- Architecture
rests on intellectual as well as material foundations. _cr
s u r f a c
e _7 A R C H I T E C T | A R
T I C L E S
| COLLAGE READING: BRAQUE|PICASSO
My work on the Synthetic Cubist
invention of collage -- what it is, what it means and its
relationship to architecture -- is an extension of my
study of the emergence of abstraction in
twentieth-century art and the correlative problem of
Formalism (see my article, Formalism:
Move | Meaning [2]). The
backdrop to my interest in these matters is the work of
Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky on the relationship between
modern architecture and Analytical Cubist painting,
introduced in their seminal essay, "Transparency:
Literal and Phenomenal" (Perspecta, 1963), as well
as the later work of Rowe and Fred Koetter on the problem
of the solid/void dialectic in their 1978 book, Collage City. -
- In rereading my
paper, which was presented at the 1996 Annual Meeting
of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture,
I realize that
the lay reader may not be in a position to assess the
degree to which my contribution is original. While
Picasso's first collage (the .first collage), which I
discuss below, is perhaps familiar to certain architects
and architectural scholars -- it appears as the
frontispiece to Collage City _-- Braque's first
pasted-paper collage, to which I compare it, is unlikely
to strike a chord of recognition in architectural
spheres. It has remained, I'm fairly certain, virtually
unknown outside of my seminar on Cubism. This isn't
surprising, inasmuch as the study of the history of
modern painting, let alone specifically collage, isn't
part of the normal undergraduate and graduate
architecture curriculum. Although I am by no means the
first to recognize the importance of these first two
collages -- my awareness and appreciation of them
derives, in point of fact, from the work of scholars of
the history of Cubism, such as John Golding -- my article
is the first attempt in the field of architecture, as far
as I am aware, to explicitly discuss either the Picasso
or the Braque and focus on their relative significance.
Moreover, my comments alluding to Le Corbusier's
relationship to Cézanne are equally original, I believe,
a connection I hope to pursue in an article at some
point. Due to the limitations of the publisher, this paper was published with only
four illustrations, but I presented it with many slides,
and I hope to make the unabridged slide-version available
on line at some point in the future
Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture [ACSA] Annual Proceedings 84: 1996, pp. 181-87 | go to page 1 of 7
