"Desedimenting Time: Gothic Column/Paradigm Shifter."

Editorial Desedimenting time: Gothic column/paradigm shifter MARVIN TRACHTENBERG Art exists and changes through time, but inwhat form is such change encoded in time, and vice versa? How are we best to describe and understand the restless and turbulent currents, tides, and storms of artistic movement that unfold through time? Can our histories the yet avoid arresting and sedimenting into a lithic epochal stratigraphy? the strong self-critical trends and powerful Despite new recent of the history of art decades, methodologies at the turn of the millennium remains inmany ways closely attached to a nineteenth-century stratigraphie be histories time-of-art practice (with origins stretching back to Vasari and Petrarch): the familiar system of Romanesque, Gothic, so and and on, Renaissance, Baroque, subcategories zones). One might (and parallel systems in non-Western think that this system would by now have been fully historicized, manifest mainly as quaint traces of an archaic discourse. This is far from being the case. Most scholars, of course, realize that all of these terms are and that they are interrelated in a tangle of problematic often perverse, perplexing hierarchies, yet it seems difficult for many of us to imagine art history without this mapping. This group of essays grew out of a College Art Association session (2000) that Ichaired, which sought to interrogate this antiquated diachronic system, posing two questions: In concrete terms of specific case studies, to affect art historical practices? how does it continue is such a stratigraphy of discrete historical Second, to spaces, defined stylistically or otherwise, necessary and the diachronics of practice, or are there chronology possible alternatives? These questions were not conjured out of thin air but stemmed from problems that deeply affect my own work in the trecento, early Renaissance, and northern Gothic It is out of the transhistorical perspective architecture. of that metacritical my teaching and scholarship questions inmy have emerged and risen to a state of urgency of the Eye, for example, one of thinking. InDominion was aims to deconstruct the hierarchical, my principal over of trecento, the quattrocento stratigraphie layering still all-to-widely of the medieval practiced submergence as well as the in Renaissance the of domain urbanism by inmajor aspects of the other arts, despite all the protests awareness about this question. of self-reflective exist throughout the larger Comparable problematics architecture. This field is intricate indeed constituted, by a complex, permeated, as the zone of the "medieval/' stratigraphy. The overall is always primarily defined, word itself connotes, or to ancient and explicitly implicitly, in opposition Within Renaissance of cultural the layers history. transEuropean field of medieval medieval zone, historical and Gothic Romanesque into space is subdivided strata, and these in turn Ottoman, Early, High, and into Carolingian, Late Romanesque, Early, High, and Late Gothic not to mention regional and national mappings devolve layers, or sites In virtually every instance, determining markers and contained historical spaces are boundary a set of formal traits. characterized defined by particular, in relationship to Each field or subfield is placed ones, typically with strong oppositional neighboring and hierarchies. distinctions is thus Medieval stratigraphy, like most others, at virtually every level essentially in terms of conceived a particular style-system, as we and style, know, can be of transition. It is, among for historical practice. highly problematic and other things, ferociously absolutist, hegemonic, intolerant in itsways. It is based on exclusion rather than inclusion. Itmakes for notorious difficulties in and transhistorical formulating authentic understanding in establishing meaningful social, political, and economic of art. For grounds of the production historians of medieval architecture, style-based stratigraphy thereby and in other ways produces enormous, densely and sometimes nightmarishly cluster of and issues. problems entangled an These difficulties known as affect the architecture "Gothic" with particular notoriety. It is not that readings in the familiar terms of various traits?rib of the Gothic skeletal structure, diaphaneity, diagonality, and so forth, seen in varying linearity, baldachins, in themselves stylistic sets and movements?are un informative or necessarily wrong. Rather, as Louis in 1977, none of these existing Grodecki observed vaulting, interpretative models offers "a firm rigorous definition" 6 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 of the Gothic.1 As a group they cannot be assembled into anything more than an unwieldy and finally self contradictory interpretative bricolage of mainly criteria. and early twentieth-century nineteenth-century This unsatisfactory situation has not improved recently, In the past three decades or in fact quite the opposite. studies have turned sharply so, Gothic architectural that away from the broad, object-based questions earlier generations (no matter how limited preoccupied or irrelevant their methods may now seem) toward the issues?the functions study of particular context-based of individual spaces, questions of patronage and liturgy, the specific social, political, material, and ideological In this recent work (much dimensions of architecture.2 of it highly laudable on its own terms) the old question, isGothic?" "What which runs as a central theme Paul Frankl's exhaustive survey of Gothic's through long is (1960), rarely explicitly asked, because historiography somehow implicitly it is considered already answered, or conversely, is it deemed irrelevant and in any because case impossible 1. L. Grodecki, to answer.3 Gothic I refuse this attitude of Architecture, tr. I.Mark (Paris, New York, 1977), p. 24. 2. E.g., H. Kraus, Gold Was Their Mortar, of the Economics "The Urban Setting Cathedral Boston, 1979; B. Abou-el-Haj, Building, Reims and its Cathedral between for Late Medieval Church Building: 1210-1240/' Art History 11 (1988):17ff;A. Erlande-Brandenburg,The tr. The Social and Architectural of Construction, Cathedral, Dynamics in Artistic Martin Thorn (Cambridge, 1994); many of the articles in Gothic ed. V. C. Raguin, K. Brush, and P. Integration Buildings, on of W. Sauerl?nder (Toronto, 1995). See also the comments Draper in "'Premiere this displacement, orNRenaissance architecture gothique' in the evaluation of the twelfth century'? Changing of perspectives architectural Medieval Occasional history," Sewanee Colloquium in The shift in interest is starkly evident Papers 2 (1985):25-29. P. Frankl's Pelican volume, Gothic Architecture comparing and Baltimore, 1962) and D. Kimpel and R. Suckale, (Harmondsworth in Frankreich 1130-1270 Die gotische Architecktur 1985). (Munich, Anne-Marie of social Sankovitch points out, "Since the embrace and the internal history of architecture 1970, formalism history around have been either rejected as elitist (or worse) or, more benignly, as their necessary having discharged regarded we can now progress to a richer understanding full multidisciplinary form in its historical but narrow task so that of architecture in its In the efforts to anchor architectural complexity. and form itself has become self-evident context, innocence or terminological futility, and our that of remains a definition "Gothic" emphasize in virtually all discussion central point of reference of to monumental of architecture the twelfth European semantic in the air fifteenth centuries. The question hangs heavily as soon as the word "Gothic" emerges from our mouths or in our writings, not to mention our explications of the to at architecture and the public nonspecialists large. zone in a We function as historians of this architectural most curious way, constantly speaking of the "Gothic" as ifwe securely knew what itwas and that it actually existed, knowing all the while that the one thing certain about the subject is our very lack of any such articulated consensus. we Whether like it or not, the "Gothic" remains and itwon't go away no with us, question matter how much we pretend to ignore it.Yet, when the seem are term of the problems directly confronted, they a miasmic intellectual quicksand; hence the tendency to them and let around them lie, like sleeping dogs. go To get beyond this impasse, Iwould like to turn to and scientific another historical discipline?intellectual a that may it that offers model suggest history?and serve to help us find a way out. Although in common itsway parlance "paradigm shift" has made to denote all manner of change, few who use it understand of innovation that it the actual mechanism possibly in Thomas Kuhn's brilliant book of 1962, The of Scientific Revolutions, where the term Kuhn's analysis of the process of scientific originated. not that complicated. innovation is in essence Like the concerned Structure historian Michel socio-intellectual contemporary he is often uncritically Foucault (with whom paired), of change and Kuhn sees history not as a continuum but as a series of distinct, discrete systems development Foucault is (a stratigraphy, in fact). But whereas the operational interested only in defining and exploring terms of each discursive formation, and not at all in transitions (or shifting) from one to the next, Kuhn, inversely, is only interested in the transitional process and not especially, all itsmicro- and macrodynamics, at in the scientific themselves.4 all, paradigms really Paradigm shifts random, according the procedures of formal analysis often tend to be taken as a given," in terms formulated with the object leaving us to deal unreflectively and the Modern ago ("Structure/Ornament Figuration of generations Art Bulletin [1998]:687). Architecture," with 1960. Christopher Wilson's P. Frankl, The Gothic, Princeton, recent survey, The Gothic Cathedral, of the architecture insightful its title, dismisses 1130-1530 Great Church, 1990), despite (London, style or architectural of definition). 4. This approach 3. or avoids the old question, shifting the center Nor is there of the "Great Church" typology. masterful French Gothic survey (see note of discussion in Kimpel 2) any to the issue and Suckale's sustained engagement the issue (Gothic do not just happen to Kuhn, or as unmotivated in science being language, implicitly without is found at as a new, defined any in or review in all of Foucault's postclassical of the problematics books, but see especially TheArchaeology of Knowledge (NewYork, 1972) and The Order 1970). of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, Trachtenberg: Editorial that cannot individual inspiration. Most scientific work ("normal is not about formulating new science"), he explains, but rather involves testing ideas (a common misbelief), and working out various implications and unresolved in a given field, problems of the established paradigm anomaly "Gothic" finding and tying up all the loose threads (or it is found that however, "puzzle solving"). Sometimes, one of these problems?often a seemingly minor issue, an obscure, be marginal detail left long in the dark?can in figure 1, the nave of forward here for study is visible in Paris. To the architecturally Notre-Dame and gradually immense difficulty and complications resolved only with In fact, sometimes and distortions of the paradigm. not work at all; it simply forcing the paradigm does cannot be made problem cannot away; something to accommodate the problem. But the itwill not go simply be disregarded; else is needed. science" "Exceptional (mistakenly thought to be the norm by the public) occurs when such a critical impasse (or "crisis point") leads a researcher to formulate a or new general paradigm that will accommodate the "impossible" problem at hand. The term "paradigm shift" describes not merely this as well as intellectual turn in itself, but itsmotivation, modified the complex discursive process by social-intellectual, is itself further tested and filled which a new paradigm out to the point that it replaces the former paradigm, in the scientific initial resistance usually against much community (especially from its older, established members, who have much symbolic capital invested in to those just entering). the status quo, as opposed not only the way alter Paradigm shifts, moreover, are of questions that are solved but the kinds problems asked (in Foucault's terms, the entire discursive formation changes). Kuhn's analysis thus could be said to posit a classic (giving its self dynamic for science narratological or Kuhn's reading of them, or both, a transformations, in the emerges great appeal): an unsettling disturbance dense order of an individual's life, a family, a disorder becomes the mysterious community; an individual or group discovers the unbearable; problem's secret with an inventive interpretive paradigm; is convinced, the community the alien, threatening factor is purged, and order is restored. Thus, mutatis in Kuhn's reading, does science move from mutandis, one paradigm, one interpretive model, or order of scientific thinking, to the next. In the "Gothic" zone of art history, there may be any such a tropology, or of hidden corners where Kuhn's model of the scientific of transfer, process-of into a change to the aesthetic world might be brought an we would to is need life. What identify parallel number 7 be accommodated by the current a disturbance, a known (or one), any paradigm fault line or fracture in the "Gothic" order of things in historical thought, that will force the search for a solution by a new paradigm. The aberration that Ibring informed eye?that is, informed by the historically current paradigm(s)?something iswrong with this a It contains prominent picture, very wrong. anomaly, an alien presence, right there where you can reach out and touch it.The question is, just what on earth are those big, solid, c/ass/ca/-looking Gothic church? columns doing in this quintessential^ Iam hardly the first historian to notice this problem. inmost studies of Gothic architecture since in at least a passing mention the mid-nineteenth century or inflection of the text, somewhat as light rays are bent It registers fields. We certainly passing by dense gravitational not want to wander extensively into this vast, disturbance. rather field of repetitive, mind-numbing an recent treatments of of However, relatively analysis when would the issue by two distinguished scholars will serve to bare the lay interpretive challenge posed by these Gothic columns. The most comprehensive reading of the history of the to is date Willibald Sauerl?nder's study of problem review of notable attempts to explain the traces discussion columns back to 1805, when Friedrich Schlegel claimed that the columns were the result of a neoclassical remodeling of the building.6 In 1850, Viollet-le-Duc instead made the columns rest of than the the "earlier" building, conceptually as originally built embodied that Notre-Dame proposing 1985.5 His Notre-Dame a conflict of two successive periods, with a wall that already Romanesque-type pillars supporting the rule that, as had become Gothic, following historical the puts it, "A building contradicting can only represent of stylistic homogeneity Sauerl?nder a principle transitional stage."7 In the twentieth century the demand for stylistic unity at Notre-Dame in character with the post receives, historicist outlook, not a historical but an abstract 2), pp. 25-43. Ansichten und Ideen von der Schlegel, christlichen 1959). Kunst, ed. H. Eichner (Munich, Dictionnaire raisonn? 7. Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-Ie-Duc, (see note 5. Sauerl?nder 6. Friedrich von de vol. 7 (Paris, 1869), p. 162; Sauerl?nder (see fran?aise, as a concept note 2), p. 37f. On the problematics of the transitional see Sankovitch in history by the nineteenth (see century, implanted note 2), pp. 692-94 and p. 715 note 34. l'architecture 8 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 Figure 1. Paris, Notre-Dame, nave, begun 1178. Photo: Courtesy of Foto Marburg. Trachtenberg: Editorial formalism. by phenomenological must art historian that the the imperative Following the formal unity underlying identify (i.e., produce) Hans Jantzen in the apparent surface contradictions, to abstract parity with the 1920s reduces the columns seen on the wall above (which round shaftlike elements enabled resolution not see as columnar).8 Sauerl?nder rightly notes to the fact that those "odd Jantzen's iconic blindness round pillars" have "attic bases and carefully carved he does foliated caps" that make them "all stand in the traditions of the classical column"; yet he himself remains apparently blind to the fact that the upper cylindrical elements are also columns with the same tripartite bases and abstractly it is not clear whether Indeed, Corinthianesque capitals. I term column is quite aware of what Sauerl?nder scholars will, avoidance the formalist way language, to column a call the Gothic declassicize it, attempting a He but column. pier, shaft, cylinder, respond, anything himself often slips in and out of this practice, on one syntax, including attic-derived columns but page calling the Notre-Dame examples also "round column-like supports," "stout, round "round pillars," "odd pillars," pillars" (twice), and as as well "unusual pillars," using the word "respond" (which describe form).9 (stressing function) for colonnettes Having to his satisfaction demolished historicizing restoration and transitional ist theories along with of the problem columns, formalist explanations Sauerl?nder finds his last target in the "ingenious but also more absurd" iconographie interpretation of Hans out of in 1950s his who book10 Sedlmayr, developed "the old conflict of matter and spirit" a seductive abstract the "bulky supports of Notre-Dame reading by which are visual symbols of the church on earth" upon which the "spiritual church floats down from heaven." Without quite why, Sauerl?nder writes off this explaining as little more than "the romantic theater" "spiritual ... a wishful dream of the spiritualized cathedral the reader to be in spontaneous fantasy"?expecting with his reaction?and is done with it.11 agreement The point of Sauerl?nder's learned historiographie is to clear the ground for his own deconstruction of the Notre-Dame column conundrum. His a is is its main intent clear. bit convoluted, yet argument He accounts for the Notre-Dame columns by arguing to which Notre-Dame that the style-phase the belonged, solution Early Gothic, was in reality a classical revival?"just which Charles Homer another aspect of the movement Haskins called 'The Renaissance of the Twelfth to like his predecessors Century'."12 Rather than seeking or minimize the columns by explain away problematic neoclassical hangovers, making them Romanesque restorations, formalist devices, or secondary elements of to the the columns spiritual theater, thereby reconciling rest of the building?to understood)?Sauerl?nder Effectively he reduces (however that is instead overvalues them. the entire building to the columns, virtually ignoring the related forms above them ("smiling" at those who sought to explain them). Sauerl?nder resolves the Gothic-column paradox by one of its two terms, pretending that the suppressing non-classical it something 9. Kunst der Gotik (Hamburg, (see note 2), p. 37. der Kathedrale (Zurich, Entstehung Sauerl?nder (see note 2), p. 39. 1957), p. 18. Sauerl?nder 10. Die 11. Jantzen, p. 246ff. in Notre-Dame, that which makes presence other than classical (or Romanesque)?the it "Gothic"?is not there or in any that makes architecture such columns preceding phase of medieval were in steep decline or out of use, and thus potentially in some detail the revivable, and indeed he advances notion that in the half-century or so prior to Saint-Denis uses columns), (which also prominently "Romanesque" architecture had suppressed the column (out of the need for stronger pier supports for vaulting).13 The fact is, is typically retained in the however, that the column apse ("the most sacred part," as Sauerl?nder admits), even at Cluny and similar monumentally vaulted churches, and is replaced by piers only in the nave of a 12. Ibid., p. 37. Without the phenomenon calling "12th-century Notre the columns of Saint-Denis, Jean Bony discusses Renaissance," and Sens in terms of an antique, Dame, Early Christian specifically revival {French Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries, in The New reviewed 1983], pp. 62-64; [Berkeley, by Sauerl?nder York Review mentioned builders as of Books, 8 November 1984, in the 1985 article). Ultimately, interested not in the antiqueness its role him in the structurally lightweight to (barely) remain safely within their desire to build and with pp. 43-44, although sees however, Bony of the column basilican the standard format, which element 13. but rather allows (". . . in of vault suddenly structures a rather unexpected age; and this introduced into the pattern of speculation of early Gothic builders"). Sauerl?nder (see note 2), p. 35f. late Roman not paridigm in spite of stone structures, spacious lightweight the help of more refined methods the initiators of the new architecture became construction, in the thin timber-covered attracted by the solutions evolved of the 1950), the Gothic difference case of little consequence. In other words, he does not resolve the paradox at all, but attempts to expurgate and stifle it. in the way that one historical distortion Moreover, to another, his belief that the Notre leads inevitably Dame columns constitute a revival requires that in the vaulting 8. Hans 9 10 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 a-columnar examples. Typically, even these compound include attached piers prominently or sometimes half-columns pilasters, which, although less iconlike than freestanding columns, were perhaps in Roman architecture the (at, for example, ubiquitous as well as throughout the provinces) Colosseum and as classicizing have also been apprehended would Sauerl?nder's them as such would be totally statement that "by arbitrary. Furthermore, Sauerl?nder's the beginning of the twelfth century the column had from the nave of the Romanesque basilica disappeared to exclude elements: throughout Europe" is qualified by the author himself to exempt Italy and the Holy Roman Empire?not exactly minor areas (despite Sauerl?nder's them calling which one might add numerous "backwaters")?to large-scale examples of columnar naves in England and itself (not just tiny ones France as Sauerl?nder implies), Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, byTournus, and Durham (the intermediate piers). a classical extinction-revival Moreover, cycle would more involve than yet just columns, presumably does not claim such a broad a-classical Sauerl?nder trend in 1100-1150 architecture, Romanesque although he does try to negate the "classical flavor of the Cluniac represented Gloucester, by insisting that this "flavor" is not a true but about "decorum, beauty, splendor"? somewhat perhaps vaguely "attached to the heritage of For Sauerl?nder, whatever classical architecture." looks or really something 1100-1150 is excluded classical after 1140/50 he allows us to apprehend else, whereas churches" historicism for him forms in the churches, only the classical nave main arcade columns, which meaning only their a in constitute Renaissance alone would classical fully at least regarding the interiors. church architecture, In Sauerl?nder's review, Schlegel, Viollet-le-Duc, Jantzen, and Sedlmayr are lured one by one into a He "smiles" at their folly, then to tempt us in turn to "smile"?a proceeds unwittingly reaction for sure?at hazardous his own energetic effort to solve the riddle. This issue was addressed again three columnar man-trap. InBearers of Meaning, which years later by John Onians. seeks to reveal the changing yet continuous symbolism a of the orders from antiquity to the Renaissance, to in the of the is dedicated effect chapter problem interested in its is not much Gothic column.14 Onians a late Rather than twelfth-century seeing historiography. 14. in the Christian 1988, Chapter VI, "The column unaware of was probably pp. 74-90. Onians in an obscure journal the year study, which appeared dates his preface. "Renaissance" of the column, Onians its emphasizes use circa the for him 1100-1260, widespread problem the period when ever larger being that this is precisely vaulted churches logically could have used sturdier, a In other words, columnar piers instead as supports. for Onians the columns are not a stylistic paradox but a structural anomaly. He finds its explanation in the power in the period, and interprets the columns of symbolism in purely exegetical the six terms, so that, for example, and Le Mans pairs of chevet columns at Coutances cathedrals Indeed at one represent the twelve apostles. is involved is not mere point he asserts that what in the eyes of their but presence?that representation were creators, those columns literally apostles.15 Such author's or intense symbolic practice in the not just a diffuse medieval but chronologically limited in both writing figuration view was phenomenon and architecture. structurally weak Ages," Sauerl?nder's that Onians "the period of the column corresponds precisely with the most when interested ecclesiastical period symbolism and he somewhat writers"; finds, inversely, that the column's the "replacement by structurally more comes appropriate piers exactly at the time [after 1260] to assert themselves," when architects were beginning further comment that architects were implying without in or even against architectural meaning, uninterested and that they had little influence over the form of pre 1260 works such as Chartres, Bourges, or Notre-Dame.16 Onians also conjures a sweeping, breathtakingly for the rest of the Gothic building, simplistic explanation the great vaulting configurations (which he at especially as worthy of mention, least recognizes unlike and Sauerl?nder). The entire, amazingly complex innovative super-columnar apparatus of the cathedral was in his eyes simply a response to the column, i.e., was fully determined by the need to build lighter over such slender supports. The power of symbolic discourse "led builders from Suger onwards to abandon piers and return to columns. Since by now great buildings could no longer be conceived of without vaults, this change led in turn to a drastic transformation of the upper parts to enable their weight to be carried on slenderer supports."17 At the same time, Onians seeks to defend his as exegetical, of the Gothic column interpretation Christian symbol against the obvious contrary reading, the column as historicist, classical of a reference?part of churches much Princeton, Middle For Onians 16. Ibid, p. 90. Ibid, p. 88. 17. Ibid, p. 90. 15. Trachtenberg: Editorial "Renaissance" such as the one Sauerl?nder to preempt such an interpretation, Evidently medieval pictures. Onians writes: The fascination with columns . . . associated with the birth of Gothic architecture and sculpture can thus be seen as the culmination of a tradition of Christian exegesis. The only other explanation for the [Gothic] fondness for columns would be a respect for it as an Antique form. But this seems excluded by the very nature of the shift from Romanesque to Gothic, involving as itdid the rejection of a Classical vocabulary.18 to support his cause Onians falls back on normative stylistic terms, the most fundamental, of architectural medieval history. stratigraphie structuring All that isGothic, by such stylistic definition, must be Here, in the Romanesque. purified of the classical still present Yet Onians's churches have not rejected a "Classical have affirmed it. But not really, vocabulary"?they the Onians would have to argue (as Iperceive that his look of way in our text)?they only implications vision. For their original audience, anachronistic they were not really "columns" at all. Where we see have seen the period eye would exclusively columns, so from (and forth). Apart producing a reductio apostles in this case the ad absurdum of the period-eye concept, habits attributed to medieval exegetical an is by no means closed. argument perception?such For example, one immediately would ask why, if the no no columness, "columns" embodied absolutely reference for their beholders, why valorizing antique were they used at all as opposed to any other well-known given their great imaginable support, especially structural disadvantage, indeed, their inherent of the great medieval contradiction vaulting movement? the analyses of the column comparing two eminent these scholars, published problem by one is within three years of each other (1985-1988), take on the astonished by their absolutely opposite Directly in divergent directions. with violent distortion we see thickset to moderns Sauerl?nder, According in but medieval round unclassical Notre-Dame, piers saw as the reason them classical columns; people truly are so is because of the the supports heavy, he reasons, loads they were great superstructure and vaulting question, to carry. Not so writes Onians (although it iswe in total independence of Sauerl?nder): evidently in Notre-Dame, moderns who see classical columns whereas medieval people saw them as veritable predestined take the form of they superficially apostles; because not and however, heavy complicated fragile columns, piers, the vaulting had to be correspondingly lightweight, hence the birth of the whole Gothic system. If two such highly qualified observers cannot agree on a set of basic questions?whether such absolutely or or is columns thick thin, supports apostles, or lightly loaded, determined or overburdened involve fundamental aspects of the problem and then construction, history, perception, individuals: the fault lies with the is not in the observing common paradigm. determinants?which to and Sauerl?nder attempts of Onians run solve the Gothic-column aground and problem the crash for the same reasons as their predecessors': not will accommodate interpretive operative paradigm is this the anomaly. Why and legitimately "normalize" ismore or less so? In these various cases the paradigm in exclusionary in its stylistics. Itworks structuralist terms of difference as it posits closed sets of traits The valiant incompatible with other sets. Gothic by its very to the classic; that is opposed (structuralist) definition is classical?whether of the antique, which or Renaissance be Gothic variety?cannot Romanesque, as and Sauerl?nder (as Onians proclaims, recognizes). classical being a primary, quintessential in is what termed "Gothic" its form, presence produces a problem that cannot be solved when confronted The column is absolute and ineradicable. openly; the contradiction Hence the various historical attempts to avoid, are later rationalize, or explain away the columns?they restorations (Schlegel); they are "transitional" hangovers and impurities (Viollet-le-Duc); they play a secondary, a in role earthly Gesamptkunstwerk spiritual theatre are not I but abstract forms like columns (Sed may r); they in the building (Jantzen). In every case either exclude columns from the transform them into something else, or Gothic building, This happens not by choice, or by them.19 marginalize or if intellectual chance, incapacity, but by necessity, by everything else these maneuvers is not to be broken. paradigm in fact argument parallels the last of these us that in the Gothic he tells (Jantzen's): strategems looks classical?big cathedral, what heavy columns with tripartite bases and heavy Corinthianesque capitals?was not seen as classical by itsmakers, and therefore was the traditional Onians's 19. which 18. Ibid. 11 rather than Nazi) to the interpretive innovative however, reading of the Gothic, (he was a largely on political grounds a closer intellectual merit, deserves look in relation terms advanced below the column. regarding Sedlmayr's highly has been suppressed 12 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 not classical. In other words, we are asked to take a kind of magic disappearing trick, as Onians seriously in the classical the column conjures away (exegetically rather than phenomenologically). Sauerl?nder, although seeming at some level to intuit the paradigm problem as does not seek a new one. impossible, nevertheless Rather he attempts to go around the old one with, so to speak, a linguistic slight of hand together with an alternate disappearing trick. He unblinkingly continues to call the architecture of Notre-Dame, "Early Gothic," in this architecture, what is yet what he describes revival of present in the text, is simply a classical columns?a of the 12th part of the "Renaissance it is not the column as column that is Century." Here, made to disappear but the rest of the (as inOnians) it is "Gothic" (the part): building simply not there. In terms of paradigm-shift theory, to restate the what is happening here conflict). Yet regardless of how much the is bent, stretched, and distorted itwill not paradigm and tricks work; only by conjuring disappearing on its the and elements, which are performed building made to disappear into thin air, or transmute into flesh, or a even is credible abstraction, spirit, rhetorically apparent in the particular, yet irreducible and crucial problem field of study, the old paradigm is simply not viable no what. new paradigm for the "Gothic" exercise indicates that a new historiographie is called Gothic paradigm for the architecture commonly now needed.20 In searching for it, however, we should first back up a step and briefly reengage the question of Our I have in two the paradigm-analysis that follows a Italian 'Gothic': Toward "Gothic, Redefinition," previous on the Italian difference JSAH (1991), pp. 22-37 (with an emphasis on Branner's Bourges: Reflections France) and "Suger's Miracles, as Medieval Gesta 39 'Gothic Architecture' Modernism," 20. explored articles, as (2000):183-205 (with an analysis of Suger's writings they apply as an epitome the paradigm, and of Bourges of medieval modernity formal terms). specific ideology built with it at its discursive birth. Its traits assigned were now inverted, as if its original essentially "Renaissance" features now were seen in reverse: not decadent not disordered but spiritualized; but not the hypersystematized; complex product of living a but brittle of abstract forms and schema history seems to It have been fated that the various, symbols. now positive style-sets concocted to explain itwould remain deeply problematic. The Gothic-column is only a marked symptom of a wider conundrum malaise. Given this line of interpretive descent, to again study the Renaissance foundation of "Gothic" discourse might of shifting the interpretive open up possibilities at most the effective juncture, its historical paradigm we might of Here point origination. directly interrogate the curious term "Gothic" itself, by asking why we persist in calling European architecture of the twelfth through fifteenth centuries after a barbarian tribe of late antiquity. Are we here merely being creatures of meaningless, ingrained habit, or might the word "Gothic" not contain a germ of etymological truth? I this, we have By understanding possible. move the difficult and crucial first of the navigated the demonstration that for a paradigm-shift protocol: a critical in the most alien and strange no rules or order, inwild and disorder, by savage barbarians who had decadence ancient buildings and killed all the the destroyed architects (as Vasari famously tells us).21 But the main point is that even after the positive reversal of fortunes of "medieval architecture" beginning in the eighteenth not Gothic did shed the century, strange and alien critical-historical description Toward by Renaissance terms possible: character is that both Onians are seeking to make question, and Sauerl?nder (and predecessors) the column problem conform to the style paradigm and vice versa (just as, according to Kuhn, practioners of . . . "normal" science "when confronted by an anomaly will devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory" in order to eliminate any matter is so why the interpretation of Gothic architecture in the first "Gothic Architecture" problematic place. in was, as iswell known (though generally suppressed critical practice), a fiction devised by the Renaissance. In order for Vasari and other writers of the Petrarchian to erase the legitimacy of the immediate past, genealogy to bury it as the "dark ages," its architecture had to be as darkly as possible. Thus itwas constructed depicted to in suggest that the word, despite the blatant absurdity its usage, contains a key to understanding the period. Here we must look to the linguistic practice of the which first made the connection between Renaissance, the word "Gothic" and the architecture in question. is simple. In the eyes of the Essentially the connection the Goths were the destroyers of Rome and Renaissance, its architecture. They were, in other words, the literal was embodiment of anticlassicism. of course, This, bound closely with the Renaissance view of medieval to 21. in now On the problem of Vasari's the contribution of Anne-Marie construction Sankovitch of the dark ages, to this volume. see 13 Trachtenberg: Editorial its essence architecture: (by necessity) was its also used another But the Renaissance anticlassicism. term for the recent post/non-antique architectural we put this term If "lavori moderni."22 phenomenon, is, put together the two together with "Gothic"?that terms for the movement?we have an earliest descriptive that is both "modern" and "anticlassical"? architecture or going a crucial step further, "modernist" and "antihistoricist," which are two ways of saying nearly the same thing.23 I submit that these early sources were on to something closer to a better paradigm than most with rib scholarship preoccupied structure, scholasticism, diaphaneity, and so forth. Ipropose that were diagonality, a name to give later medieval architecture later, "scientific" vaulting, skeletal geometry, it possible more descriptively accurate less loaded with than "Gothic"?while requires 22. E.g., Filarete (cf. Frankl [see note not to be confused with later Renaissance for the Renaissance Origins pp. 81-88. 23. "Gothic," The Gothic the itself (for example, of Renaissance period architecture period-naming, its itself, so far as we know, only qualified was as "opus The phrase francigenum." in reference to the German 1280 around geographically, by Burchard von Hall im Tahl (Frankl, p. 55). As Frankl abbey church of St. Peter atWimpfen was similarly aware that the of Canterbury points out (ibid.), Gervase Gothic choir of Canterbury Cathedral that he chronicled derived from used Gothic Italy, there is no reason not have been seen as something In late medieval France. would also may trecento have reflecting as being current to believe French, with Germany already associated und italienische "Deutsche Baukunst become that the it although in the im Trecento," (H. Klotz, xi [1966], des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz, Mitteilungen the geographical 173ff ). By the Cinquecento locus of the Gothic had to in shifted the of the Italians often (who eyes completely Germany it the maniera called tedesca); but for Philibert Delorme, presumably 24. analysis French notions, the Gothic remained French, as well "modern" (Frankl, p. 297). see Frankl, passim; the term Romanesque, of L. Seidel, Songs of Glory, The Romanesque On the perceptive Facades of that the picture is far validity, we must recognize from being so simple. The former phase often embodied as well, just as the period of modernist tendencies was complicated modernism by a historicist presence. Neither was 3], 256f, 858f). This should use of the term "modern" and Vasari). On by Raphael see E. H. Gombrich, Form: The Stylistic Categories of Art History and Their in Renaissance 1966), Ideals," in Norm and Form (London, phenomenon "Norm and suggest that it provides a more accurate take on the period it denotes than all the later academic analysis in terms of square-schematism, bay systems, radiating like the usual attributes of chapels, and the like, which, not do hold under hard scrutiny regarding "Gothic," up or of accuracy, compatibility, comprehensiveness would certain and that hence paired, here.24 As with Ipropose instead, in a manner somewhat to revaluation of "Gothic," my etymological analogous that the original core meaning of the word "Romanesque" also has a certain powerful validity (at least for I immediate purposes at this point in the argument). Gothic. in Itwas, architecture was, quite simply, Roman-esque. other words, deeply historicizing. seem to give us a conceptually This would clarified a phase of historicism, medieval followed by sequence: one of modernism. in very general terms of Although broad tendencies and emphases such a schema has a monadic paradigm that the implications of the concept of "modernism" might imply. In this preliminary we need still to expand our view, paradigm-research to the and go back a step in the common chronology, a term which called with Romanesque, period generally is often oppositionally some critical attention or either unthinkingly tend to use "Romanesque" if it the that that with idea is, represents, disparagingly, a of the naive rather pre understanding anything, to this highly varied architecture. Instead, application was term Romanesque the early nineteenth-century on more accurate the mark, nearly historically generally than late nineteenthand early twentieth-century in question. At this level rumination on the architecture mean itwould that pre-Gothic medieval of analysis, and at connotations misinformative the same time retaining the historically and conceptually nonsensical legitimate, hidden meaning of that otherwise name would be "medieval modernism." term?that in question, The architectural phenomenon however, was far too complex to be reduced to the sort of "Gothic" we purist (except perhaps for the very final of medieval which came close). modernism, stages The components of historicism and modernism varied in form and widely strength throughout "Romanesque" Europe, a fact that invalidates the usual models of this analysis (which cannot accommodate and fuels my proposed approach. Some nearly purist (through various chronological in in stressing and spans varying density of occurrence) one tendency over the other. For example, the medieval descriptive complexity) areas were of Rome were so faithful to Early Christian that is, so immaculately models, historicist, that for "Romanesque" scholarship they represent intractable to standard exceptions interpretative models (square the schematism, bay system, and so on), while to the churches Acquitaine Architectural 1981), p. 4ff; andT. Bizzarro, Romanesque (Chicago Criticism: A Prehistory 1992). A further (Cambridge, of course, is that the Gothic is oppositional to both complication, Classical and to each other. to the Romanesque, which are considered oppositional the RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 14 Figure 2. Rome, San Lorenzo fuori-le-mura, nave, 12th century. Photo: Marvin Trachtenberg. nonspecialist according Normandy, sometimes they are Romanesque only by their date, to the usually received explanation (fig. 2).25 on the other hand, was in certain aspects so strongly modernist that instances such as in Caen (fig. 3) could be plausibly Saint-?tienne included by Ernst Gall in his admirable book on early Gothic (which, however, implicitly posed the conundrum of a premature, anachronistic More characteristic of the period, or manifestation).26 are to works like Autun Cathedral considered central it, (fig. 4) or itsmodel, Cluny III,which embody a complex, tense or conflicted relationship between such as classicizing columns, elements, historicizing and "normative" pilasters, vaulting, ornament, on the one hand and on the other proportions, often modernist tendencies towards the bay system, spatial and attenuated schematization, fragmentation, a tension that, of course, was part of the proportions, pervasive and continuing ambiguity of the conflicted medieval attitude towards antiquity.27 terms in in more positive to explain this Roman purism on the History of the City of Choice: Speculations in C. Striker, ed., Essays in Rome and the Origins of the Renaissance," of Richard Krautheimer (Mainz, 1996), pp. 169-174. Memory in Frankreich und Deutschland 26. E. Gall, Diegotische Baukunst 25. I seek "On Bruneileschi's 1925). (Leipzig, see above all, E. Panofsky, 27. On this huge and still open subject, I inWestern Art (New York, 1965). Renaissance and Renascences The great exemplar of this interaction was the imperial Cathedral at Speyer. The first Speyer of the early eleventh century took up the nearby fourth-century Constantinian basilica at Trier, turned it outside in, and of added an attenuated half-columnar layer bay-dividing is particularly elements (figs. 5, 6). What telling is that the second Speyer as rebuilt a half-century later ismore Not rather than less historicizing only are huge (fig. 7). Roman-style groin vaults erected, receive a double order of massive more antique in proportions than the interior of forms. As a whole but the main piers columns that are far the original attenuated this prodigious Empire thereby recalled ancient interiors such as still-famous vaulted large-scale the imperial thermae or the Basilica of Maxentius. Speyer tells us that what we call "Romanesque," just as itwas rarely a pure historicism, also was never an inexorable "transitional" movement towards "Gothic"? or now, tentatively, medieval modernism?a cathedral of the Holy Roman the "Gothic") the (as in the text below regarding emphasize that one might think of, for example, the attenuated possibility columns and pilasters of Speyer, Saint-Sernin, III, and Autun not Cluny in the usual terms of confusion of the classical and misunderstanding would the return to the classical past was always (e.g., "In the Middle Ages, as in note 2, 34) but more as and distorted," Sauerl?nder, fragmentary of the very antiquity distortions self-conscious, knowing, modernizing are so powerfully to which these same buildings attached. 15 Trachtenberg: Editorial !-1! F *???>%>.. \.^-> Figure 5. Speyer I,c. 1030-60 Figure 3. Caen, Saint-?tienne, nave, 1064-77. Photo: (Hollar reconstruction). Marvin Trachtenberg. that never has been quite put to rest.28 misinterpretation Itwas not driven by any unconscious process of stylistic evolution but rather guided by a strongly self-conscious to the view of history, of the present in its relationship was in to not in the latter be which past, relinquished but instead emphasized (its strength on which could specific circumstances, depending not want "in It did reverse"). vainly to be easily go unlike our own recent Post-Modernist "Gothic" but?not as well as much of the nineteenth architecture, architecture century's?was same time. both modernist and historicist at the of what has Thus, perhaps the fairest characterization in terms would be been called the Romanesque period tension of a conflict, an instability, an unresolved between the two currents of historicism and modernism, inwhich the former tended to predominate, although not in any progressive way or with any clear pattern. In turn would no longer be such a reading, the Gothic construed as a replacement of one style-set by another, Figure 4. Autun, Saint-Lazare, Photo: Marvin Trachtenberg. forechoir, early 12th 28. On century. note 7. the "transitional" in modern architectural discourse, see 16 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 Figure 6. Trier, basilica, early 4th century. Photo: Courtesy of Foto Marburg. a move towards the but rather a shift in orientation, resolution of the contest, away from historicism and favor of an ascendant, dominant, eventually Yet even this more critically nuanced modernism.29 in requires further it might offer a qualification new the viable paradigm paradigm. Considering in this essay, what is required is an problem highlighted accounts for the marked framework that intellectual a in time of historicism presence of dramatically diachronics architecture of medieval and elaboration before either intensified modernism without compromising Notre-Dame term?a means to relate the problematic in a manner coherent to the rest of the building columns as a whole. movement a architectural view of the with in literary closely parallel developments around in France, in the shift that occurred to self revival of antique material 1150 from a strong proto-humanistic new interests and methods novelty, promoted emphasizing consciously were prone to calling themselves sometimes by scholars who 29. This intellectual volte-face circles would centered see S. C. Ferruolo, "moderns"; W. Treadgold, ed., Renaissances 1984), pp. 139f, 144. "The Twelfth-Century Renaissance," the Renaissance Before (Stanford in Modernism and historicism: and implications Definitions At this point, the terms historicism and modernism, Ihave used while relying on a certain suspension of disbelief on the reader's part, can no longer wait to be clarified as to their usage inmy argument. To do so it helps to realize that my approach here to medieval is derived from a familiar methodology architecture which (and other universally applied to the architecture of certain nonmedieval cultural production) fields, in Renaissance and Modern the periods. These particular not in terms of style, as are are generally understood virtually all current readings of the middle ages, but lack of a more concise rather in terms of what?for term?I would call "modalities of cultural-historical That is, the central factor underlying consciousness." in the Renaissance and reception cultural production in the mode is seen as grounded and Modern periods in the period's sense of the historical consciousness, of or relationship of the self, the institution, the community, formation to the past. It hinges the particular discursive on the dependence of cultural ambition and desire on from the sense of independence the past or, conversely, Trachtenberg: Editorial 17 least since Michelet and Burckhardt, the Renaissance not as a style but as a has been defined principally movement driven by a turn in historical self consciousness and desire, by a deep new historicism seen as pervasive throughout its cultural production. But it is the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that provide the more relevant parallel to my reading of the in Labrouste's medieval. Here, as realized for example the nineteenth Ste-Genevi?ve, century is Biblioth?que as a time now seen, much like the Romanesque, to exploring both historicism and committed a project believed to be compromised in modernism, the eyes of the early twentieth century, which turned as in Le Corbusier's Villa toward a purist modernism, Savoie (which, of course, was nevertheless imbued with a strongly historicizing Platon ist formal idealism). in observed patterns of misusage, It is evident that I also need to refine and reinforce certain distinctions in the terminology employed (working, not absolute) here, especially regarding the word "modern/ism." One that should be obvious, though it is often not kept in is the difference between modernism and mind, a Modernism: between respectively, transhistorically mode of consciousness and experience and its as in historical the Modernist realization, specific movement of the twentieth century (or, indeed, the wider "Modernist" project for civilization formulated by the Enlightenment).31 Medieval Modernism would share a common with recent Modernism antihistoricist in the "present," an emphasis on the critical grounding power of reason over precedent and authority, and of individual ultimately to some degree an empowering potential Figure 7. Speyer II,c. 1080. Nineteenth-century lithograph. it?in other words, the oppositional pair that we know as historicism and modernism. In the historicist mode, cultural production is in reference and legitimated by grounded categorically to historical precedent, often though not always classical Inmodernism, is this historicist grounding cultural would say repressed?and suppressed?some as is considered, however self-deceptively, production in both self-generating and self-legitimizing, grounded recourse to history.30 Thus, at the present (future) without antiquity. 31. on See Habermas transhistorical above. Compare constituted, categories "Why should modernity recent remarks Terry Eagleton's inmy terms, by modernism define itself in purely to a cultural style, a mode of terms, rather than by reference ... All are modern, an intellectual climate but not periods production, in this mode. all of them live their experience Indeed the classical is a and historicism: temporal a reprise of as though itwere way of living one's experience simply the past, so that only those bits of itwhich bear the legitimating seal of . . . sees tradition can be regarded as authentic Modernity, by contrast, itself not just as one more phase of time, but as a phase of time which . . What . strikes it as most re-evaluates the very notion of temporality is of time, about itself the experience typical dazzling, dismaying no longer comes wrapped in history or habit or custom but is which now 30. On and problematics the concept Discourse The Philosophical of modernity, of Modernity, see above all trans. F. J. Habermas, use of the term, W. Lawrence 1986); on the medieval (Cambridge, MA, des Mittelalters und andere Zeitbegriffe Freund, Modernus (Cologne, 1957). The modern is that which almost their opposite. becoming reduces everything which up to half an hour ago to an happened it is less a continuation of history than an traditionalism; oppressive review of Peter Conrad, Modern of it," ("Newsreel abolition History," Times, Modern 12 November Places 1998, [London, p. 8). 1998], in London Review of Books, RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 18 this is a crucial but?and subjectivity, distinction?not coexistence. any particular formal features of its cultural necessarily which has been Unlike recent Modernism, production. so transparent and omnipresent in culture, medieval a much more problematic, Modernism experienced as a cultural often submerged or disguised existence in the in terms its of project, especially explicit presence textual for also involves a third meaning, does signify, of course, "modern" may and commonly is (or seems) new, recent, current, simply what and so on. In this usage contemporary, up-to-date, can historicism also be "modern," as in the Renaissance, use of the term modern the "Gothic" It of conflicted, multilayered works. explication us see to in works terms, to encourages anti-hegemonic see the cathedrals as the complex and even formally entities that much contemporary self-contradictory research is in fact proving them to be socially, and to was not to designate but rather the then current classical in practice both medieval and versions of modernism vitally twentieth-century this important meaning incorporated such "newness," not at the core of my redefinition of the medieval revival.33 Although Furthermore, formal difference historicism analogously from what might be called from that complexity unburdened by the demands of a view within of coherent their style, yet general formal character. The paradigm permits the unproblematic interpretation of periods of instability and of tension between historicist and modernist like the desire, eleventh and early twelfth centuries, inmuch the same of the period of the way that it allows for the complexity turn to medieval Modernism?also known as the explain is instead passage known as "Gothic." My usage focuses on the evident, underlying shift in historical and desire rather than on the consciousness, grounding, associated formal novelty of the cultural products of the shift, that is, specific preceding works. are about conscious as we of formal traits in individual works, Itallows for irrationality and and artists, periods). the and contradiction for messy complexity exception, of life, and of art. Thereby the cultural-historical consciousness indeed fosters, the paradigm permits, record.32 one and consciousness, limited number But modernism when These modalities know, is inherently and rather expansive, multilayered accommodating, than intolerant, reductive, or monadic (as style tends to be in its globalizing insistence on coherent sets of a desire, Gothic?in the rising tide of modernist desire a strain of historicist rarely unaccompanied by in certain specific consciousness, strongly manifest situations and sites. immediately is to be traditionalism, distinguished it is sometimes with which conflated. By traditionalism mean the sheer continuation of practice (in activist or it be Its called conservatism).34 form, may polemicist or not is but innovation, modernism, opposite simply terms of consciousness). modern-as-newness (on whatever a of definition, Turning from such problematics crucial point of substance concerns certain advantages of the cultural-historical consciousness paradigm over a The style-centered methodology. paradigm spares us the difficulties associated with "style."35 many well-known Itsmodalities of modernism and historicism can occur in infinite pure and impure states of existence and I which In other words, the paradigm enables us to those problematic columns classicizing in Paris in the same terms as the understand Notre-Dame is in modernism of these buildings without or in the either presence compromising subordinating manner unavoidable when the old using Romanesque to which, as we have versus-Gothic paradigm according seen, such classical elements by definition can never predominant it allows us to appear in the latter style. Moreover, understand S. Lorenzo in Rome, Florence Baptistery, Autun and Speyer Cathedrals on compatible, meaningful terms of identity and difference has (which otherwise indeed to understand Florence impossible), and Baptistery Bourges Cathedral on those same terms. It lets us see St-Etienne in Caen as congruous proven 32. Cf. note 33. See note 34. Such 29, however. 22. traditionalism is, of course, is a historicist to be distinguished (or retrohistoricist) from "invented" construct tradition, which of real and imaginary elements of the past (often associated conjured as conservatism); Idistinguish see E. H. Hobsbawm, with what in The Invention of Tradition, E. H. Hobsbawm "Inventing Tradition," andT. Ranger eds. 1983), pp. 1-14. (Cambridge, of style, see above all M. concept in idem., Theory and reedited of Schapiro, "Style," (1955), Philosophy Art: Style, Artist, and Society (New York, 1994), pp. 51-101, especially 62ff regarding the critical position taken here. 35. On the problematic unproblematically including an eleventh century quasi interior elevation, modernist sparing us the agony of or a the is proto-Gothic whether deciding building some with features, Romanesque building proto-Gothic or whatever. in this way, the paradigm may even Ultimately, allow us to develop a reading of medieval architecture not as stratified horizontally into "Romanesque" and "Gothic" layers at all (which inevitably solicits stylistic Trachtenberg: Editorial of cultural but vertically, as a continuum twin of around strands dominant production organized historicist and modernist distinct yet often discourse, in ever varying relationships. To pursue such a entangled dialectical genetic logic to its conclusion would a certain fundamental reorganization potentially imply categorization), not only of the "medieval" (an archaic, now rather term that would paradoxical necessarily disappear)36 but a as of architectural whole (at least history conceivably the European-Western sphere): a ninety-degree of history from horizontal stratification to a a vertical dialectical structure, producing consistently within reorientation transparency architectural Renaissance, as virtually and compatibility time zones?those between various called medieval, and Modern?currently regarded terms the of their incompatible regarding Baroque, interpretation. such transparency would result not only Moreover, as well. As but synchronically diachronically potentially has been recently demonstrated, the social tends to narratives mainly to become involved in style-based in stylistic explain away aberrations and inconsistencies and patterns thereby precluding development, contextual meaningful interpretation.37 Just as style so is inherently asocial in its abstraction, based criticism the cultural-historical is engaged definition consciousness consciousness in the social paradigm by field, for what are if not specifically that of and desire individuals, groups, historicism Although institutions, and communities? are transhistorical and modernism concepts, they nevertheless compel close attention to the historical specificity of the period under study. The are cultural products of cultural-historical consciousness as of that consciousness; inevitably representations representations they bridge the gap between artistic form Iam and desire. This would suggest that the paradigm for medieval architecture might be displaced proposing in its center from the matrix of consciousness toward the 36. "Medieval," of course, combines the Latin m?dius (middle) a "middle and aevum ancient and (age), designating age" between seem to make modern the term "medieval periods, which would an oxymoron. This problem may be avoided, however, to the distinctions in the text above, by which made by adhering not any inherent qualities "medieval" would (or cultural designate modernism" an "intermediate" the time period as such, with "style") but only "modern" the particular character of the epoch. signifying on specific this demands usage, a problem agreement Admittedly, solved by avoiding the term "medieval" perhaps best ultimately generic its seemingly altogether, with to the framing subordination 37. Sankovitch (see note ineradicable connotations classical-historicist 2), 1998, pp. 694, periods. 700-701. of cultural 19 or expanded to field of spatio-visual representation, embrace shift the methodology toward it,which would alignment with many specific forms of current research in the period?and in art history in general. Building the paradigm During the rise of medieval modernism, historicizing elements are deliberately, and self-consciously, pointedly made either to disappear or to lose, by their historicist presence. The meaning-laden degrees, historicist language taken from Rome, that agglomerate of forms so strongly present in the previous (Roman esque) medieval phase, the classical apparatus of groin and barrel vaults, pilasters, trabeation, and load-bearing is now in diverse ways and to varying degrees, walls, over time, negated suppression, through exclusion, subversion or conversion?a process also generally in a singular way, to the column. In applied, although a of the old medieval place historicising assemblages mode of architectural modernism takes hold: not the episodic, fragmentary, often superficial as (for example, at Speyer gestures, previously a but III), vital, new deep comprehensive, rooted program of structure and form, which is in modernist both and anti-classical inherently logic and motivation. effect, and in signification and self-conscious ismost interesting about this modernist What scattered, modernist or Cluny in terms of my argument, are two distinct yet it drastically interrelated procedures ultimately by which remodels the cathedral. The first?which concerned that in large part the new everything but the column?is program may be attributed to a paradigm shift that occurred within the cathedral workshop itself (rather than a shift in our terms of understanding the past). More accurately, this turn entailed a series of such in close sequence produced the transformations, which rib vault, the pointed arch, and the flying buttress so essential to the new modernist building. These were not metamorphoses arbitrary, spontaneous inventions propelled by sheer modernist desire, but fully the protocols of paradigm-shift followed theory and its ruthless self-critical procedures. That is, each was program, motivated by an impasse in the given design paradigm, one or more intractable that it simply could problems not resolve, thus requiring a reconceptualization, a new once was which formulated paradigm, gradually in its problematics and implications and explored spread into general modernist eventually practice. Yet it must be said that architectural of the level change described here was not only a matter of problem 20 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 important as that was. The modernist impulse solving, a fierce architectural that also embodied iconoclasm seems to have inhabited these workshops, which of course only reinforced the autocritical and inventive drive to paradigm shifting. And indeed, medieval modernism itself (insofar as it can be spoken of in without the deepest levels isolation) was unimaginable of architectural desire to power it. center of this transformative process The paradigmatic was the ruthless, powerful, and, Imaintain, highly self and knowing critique of the logic, geometry, of the Roman-esque? technique, and appearance which had been the vault, ultimately Roman?groin workhorse of vaulted buildings. This critique lead not simply to "progress" but to a radical mutation and reversal of virtually all of its traits in the rib vault (results that could not possibly have emerged without a high conscious and intellectual degree of techno-historical knowledge In formal terms, this critique (deeply motivation). as inmuch of its logic) worked essentially Euclidian as two follows: Because the groin vault was conceived interpenetrating barrel vaults, it produced groin lines of parabolic curvatures and folds, as difficult-to-manage well as being inherently resistant to covering anything Figure 9. Rib-vault diagram. Structure: The Gothic Vault From James (University H. Acland, of Toronto Medieval Press, 1972). Reprinted with the permission of the publisher. that towards 1100 than a square plan?difficulties and after came to be regarded in Norman and northern French practice as untenable (fig. 8). The rib vault as an and in construction instead begins conceptually an each framework of discrete with arches, integral curvature not defined independently generated by a mere edge but by strong plastic form (figs. 9, 10). The other the visually formerly secondary groin line thus becomes now with the surface rib, primary appearing as vaulting serves as the visually secondary infill, the web, which Figure 8. Groin vault diagram. Drawing: Marvin Trachtenberg. Figure Marvin 10. Saint-Denis, Trachtenberg. ambulatory vaulting, 1140-44. Photo: Trachtenberg: Editorial the ground for the dominant figure of the ribs. All that is left of the historical model is the idea of masonry initially with a four-part cross-diagonal vaulting, division; soon even frequently exploded rib vault is realized that quadripartite as the flexibility in an endless and polygonal quadrangular, even more boldly Perhaps is organization of the modernist plans. revealing of the deeply thrust of the rising movement and in the paradigm and dazzling engagement is the closely associated modernist as the pointed arch. Ithas been variously interpreted in terms of bent tree branches, heavenward and the like, but thrust, Islamic precedent, its genesis, one propose that two factors dominated shifting process element known the other visual. The first of these iswell technical, known, and involves the way the traditional semicircular to the arch posed insurmountable geometric problems designer of rib vaults. In order to make the various arches and ribs (technically the diagonal arches) of a same to unit rise the for vaulting height?imperative both structural and visual reasons?using the unbroken the could frame be assembled with curve, vaulting only an ungainly combination of semicircular, and segmental, stilted arch forms. Although workable, the solution was awkward, and evidently came to be regarded as like the groin vault). In other words, inherited from Roman paradigm, intractable presented problems. A daring intolerable (much the unbroken-curve esque new usage, the so-called paradigm, pointed arch, completely solved the difficulty: by using various degrees of pointing, a given arch over a certain span could be made to rise to various heights, which now allowed all the various arched components of a vault to rise to the same a attended not-unharmonious height, only by of the degree of pointing rather than the old of arch-forms.38 heterogeneity Yet the second factor behind the new arch formula Ipropose that to the may have been of equal motivation. it would have contemporary spectator perhaps most of all looked not "pointed" (a post-medieval English term) but instead like a broken arch (i.e., as in the relatively recent French arc bris?). That is, regardless of its key in role paradigmatic resolving geometric problems of the rib vault, the form would have been seen, in especially the early period of its use, as a literal breaking?and the semicircular, reconstitution?of unbroken arch that diversity one of the through the entire middle ages had provided a central of reference historicist elements, primary point to antiquity, whose architectural authority was now being shattered and replaced by a new modernist program. (Technically the broken arch was realized by a inwhich twin centers of operation, decentering curvature replaced a single central point.) One might say that the broken arch is an indexical sign of an architectural revolution.39 An analogous dualism of motivation was behind the series of triangular, iconoclastic critical, its profound I third major component of the new modernist program. With the advent of the flying buttress, the exterior of the cathedral the purest and most powerful rapidly became the entire modernist of aspect building. Again the a was novelty produced by paradigm shift, in this case the most profound of all. The traditional reinforcement of system going back to large vaulted construction, was within the building or contained Rome, entirely as to it flat adhered buttresses). closely Following (e.g., an unwritten rule of structural decorum, components that could not be disguised as ordinary piers, arches, and other standard elements of the Roman-based form as to In this mode, be hidden.40 the language, tended great churches grew higher and larger, the massive framework of aisles and galleries grew with them, piled up in layers around the high central vaults as a stabilizing framework (fig. 11), and such assemblages as high as could have been stacked even higher?even the greatest modernist cathedrals like Amiens and Beauvais. The intractable problem of this traditional was not size, as is often thought, but buttressing frame and lighting. The paradigm of flexibility, economy, closed reinforcement lateral assemblages was by inefficient, spatially redundant, and expensive, clumsy, limited the severely height of the clerestory. A new if development completely paradigm was needed 39. The pointed in eighth-century first occurs Islamic arch, which 1100 in Burgundy towards (for example, architecture, appears Cluny its adoption III) and elsewhere (e.g., Durham), generally being to structural attributed see, e.g., J. Bony, French Gothic advantages; Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries 1983), pp. (Berkeley, seem to context would first in a "Romanesque" confirm my reading of that period as one of not infrequent modernist In any case, resistance to the broken arch can still be seen in episodes. the early phases of lle-de-France S. Etienne for example, modernism, 17-21. That it appears at Beauvais to employ which continues (ca. 1120/30), stilting instead to solve the geometric of pointing of equivalent arch heights problem in rib-vaults; only at the St-Denis choir (apart from the minuscule to near Morienval does the broken arch first proliferate "ambulatory") consistent For a fuller, yet accessible of this problem, explanation and I. Hyman, Architecture to from Prehistory Trachtenberg second edition, 226f. (New York, 2002), Postmodernity 38. 21 see M. 40. was use. Among the Pantheon, arches and vaults the most with built ancient examples of this practice elaborate its immensely system of relieving complex into the thickness of the wall. invisibly 22 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 r ' Figure 11. Noyon Cathedral, c. 1170, axonometric. From Ernest Gall, Die gotische Baukunst in Frankreich und Deutschland (1925). other Figure 12. Modernist after. From James buttressing system, H. Acland, Medieval late 12th century and Structure: The Gothic Vault (University of Toronto Press, 1972). Reprinted with the permission of the publisher. than sheer size was to occur. The buttressing reconceptualized (fig. 12). The new and simple, extremely bold: the entire was now externalized, vaults high immovable buttress-towers huge, the edge of the aisles, their great masses arrangement was idea was rational, buttressing for the taking the form of placed along projecting beyond the aisle walls, carrying immense up over the quadrant arches?the flyers?reaching aisle roofs to receive and transmit the vaulting thrust. Galleries were no longer needed, and their place could be taken by the huge clerestory zone of immense stained-glass panels that soon appeared. The paradigm-shifting But logic here was impeccable. itwas attended by a powerful motivational factor rooted in the deep iconoclasm of the movement. In this the salient point is the way modernist perspective in a few decades of practice destroyed radicalism the inwhich buttressing classical probity of closed volumes was essentially the building.41 This contained within internalized reinforcement hidden, system? largely equally evident at, for example, Cluny III,Saint-?tienne in Nevers, Noyon, the Pantheon, and the Basilica of now exfoliated, as itwere, Maxentius?was replaced by new mode of openwork the explosive reinforcement that Iwould term modernist to historicist opposition 41. For a critical review S. Murray, flying buttresses, of Gothic," Art Bulletin 80 in structural exhibitionism, structural "Roman-esque" and advancement "Notre-Dame (1998):229-253. on early the Anticipation of the research of Paris and Trachtenberg: Editorial Figure 13. Nevers, Saint-?tienne, choir, 1163-97. decorum in the entire (figs. 13, 14, 15). Nothing created middle ages could have been more alien or shocking to the classical sensibility than those giant, angular piers and half-arches leaping impossibly through space. The dramatic transformation of the cathedral exterior was thus made possible not merely by the internal structural logic of paradigm-theory, compelling though that logic iconoclastic may have seemed, but also by the powerful, antihistoricist urges of the medieval modernist to the urge of modernist consciousness movement, follow through in practice the radical direction that rational analysis indicated. In the origins of the rib-vault, broken arch, and flying buttress we have seen how the paradigm-shifting process in the programmatic modernist transformations operated of the cathedral.42 Yet there was, as already mentioned, another mechanism took by which medieval modernism effect, and this iswhere the column question comes back into play. Far from extinguishing the column, the new churches make it proliferate in their interiors, and 42. If this makes forerunners that should reinterrogated. the medieval modernist master masons of post-"medieval" it is not their strategy scientific method, be doubted but rather intellectual history that must be 23 Photo: Marvin Trachtenberg. not only in the twelfth century or in the mode of the nave supports. Although Notre-Dame typically called in the column and shafts colonnettes, piers, responds, avoidance of modern scholarship, they are language all nevertheless columns, with classicizing bases, and shafts, cylindrical Corinthianesque capitals, and are in main supports, as responds, everywhere?as they the galleries and triforiums, and inmultiple and layers levels in the tracery (e.g., fig. 16). The entire elevation, in fact, comes to consist of nothing but columns and slender arches (and multiple arch-profiles), together with a few stringcourses and patches of remnant wall. So interior cannot be important are they, that the cathedral without them. easily imagined true also This is not only our vision but was evidently for the builders. The columns were multiplied because even as were the available, yet they only language for the vital needs of architectural self conceivable, in in the elevation?that the is, representation visually primary interior aspect of the church. As Anne-Marie Sankovitch has written, "the classical orders constitute a resonant language with an established and vocabulary that communicate which transcends syntax meaning their usage in individual buildings, meaning that is not or tectonic. but also Thus, for only ideological symbolic the column's of syntax example, base-shaft-capital 24 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 Figure 14. Rome, Figure 15. Pantheon, Le Mans, 118-28. cathedral, Photo: choir Marvin buttresses, Trachtenberg. after 1217. Photo: Marvin Trachtenberg. 25 Trachtenberg: Editorial ' ) -. Figure Marvin ff^H-*^ 17. Saint-Denis, MmS"*! ! ambulatory 11?:JM^fcrr; I lili view, 1140-49. Photo: Trachtenberg. pseudo-scholastic logic44 but forced to represent the anticlassical. Thus, although historicist and modernist in practice they desire were theoretically oppositional, came 16. Laon, Figure Trachten berg. nave, cathedral, after 1160. Photo: Marvin to be intricately the former. interwoven, with the latter colonizing self-affirmation and violence This representational was not achieved of course, but in an instantaneously, In a sense the intricate multigenerational development. Notre-Dame St-Denis and columns of "problem" the degree-zero point of this process, a at moment when, as Suger's texts make appearing was not only allowed but historicism such blatant clear, in the church still required as a legitimizing presence constituted so even in its signifies 'support' and does a as Gothic metamorphosis pier."43 It is just such in its I that here, although metamorphosis emphasize In function. this structuralist than rather ideological is not merely submitted to the process the column as a form vision: it is co-opted by modernism modernist as an indispensable medium of of symbolic expression, not only of rationalist (or "scholastic") representation, structuralist values but, more critically, of the modernist in the cathedrals movement itself.What largely happens to the column is that this primary historicist element into is turned against itself, not merely neutered 43. "A Reconsideration Architecture," Renaissance of French in J. Guillaume, (Paris, 1995), p. French classicism throughout fourteenth century. Renaissance Church de la ed., L'?glise dans l'architecture stresses the presence of 165. Sankovitch architecture from the eleventh to the interior, adopted not in spite of but because of the adjacent, still-daring, and somewhat alien modernist vaulting apparatus (fig. 17).45 Be this stage as itmay, is clear enough. Highly what happens subsequently takeover of the building indicative of the progressive by of what are in fact virtually all as scholasticism in analysis of the cathedral stone (Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism [New York, 1951], p. 51 ff), Ranofsky totally engages column-avoidance (the main language are "monocylindrical is "column" of Notre-Dame columns piers"); 44. columns In his detailed discussion in his famous ended with a capital "like a used only once (the pilier cantonn? of the column of the 82). column," presence p. Recognition pervasive of Ranofsky's argument. intriguing modifications might force certain See the contribution 45. Trachtenberg, Sankovitch by Anne-Marie 2000 (see note 20), pp. to this volume. 195-199, on Suger. RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 26 inwhich, vision is the manner historicist forms are these conspicuous subsequently, and ultimately gradually subverted, transmuted, eliminated (not in linear progress but in a far more Ipropose that complex developmental choreography). what tended to be displayed and seen in this process was not so much the column itself (as at St-Denis and modernist the main arcade in Paris) but its anticlassical, a its of difference from transformation, classically degree the modernist and column-usage (which evidence Speyer, St-Denis, Paris, and suggests?including numerous other cases?was known to architects and clients of the time). The column, or columnar schema, authentic column submit, was I now retained, indeed made newly to proliferate densely throughout the church interior, in the systematic order to make possible representation of the critical progress of modernism through its in from authentic historicism, expository self-distancing readable, dramatic (and often hyperrational ?zed)46 architectural language. occurs A pivotal step in this movement in the High Gothic pilier cantonn?, which literally imprisons the column?earlier freestanding and, by displayed in good classical form at Paris and Laon? comparison, in a modernist cage of attenuated colonnettes, turning classicism incarcerating the key against itself, as itwere, to its own devices idol according historicist architectural central Figure 18. Reims, cathedral, pilier cantonn?, after 1211. Photo: Anne-Marie Sankovitch. at Troyes later, for example, (fig. 18).47 A generation Cathedral or the nave of St-Denis, bundles of such the pier completely: dominate colonnettes they are now or are we meant to of the all that see, see, virtually building's supports (fig. 19). All along, these colonnettes are progressively and radically thinned down and if on a rack?to the point that all stretched out?as connection with antique supportive substance and 46. The "scholastic" 1950, would Ranofsky, of the column medium by reasoning of Gothic design emphasized the have been virtually impossible without that this mode of reasoning was (meaning formal fluidity and indeterminacy). acolumnar by Late Gothic in both the pilier cantonn? was also foreshadowed Of course eastern nave Paris (in the clustered aisle piers) and Laon (the cagelike medieval the theologically emphasizes problematic piers). Onians Inmedieval idols illustrations pagan status of the column (pp. 74-90). obviated 47. often are seen sometimes to stand on columns, or fall with them; break relief at the Amiens west and when a notable they fall the columns in the instance occurs discussed {The by M. Camille of the p. 2, fig. 3): the "columns of the Holy Egyptian temple snap like twigs before the onslaught ... as if as part of an elaborate sculptural edifice representing, Family edifice and of an alien and competing of images, the total destruction socle Gothic Idol [Cambridge, facade, 1989], its ?mages." See also T. Buddensieg, "Gregory the Great: The Destroyer Figure 19. Troyes, cathedral, after 1228. Photo: Marvin Trachtenberg. Trachtenberg: Editorial EVFf ffS Figure 20. Rouen, Saint-Ouen, nave, 14th century. Photo: Marvin Trachtenberg. is dissolved, ?conic presence all affirmation of their columnar in antique origins negated: part of a process which the classical element itself is physically forced (cumulatively imprisoned, stretched, broken) to the anticlassical (figs. 20, 21). Similarly, the that crucial of the classical Orders, is sign capital, into the crocket type and shrivels to a mere abstracted (as if burnt to a crisp on a speck in the gigantic elevation at the levels spit), becoming higher nothing more than a represent faint sign of the terminal point of the columnar schema. Inmany cases, the capital eventually disappears altogether, as does, in the still more radical Late Gothic, the attic base and, indeed, the entire independent its colonnette itself, which, having exhausted of modernization, possibilities finally gives way to a at which point bundle of continuous vertical moldings, Figure Wl I^? 21. Rouen, Saint-Ouen, nave vJjM __|^^__ / after 1529. triforium, 27 on Photo: Marvin Trachtenberg. the suppression of historicism is finally completed (figs. 23).48 22, But of course this was to be only a brief illusion. a new historicism emerged At this very moment in Italy, soon brutally of Pagan Idols," Journal to cut short the life of medieval of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes 28 (1965), 4ff. see 48. For a clarification of this final modernist transformation, 1995 (see note 43). The transformations of the classical Sankovitch, column that I have outlined might be loosely compared with inwhich "the classical Ranofsky's analysis of contemporary sculpture, as to become is so completely absorbed invisible," and his in of trends and poetry analogous philosophy, reading historiography, are driven these changes (1965, 102f ). In Ranofsky, however, by from the impersonal period forces rather than resulting explicitly element agency of critically engaged human consciousness and desire. 28 RES 40 AUTUMN 2001 killed the thriving virtuoso The main point of these is not to resolve this lines, however, concluding turn but merely to architectural extremely complex how the historicist-modernist suggest paradigm of of cultural-historical consciousness modalities may enable us finally to speak of "medieval" and in compatible, "Renaissance" and conceptual, same terms?in the breath.49 interpretive architectural of modernist 49. treatise?that architecture. To review my of a new proposal writes (84): of the Gothic-column analysis interpretive paradigm All crises begin with the blurring loosening of the rules for normal in one of three ways. Sometimes able to handle the crisis-provoking in Kuhn's "crisis" specific art and terms, he of a paradigm and the consequent . . .And all crises close research science proves ultimately the despair of problem despite those who have seen it as the end of an existing paradigm. On resists even apparently other occasions the problem radical new a future is set The for labelled and aside approaches. problem generation Having state of words Figure Photo: 22. Gisors, Anne-Marie Saint-Gervais, nave aisle pier, after 1529. Sankovitch. with in the second research may . . . Figure 23. Abbeville, Photo: Anne-Marie Saint-Wulfran, pier base, after 1488. Sankovitch. modernism throughout Europe, long before it showed any internal signs of faltering. This time, however, the not through the internal critique violence was achieved or the symbolic colonization of form of paradigm-shifts illustrated language. Itwas mainly the printed book?the on instance a difficult conjure the case battle over tools. developed "Gothic" finally, the emergence ensuing &?&$: more with normal effectively prior to my road ahead that will of a new most or less described thesis. Kuhn's present for our discourse: concern candidate its acceptance. more the further us here, a crisis may end for paradigm and with the