Showing posts with label symbolism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label symbolism. Show all posts
Anecdote about symbolism
A personal anecdote about symbolism: When I first came to Cambridge I took one of those little tours they had in Harvard Yard, and when we came to Memorial Hall, the guide said - What do you think this is? And someone (or a couple of people) answered - a church. The guide said - This is not a church, but it really looks like a church doesn't it? That's because it was designed to be a church...
I accepted that, but the fact was I didn't think it looked like a church. Perhaps that's because I didn't come from a place where churches looked like that. But this remained in my mind, that Memorial Hall looks like a church, so when I was working some days this past summer in the information station and people came to ask where is Memorial Hall, I would direct them and say "it is that building across the street that looks like a church", and they all get it straight away. So, I bought into a symbolism I only just learnt... It works, and it was useful for giving directions.
End of anecdote.
I accepted that, but the fact was I didn't think it looked like a church. Perhaps that's because I didn't come from a place where churches looked like that. But this remained in my mind, that Memorial Hall looks like a church, so when I was working some days this past summer in the information station and people came to ask where is Memorial Hall, I would direct them and say "it is that building across the street that looks like a church", and they all get it straight away. So, I bought into a symbolism I only just learnt... It works, and it was useful for giving directions.
End of anecdote.
Art and Need
(Four Elements of Architecture, Gottfried Semper)
(pencil emphasis not by me)
"Art knows only one master - the need. It degenerates when it follows the whim of artists, even more so when it obeys the powerful patrons of art. Its proud determination can indeed raise a Babylon, a Persepolis, or a Palmyra from the desert sands, whose regular streets, mile-wide squares, stately halls and palaces impatiently wait in their sad emptiness the population that the despotic ruler was unable to conjure. The organic life of Greek art is not its work; it flourished only on the soil of need and under the sun of freedom."
(pencil emphasis not by me)
"Art knows only one master - the need. It degenerates when it follows the whim of artists, even more so when it obeys the powerful patrons of art. Its proud determination can indeed raise a Babylon, a Persepolis, or a Palmyra from the desert sands, whose regular streets, mile-wide squares, stately halls and palaces impatiently wait in their sad emptiness the population that the despotic ruler was unable to conjure. The organic life of Greek art is not its work; it flourished only on the soil of need and under the sun of freedom."
When we look at some great fabric
(Le Camus)
"One sensation induces quiet reflection; another inspires awe, or maintains respect, and so on." That a flower charms the eye: how does this relate to the argument that ornament is or has to be symbolic? What is a flower a symbol of?
"One sensation induces quiet reflection; another inspires awe, or maintains respect, and so on." That a flower charms the eye: how does this relate to the argument that ornament is or has to be symbolic? What is a flower a symbol of?
Symbolism
"meaning in the eyes of the public" - yet I think it is no longer about symbolic meaning but meaning in imagination
As such, these buildings are devoid of imagination
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