12th International Bauhaus-Colloquium Henry Van de Velde and The Total Work of Art Bauhaus-Universität Weimar • 4-7 April 2013 Workshop 2 – Utopia and Critique “The Expression of Order – An Inquiry Into Modern and Traditional Conceptions” Full Paper Submission Author: Felipe Loureiro e-mail: felipe.loureiro@rioarquitetura.com Abstract In architecture, the notion of “total work of art” is based on the assumption that a building should be the expression of an “Idea” conceived by the architect, who is also responsible for designing every element of the building, so that all of them express the original “Idea”. This notion that an architect should be the one and only “creator” of a building is actually quite recent. Many pre-modern masterpieces, such as most Christian cathedrals, were built by hundreds of people, who worked on them for hundreds of years. Thus, if there was an “Idea” behind it, it was not necessarily the product of one single mind. However, many of these buildings have an unarguably strong unity. Such a building seems to express something that was somehow shared by all the people who worked on it along the centuries. According to Zygmunt Bauman, “the modern project promised to free the individual from inherited identity”, but “It only transformed the identity from a matter of ascription into one of achievement, thus making it an individual task”. Thus, the idea of the “total work of art” appears as an individual attempt to create order, while pre-modern artists sought only to express an order that was somehow “given” to them. Thus, “traditional” Architecture was not conceived as an expression of an “Idea”, but rather as a symbol of how the architects/builders experienced and understood reality as a whole. This led traditionalist philosopher Titus Burckhardt to state that “It is impossible to be engaged in architecture without becoming implicitly engaged in cosmology”. This paper aims at comparing the concept of the “total work of art” with the role of Art in traditional, pre-modern societies, looking for common points that can hopefully help us to identify and express our apparently ungraspable Zeitgeist. 1 Essay “Only infamy creates by itself a new world. What is good has always been so”. Achim Von Arnim1 This essay aims at comparing the concept of “Total Work of Art” (or Gesamtkunstwerk) with the role of Art in traditional, pre-Modern societies, focusing on the influences of these two conceptions in Architectural theory and practice. Section I will consist in a comparison between the theoretical bases of both artistic expressions; on section II, I will briefly discuss to which extent these two conceptions might offer valuable insights for our current architectural production; on section III, one of these possible “insights” will be developed into a “proposal” for contemporary architects. All three sections will be summed-up on conclusive paragraphs of Section IV. I In his classic dictionary of philosophy, José Ferrater Mora defines Art as “a certain virtue or ability to make or produce something”2. Thus, Art can be understood as “a way of doing”. However, this “way of doing” is always directed, to some extent, by a “way of seeing” – or a “way of thinking” - , that is, by a theoretical basis on which the practice of Art is developed, and which it expresses. In a previous paper, I have investigated how architecture – and, in fact, all human creations – works “inside” a worldview: “The building itself is then the concretization of an intention, or idea, which is always – although usually unconsciously - based on a particular worldview. This led Swiss philosopher Titus Burckhardt to say that ‘It is impossible to be engaged in architecture without becoming implicitly engaged in cosmology’. In fact, everything 1 Achim von Arnim in Otto Maria Carpeaux, Ensaios Reunidos I: De A Cinza do Purgatório até Livros na Mesa (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1999), p. 201. Translation by the author. 2 José Ferrater Mora, Dicionário de Filosofia (Rio de Janeiro: Martins Fontes, 1994), p. 46. Translation by the author. 2 that we do is done according to the way we understand our being-in-the-world. Therefore, all our experiences and actions take place inside an ontological framework.”3 Thus, which worldviews are being expressed through the Gesamtkunstwerk and through the works of Traditional Art?4 The term Gesamtkunstwerk - or “Total Work of Art” - first appeared in Germany, around 1850, and it was made popular by composer Richard Wagner. For Wagner, the Modern Opera was a “Total Work of Art”, since it was formed by the combination of music and literature, and since architecture, painting and sculpture were combined in stage design. Thus, we may be lead to think that any work which is composed of many parts, forged by different disciplines, can be considered a “total work of Art”. We can then think of buildings, which are formed by structure, walls, floors, ceilings, decorative elements, paintings, sculptures, landscaping, and etc. – not to mention the thousands of objects needed in everyday life, and which complement any functional space. We might feel inclined to say, then, that any building is a total work of Art. However, the term infers a specific connotation: a complex artistic endeavour, such as an Opera or a building, is considered a total work of Art as long as all of its aspects are the work of a single mind, or, at most, a collective creation made by artists who share the same view and the same intentions. What really matters is the expression of the artist and of his particular worldview. In his Discourse on The Method, Descartes – one of the founders of Modern thinking - states: “(…) there is seldom so much perfection in works composed of many separate parts, upon which different hands had been employed, as in those completed by a single master. Thus it is observable that the buildings which a single architect has planned and executed, are generally more elegant and commodious than those which several have attempted to improve”5. 3 Felipe Loureiro, The Transcendence of Architecture: Searching for Common-Ground In Architectural Experiences. Newcastle: International Society for the Philosophy of Architecture, 2012 (to be published with the conference proceedings). 4 It is crucial to underline that both notions – especially Traditional Art - refer to the work of numerous artists and architects, and thus do not correspond to homogeneous categories. However, it is possible to identify common-points which allow us to group fairly heterogeneous expressions under these two categories. 5 René Descartes., Discourse on the Method. (New York: Cosimo, Inc., 2008), p. 17. 3 In this passage, we can see the germ of the “Total Work of Art”, that is, of the desire to create a work of Art as an individual expression. This notion is completely different from the traditional “way of doing”, in which, according to Jean Hani, “the artist cannot let himself be guided by his owns inspirations; his work does not consist in expressing his personality, but in searching for a perfect form which corresponds to sacred prototypes of heavenly inspiration”6. In the next paragraphs, I will discuss how the main differences between these two “ways of doing” are actually “demanded” by the theoretical basis of each one of them. The Gesamtkunstwerk can thus be understood as a “way of doing” in which the artist tries to express an all-encompassing concept – an order - created in/by his own mind, and which must be manifested through forms which act as images of intellectual concepts, whereas traditional artists apparently sought only to express the divine order created by God, which could only be expressed through a symbolic language that allowed men to somehow experience transcendental principles which could not be known directly. The Modern worldview, expressed by the Gesamtkunstwerk, is based on the belief that the universe is a mechanism that works “by itself”, in accordance with universal laws. The order of the universe is, thus, immanent. The traditional worldview, on the other hand, considers that the “functioning” of the Universe depends on the constant action - and thus on the will - of God (or other divinities), whose existence includes and surpasses the universe. Thus, the origin of this order is transcendental. These two notions are defined by Mircea Eliade as “two modes of existing in the world”, the “profane” and the “sacred”. These modes are “two existential situations assumed by man in the course of history. (…) In the last analysis, the sacred and profane modes of being depend upon the different positions that man has conquered in the cosmos”7. Which is, then, the “position of man” in the cosmos “proposed” - or expressed - by these two worldviews? According to Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, “In all the great spiritual traditions, with no exception, we can find some ternary division of the planes of 6 Jean Hani, O Simbolismo do Templo Cristão (Braga: Edições 70, 1981), p. 15. 7 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion (Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1959), p. 15. 4 reality, for instance the Christian Deus, Homo, Natura, and the Taoist Heaven-Earth-Man (Tien-Ti-Jen)”8. We can find the same relation in the Greek ternary of Logos-Ethos-Physis. Carvalho concludes, then, that the idea of the ternary structure “seems to apprehend, if not an ontological law inscribed in the very structure of being, at least a ‘constant of the human spirit’, a universal tendency for man to understand the constitution of being as such”9. Thus, we can say that the “traditional worldview” considered that man is in an intermediary position between Heaven and Earth. Then, it makes sense to think that artists working inside this ontological framework considered that the overall order of the universe was somehow “given” to them by God. Actually, according to Hani, “the goal of art consists precisely in revealing the image of divine Nature which is imprinted in creation - but hidden in it -, by creating visible objects which work as symbols of the invisible God.”10 This scheme is used by Olavo de Carvalho to illustrate what he calls “the cruciform structure of reality”. Man and Nature exist in the horizontal plane, which is pierced vertically by the plane of transcendence.11 8 Olavo de Carvalho, O Jardim das Aflições (São Paulo: É Realizações, 2004. 2nd Edition), p. 133. Translation by the author. 9 Olavo de Carvalho, Op. Cit., p. 135. 10 Jean Hani, Op. Cit., p. 15. 11 Olavo de Carvalho Op. Cit. p. 195. 5 Chinese ideogram of the Great Triad: Heaven-Man-Earth.12 This notion of the ternary structure of reality permeated the thoughts and actions of most pre-Modern men. I will now exemplify the influence of this theological concept through the analysis of a procedure which was widely spread among traditional architects: the tracing of the “quadrature” of the solar cycle, which guided the placement of many sacred buildings. The rite consisted in placing a column in the center of the chosen site, tracing a circle around it. The extreme positions of the shadows cast by the column on the circle, during morning and evening, were marked, and became the centers for other circles. These circles intersected, creating a vertical and a horizontal axis. Other circles were then traced, having their center points at the extremes of these two axes. The intersections of these circles indicated the four corners of a square, which illustrated the “quadrature” of the solar cycle. Steps 1 and 2 – The Circle and The Cross. 12 Extracted from Titus Burckhardt, Foundations of Oriental Art and Symbolism (World Wisdom Inc., 2009), p. 22. 6 Step 3 – the Square. This basic procedure - including many variations - guided the placement of medieval cathedrals, Buddhist temples, Chinese palaces, Roman cities and many other buildings. The main goal behind this procedure was to symbolize God’s action on earth. This operation was summarized by Jean Hani as a transition from the “divine” Circle to the “terrestrial” Square, which was achieved through the tracing of a Cross. The notion that the circle is a symbol of divine perfection, whereas the square symbolizes the limited world of men, is widely spread among many cultures, and can be identified in the numerous sacred buildings composed by prismatic spaces covered by domes. According to Titus Burckhardt, the three phases of this rite – Circle-Cross-Square – correspond to the ternary Heaven-Man-Earth13. The symbolic nature of such a procedure is an example of the way of thinking which was characteristic of pre-Modern societies, in which many – if not most – aspects of life were understood as symbols of the Divine - be it of its presence or of its action. According to Martin Lings, Islamic tradition, for instance, considers that “(…) the universe and its contents were created in order to make known the Creator” and that “(…) the means of making it known is to reflect it or shadow it; and a symbol is the reflection or shadow of a higher reality”. The function of symbols in religious societies can be illustrated by the 13 Titus Burckhardt, Op. Cit., p. 22. 7 symbolic nature of architectural elements; here, I have chosen to exemplify this by quickly analysing some of the symbolisms which guided the design of the baptismal fonts found in many Christian temples. The baptismal font symbolizes the water spring in the microcosm that is the church itself; it is also a symbol of the primeval waters of the Genesis, whose life-giving, regenerative forces are present in the rite of baptism. The font is usually circular or octagonal; the circle, as already mentioned, symbolizes divine perfection, while the octagon symbolizes, for instance, the eight people saved in Noah’s ark – the ark being a symbol of the church itself. The octagonal shape also symbolizes the passage to another level, or another series, a notion which can be found in musical harmony and also in the fact that the seven colours are combined into an eighth colour, white, which is their “unity and principle”14. Through the sacrament of baptism, man also moves to another series, entering into a life of communion with Christ. We can thus see to which extent the form of an apparently simple element was defined by what it symbolized in the structure of the building, in the life of the individuals which would experience it, and in the overall structure of Christian belief. However, it would probably be quite accurate to assume that, today, only very few people would be able to recognize these symbolisms. In our secular, desacralized world, these layers of meaning remain occult, and might be forever lost. If we analyse churches built according to the premises of Modern architecture, we usually find that this symbolic dimension was completely forgotten; the elements such as the baptismal fonts seem to have been devised as mere pieces of sculpture, lacking any relation to the sacrament which “demands” their creation in the first place. Comparing a “traditional” font with a “modern” version, while being unaware of the symbolic nature of the first, we might be inclined to see only different “styles”; however, we are actually looking at completely different “ways of seeing”, and extremely distant “ways of doing”. The modern font can actually be aesthetically “pleasing”; however, it is just a piece of sculpture which does not symbolize or communicate anything other than its own form – it is only an image. This is the main difference between sacred art and religious art; the first works as a symbol of the Divine, while the latter is only an object with a religious motif or subject. This is why many traditionalist authors consider Renaissance and Baroque art as merely religious, but not sacred15. 14 Jean Hani, Op. Cit., p. 82. 15 Titus Burckhardt, Op. Cit., p. 87. 8 This scheme illustrates the main difference between the “ways of seeing” which guided the design of both fonts. One longs to symbolize a transcendental essence, while the other is a self-referential object. Having exemplified the symbolic nature of traditional Art, I must now investigate how this nature could be compared with the modern conception of Art. According to Karsten Harries, Modern Architecture was supposed to be “a style that would allow human beings to feel at home in a world shaped by science”16. On the other hand, we can say that, for traditional or pre-Modern architects, it seemed that human beings already felt at home in the world shaped by God. Thus, their main concern was not to “adapt” or adjust the world, so it could become more “homely’ to men; their challenge was to express the presence of God among men. This is why, in his dictionary, Ferrater goes on to saying that, until the Modern Age, there was something of a consensus around the idea that Art somehow imitated Nature – it was an artificial construction based on “natural” reality. What has changed, then, in the Modern Age? First of all, the ternary structure of reality was broken – the idea of the universe as a “self-propelling” mechanism, ruled by immanent universal laws, seemed to “explain nature and man with no need at all of the ‘God hypothesis’”17. Thus, the prevailing conception of the structure of reality was to some extent reduced to the binary Man-Nature. We could then 16 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (MIT Press, 1998), p. 9. 17 Olavo de Carvalho, Op. Cit., p. 137. 9 presume that the order of this universe was a product of Nature, which could be considered as external to man as God. Then, this order could also be understood as an external product, or gift, that was somehow given to man. However, man and nature exist in the same “existential plane”, whereas God’s presence includes and surpasses this plane. Thus, God is not “external” to man; man is actually internal to God. This notion was expressed by St. Paul Apostle in Acts 17, 27-28: “God is not far from each of us… In fact we live in him, we move in him, we exist in him.” Thus, with God somehow “out of the picture”, Modern men were free to search for the supposedly “true” meaning which was inscribed in the Nature – that is, in the dimensions of Space and Time. This is the main turning-point which marks the change in direction from traditional Art towards Modern Art - the notion of the “self-propelling mechanism” was not applied only to Nature (space), but also to History (time). Thus, History was also thought to have an immanent structure – hence the growing popularity of the notions of “progress” and “evolution”. A good example is Hegel’s conception of History. In a very short summary, Karsten Harries states that, for Hegel, History was “(…) a fundamentally irreversible process, leading to an ever-increasing freedom: history is the progress of freedom. As such it is also the progressive emancipation of humanity from its initial enslavement to nature, that is, the progress of technology”18 It is very seductive to think that one has achieved an all-encompassing explanation for History; it is not only “flattering” as an intellectual achievement, but it also creates the possibility of changing History. If you know how it works, you can probably transform it – and, through Hegel’s way of seeing, any proposal built on the idea of progress, especially technological progress, could then be seen as “natural”, and, therefore, indisputable. Thus, a man-made system could somehow acquire the authority of a natural, inescapable step in the self-propelling progress of History. However, it is crucial to underline how this view of History changes the “position of man in the cosmos”: in order to know an object “completely”, you must be “outside” of it; from an external position, you can examine the object simply as an object, and then describe all of its characteristics through an apparently rational, unbiased vision. Then, in order to explain History, man must see himself as being outside of History. Thusly, man transcends Time, as if he were actually “replacing” God. 18 Karsten Harries, Op. Cit., p. 358. 10 This way of thinking provoked a radical change in man’s attitude towards reality: it was not about understanding it, but transforming it. Thus, for many artists, the goal to merely express an existing order was replaced by the urge to “create” order. Philosophers were actually contaminated by an artistic flair, becoming the “creators” of new worlds. Machiavelli had already described the State as a work of art, underlining the “artistic” aspect of Modern thinking. It is something like a “way of doing” – a way of creating new worlds: at first, they are abstract, intellectual worlds; then, through action, the abstract world can be forced into the “real” world. This pre-eminence of “thought” was unsurprisingly proclaimed by Hegel, according to whom we have “passed beyond the point at which art is the highest mode under which the absolute is brought home to human consciousness. (…) Thought and reflection have taken their flight above fine art”19. Considering this significant transformation in the “position conquered by man in the cosmos”, I will now turn to its influence on architectural practice. The “insertion” of the Modern worldview into reality was symbolized by Modern architecture. The current “intellectual world” had already been “shaped by science” – now, Modern architecture would transfer this “shape” to the physical world. Considering the notion of immanent order, Modern architects believed that, by shaping the environment in accordance to their vision of how the Modern world should be, this order would then spread and actually become universal, shaping not only spaces and buildings, but also people. Addressing to his students at the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius made this assumption very clear: “(…) No large spiritual organizations, but small, secret, self-contained societies, lodges. Conspiracies will form which will want to watch over and artistically shape a secret, a nucleus of belief, until from the individual groups a universally great, enduring, spiritual-religious idea will rise again, which finally must find its crystalline expression in a great Gesamtkunstwerk. And this great total work of art, this cathedral of the future, will then shine with its abundance of light into the smallest objects of everyday life”. 20 Maybe this Modern notion of Architecture – and Art as a whole - was born out of a necessity of asserting a particular, personal expression, since, in a desacralized world, the strength of a 19 G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, pp. 30-31; trans. Osmaston, p. 391. Cited in Karsten Harries, Op. Cit., p. 354. 20 Walter Gropius, in Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus. Trans. Wolfgang Jabs and Basil Gilbert (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), p. 36. Cited in Karsten Harries, Op. Cit., p. 330. 11 recognized common-ground was no longer vigorous enough to hold itself – and men together. The spiritual-religious aspect mentioned by Gropius should not be overlooked, especially since he claimed that this spiritual-religious idea would spring out of the secret groups which would be responsible for re-inventing architecture; thus, it would obviously be a manmade idea, which would gain, thanks to a Hegelian view of History, an artificial “mask” of transcendence. According to Zygmunt Bauman, “the modern project promised to free the individual from inherited identity”, but “It only transformed the identity from a matter of ascription into one of achievement, thus making it an individual task”. The modern artists invoked by Gropius would be, then, creating their own identities, which would actually become the model for the universal identity of the “Modern artist”. The reference to the medieval mason’s lodges indicates not only the need to relate to a somehow spiritualized “way of doing”, but it also shows a reaction to the growing standardization caused by industrial development, which would gradually turn architecture into an assembly or “collage” of standard, mass-produced elements. A column can be just a column, or it can be as expressive as any piece of sculpture. Many museums exhibit “parts” of buildings such as columns, capitals, friezes, and so on, which stand up by themselves as brilliant works of Art. Maybe the idea of a total work of Art in architecture is also derived from the abstraction of architectural elements - with the increasing industrialization and standardization of building elements, they started to feel “naked”, and therefore architects would call up on the “other arts” so they could bring some flair to the building. Would any museum “exhibit” a column extracted from the Villa Savoye? Would it still be relevant if we were unaware of its original “habitat”? We go to museums and see modern and contemporary works made for “living” in museums; but we also admire pre-Modern works that “used to live” in churches, palaces, public building and so on. Surprisingly enough, many of the latter do not seem out of place inside a museum gallery. Their unity is so powerful that we are inclined to think that they could be just as admirable if placed almost anywhere. Most people who line-up to see these works at museums throughout the world have probably no idea that these masterpieces were created for embellishing and complementing buildings – the idea of an architectural space created by “the sum of all arts” 12 is not that new after all, and the founders of the Bauhaus apparently sought to recover this “unity of the arts” which they found in the model of the Gothic cathedral21. II We can thus be lead to think that, apart from the conflicting worldviews expressed by these two ways of doing architecture, we can actually be comparing just two different expressions of the same “will” – that is, of the same yearning for order and unity in Art. Then, we cannot help but wonder which one – if any – can provide a more adequate reference for our contemporary architectural production. We can probably assume that the world we live in is closer to the world of the Bauhaus than to that of the medieval lodges. However, Modern architecture was never really widely accepted by “common people” – that is, by people who are not architects. The main critique it has received is its alleged disconnectedness from real, everyday life. Many people feel that Modern architecture is actually made “for architects” something like an “internal joke”. However, millions of people are forced to live “inside” this joke. This reaction can actually seem quite precise, if we remember that, according to Gropius, the new architecture would be created by “secret groups”. Besides that, the “cerebral” aspect of Modern architecture is undeniable, and it is based on its acceptance of the pre-eminence of thought over Art. Thus, despite the fact that Modern architecture is apparently “closer” to us, we may still disagree with its vision, and consider that architecture can actually achieve more than just the physical/spatial expression of intellectual systems created by philosophers. Then, we may feel tempted to completely deny Modern architecture – and its theoretical basis -, looking back towards traditional, pre-Modern Art, with hopes of findings a somehow still “valid” way of understanding and creating architecture. However, most of the basic elements of the traditional worldview would probably make no sense to us today. This anachronism was soon identified by the leaders of the Bauhaus movement, which gradually abandoned the model of the medieval lodges, embracing the possibilities of industrialization and the idea of 21 The leaders of the Bauhaus might have been influenced by Victor Hugo, who stated that, in the Gothic period, “All other arts obeyed, and placed themselves under the discipline of architecture. They were the workmen of the great work”; thus, the works of sculptors and painters were summed-up in the person of “the architect, the poet, the master”. Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: Notre-Dame de Paris (Digireads.com, 2009), p. 113. 13 a unit between art and technology22. Still, maybe there really are some aspects of this worldview which still resonate in the souls of contemporary men. Karsten Harries mentions, for instance, the “natural” roots of some of the symbolisms which guided medieval art. By being “natural”, these symbolisms would be true and universal - thus, they would still be valid today. However, wouldn’t this notion be quite similar to Hegel’s attitude towards History? Wouldn’t we be asserting a transcendental meaning to an immanent aspect of reality? Harries goes on to saying that “Reality transcends our understanding. Art recalls us to this transcendence”23. Thus, art and architecture should aim at “an interpretation of an order that is glimpsed rather than created – in this sense a transcendent order.”24 This is quite an straight-forward call for a revision of Modern architecture’s way of doing – as I have already pointed out, it was traditional Art which aimed at interpreting a transcendent, “glimpsed” order, instead of trying to create one from scratch. A similar attitude can be found in a more recent book, which actually does claim to present a valid way of doing architecture in accordance with the demands of our times – or of all times, to be more precise. However, it does require some drastic transformations. In “The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems”, Christopher Alexander sums up the attitude which permeated most of his previous writings, identifying the urgent need of a full revision not just of the way we think about architecture, but of the worldview which dominates most – if not all - of the Western world. Alexander sets apart two systems, which he calls System-A and System-B. The first can be summed up as the “Timeless Way of Building” described in his book of the same name, published in 1979, while the latter would be the architectural “system” we have nowadays, built upon the basis of Modern thinking. According to Alexander, System-A “(…) reveres the land, does one’s utmost to grasp the overall form and structure as it is, and then tries to make all actions support and strengthen that structure as it is. More loosely expressed, one might describe this as a state of mind which takes the land as holy, and tries to extend and increase that holiness, in every act”.25 22 Karsten Harries, Op. Cit., p. 336-337. 23 Ibid., p. 361. 24 Ibid., p. 364. 25 Christopher Alexander, The Battle for The Life and Beauty of The Earth – A Struggle Between Two World-Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 59. 14 The “attitude” described by Alexander is very similar to what Eliade identified in the “primitive man”. The land is holy, and therefore the human activities related to the land are understood as sacred – they are sacraments, they participate in the sacred. This inclination towards holiness strongly differs, as Alexander points out, from the way System-B advocates understand the world. In this system, the land is not holy - it is a resource. Even some of the latest arguments for sustainability follow this imperative. Even if the motivation is to preserve the environment, it is one thing to do it simply because you want it to remain “available” for the future generations - it is completely different to do it because you think that the land you live in is sacred. On the first case, the land is still seen as a resource, and the motivation behind preservation is purely “economical” – some of the resource must be “stocked”, so it will remain available. On the second case, the motivation is completely different. If the land is sacred, it is a gift or a manifestation from God – and man’s actions towards the land must show his appreciation and gratitude. Thus, the man-made world is seen not in opposition to the natural world, but as a complement to it – it is a “second nature”, as Cicero26 puts it. It is not about building something to change or replace Nature; of course that some change will be necessary, but the whole process is seen as something like a “cocreation”, and not as an individual expression which aims at transforming the world. This notion can be related to Jean Hani’s definition of traditional Art – we can say, in this case, that man’s intervention on the “land” must be driven by an attempt to reveal the divine Nature hidden in it. Thus, the experience of Architecture, for instance, can somehow also be an experience of holiness, in Eliade’s terms. According to Boethius, “The form of a thing is like a light by which that thing is known”27 – thus, the form of a building might be the way through which the sacred order imprinted in Nature can be known by men. This recovery of the notion of holiness can seem quite tempting as a response to the desacralized and usually “arid” order of the Modern world. Could this be the answer for today’s architecture? Maybe it can actually show us a promising path; however, in order to experience holiness, we must somehow be open to it. With the elimination of the “vertical 26 Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Natura Deorum (Cambridge University Press, 2003). 27 Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, De Unitate et Uno. Patrologie Migne. Cited in Titus Burckhardt The Essential Titus Burckhardt: Reflections on Sacred Art, Faiths, and Civilizations (World Wisdom, 2003) p. 120. 15 axis” God–Soul, Modern thinking has numbed our ability to open ourselves to transcendence. The notion that only reason can and should be “trusted” apparently teaches us to ignore our intuitive faculties, and the feeling towards God can only be intuitive – it is actually the feeling of a presence. God is not an object that can be “known”28 – as I have already mentioned, to know God man should “step outside of Him”, looking down on Him as an object. However, reason is also included in this intuitive feeling towards God and transcendence as a whole. According to Dom Luigi Giussani, “The religious sense is reason’s capacity to express its own profound nature in the ultimate question; it is the ‘locus’ of consciousness that a human being has regarding existence. Such an inevitable question is in every individual, in the way he looks at everything.”29 Thus, the “religious sense” is in itself a “way of seeing” – it is in the way we look at everything. I am inclined to believe that this is the common “attitude” that unites pre-Modern artists of different times and places, and I am sure that any attempts to recover, or at least remember the sacred dimension of human existence, must start with the awakening of the religious sense in the heart and soul of each individual. III With this notion in mind, I believe that the study of what I have called the “traditional worldview” can be a path towards a more critical understanding of the world we live in. First of all, it shows us that many Modern notions that we usually take for granted, and even consider being common-sense, are not really “imprinted” in the structure of reality; most of them are just human creations - some more accurate than others, and some more honest than others -, and should never be seen as “final explanations” or “universal laws”. Therefore, the “traditional worldview” can help us to reconnect with the past conquests of our civilization, mending the laces that were torn apart by Modern thinking and recovering the richness of a fuller understanding of the structure of reality – one which places man once again as a medium between God and Nature. The recovery of the transcendental dimension of human life can also enrich our ability to express our interpretation of this life, - that is, 28 Étienne Gilson, Deus e a Filosofia (Lisbon: Edições 70, 1941). 29 Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense (McGill-Queen’s Press, 1997). Translated by John E. Zucchi. p. 56. 16 our Art, our “way of doing” – through the “resurrection” of the symbolic nature of manmade objects. However, it is important to remember that such a revision of our past should also include the contribution of Modern thinkers and artists. After all, if I would propose a break with the Modern worldview and with its expression through Modern art – the “new tradition” announced by Siegfried Giedion -, I would be repeating the same mistake I am condemning. Their work must be studied and interpreted, and by doing so we might find elements that stand the test of time, and can inspire future creations. This is the true spirit of Tradition, as defended by Otto-Maria Carpeaux: “Tradition only exists in human consciousness. Only human consciousness has the freedom to choose what is indispensable to the true traditionalism; a freedom without which all traditionalism (…) degenerates in inquisitorial oppression. (…) Human consciousness, artificially separated from the experiences of true tradition, succumbs, closed inside an individualist or collectivist ‘modernism’”.30 The “true traditionalism” invoked by Carpeaux is an attempt to avoid the tendency to adhere to pre-made conceptions or systems – the all-encompassing explanations which proliferated during the twentieth century. With Carpeaux’s observation in mind, I would like to underline the following: perception and expression – or, as we might call them, our “way of seeing” and our “way of doing” - are both intuitive, being affected by all aspects of human life, including individual and collective memories, thoughts and feelings. The following scheme tries to illustrate the various dimensions involved in these processes, and it helps us to illustrate two arguments: first of all, with the removal of the vertical axis of Transcendence, human expression becomes poorer and self-referential, usually being reduced to the production of “images”, and not “symbols”, which carry much more layers of meaning; secondly, I would like to underline that perception, which takes place in the present, is always permeated by the past (History, memory) and also by the future (as all the “imaginable possibilities”) – it is, thus, a “critical” process, and not merely a passive absorption of external stimuli. This “critical perception” is the operation of true traditionalism, which will then be the basis for expression – the imaginable possibilities of the future. 30 Otto Maria Carpeaux, Op. Cit., p. 204. 17 This scheme tries to illustrate the various dimensions involved in Perception and Expression.31 Thus, I believe that the lesson we might learn from traditional Art – and from the true traditionalism mentioned by Carpeaux - regards the possibility of recovering the notion that artistic expression can, by itself, be a reflection about our being-in-the-world. The idea of the pre-eminence of thought over art is just a Modern thesis, and, as architects, we cannot allow it to reduce the expressive possibilities of our craft to the expression or translation of intellectual systems. In his classic study of the relation between Gothic architecture and Scholastic philosophy 32, Erwin Panofsky has identified and explained the structural coherence between these two expressions of the medieval genius. Panofksy follows Hegel’s imperative, considering that the Gothic cathedrals were translations or analogies of the scholastic Summa. However, as 31 Inspired by Olavo de Carvalho, “Para Uma Antropologia Filosófica”, O Globo, 19 July 2003. Available at http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/semana/030719globo.htm 32 Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New American Library, 1976). 18 Olavo de Carvalho has observed in his most recent book, some of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture were built before Alexander des Halles began to write the first Summa in 1231 33. Thus, according to Carvalho, scholastic thinkers were probably inspired by Gothic architecture, and not the other way around. This pre-eminence of art over thought can seem to us as an inversion – but it is the Modern, Hegelian idea of the pre-eminence of thought over art which is an inversion of the “traditional way”. Carvalho has exemplified the recurrence of this notion in different times and places, such as “the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, which gave to Plato and Aristotle the model of the eternal laws; Giotto’s perspective, without which the new cosmology of Galileo and Kepler would be inconceivable; Dante’s Divine Comedy, which creates the possibility of the modern intellectual as the sovereign judge of society; Balzac’s Human Comedy, in which Karl Marx got his first view of the structure of capitalism, and so on”34. The pre-eminence of art is undeniable because “firstly, the experience is condensed in the compacted symbolic forms of art, myth and ritual, and only then verbalized, when possible, as concept and theory”. Thus, “artistic creation forms and traces the limits of the imaginative terrain on which the theorizing constructions of science and philosophy will be erected” 35. This notion can help us to reconstruct the role of art and architecture in our contemporary society. Instead of creating translations of intellectual systems or “cultural commodities” – and images - for mass consumption, we can look back to the “ways of doing” expressed in the surviving works of our ancestors, trying to find others means of expression. Instead of thinking about architecture, we can try to think by creating architecture, recovering its ability to express, through its own particular language, our interpretation of life and of our place in the universe. IV This essay argued that the modus operandi of Modern architecture – as exemplified by the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk – is based on the mechanicist worldview developed by Modern philosophy. This worldview proclaimed that the order of the universe is a product of the 33 Olavo de Carvalho, A Filosofia e Seu Inverso - e Outros Estudos (Campinas: Vide Editorial, 2012), p. 70 34 Ibid. p. 73. 35 Ibid. 19 universe itself – thus, it is immanent to it. This notion made it possible for philosophers to develop all-encompassing intellectual systems, based on their interpretation of the “natural” structure of the universe, which claimed to explain the whole of reality. By doing so, they have tried to change their “position in the cosmos”, allowing themselves to act as “creators of worlds” built in/by their own minds. Thus, thought seemed to have conquered preeminence over other human expressions, especially Art, which was, until then, understood as a way of symbolizing the structure of reality. This led to a reduction of the expressive possibilities of Art, which was turned into a mere translation of the intellectual systems devised by Modern thinkers – a translation achieved through the production of images which aimed at representing the ideas which laid behind them. Even though architectural theory and practice has undeniably surpassed the ideas of the founders of Modern Architecture – including many revisions and critiques of their thought and of the resulting “products” -, the Modern worldview and its conception of Art was still the basis for Post-Modernism, Deconstructivism and many other “reactions” to Modern Architecture, including the recent Parametricist Manifesto devised by Patrik Schumacher36. This conception of Art, which “unites” these apparently conflicting visions, strongly differs from the attitude towards Art which permeated the works of traditional, pre-Modern artists. Their Art was based in a worldview which acknowledged the transcendental nature of order, which they tried to express and revere by creating symbols of the divine presence on Earth. Thus, Art was considered to have its own language, being by itself a valid – and actually the best – way of making the sacred known to men. We can then conclude that, in the traditional worldview, Art actually had pre-eminence over thought – or it was, at least, also considered as a valid and fruitful way of thinking, and not just a translation of pre-made conceptions. I believe that this notion might help contemporary artists and architects to turn their attentions to the very essence of their craft – that is, to try once again to interpret reality through Art. Some authors have acknowledged this possibility, especially Christopher Alexander and Karsten Harries, whose writings were already mentioned in this essay. Alexander recognizes 36 At this point, I feel the necessity of assuring that I am perfectly aware that most architects do not turn to philosophy in order to find references for their practice. Usually, they turn to other architects. Thus, the influence of Modern thinking is present even in the works of architects who never read a line from Descartes, Hegel, or even Gropius – the architectural images created by architects who were directly influenced by Modern theories propagate these theories to unsuspecting followers. 20 the enduring expressive – and “structuring” - strength of traditional architecture, focusing on its attempt to relate to the structure of reality, which, according to the author, has directed the creation of buildings and environments which harmoniously “blended” into the natural world. Karsten Harries also focuses on this relation between nature and the man-made world, underlining how architecture can symbolize, through conventional, man-made symbols, the natural symbolisms which are imprinted in our perception of reality. This procedure would allow architects to create structures of “universal” appeal, since these would be related to experiences which are common to all men. However, both authors – especially Harries - only “skim the surface” of a pivotal element of the traditional worldview: the transcendental nature of reality. I believe that the recovery of this dimension of human existence is a necessary path in this critical review of both the Modern and the Traditional “ways of doing”. Only by reflecting on our “position in the cosmos” can we create “expressions of impressions”37 which can actually speak to us on a level that can hardly be achieved by the writings of even the most talented philosopher. In spite of the wonderfully enriching experiences we may have when reading philosophical texts, only the direct experience of reality – and the expressions of these experiences crystallized by Art - can allow us to reach a higher understanding of our being-in-the-world. Philosophy can - and surely does - help us to achieve valuable insights, which will be incorporated into our “mind-set”; this “mental atmosphere” will then directly affect our perception of reality, and, inevitably, our expressions of these impressions. However, the mere absorption of theories – and of the many images of these theories - will always be incomplete, since any all-encompassing intellectual system can only be an abstraction which cannot survive the confrontation with the unbreakable unity of our experiences. 37 Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic As Science Of Expression And General Linguistic (Kessinger Publishing, 2004), p. 105. 21