2015 Theory of Art

Phenomenology in architecture — and in theory of architecture in particular — is a result of reaction to late modernism after WWII and fatal crisis of the modernism. Christian Norberg-Schulz, one of world leading theoretician of his days (but today his theories seem to be mostly abandoned), proposes in his theories new basis for modern architecture. At the beginning it was structuralism and semiotics in his first book, “Intentions in Architecture”, but very soon he shifted his interest to phenomenology (and Heidegger) and started building his phenomenological theory. His first book on the theme was “Existence, space and architecture”, and he went on developing phenomenology in architecture for his whole life.
My first aim is — working from the point of view of a theoretician of architecture much informed by philosophy — to show the basis of his theory and problems that can be seen in it. My entry will derive predominantly from the book “Existence, space and architecture”, but taking into consideration his whole theoretical work. I would like to focus on the role of modernity (or lack of its role) in Norberg-Schulz’s theory. That is paradoxical, since his aim was to provide new basis for modern architecture, but that basis was constructed on hypothetical pre-modern experience of architecture. The key question to debate is if modernity was a break from tradition (as modernists believed) or a form of continuity (as proposed by Norberg-Schulz) and if it’s possible to base contemporary architecture on the same basis as before modern time. Norberg-Schulz’s attitude towards modernity shows limits of his theory and makes him a problematic source of ongoing phenomenological project in architecture. As his theory influences new architecture even today it is important to understand it well, so I would like to interpret him as part of historical turn and thus as a prototype of our situation today.

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The subject of Russian avant-garde is one of the most unexamined today, both as far as terminology and cultural- historical identity are concerned. The interpretation of avant-garde lacks the coherent criteria system, its categorization in scientific conceptual framework is deficient, key concepts and terms are not developed in a proper methodological way.

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There were several great eras between the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). We can see huge changes in history, culture and a man himself in that time. This concerns the religious art and the church architecture as well.
The theme of the paper is the liturgical space of West European Christian churches of 16th–20th centuries in relation to the theoretical works of theologians and architects. Eucharist and the Liturgy are essential for the Christian church. The space and the architecture embrace and frame these core issues. We can study the roots of substantial changes in the church architecture on the basis of theological experience. Since we deal with different research areas, the systematic approach is our choice.
The aim is to connect the requirements of devoted Christians and the changes in Catholic and Protestant church interiors and the sacral space. This would help us to understand the fundamental principles and reasons for variations in the layout and formation of liturgical space. It concerns the evolution of the church in past centuries, but will also help us to identify the problems of the contemporary Christian church building.
The paper is a part of doctoral thesis research dedicated to the sacral space theory by Rudolf Schwarz, one of the most profound thinkers and great architects of the 20th century.

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In 1926 N. M. Bakhtin (the eldest of the brothers) wrote, “Any genuine creative work perceives itself not as a start or continuation but as a revival — it is how this one and only law may be laid down”. The revival of the notion of “fine” has become one of the aims in matching historical and theoretical issues related to architectural criticism at the present stage of architectonic thinking integrated into the non-linear world perception. The return to one of the earliest interpretations of “fine” (by H. Poincaré) as a result of harmonious and complete internal structure of any integral unit provides intellectual content for visual perception of architectural form. The application of this notion may become a methodical basis for the establishment of the essentially “fine” dialogue between the history and the evolution within the logics of the “Grand-Time Architectonics” (M. M. Bakhtin).
The attention to the creative trends resulting from the Renaissance world perception in the architecture of the 1920s was rather strong and meaningful. I will illustrate it with two examples. The Dictionary of Art Terms was created by the National Academy of Art Sciences in 1923–1929. The notion of “architecture” had acquired by that time the stable possibility of various readings, and the authors preferred to include into the dictionary two articles: by A. G. Gabrichevskiy and M. Ya. Ginzburg. Ginzburg also used as the epigraph in his book Style and Epoch (1924) the words by G. WÖlfflin, “Movement starts simultaneously at many points. The old regenerates carrying everything with it, and, at last, a new style becomes a fact. But why did all this have to happen?” Fixing attention on the above issue, the author started the review of his colleagues’ works with examples form then current oeuvre of I. V. Zholtovskiy and explained that it was important to him to demonstrate how the “sense of a new form” and “the genetic value in a new style formation” reveal themselves.
Therefore, the process of revelation and validation of the “genetic” line in the establishment of the new, intellectually intensive world perception shall be in a due course revived in the contemporary architectural criticism.

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Iconographic description of a contemporary Russian critic consists of paradoxes. However, critics create the foundation for future generations of art historians. Therefore it is necessary to comprehend both positive and negative feelings arising from the first encounter with the post-modern art space (1990–2015), created not only by artists, but also through the efforts of curators. There the question arises: what would be a warrant of truth? What traditions of Russian avant-garde can be traced in contemporary art? Where does the necessary expansion of terminology in art: from the canonical to non-­canonical language, from standard to improvisation lead? How can we estimate the curators work at the “Manifesta-10”? Of course, the new generation has grown absorbing the traditions both of Russian and foreign art studies. The situation occurs, when critics are stronger thinkers than presented artists, but the reviews of exhibitions still follow the formula: nothing unless good. Being professor of Saint Petersburg University, who has great experience in working with young generation and director of Dyagilev Museum of Contemporary art, I might recall Aristotle and his dialogues at the Lyceum about the meaning of life and soul and ask the same question: how art helps us to live, to feel, to think? Another question asked by Confucius could be addressed to artists, curators and critics: Isn’t it him who knows that it will not work out, but still attempts to do it? Is it possible, that in spite of high intellectual level we are interested in the “light” version of artistic work?

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Heinrich Lützeler (1902–1988) — German philosopher and art historian, studied under Max Scheler and Wilhelm Worringer. His opus magnum, Kunsterfahrung und Kunstwissenschaft, was published in 1975 and has never been translated into other languages. Describing different ways and stages of human experience with art whether non-scholar, pre-scholar or scholarly sound, Lützeler deals with one of the most relevant problems: that of interdisciplinary perspective in humanities and the specific features of interdisciplinary contacts.

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In his teachings at the Bauhaus avant-guard artist Paul Klee emphasized: “In order to bring something genuinely and sustainably new into the world, be it in art or elsewhere, one should not work at the „form ends“, where things are explained, classified, determined, but rather as closely as possible at and with the „formative forces“?” Yet, where and what are these “formative forces”? And how can we work with them? Similarly, Wassily Kandinsky’s writings describe that abstract art intends to go beyond visible things to the living principals from which the physical world originates.
With this as a starting point and drawing on inter- and transdisciplinary ways of working, the paper explores “predisciplinarity” as a new creative approach that connects art and science, while placing both within a wider integrity.
“Predisciplinary work” takes place in an experiential sphere preliminary to the separation of theory and practice. The Greek origin of the word theory — thea, meaning “beholding” — points to this sphere. Here, insight and knowledge emerge from a heightened sense of being as well as from an enlivened practice of perceiving — and therefrom of thinking. Since quantum physics this sphere has become empirically detectable as primordial, creative aliveness.
Based on cultural science and informed by a phenomenological methodology, the research presented aims at identifying ways of gaining knowledge, which provide an expanded understanding of both science and of art.
This “predisciplinar approach” focuses on the “inner space” within every human being as a primary workspace waiting to be explored. The sacred buildings throughout times and cultures — temples, churches, mosques — might be physical manifestations of this inner space, in which what makes the world alive longs to become aware — aware of itself.
Finally, the research explores whether and how predisciplinarity could be a pathway to a possibly upcoming era: an era of “Enlivenment”. Whereas the Enlightenment intended to elevate mankind from its incapacitation by granting it rational agency, the “Enlivenment” would preserve the Enlightenment values such as individual dignity, justice, and equality, while reconnecting them to their roots, which lie in the dynamic, creative omnipresence of what keeps the world alive.

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The paper analyses the experience of scientific 3D-reconstructions made at the Moscow Institute of Architecture. These reconstructions are made for students’ yearly papers or as part of theoretical works and restorations by the research fellows. The historical and architectural analysis which has been carried out at the Architecture and Urban History Department during more than half a century plays the key role. Scientific architectural reconstructions often become one of the methods of such analysis. The traditional instruments for these reconstructions are hand drawings and paper models. However, during the last 15 years the role of digital technologies for this scientific area has increased considerably.
The poster contains several reconstructions of different monuments from antiquity to 18th–19th сen­turies, they are made by the authors themselves or under their supervision. The reconstructions including those made with computer technologies illustrate the different aims of the researchers. Thereupon the justification of the object selection is essential, as well as the definition of the selection criteria. The main types of the scientific reconstructions are defined: the recreation of the original look of a rebuilt object, reconstruction of lost monuments, 3D-visualisation of not constructed projects, the reconstruction of specific architectural details or stages of construction. Integrating the experience of the scientific reconstructions at the Moscow Institute of Architecture, testing the results and their comparison with the experience of other Russian scientific organizations and researchers could promote this kind of research in the architectural history.

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The architecture of museum building represents outstanding historic architecture, styles and concepts of art throughout the entire age of the museum. Thus we can follow the development of museum architecture over the long years.
There is no universal approach to the modernisation of museum building; but we can try to define some key principles of interaction between historic and contemporary architecture and examine the most widely accepted forms.
The first (“harmonious”) principle represents the consonance of various architecture styles that do not break the uniform architectural image of the museum. This principle of modernization does not mean a duplication of the historic building, it is about using the same stylistic frame.
The second (“neutral”) principle is about introducing into the museum complex a new premise with no architectural message or individual style, which will not interfere with the ancient main building; it can also be a separate building of mere functional character.
The third (“contrasting”) principle is the most outstanding one because it represents the artistic spirit of the contemporaneity. The architecture of the new building or museum site represents a style contrastively juxtaposed to the historic premises.
The synthesis of styles can make an architectural image exceptionally expressive in the contemporary world of globalization and technical progress. Therefore, historic architecture still survives, whereas modern architecture serves to face the multiple challenges of the new age.

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The turn to philosophical categories of part and whole is one of the most characteristic features both of art history research and artistic practice today. The theme of the fragmented or damaged piece of art, of the lost integrity comes up more and more intensively as a core compositional idea in both fine and applied arts in works of national and foreign artists. Moreover, it is not only the issue of losses, damages, patina that is consciously used to the best effect, but also the theme of reconstruction, conservation, restoration (see f.e. paintings by G. Bogomolov).
The situation derives from the typical postmodernist disposition to endless quotations from previous epochs’ heritage, and therefore, from treating cultural background as a source, and, consequently, as a text in a broad sense of the word (just reminding J. Derrida’s famous saying that a table is a text). Speaking of historical source, issues of “layers”, “noises”, distortions and interpretations arise.
Today these problems are of high importance for the methodology of conservation of art. As convincingly demonstrated by Yu. G. Bobrov, a conservator, however purist position of non-interference he may take, it inevitably affects not just the material of the work of art, but the very artistic “text” as well. In other words, conservation is an interpretation in any case, due at least to the fact that it is impossible to fully isolate so called “technical” and “artistic” conservation stages.
The problem of relations between part and whole appear to be of special importance in the field of conservation on its stage of loss compensation. Conservator’s task is not to reconstruct “initial” appearance of the object, which would be a methodological mistake, but to recover its artistic integrity, or “potential unity”. Although a conservator acts as a researcher rather than an artist, to fulfil the task he should be a highly skilled artist. Both an artist creating a new piece and a conservator treating the already existing one, have to deal with fundamental categories of part and whole.

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