architecture WAS Re: GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
It seems to me that there is an art to these gardens which depends on
site and climate, as much as to the prevailing attitudes toward the
commodification of the antique, or doctrines of teh Sublime.
One of the splendid things about these gardens is who closely they are
adapted to the landscape and the characteristic cloud formations of
England.  I've seen holes in the general overcast cast sunshine like a
searchlight onto hill sides, the sun-patches wandering along up and
down the hills high-lighting first this folly, then a herd of sheep,
then that cottage over there... In the US you more typically percieve a
moving patch of cloud-shadow in the glare...
Anyone else see it this way?
Mark

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> > some good subject matter is the "Picturesque"
> > English landscape tradition - followed by Capability Brown and the
> other
> > landscape architects of the 1800's. The idea was that you would
> populate your
> > large country estate full of Greek temples, ruined castles,
> pagodas, pyramids,
> > etc,  placed amongst trees, so as not to be viewed all at once. The
> experience
> > of walking the estate would be that of discovery, and the discovery
> would be
> all
> > the world's cultures, represented architecturally. The estate
> owners had
> > generally done the Grand Tour of greater Europe, as it was called,
> and the
> > garden worked on several levels: it worked as a visual "photo
> album" memory
> > trigger, it showed off to others where the owner had been, but most
> importantly,
> > it symbolised the Victorian ideal of compartmentalising and
> collecting, and
> thus
> > taming and making safe the . As an aside, these garden estates also
> had their
> > fences concealed in large ditches below general ground level,
> called
> mini-hahas
> > (yes!). This gave the impression that the owner's land stretched on
> forever.
> 
> The British Empah, on which the sun never set ...
> 
> It had a lot to do with wealth, status and ostentation, but it was
> mainly
> about ownership I think. The landed gentry built these mazes and fake
> ruins
> and follies as a display of their cosmopolitanism but it was also a
> statement about the pre-eminence of England and English culture. All
> the
> treasures of the world were simply theirs for the taking -- exotic
> spices
> from the Far East, liveried servants from the Indies, wild animals
> from
> Africa, the Elgin Marbles -- and all the cultures of the world were
> viewed
> as inferior, subservient, merely to be appropriated and transplanted
> to the
> English countryside as decorative appurtenances, or colonialised and
> converted, subsumed at will to the greater glory of the Empire.
> 
> The incredible decadence of the era is exemplified in William
> Beckford,
> whose Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire was a huge country house done up in
> ecclesiastical garb. At Beckford's insistence the Gothic monstrosity
> with
> its gigantic 280 foot tower was constructed at insane speed in the
> late
> 1790s, with up to 600 men working day and night by the light of huge
> bonfires. In 1825 when the tower collapsed (apparently the specified
> foundations had not been laid) Beckford was at his London club: when
> told of
> the calamity, he simply regretted that he had not been there to
> witness the
> spectacle.
> 
> http://www.headstrong.demon.co.uk/fonthill.htm
>
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/single_image/0,5716,1610+asmbly_id
> ,00.html
> http://www.hum.gu.se/~litwww/Fonthill.html
> 
> The 'Picturesque' tradition was directly descended from Walpole --
> the
> Gothic Revival in architecture and the Gothic Novel. The era also saw
> the
> advent of literary hoaxers like Thomas Chatterton ('Thomas Rowley')
> and
> James MacPherson (the 'Ossian' poems), the emergence of Romanticism
> and the
> concept of the sublime, and, of course, King Lud and those
> transvestite
> Luddites -- all very Pynchonesque, too.
> 
> I think there is an ironic attitude in the reification of these
> impulses and
> styles in postmodern literature and architecture which wasn't there
> in the
> originals. I'm not sure if this makes it more or less decadent,
> however;
> something which probably needs to be gauged on a case by case basis.
> 
> best
> 
> 
> ----------
> >From: pporteous at worley.co.nz
> >To: "Dave Monroe" <monroe at mpm.edu>, pynchon-l at waste.org
> >Subject: Re: architecture WAS Re: GRGR(29) - The Grid, The Comb
> >Date: Tue, Jul 4, 2000, 1:40 PM
> >
> 


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