Material and Mind by Christopher Bardt;

Author:Christopher Bardt; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press

The sensational impact of the chapel on the visitor is significantly not sustained for any great length of time and when the emotions subside there is little to appeal to the intellect, and nothing to analyze or stimulate curiosity. This entirely visual appeal and the lack of intellectual participation demanded from the public may partly account for its easy acceptance by the local population.19

Stirling criticized the newly completed Ronchamp chapel as being too “easy” to experience, implying that architecture had a duty to resist affective empathy and challenge passive acceptance. The project of modernism was, at its core, a refutation of subjectivity and its attendant emotional impulses. The First World War had demonstrated the dangers of unchecked passion and nonobjective inclinations, which led to the neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity) of the 1920s and 1930s in Germany—a movement in art that was a reaction against expressionism. The rise of Nazism and the Second World War ended this movement, but the postwar period saw a return to a deep suspicion of propaganda, easily swayed masses, and unmediated experience.

It was in this context that Stirling wrote about Ronchamp and expressed his unease while acknowledging the local populace’s embrace of the chapel. Why isn’t that “easy acceptance” a sufficient outcome for a work of architecture or, for that matter, a work of art?

Artifacts of art, design, and architecture have value because they provoke, question, and challenge assumptions (even if they earn the general public’s dislike in doing so). The foundations of a democratic society depend on the freedom to choose one’s point of view—and Stirling faintly damns Ronchamp for its totalizing effect, which for him suppresses the “freedom” of an inquiring mind. (It should be noted that Stirling—who considered “rational” only those geometries he could see—most likely was unfamiliar with the hidden geometries and orders of Ronchamp. A greater understanding on Stirling’s part would no doubt have mitigated his critique.)

The episches Theater (epic theater) movement, of which German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) was the most famous practitioner, was developed as a critique of the passive, empathic connection between audience and actors in popular theatrical performances of his time—today better known as “tear-jerker,” mawkish, or “feel-good” productions. Their effectiveness relies on a strategy of coordinating all the elements so seamlessly that the audience doesn’t notice the lighting, swelling violins, background, and script working together to elicit a powerful emotional upwelling. Brecht purposefully separated the elements of production to create a distancing effect on the audience, breaking habitual (i.e., lazy) empathic connections between audience and actors. His plays would have actors step out of roles; time would be chopped into unnatural blocks; and commentary would interrupt action. The idea was to stimulate the audience’s attention and concentration and have audience members construct their own meaningful insights into the characters—not only the characters’ feelings but also other dimensions of their being. Epic theater practitioners called this the Verfremdungseffekt (estrangement effect).

Such a stimulus of estrangement isn’t unemotional; it is disturbing and brings feeling and reasoning into dialogue. For

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