Gradhiva 25/2017. Gottfried Semper, inhabiting color.
Quai Branly Museum| N° d'inventaire | 20805 |
| Format | 20 x 27 |
| Détails | 270 p., numerous illustrations, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2017 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
The German architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), who built the Dresden Opera House, the Zurich Polytechnic and the Burgtheater in Vienna, discovered the naturalist collections of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris from 1826. He then became interested in the relationship between plant and mineral forms and architectural ornaments, becoming a fervent defender of the "polychromy thesis". He went to Italy and then to Greece, where he examined ancient temples and buildings for three years (1830-1833) in search of vestiges of color. From his earliest writings, he challenged the accepted hierarchies between architecture and decoration, support and covering, form and ornament, and promoted a way of thinking about materials that was not the antithesis but the paradoxical correlate of a way of thinking about the immateriality of color. For Semper, the existence of a polychromy in ancient architecture and sculpture founded a profoundly new reinterpretation of the functions of architecture, which involved an anthropology of human constructions, their forms and their techniques. In 1834, Semper returned to Germany where he became director of the School of Architecture and led a brilliant career, brutally interrupted by the revolution of 1849, in which he took an active part alongside his friend Richard Wagner; he designed on this occasion a model of barricades that remains famous. His republican convictions led him into exile. He took refuge in Paris and then settled in London. This stay in England marked a turning point in his theory: by deepening his knowledge of the "industrial arts", he came to detect in them the matrix of the monumental arts and the "fine arts". His thinking on polychromy then entered a new phase: the historical primacy of hanging textiles, notably carpets used as temporary partitions in the mobile dwellings of nomads, became the key to architectural polychromy; wall paintings and other colored covering decorations carried in their forms and arrangement the memory of this textile origin. This decisive discovery is set out in the two volumes of Style (Der Stil), Semper's major text (1860 and 1863). The first, Textile Art, studies the relationships between ornamental decoration and building structure in different cultures and several periods: "New Zealand and Polynesia; China; India; Mesopotamia; Phoenicia and Judea; Egypt. Old and New Kingdom; Asia Minor; Greece; Greece; Rome; Christian period in the West, in the East; Renaissance. This expansion of the reference space of the history of architecture has led Semper to be said to be one of the first heralds of the "primitive arts." This issue of Gradhiva aims to identify Semper's contributions to an anthropology of architecture and housing, and to initiate a new reading of Der Stil, of which we provide previously unpublished extracts from the first French translation, currently in preparation.
The German architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), who built the Dresden Opera House, the Zurich Polytechnic and the Burgtheater in Vienna, discovered the naturalist collections of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris from 1826. He then became interested in the relationship between plant and mineral forms and architectural ornaments, becoming a fervent defender of the "polychromy thesis". He went to Italy and then to Greece, where he examined ancient temples and buildings for three years (1830-1833) in search of vestiges of color. From his earliest writings, he challenged the accepted hierarchies between architecture and decoration, support and covering, form and ornament, and promoted a way of thinking about materials that was not the antithesis but the paradoxical correlate of a way of thinking about the immateriality of color. For Semper, the existence of a polychromy in ancient architecture and sculpture founded a profoundly new reinterpretation of the functions of architecture, which involved an anthropology of human constructions, their forms and their techniques. In 1834, Semper returned to Germany where he became director of the School of Architecture and led a brilliant career, brutally interrupted by the revolution of 1849, in which he took an active part alongside his friend Richard Wagner; he designed on this occasion a model of barricades that remains famous. His republican convictions led him into exile. He took refuge in Paris and then settled in London. This stay in England marked a turning point in his theory: by deepening his knowledge of the "industrial arts", he came to detect in them the matrix of the monumental arts and the "fine arts". His thinking on polychromy then entered a new phase: the historical primacy of hanging textiles, notably carpets used as temporary partitions in the mobile dwellings of nomads, became the key to architectural polychromy; wall paintings and other colored covering decorations carried in their forms and arrangement the memory of this textile origin. This decisive discovery is set out in the two volumes of Style (Der Stil), Semper's major text (1860 and 1863). The first, Textile Art, studies the relationships between ornamental decoration and building structure in different cultures and several periods: "New Zealand and Polynesia; China; India; Mesopotamia; Phoenicia and Judea; Egypt. Old and New Kingdom; Asia Minor; Greece; Greece; Rome; Christian period in the West, in the East; Renaissance. This expansion of the reference space of the history of architecture has led Semper to be said to be one of the first heralds of the "primitive arts." This issue of Gradhiva aims to identify Semper's contributions to an anthropology of architecture and housing, and to initiate a new reading of Der Stil, of which we provide previously unpublished extracts from the first French translation, currently in preparation.