| God Knows I Tried. An experimental approach to orientalism and the practice of writing. (excerpts) |
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Mark Wigley argues that just as Reason has traditionally been represented as threatened by the sensual mobility of the ‘feminine’ in all its visceral manifestations, Architecture has been repeatedly visualized as being a High Art only by virtue of its subordination of "the ornament". The emergence of the cultural construct of Thinking Man, whether homme de lettres or architect, hinges on the control over (feminine) irrationality and excess; and much as ornament can be held in check by structure, chaos can be curbed through function, connotation through denotation, representation through harmonic order, and aesthetics through theory. Wigley quotes Gottfried Semper, a nineteenth century architect from Vienna who reflected on what he called Art Theoryís "repression" of "the structural role of decoration". According to Semper, the white marble of the columns in Greek temples, the epitome of pure, originary, and quintessentially structural architecture, was used merely because it was a better surface for colored paints. Interior structure, he quipped, is at best a construction of the surface. The actual production of space ultimately depends on paint, wall carpets, curtains and so forth, and not on brick walls and marble columns, which are there only for the security and permanence of the space produced. He liked to play on what might call the "identity-in-difference" between the terms Wand (wall) and Gewand (garment), to illustrate his idea that the very origin of spacing is not construction in and of itself, but the masking and dissimulation thereof. |
