UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA
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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015
06 The Architecture of Invisible Lines MARK WIGLEY Colaboraciones: Arquitectos / Artistas. Sala Jorge Vieira. Lisboa. 2001
What does it mean for architects and artists to collaborate? What does it mean lo exhibit such work? What are we looking at exactly? Collaboration is not just talented people from different fields working together on stimulating projects. Collaboration really begins when it is no longer clear who is responsible for what. Two people sign a project but there is no visible line in the work that allows us to credit each of them with different parts or roles, no clear line between art and architecture. The line is somehow blurred in the working process and erased in the final result. The whole point of exhibiting “CoLlaborations: Architects / Artists” is that the “ / “ between architect and artist has been systematically sabotaged in each of the projects on display. Of course the removal of the line presupposes its existence in the first place. There is no collaboration without a clear line that is then withdrawn, a line that is so familiar that we may have forgotten its unique force, a line that only comes back to our attention when it is taken away. What one sees when looking 1
at his work is not some special aesthetic quality. A collaboration between disciplines does have a particular look, an extra energy resulting from the fusion of forces. On the contrary, what one sees is that something is missing, the line. And we only look for it because we have been told that the work is collaborative. Two signatures are presented to us, representing a division between fields, media, issues, or personalities. But the division leaves no trace. Collaborations are a kind of tease. The point to a line that is not there. Or, more precisely, they at once draw and erase the line, highlighting it by terrorizing it. It is important to remember that the line being threatened is a relatively recent one. The familiar division between architecture and art is product of eighteenth century specialization, even if it had taken over two millennia of industrial history to establish. Already in the time of Augustus Caesar, Vitruvius wrote the first book devoted solely to architecture as an independent field. It tried to isolate the architect as a distinct figure, detached from both the subordinate world of physical labor and from all the other similarly elevated fields. But the mission was unsuccessful and was not revived until the fifteenth century. Despite the receiving the active support of most of the leading intellectuals of successive generations, it was not successfully carried out until well into the eighteenth-century. Only then was a fine art system established with each art clearly isolated within its own disciplinary apparatus. This definitive specialization paralleled the new specialization of disciplines in the modern university during the same period. A full scale academic industry became devoted to maintaining the new system of specialties and defining the differences between the arts, between the arts and the sciences, and so on. Treatises, essays, curricula, encyclopedias, training programs, and legal regulations worked hard to identify and maintain disciplinary limits. Clear boundary lines were drawn and kept under surveillance, lines that remain powerful today. For the artist, a key step had already been made in the second half of the seventeenth century, as the center of the discourse shifted from Italy to France. Architecture, painting and sculpture were each given their own Royal Academy to regulate their respective fields. Yet the division between them only became absolutely secure almost a century later with the emergence of the first independent schools for each art form. Even the first complete school of architecture, Jacques-Francois Blondel’s private school established in Paris in 1740, included 2
a program in painting and sculpture. It is only when Blondel became the director of the first official school at the Royal Academy of Architecture in 1762 that a fully independent program of architectural education was established. The dream of specialization in the obsessively studied text of Vitruvius had finally become a reality. The background against which the disciplinary limits were established, and which they were explicitly designed to reject, was collective work. Academies were set up to take over training, production and control of the arts from medieval system o guilds in which work was produced by numerous apprentices in workshops, without a clear signature attached to the artwork or any distinction between fine and decorative arts. In major projects, architecture, painting and sculpture would be blended together. This tradition took centuries to undermine. As Giorgio Vasari started to construct the counter-image of the artists as a solitary ego and launch the first academy of art in the mid-sixteenth century, many of the artists involved, including Vasari himself, were both architects and artists according to the new distinctions. Michelangelo, his role model, was at once sculptor, painter, and architect. The individual signature of the artist was successfully invented but it took a long time for it to be associated with a particular art. The image of solitary work that Vasari read into the still collaborative scene was more a desire of himself and his friends than a reality. Modern specialization emerged extremely slowly out of the collaborative tradition. Indeed, the guild tradition never completely died until the eighteen century when arts were no longer blended together. Only then was the distinction between architecture, painting and sculpture clearly marked in each major project. The divisions of the new fine art system literally became inscribed into the surface of artworks. Strictly speaking, it is not accurate to describe the workshop tradition against which the academics struggled for so long as “collaborative�. It is only with the emergence of specialized fields that the idea of collaboration between them becomes thinkable. What the guilds mixed were not discrete arts as they would later be conceived. The fine art system establish an entirely different economy of interaction. In fact, it connects and unites the arts in very gesture of dividing them. The lines that hold the fields apart combine to form a dingle overall disciplinary structure. The system is a kind of diagram, a single set of coordinated lines. The idea of disciplinary specificity can only be produced within the idea of a generic 3
organization. When Blondel, for example, finally isolates architectural training off
uitous white wall of modern architecture took over the role of isolating artworks
by itself he begins by pointing to an overall system that connects architecture
from each other and from architecture so much so that modern art was able to
to other fields. In so doing, he echoes Vasari, who had likewise appealed to a
abandon traditional frames. Architecture played a key role in preserving the mobil-
“certain kinship” between all the arts and between the arts and the other higher
ity of artworks. Art could enter architecture without being absorbed by it. Safely
disciplines, who in turn echoes the way Vitruvius appeals to a “common bond”
screened off by a generic white surface, the immobility of architecture seemingly
uniting all the fields as “departments” of an overall intellectual structure. Each field
intensified the mobility of the artworks. In fact, it produces that sense of mobility.
elaborates its individual identity by establishing its familial relationship with all the
Whatever is isolated off against the static white wall is automatically, as Duch-
others. The lines dividing them also enable them to work together. The dream of
amp demonstrated, transformed into art. What defines art is the frame not some
disciplinary specificity is inseparable from the dream of collaboration. The very
unique aesthetic condition. To exhibit an architectural project in a gallery is to use
structure that isolates the fields is also the possibility of bringing the together. The
the static quality of one architecture to frame and thereby give mobility to another.
lines become joints.
Once mobilized, architecture is able to engage with new forms of collaboration.
Radical collaborations erase the traces of these joints but do not neces-
The exhibition of collaborative projects actually has a much more dynamic and
sarily threaten disciplinary specificity. Consider the way that the dominant aca-
unsettling role than their construction in fixed sites. It exposes the strange way
demic system of discrete arts organizing the training, production, commission
that lines between architecture and the other arts are simultaneously remarkably
and evaluation of works has survived the continuous brutal assault upon it. This
fragile and remarkably strong.
assault already began less that hundred years after the system had finally been
To look at collaborative work in an exhibition today is to look into an ex-
established. From the mid-nineteenth century on, there was an extended line of
tremely convoluted scene in which art and architecture are twisted over and over
theoretical attack launched by Gottfried Semper’s comprehensive rejection of the
each other in a kind of endless tumbling. This gymnastic display keeps blurring
distinction between fine and applied art and extended practical tradition launched
the reasserting the line between disciplines, repeatedly destabilizing the system
by the revival of the workshop tradition by the circle of artists around William Mor-
of specialties only to reassert them. A centuries long soap opera is acted out at
ris and the subsequent arts and crafts movement. The resulting idea of blending
blinding speed.
all the arts into a “total work of art” set off a chain reaction of collaborative groups that refused the distinction between the arts: Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, the Secessionists, the Constructivists, the Italian Futurists, De Stijl, and so on. The paradigm is the celebration of the workshop by the Bauhaus school, whose director, Walter Gropius, repeatedly identified “collaboration” between artists and arts as the key to overturning the ruling academic tradition. So much of modern art is a product of this sustained attack and yet its canonic form quickly reestablished the disciplinary divisions being assaulted. In the twenties, for example, the most influential architect, Le Corbusier, polemically collaborate with artist in running an influential little magazine and incorporated the work of artists in most of his projects. But the arts were always isolated within separate essays in the magazine, and articles written collectively by painter and architect appeared under only one author’s name. When articles were gathered 4
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tural work, blending all the different arts as a “cathedral”. The renewed call for a
together, they formed separate books on painting and architecture, and paintings
synthesis of the arts in the forties and fifties simply repeated this absorbing ges-
and sculptures in the building were clearly distinct from the architecture they were
ture. When arguing for such a collaboration, Le Corbusier insists that architecture
placed within. Le Corbusier even wrote on the need to preserve this clear distinc-
is the “most synthetic” of the arts. Architecture is a field without clear limits. The
tion. In the thirties, this become the standard role of art in the newly canonized
real specialty of the architect collaboration. An artist working with an architect in-
International Style. The trademark white walls acted as a backdrop for isolated art
evitably becomes yet another invaluable consultant, lined up alongside the usual
works. Architecture framed art rather than blended with it.
array of structural engineers, plumbing experts, acoustics, landscape, lighting, and so on. Collaborations with architecture are never symmetrical.
It was only with the Second World War that there was another strong counter-reaction and a renewed call for a radical “synthesis of the arts” was made
In the end, the real issue is mobility. The line between architecture and
by the leaders of architectural discourse dominating, for example, the discus-
art that was inserted in the eighteenth century is also a seam. It allows art to be
sions at the successive CIAM congresses of 1941, 1949 and 1953. Individuals
stitched to architecture but also to be detached from it. The institutional specific-
like Le Corbusier, André Bloc, Sigfried Giedion, Fernand Léger, Paul Damaz, and
ity of art coincides with its independence from a particular spaces. It is not by
Gyorgy Kepes dedicated themselves to this post-disciplinary synthesis in publica-
chance that the fine art system arrive when a painting is no longer a fixed mural
tions and projects. Numerous collaborative groups like Cobra, The Situationist
on a particular wall but a framed image that can be removed from the architectural
International, Group Espace, Liga Nieuw Beelden, and The Independent Group
physical specificity. This institutional specificity of artworks is a product of lack of
emerged in the fifties and early sixties to once again efface the boundaries be-
physical specificity. This is ultimately a function of the market. Art become mobile
tween art and architecture. But in every case the members soon withdrew to their
with the emergence of an art market. The disciplinary line established and the
respective specialties. Eventually governments around the world started insisting
passage of works between collectors. It is the new forms of patronage and the
that a percentage of the budget for public buildings has to be devoted to art, and
passage of works between collectors. It is new mobility that makes the idea of
the possibility for a blending of disciplines multiplied exponentially but was rarely
collaboration possible. Only when art is not site specific do collaborations reunit-
taken advantage of. Artworks remain discrete objects placed within ready-made
ing it to specific spaces become possible. The frame (whether it be picture frame,
building designs.
pedestal, label, catalog entry, and so on) is the key. It establishes the line between
The subsequent decades were punctuated by a series of high profile col-
disciplines. Collaborations with architecture begin by removing the frame, pinning
laborations on built projects like those between Isamu Noguchi and Louis Kahn,
art to a site and absorbing it into the space.
Claus Oldenburg and Frank Gehry, Jorge Oteiza and Francisco Javier Sáenz de
Yet precisely inasmuch as architecture is itself considered a fine art, it
Oiza, Chucho Reyes and Luis Barragan, Barbara Kruger and Laurie Hawkinson,
is also mobile and has a market. It too can enter or leave a fixed space. When
James Turrell and Robert Mangurian, Vito Acconci and Steven Holl, etc. Archi-
collaborations are exhibited, for example, they have been transported from their
tects have increasingly been asked to collaborate with artists in design competi-
respective building sites into a gallery and from there to other galleries, collections
tions. The more well known an architect is, the more likely he or she is to be
and publications. Architecture now appears in the space of art rather than art ap-
asked. The leaders of the field are called on to symbolically cross the border. But
pearing in the space of architecture. Even if architecture enter the gallery on more
these projects remain the exception in the work of each architect and in the over-
equal terms.
all scene. Indeed, the only serve to reinforce the labels “architect” and “artist”. The
Things are immediately more complicated because the space for displaying art is itself an architectural work. In fact, the synthetic art of architecture has long played a key role in maintaining the line between disciplines. The ubiq8
respective specialties become more clear rather than less. The big signatures keep the disciplinary order intact in projects that apparently bypass it. In the end, collaboration remains a side effect of the fine art system 5
rather than its subversion. It is staged periodically as a king of maintenance pro-
artist”. Images of building alternate with images of paintings with the text earnestly
gram of the system. Since the mid-nineteenth century there has been an almost
stitching the two together until it concludes by appealing for new forms of “practi-
rhythmic alternation of blurring and reassertion of disciplinary limits. For an archi-
cal collaboration”, even if a recovery of the intensity of “intellectual collaboration”
tect to collaborate with a photographer, painter or sculptor today is a really not
between artists and architects immediately after the First World War is unlikely.
so different from similar projects at the beginning of the century. Once again, the
In fact, many of the pioneers of modern architecture were originally paint-
disciplines being combined almost immediately retreat to their usual locations.
ers or decorative artists. The line between art and architecture is routinely twisted.
Specialization rises again out of blurring. Indeed, ritualized blurring allows an in-
Take Le Corbusier again. Famously, he would paint in the morning and designs
dividual works to reenact the centuries-long historical process by which the fine
buildings in the afternoon. His early designs were often exhibited in a small art
arts emerged from a collaborative background. To celebrate collaboration, the
gallery in Paris. To enter the gallery was to find models and framed drawings of
very concept of which is a product of the fine arts system it appears to challenge,
modern houses. To enter those houses when they were built was to find framed
is finally to celebrate that system.
paintings, often by the architect or his colleague Léger (someone with a little
Indeed, what such collaborations disguise is that the routine operations
architectural training who turned into a painter). Architecture is framed by the art
of each discipline violate the limits that are officially assigned to them. The para-
world, then frames that world, and so on in a never ending complication. The ex-
doxical reassertion of disciplinary specific through symbolic acts od interdisciplin-
change is so fluid that many artists have simply decided to operate as architects
ary blending tries to block an ongoing insecurity about the border limits. After all,
for a while. An endless stream of artists have presented themselves as architects
no discipline is a specialized as it proclaims. The everyday practices of art and
throughout the second half of the twentieth century: André Bloc, Constant, Dan
architecture are more heterogeneous than the system acknowledges. The sys-
Graham, Arakawa, Richard Stella, and so on. This has reached special intensity
tem is endlessly reasserted precisely to produce a confident image of specificity
in the last decade as artists have increasingly moved beyond mixed media instal-
in the face of daily confusion and doubt.
lation work in fixed spaces to constructing new spaces. The number of artists with
Architects, for example, routinely present themselves as artists. Not only
“architectural projects” is rising exponentially.
do they use the same media and technique as artists when producing buildings
The fluidity of these daily exchanges across the official borderlines tends
but they present their drawings, paintings, photographs, collages, and models as
to be masked by high profile collaborations. Or, more precisely, the architect sees
artworks whose aesthetic value exceeds their utility in the design process or in
all such exchanges as being internal to architecture itself. If an architect collabo-
practical communication to clients, builders, colleagues or students. Architectural
rates with a painter, it is symptomatic that the painter is seen to be entering the
work is routinely exhibited in art galleries and museums. Furthermore, architects
world of painting. The architect’s world can absorb almost anything. Its interior
constantly refer to specific work by artists when accounting for their work and
is full of things collected from the outside. Ever since Vitruvius, the architect has
their projects are often analyzed as if they were produced by other disciplines.
been constructed as a synthesizer of multiple disciplines, absorbing and coordi-
Dominant critics evaluate buildings in the same terms as paintings. In 1941, in the
nating heterogeneous fields. When the attempt to make architecture an indepen-
most influential history of modern architecture, Sigfried Giedion compares images
dent high art was revived in the fifteenth century, architecture was again present-
paintings by Picasso and Braque to buildings by Le Corbusier and Gropius, argu-
ed as the supervising “mother” of the other arts. In the Bauhaus, with its religion
ing that modern architecture completes the unfinished project of cubist painting.
of collaboration, architecture was again the center, embracing everything else
In 1948, Henry Russell Hitchcock, another of the leading promoters of modern
and only being reached after passing through all the workshops of the specialized
architecture, published “Painting Toward Architecture”, a book on the influence of
arts. In 1919, Gropius insisted that all the arts should come under architecture’s
painters on modern architecture that is specifically addressed to “the architect as
wing and the Bauhaus institution itself was repeatedly described as an architec-
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