1997_2
ALEXANDER BOURYAK
THINKING AGAINST TRADITION
1Totalitarianism of the
architectural thinking in the 20th century is not at all
the begetting of Bolshevism or of fascist regimes, or,
more precisely, not exclusively their begetting.
Totalitarianism is primarily inherent to Modernist art
thinking. The architectural education in Europe in the
period between two world wars, during two decades from
1920 till 1940, has fully experienced the influence of
this totalitarianism. Totalitarianism of the
architectural Modernism follows from its technicism, from
scientist and positivist methodology, which from the
first steps of the Modern Movement aspired to assimilate
architectural creativity to engineering designing. On it
directly insisted Louis G. Sullivan, and Russian
Modernists of the 20-th - both 'rationalists' of ASNOVA
and constructivists of OSA have developed this programme,
by adding to it the requirement of "laboratory
work" with the form, function and construction,
aimed at formation of the scientific basis of new
architecture as the block of technical and natural
disciplines.
2Coming down upon constructivists
for technicism and trivial utilitarianism, one of the
leaders of 'rationalism' N.Dokuchayev writes at the same
time: "Architecture should cease to be anarchy of
individualistic tastes, interpretations and feelings, it
should become scientific value, which had distinctly
found out its laws of composition and constructive
principles of organization of architectonic forms and
space (similarly to an art of music). These basements of
architecture must distinctly combine both formal, and
social-ideological and material sides, from which each
architectonic form is composed. For this purpose the
architectural education should be widely put, concerning
its attitude towards the study of social-economic and
technical disciplines, as well as art disciplines, based
on biological and physiological principles of our
perception of the visible <...>These ideas were
formulated in a new psycho-analitic method of study of an
art of architecture. The method was based on the
experimental analysis of the properties and qualities of
architectonic form and of formal architectonic principles
and laws". [2, 206-207]. It is, in effect, the same
scientism (and, accordingly, technicism), as that one of
Ginzburg: architectural form creation should become a
technical discipline, the basis of which is the
fundamental theory, similar to natural sciences.
3"Constructivist" pathos
of the scientific-engineering methodology was so strong,
that the appeals to scientification and technisation of
art resounded even in literature scholarship:
"...Constructivism steps on a crest of a huge wave
of energetic rise and unknown growth of engineering. From
here constructivism calls for many related phenomena of
culture in the most various areas. <...> Through
constructivism dawns an opportunity of morphological,
methodological rapproachement between science and art
and, in particular, poetry. Goethean dream - the unity of
poetry and science - by the run of culture is now put
forward again and again under the most various names and
in the most various areas" [3, 193]. The completely
similar line in Germany was carried out by the
ideologists of Bauhaus in Dessau, among whome, by the
way, the persons and ideas of Russian avantgard were very
influential. In effect, similar quasi-scientific doctrine
was Piet Mondrian's "Neo- plasticism" concept,
set as principle for the Dutch "De Stijl"
group's activitiy - the third most influential centre of
European art and architectural vanguard.
4The scientific laws, which ought to
be opened and set as principle for productive methods of
new architecture, were conceived as universal and
eternal, i.e., namely, as total. It is clear, that this
approach left no space either for the professional
tradition, which was announced hopelessly technically
out-of-date, or for the values of historicism, which was
rejected in virtue of the basic ethic and aesthetic
settings of the Modernist doctrine. A natural consequence
of the same settings was the internationalism of the
Modern Movement, inclined to take into account national
or regional peculiarities of architecture only in a
measure of the difference in climatic conditions, the
character of local building materials and in the level of
technological development. In the strategy and tactics of
the "struggle for new architecture" Modernist
trends, in virtue of the logic of the accepted approach,
acted precisely in the same way as totalitarian political
movements and parties. This coincidence is so much the
more natural, for in the basic ideas of architectural
Modernism there definitely were numerous consonances with
the ideals of socialism, as them describes, for example,
Fridrich Hayek: "<...> people, being proud of
the world built by them, as if it had been created after
their project, and reproaching themselves for the fact,
that they had not designed it better, just conceived the
intention to begin the latter. The purpose of socialism
is to completly reconstruct our traditional norms of
moral, rights and language, and on this basis to
eradicate the former order and ostensibly severe, not
justified state of affaires, withholding the accession of
reason, self-realization, true freedom and justice"
[5, 118].
5In its organizational strategy the
early Modernism, exactly just as its political doubles -
socialists - pretended an absolute monopoly, and not only
ideological, but also from state one. In the eyes of
adherents of functionalism it looked quite naturally and
lawfully, because the movement ("International Front
of Modern Architecture") acted, as they thought, in
the name of the only true - for the only scientific -
doctrine. Precisely the same chain of reasonings
justified during 70 years the Party monopoly on the truth
and demolishing of any heterodoxia in the countries of
the 'real socialism'. From scientist orientation of the
Modern Movement followed the hyperbolisation of its' own
importance in the life and history of the profession - as
of carriers of true knowledge, discoveres of the 'eternal
laws' of Architecture. But the monopoly is always and in
everything hostile to freedom. The appropriated monopoly
on the truth led the architects -Modernists- from Soviet
constructivists up to Corbusier- to nihilism in regard of
the views on the one hand, and to design megalomania on
the other hand. This is precisely formulated by Rappaport
in application to all the period of Soviet architecture:
"There appears a hypothesis about conformity between
design enthusiasm and pretensions on total designing, and
totalitarian systems and absence of democratic institutes
or their underdevelop- ment. The more freedom is there in
the society, the less total pretensions are presented in
the design initiatives. The violation of individual
consciousness, carried out by totalitarian system,
causes, as the reaction of individual consciousness, the
projects of forced change of the social and cultural
system. Having no opportunity of existential designing
and free self-realization, individual consciousness
transfers personal intentions on socium, because it's
just socium that suppresses these personal intentions"
[4, 36-37].
6So, design megalomania itself is a
sign of designer's intentions to restriction and
suppression of freedom in the society. These intentions
predominated in settling Modernism as an architectural
phenomenon, independently of individual social and
political preferences of particular representatives of
the movement. The Modernists' relation to bourgeois
democracy was suspicious up to animosity. On the
contrary, they showd no immunity to dictatorship, and
from the very beginning constructivists demonstrated
their full disposition for cooperation with the communist
party on the common ideological and theoretical basis and
readiness for joint development of such a basis in the
field of architecture, town building, and wider - in
formation of public service systems, new culture and
education. But in the USSR, in difference from Germany,
where Speer has become one of the first persons in the
state-party hierarchy, architects were not admitted to
the rudder of the state machine - eigther constructivists
in the 20-th, or neoclassicists in the 30-th - 50's. 7Antitraditionalism of the
Functionalist doctrine in a strange way associated with
feudal romanticism in the field of organization of
professional activity and in the organizational structure
of schools. Cult of the Master became the extreme
expression of aspiration of 'Modern' professional
ideology to monopoly and dictatorship. From the 20-th
thinking became the central ideologem in all Modernist
architectural schools. Thinking was taken in its
scientized (naturalistic, experimental and engineering)
forms. Thus just the soviet innovators - Dokuchayev with
Ladovsky, as well as Ginzburg, - were inclined here to go
up to the Pillars of Hercules, subordinating all the
creative processes to the sciencewise methodical scheme
and driving back to odd corners creative intuition and
professional tradition - with all their art experience
and cultural symbols. The methodological consequences of
that were, on the one hand, basic antitraditionalism,
verging upon complete exception of the history of art and
architecture from the educational programmes, and, on the
other - open search, for the first time raised to the
main regulation of educational and pedagogical work. The
search was not limited by anything, except for the
procedure of the "correct", i.e.
scientific-engineering method. Both of them wonderfully
agreed with the cult of individuality: "if among a
dizzy change of 'manifestos' we nevertheless catch some
basic currents, they should rather be put on the account
of our incli- nations to classifications.
8In effect, each Modern artist is
the special current. It is important to note thus, how
each new current aspires to begin from the beginning, to
announce all the previous either a decline, or an error,
or preparation; how each group requires an ex- usatory
manifesto, reconsidering anew all ill questions of art.
The aesthetic password of our time - to rescue art, to
remove it from a heavy crisis on a new road.
<...>Both Plinius and Reynolds, complaining on
Modern art, search for refuge in the past, wait for
rescue from tradition; and our revolution in art is built
on destruction, on total denying of all, that existed"
[1, 260-261].
Literature:
1. Vipper, B.R. Iskustvo bes kacestvo. Is istorii sovetskoj esteticeskoj mysli. 1917-1932: Sbornik materialov. M.: Iskustvo, 1980, str. 255-263.
2. Dokucaev, N.V. Arhitektura i nasa skola. Mastera sovetskoj arhitektury ob arhitekture. Izbr. otryvki iz pisem, statej, vystuplenij i traktatov. T. 2. M.: Iskustvo,1975, str. 205-207.
3. Zelinski, K.L. Konstruktivizm i socializm Is istorii sovetskoj esteticeskoj mysli. 1917-1932: Sbornik materialov. M.: Iskustvo, 1980, str. 59, 60.
4. Rappaport, A.G. Granicy projektirovanija. "Voprosy metodologii". M.: 1991,Nr. 1, str. 19-38.
5. Hajek, F.A. Pagubnajy samodejannost'. Osibki socializma. M.: Novosti pri uc. Catallaxy. 1992, str. 304.
