PROLOGUE
In the year 2000, Fiat merged
with GM. Two colossal automobile manufacturers decided to become one colossal
automobile manufacturer. Thus we have one less colossal manufacturer (or is
it one more?). I propose that the logic behind this decision was permeated
by notions of the so-called “globalized economy” and by the irresistible urge
not to be left behind in the general trend (since
Daimler and Chrysler did it, we better do it as well). In this context,
the merger surprised no one, yet it was portrayed as big news and fed to the
public as one more piece of concrete evidence of the effects of ‘globalization’.
In other words, the cause was equated to the effect. Would it have been eccentric of the two companies not to merge?
No. Was it eccentric of them to
merge? Again, no. So what is the eccentric company to do? The pragmatic answer
is that no eccentric company exists. Furthermore, companies exist precisely
because they are not eccentric.
It seems that the vast majority
of people in the ‘western world’ go through a vicious circle that resembles
this: dismay – outrage – boredom – reconfirmation.
If you replace the word “reconfirmation” by the word “re-election” you will
have the basic mechanism that motors a western democracy. As long as a governing
political party –or its mirror image, the chief opposition– avoids any eccentricities, it remains in power.
In the modern democratic sense,
any Institution must express the
widest majority possible. Courtship
of the centre has proved to be the most (the only) successful way for
an Institution to remain such. So who wants to be eccentric?
DEFINITIONS
According to the meaning of the
word in greek, “eccentric” is that which is ‘off-centre’ (or skewed). Let
me say right away that I do not attach any moralistic notion to the term:
to be eccentric is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’. As an example of an eccentric
force I shall use the architectural ‘avant-garde’ 1. The term is
french and it literally means “forward-guard” or “forward-guards”, depending
on the number being used. By pronouncing the word avant-garde (or avant-gardes)
we cannot perceive whether it is in singular or plural number but by resorting
to the actual context. Let us hereby assume that the syntactical order of
the word has been neutralised and that we will accept the term avant-garde
without protest and without concern for the number or the gender. This last
clarification is important, as under no circumstances must there be confusion
between the use of the term avant-garde
and the reference to any specific avant-garde
Movements, historical or otherwise
2. In this article I will try to show that the avant-garde is a necessarily
eccentric entity.
Occasion for this name is given
us by Bentham’s theory of fictions. Entities are distinguished by Bentham
into perceptible and inferential. Furthermore, an entity –whether perceptible or inferential–
can be either real or fictitious. If for a moment we suppose
the non-existence of some real entity, and act accordingly –for example, if
we try to walk through a steel door as if it were not there– our senses (in
this case, pain) will “at once bear witness against [us].”3 The
experience of pain is here the real effect of a real, perceptible entity,
and whichever is not that must be,
at best, inferential; for, as Bentham puts it, “no such immediate punishment
will follow”4 the supposition of the non-existence of an inferential
entity. Yet, real effects can be caused by other kinds of entities. At least
one person has suffered pain –or worse– in the name of God who, according
to Bentham, is an inferential entity (whether real or fictitious, is a question
of faith) but must rather be classified in the special category of non-entities. Very characteristic is Bentham’s
attitude towards ghosts: “In no man’s judgement can a stronger persuasion
of [their] non-existence have place than in mine; yet no sooner do I lay myself
down to sleep in a dark room than [...] these instruments of terror obtrude
themselves.”5 Therefore, both fictitious entities and non-entities
have effects on reality, as Miran Božovič clarifies, “the former despite
the fact that they do not exist, and the latter precisely
because of the fact that they do not exist.”6
Altering slightly the letter and
spirit of Bentham’s terminology, we can now introduce a new meaning: that
of the mythic entity. The differences
between the fictitious and the mythic entity refer to those between the words fiction and myth. According to one definition, myth is the disclosure of an idea
by way of using and expanding the imagination which thus mixes its figments
with the underlying truths.7 On the contrary, fiction is itself
a figment of the imagination and so much the better will it express its own
truth, as the more careful its description will be. Let us then say that the
mythic entity functions in the same subconscious, and risk-ridden, manner
as the myth: some part of it is known beforehand and is recalled whenever
that which is the mythic entity is fixed upon.
THE AVANT-GARDE
The Prussian general and theorist
Carl von Clausewitz 8 writes: “Any force not totally ready for
battle needs an advanced guard to detect and observe the enemy’s approach
before he comes into view.”9 This concerns the strategic evaluation
of the military corps of the advanced guard which is then leading the main body of the army; leading though, only because it
thus stands better chances of carrying out its mission which is the reconnaissançe
of the enemy. If now the army were in retreat, the advanced guard would be
turned into the rear guard so as to maintain maximal possibilities of contact
with the enemy and protection of the main body of troops.10 As
the army is retrograding, the avant-garde, which has now become the arriére-garde,
is following the rest. That is to say, in the moment when a negative condition
is prevalent (since there occurs a distancing from the final objective which
is victory) 11 the avant-garde is no longer in the lead – in fact,
quite the contrary. We must destroy our spatial perceptions of the front-stage
(or even the back-stage) position of the avant-garde in relation to the
mainstream, in this case being represented by the main force of the army.
“The fundamental difference [between
war and art] is that war is not an exercise of the will upon lifeless matter,
as in the mechanical arts, or matter which is alive but passive and yielding,
as in the fine arts. In war, the will is directed against a living object
which reacts.”12 And yet, from the paralleling to the military
vanguard, useful conclusions can be derived concerning the institutionalised
perceptions of the avant-garde, conclusions that may in fact be focused exactly
on the points where the greatest differences occur: in the strategic model
it seems that the avant-garde is keeping a specific distance from the body
of troops, on which the total progress or immobility is thus dependent – in
other words, the progress of the two seems to be geometrically the same. Says
Clausewitz: “A corps of advanced guard extracts its operative value more from
its presence than from its actions – from the engagements that it could offer,
rather than those it actually fights.”13 To the degree that the
avant-garde can have any “operative value”–which in the architectural model
would be equivalent to some sort of progress– things may be exactly the reverse
in our case.
In contradistinction to the strategic
model, the following can already be noted: a) Avant-garde architecture will
not be construed as holding a progressive or privileged position in relation
to any other architectural expression, but simply as holding a particular
and, to an important degree, extreme
position. b) The way in which avant-garde research progresses –if this even
happens at all– must be regarded differently than in any other case of architectural
research. The idea of progress itself
–aesthetic, technical, or philosophical– acquires a drastically different
meaning the moment it is placed in the realm of the avant-garde. c) The “main body of the army” can now
be called centre, and it is not
at all certain that the avant-garde’s rôle is to protect it. The utmost caution
must be kept in regard to whether there
is an enemy, and to who that may
be.
THE “HISTORICIST” OBSTACLE
“I knew the earth was rotating,
and I with it, and Saint-Martin-des-Champs and all Paris with me, and that
together we were rotating beneath the Pendulum, whose own plane never changed
direction, because up there, along the infinite extrapolation of its wire
beyond the choir’s ceiling, up toward the most distant galaxies, lay the Only
Fixed Point in the universe, eternally unmoving.”14
This is a passage from Umberto
Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. The Only
Fixed Point can here be read as the Hidden Truth which generations of Hermetics
and Gnostics have searched for in the Texts, whose words, “instead of speaking,
conceal the unspeakable.”15 That, as Eco explains, is their fundamental
difference to the rationalists who, accepting in principle the meanings of
words, proceed by induction. But even the inductive system of thought needs
a primary hypothesis, or cause, “beyond which there can be no other.”16
The Only Fixed Point seems to be an inescapable magnet.
Historical research, which preeminently
functions, or tries to function, in a rational way, focuses on the recognition
of the causes that are believed to have brought about the phenomena being
studied. And yet, as the word itself tells us, re-cognition presupposes that which is already known. Tafuri writes:
“In posing the problem of an ‘origin’, we presuppose the discovery of a final
point of arrival: a destination point that
explains everything, that causes a given ‘truth’, a primary value, to
burst forth from the encounter with its originary ancestor.”17
This is the echo of Sir Karl Popper’s words, who, in 1945, was saying: “Historicism
is out to find The Path on which mankind is destined to walk; it is out to
discover The Clue to History.”18
One could say that the tendency
to ‘historicise’ has appeared ever since there has been an effort to put history
down, but its most consistent and destructive presence should be looked for
in the 20th century. The whole ambiguous concept is based on the
theory that it is possible to define any object of historical knowledge as
the singular result of a chain of historic occurrences, which can be determined.19
The totalitarian version of this view, from which orthodox historians rather
keep their distance, says, for example, that the architecture of a particular
period is none other than ‘the expression of the collective unconscious’.
20 This version is by no means rare in architectural theories where
it is occasionally formulated as the ‘spirit of the age’ (Zeitgeist), or the
‘spirit of technological progress’, for no other reason than to justify specific
formal preferences.21
To set the
avant-garde within such an anti-individualistic background would have sorry
consequences on its understanding. Tafuri and Dal Co say: “It would be a mistake
to read the course of the avant-garde as a straight line leading from the
overcoming of expressionistic anxiety to [the artistic expression of] technical
reproducibility.”22 And a mistake it would be for thus we would
reduce the avant-garde to something
explicit, we would append a starting point, a goal and a destination to
it; paradoxically, we would give it that which, like Bentham’s ghosts, it
doesn’t want to have: its place. Avant-garde is, as was defined earlier, a
mythic entity; and as such it cannot be scientifically examined, but only
approached in an interpretative manner. This study does not deal with the
genesis or, even less, the historical ‘evolution’ of the avant-garde, but
with the way it affects reality.
If we assume that the avant-garde
act is an intrinsically reactionary act, then its means must change whenever
that to which it reacts, changes. If, in addition, this last is the occasional
‘centre’ (in the sense given it in the introduction), then the avant-garde
act is, up to a varying degree, a repulse
of the centre – in other words, an eccentric act. We can now largely define
the historically necessary, although not
sufficient, conditions for the appearance of avant-garde activity: there
must exist a specific and compact
centre (at least one), this centre must be assimilated, and there must concur
special reasons making its repulse attractive (such as the boredom it may
have caused with its supererogatory presence).
THE “GOOD TASTE” HURDLE
The dictionary tells us that the
word style originates from the latin
stilus.23 Stilus is the pen
–the sharp instrument for writing or engraving. Metaphorically, style is the
manner in which one uses the pen. If someone’s manner is similar to at least
one other’s, then we speak of the style of a group, and eventually of a school’s
or an epoch’s. But already things are getting complicated: for what reason
should my manner be similar to somone else’s? There are here two possibilities:
either it is not –and has merely been thus recorded by a third person, who
is making history in his (or her) own manner– or it really is, in which case
there are many probable explanations. Those that seem to be generally preferred
lead to the conclusion that we obeyed (or
did not obey), both I and the other, to the conventions of our day. Let
us presume: the conventions of our day may be formed by tradition and the
mores, or by the prevalent –which is to say, the plurality’s– perception of
what is elegant, maybe even by fashion. And with that, things are beyond all
control.
Fashion is also a manner; it answers
to the question how. But the question
that seems to be elusive is who.
David Watkin says: “In fact there are a hundred and one solutions [manners],
and the one chosen will always depend partly on the current fashionable notions
of what buildings ought to look like.”24 A sentence that must surely
be considered heretic by any purist, champion of any Architectural Style,
as by any ideologue. According to Walter Benjamin: “Fashion –more widely,
consumption– conceals the deepest social inertia [...] to the degree that
the demand for real social activity idles and loses itself in fashion, in
the sudden and often circular change of objects, clothes and ideas. And to
the illusion of change is added the illusion of democracy.”25 In
this case, fashion is objectified as an expression of capitalistic totalitarianism
which uses it as a lever to stupefy, and therefore control, society. On the
other hand, the historians and theoreticians of the Modern Movement are seeking
the “ideo-logical base that would remove architecture once and for all from
the arena of Style and fashion.”26 Of course, as the case was later
shown to be, modernism did not differ in that from Styles of earlier centuries,
which had striven towards the same goal, and with the same unfortunate result.
However, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner succeeds in introducing a real novelty by declaring
that “sham materials and sham technique are immoral”.27 Which means
(allowing for a slight interpretative leeway as to what a ‘sham’ material
or technique could possibly be) that immorality leaves the subject and moves
to the object; it becomes objective. In other words, forms are no longer subject
to aesthetic criticism –which is debatable– but are judged as either moral
or immoral. The hunt for the Fixed Point is kept on.
The question though, is kept unanswered.
Fashion, to the general annoyance, seems to be influencing everything –but
who influences fashion? If we except,
as beyond the point, several Hautes Couteurs, if we discount the Church as
the dead opposite of fashion, if we accept that Intelligentsia and Art cannot
be directing fashion simultaneously as trying to resist it, and if we agree
that fashion is older than Capitalism, then, by rule of exclusion, it must
be the ‘broader public’ that generates and affects it. But this would prove
that no ‘true’ architectural dogma has a real social basis, and, at least
seen from Pevsner’s point of view, that cannot be true. What apparently causes
Pevsner such discomfort is not common, everyday fashion but academic fashion,
which is to say, style.
It is then academically sanctioned fashion that constitutes the ‘centre’, the
repulse of which is the essence of the
avant-garde act. But not its replacement.
If that limit is crossed, then the avant-garde ceases to exist as such, and
melts itself into a new ‘centre’. Even further: if the intention of the act is,
from the beginning, the replacement
of the ‘centre’, as in the case
of Pevsner’s effort, then the act cannot
be called avant-garde but innovating or progressive movement.
If the character of the avant-garde
is essentially unproductive, that leaves a distinctive trace on its aesthetic
means, but it does not follow that the primary instruments of its language
are necessarily different than those of the current idiom. The avant-garde,
like any architectural expression, cannot but have, as its starting point,
the style that exists at the moment of its appearance. Its aim is rather less
the invention of a new style, than the exploration of the extreme possibilities
of the actual one, through a systematic undermining, or outright violation,
of its rules – a practice that subjects it to accusations of immorality and
‘bad taste’. It is precisely for this reason that the study of extremities
is impossible when there are notions of morality or ‘correct taste’ lingering
underhand. As it would be inexpedient for one to try to approach the Marquis
de Sade’s texts from the good christian’s point of view, so it would be illogical
for one to try to approach products of extreme architecture, armed with good
taste.
ECCENTRICITY AS THE ULTIMATE REFUGE
In Philosophy in the Boudoir, writes Sade:
“They who wish to denigrate the taste [sodomy]
or proscribe its practice declare it is harmful to population; how dull-witted
they are, these imbeciles who think of nothing but the multiplication of their
kind, and who detect nothing but the crime to anything that conduces to a
different end. Is it really so firmly established that Nature has so great
a need for this overcrowding as they would like to have us believe? [...]
Let us make no mistake about it, this propagation was never one of her laws,
nothing she ever demanded of us, but at the very most something she tolerated;
[...] Why! what difference would it make to her were the race of men entirely
to be extinguished upon earth, annihilated!”28
Says Manfredo Tafuri: “The greatness
of [Giovanbattista Piranesi’s] ‘negative utopia’ lies in his refusal to establish,
after [recognising the presence of contradiction as the absolute reality],
alternative possibilities”.29 Almost all of Piranesi’s works are
nothing but confirmations of this contradiction. But, according to Tafuri,
the most complete example of this is perhaps the altar of San Basilio in Santa
Maria del Priorato, which is also one of the very few projects he ever ‘built’.
The structure is ambivalent in every respect. The sculpted figures compose
the face shown towards the front side, “facing the community of the faithful”.30
This face is counterpoised to the concealed face of the rear, the infidel –we should say, the sodomite– side, which “only by a deliberate act”31 (that
is to say, to see the backside) can be revealed, and which is the face of
abstraction –stylistic or other. But this
hidden face cannot exist without the other, the evident one: the ‘thing’32
is indivisible, and no combination of signs, no language, is sufficient for
it. The ultimate expression of the contradiction in the sculpture is the sphere,
the hermetic symbol of void.
To recognise the contradiction,
to become conscious of its irrefutable presence, leads to the void. To that
which Sade, however inhumanly he puts his characters to rape, to murder, and
to consume the symbol of uselessness –excrement– he can neither approach nor
avoid. The basic characteristics of avant-garde eccentricity are equivalent
to the basic characteristics of Sadean theory:
inversion, transgression, subversion, and transcendence. 33
Hal Foster says that “shock, scandal,
alienation [...] are no longer tactics against conventional thought, they
are conventional thought.”34
In other words, that the void has been conquered by the ‘hyper-plurality’
of the capitalistic consumption society. Something similar to what Kasparov
said, the first time he was defeated by Deep Blue, that the machine has managed
to create quality through quantity. However, since Zeno of Elea had already
doubted the meaning of multiplicity since the 5th century BC, one
has the right to be sceptical, or, in any case, not to hope. Zeno subjects
to doubt, perhaps for the first time, notions fundamental and ‘objective’,
such as movement, and introduces the meaning of the paradox, which could be
termed as “an apparently unacceptable conclusion that results from an apparently
acceptable hypothesis, through an apparently acceptable reasoning.”35
To formulate or to notice a ‘succesful’ paradox is not merely to play an elegant
word game; it is to formulate or to notice a refusal –a negation. The absolute
paradox is not confronted by logic but by another absolute paradox, a convention.
In 1769 Piranesi publishes the
work “Diverse Manners for the Decoration of Fireplaces”, in a mixed ‘post-rococo’
style, using egyptian, etruscan, and greek motifs. In order to answer to his
Neoclassicist (purist) critics, he accompanies the work by the written “Apologetic
Reasoning”, in which we read:
“To certain natures, then, whom the poverty of their ideas more than propriety
renders abnormally fond of simplicity, these designs of mine will seem to
be too laden with ornaments, and they will throw up in my face Montesquieu’s
maxim, that a building laden with ornaments is an enigma for the eyes, just
as a confused poem is for the mind, and I in turn will answer that I stand
with Montesquieu and with all other enemies of enigmas and confusion, and
that I disapprove as much as anyone of the multiplicity of ornaments.”36
NOTES
1. I say ‘architectural’
because I am an architect and my main input is through architectural sources
and examples, and not because I would necessarily want to distinguish between
Art and Architecture. But, not to be entirely benign, I will say that the utter
confusion reigning over the distinction between the various “avant-garde
movements” is entirely due to the polemics among Art critics and historians.
2. A good example of such a
polemic as mentioned above is the one between those who believe the only “true”
Avant-Garde to be the so-called ‘historic’ one (of the beginning of the
century) and those who also recognise the 60’s tendencies as “true”. See Peter
Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde,
Univ. Of Minnesota Press, 1984.
3. Jeremy Bentham, Postscript I, The Panopticon Writings, p.122.
4. Ibid.
5. Bentham, from C.K. Ogden, Bentham’s Theory of Fictions, London,
1932, from Bozovic, p.21.
6. Miran Bozovic, Introduction, in The Panopticon Writings, p.21.
7. André Lalande, Lexikon tis Filosofias (Dictionary of Philosophy), entry “myth”.
8. Clausewitz remains to this day one of the most important thinkers on
strategy and war. This note is here to dismiss any notion that he might have
been chosen because of his supposed ‘bloodthirstyness’ (in any case, a
ridiculous idea), which would presumably combine nicely with the avant-garde.
9. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, p.302.
10. See Clausewitz,
chapt.2,3, Book V.
11. Victory is defined by
Clausewitz as the aim of tactics and the means of strategy, chapt.2, Book II.
12. Clausewitz, p.149.
13. Ibid., p.311.
14. Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum, p.5.
15. Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation, p.59.
16. Ibid., p.44.
17. Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, p.3.
18. Sir Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 1945,
from David Watkin, Morality and
Architecture, p.6.
19. See Watkin, Introduction
to ‘Historicism’ (Part III).
20. Watkin mentions this
ironically, and within quotation marks (p.3). It would be very interesting to
know who came up with it.
21. Here, I feel obliged to
refer to Watkin’s entire book.
22. Manfredo Tafuri/Francesco
Dal Co, Modern Architecture I, Faber
and Faber/Electa, Milano, 1976, p.108.
23. Which probably originates
from the greek stylos (pole).
N.P.Andriotis, Etymological Dictionary,
Aristotelian University of Salonica,
1995.
24. Watkin, p.3.
25. Walter Benjamin, from Hal
Foster.
26. R. Macleod, Style and Society, Architectural Ideology in Britain, 1835-1914, 1971, from Watkin,
p.13.
27. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, An Enquiry into Industrial Art in England,
1937, from Watkin, p.4.
28. D. A. F. Le
Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the
Boudoir, p.274-276.
29. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, p.54.
30. Ibid., p.48.
31. Ibid., p.49.
32. “das Ding”
33. See Timo
Airaksinen, The Philosophy of the Marquis
de Sade.
34. Hal Foster, Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural
Politics, p.26.
35. R. M.
Sainsbury, Paradoxes, p.1.
36. Piranesi, “Ragionamento apologetico”, 1769, from
Tafuri, p.51.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Airaksinen, Timo – The Philosophy
of the Marquis de Sade, Routledge, Kent, 1991.
Bentham, Jeremy – The Panopticon
Writings (Panopticon Letters and Postscripts, Fragment on Ontology), Verso, London, 1995.
Bozovic, Miran – Introduction,
in The Panopticon Writings, ibid.
Clausewitz, Carl von – On War,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1989.
Eco, Umberto – Foucault’s
Pendulum, Picador, London, 1990.
Eco, Umberto – Erminia ke
Ipererminia (Interpretation and
Overinterpretation), Ellinika Ghrammata (Greek Letters), Athens, 1993.
Foster, Hal – Recodings: Art,
Spectacle, Cultural Politics, Bay Press, Seattle, 1985.
Kondylis, Panaghiotis – I Parakmi
tu Astiku Politismu (The Decline of
Bourgeois Civilisation), Themelio (Foundation), Athens, 1995.
Lalande, André – Lexikon tis
Filosofias (Dictionary of Philosophy),
Papiros (Papyrus), Athens, 1955.
Piranesi, Incisioni - Rami -
Legature - Architetture, Fondazione Giorgio Cini / Neri Pozza, Vicenza, 1978.
Sade, Donatien-Alphonse-François, Le Marquis de – Juliette – Six Volumes in One,
Grove Press, New York, repr.1968.
Sade, D. A. F. , Le Marquis de – Florville
and Courval, or The Works of Fate , Oxtiern,
or The Misfortunes of Libertinage , The
120 Days of Sodom , in The 120 Days
of Sodom and Other Writings, Arrow, London, 1990.
Sade, D. A. F. , Le Marquis de
– Eugénie de Franval , Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue , Last Will and Testament , Note Concerning my Detention , Philosophy in the Boudoir , in Three Complete Novels and Other Writings,
Arrow, London, 1991.
Sainsbury, R. Mark – Paradoxes, Cambridge U. P., Cambridge, 1995.
Tafuri, Manfredo – Il Complesso
di Santa Maria del Priorato sull’ Aventino, in Piranesi, Incisioni - Rami - Legature - Architetture, as above.
Tafuri, Manfredo – The Sphere and
the Labyrinth, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990.
Tafuri, Manfredo / Dal Co, Francesco – Modern Architecture I, Faber & Faber / Electa, Milano, 1976.
Watkin, David – Morality and
Architecture, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977.
Guido Meranzana is an Architect. His interest lies in
the crossover between architecture and avant-garde practices .