the Fibonacci series is one expression of golden ratio proportions), and this means it can be used to generate relationships between things of entirely different scales: from the size of a sculpted icanthus leaf to the size of a city for example, or to put it another way: from the human to the urban.
Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man
And this is where Architects and Artists can get waylayed. Because all of a sudden, we believe we can almost see it – a system of measurement, of understanding, that encompasses everything – Art that consumes Science!
Le Corbusier’s “The Modular”
Fractal image
But this is a problem. This is science - not art or architecture. This is using a system of rules to try and proscribe (not describe) beauty. And Art and Architecture, like nature and society, do not operate on a pure system of rules and regulations. It is often the mistake, the error, the quirk against the system, the lack of perfection, which makes buildings / paintings / sculptures beautiful. Because in the end, we live in a world which is not describable empirically, a world in which we don’t have exactly 365 days a year, a world in which there isn’t exactly 8 notes in a natural musical octave, a world which is way out of the reach of our understanding through an all encompassing theory (unless you're Steven Hawking).
And this is why, although it worthwhile understanding the principles of a classical language, we also need, in the end, just to trust our own judgement.
This is beautiful.
That is ugly.
Etc. etc.
1 comments:
That was a mighty post Alan! I think it raises some interesting questions about the difference between art history and art criticism. Art history, as I understand it, is the story of taste. When I first got to grips with it as a sixth form student, we were only given the grand narrative (the same one that makes up the content of the AQA AS course) beginning in classical Greece, Western, dominated by cultured men and based on the assumption that art is a manifestation of the process of civilisation. The idea was, and still is to a large extent, to assess the development of how and why well-educated scholars across the centuries constructed a canon of beauty and how this developed into an academic discipline in its own right, with its own jargon, methodologies and schools of thought. In other words, art history could be said to be the study of art criticism (what some people call connoisseurship) through the ages. It's a shame that the AQA course doesn't allow comparison across the globe of different (and competing) notions of beauty. In this sense, any personal "judgement" we might have about the beauty or ugliness of works of art, architecture and design are clearly grounded in our cultural experiences and the assumptions of the society in which we belong. What's most appealing about concepts like the golden section (as a measure of beauty/harmony/proportion) is that they help to codify natural phenomena and make them tangible as art. This relationship between observation of what we might call natural laws and the development of Western art is something we will hopefully return to at various points on this blog. 500 BCE seems to provide a convenient starting point for the exam board precisely because art attains an enhanced naturalism at this point in its history and this is, in turn , associated with political concepts like democracy, economic and cultural centralisation, the rise of the artist hero, civic pride and state power - all the things that have come to define Western (classical) civilisation.
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