![]() And the flutes on the columns: what do they signify? Vitruvius thinks they are the pleats in a matron's gown. ![]() Reprinted with permission of Getty Publications. Los Angeles: Getty Publications Program, 2002, pp. Caroline Beamish and David Britt, in Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from Parere su I'Architettura (1765), trans. So it is Greece and Vitruvius? Very well: tell me, then, what do columns represent? Vitruvius says they are the forked uprights of huts others describe them as tree In short, Didascalo's argument is a defense of the various traditions of architecture, including its baroque tradition, against the simplicity of classicism, and it rallies around the architect's freedom to invent and re-use traditional forms - in short, eclecticism. Didascalo then usurps Protopiro's reformative purism and sarcastically eliminates nearly everything else from architectural usage, leading him to conclude that if Protopiro and Laugier had their way, everyone would once again be living in primitive huts. In the first part of the dialogue Protopiro has his way, and in the spirit of Laugier he points out the many abuses of contemporary practice with its over-reliance on ornamentation. His villain here is actually Laugier and his reform-minded rationalism. Piranesi wrote it when he himself was making his way back into architectural practice, and he now shifts from his earlier archaeological argument into an architectural one. It is a dialogue of the greatest importance to architectural theory because it opens up an entirely new line of theoretical development and reflects the crisis of academic theory in the 1760s - a crisis that would continue until the end of the century. ![]() During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Chernikhov devoted much time to teaching at various Soviet schools, where he focused on providing his students with a necessary introduction to “graphic literacy,” devising courses on “Methods of Depiction,” ”Projection Sketching” and “Projection Drawing” while simultaneously striving to compile an “Encyclopedia of Geometric Drawing” and “A Course on Curves.” The fruits of these efforts appeared in two large textbooks published at the end of the decade, Osnovy Sovremennoi Arkhitektury ( Fundamentals of Modern Architecture, 1929-30) and Konstruktsiya Architekturnykh i Mashinnykh Form ( The Construction of Architectural and Machine Forms, 1931).īut his Architectural Fantasies remain unrivaled as an expression of his vision, inspiring generations of architects in the later twentieth century and beyond.Įarlier this year, Beinecke acquired Chernikhov’s first two textbooks (check out the “ Uncataloged Acquisitions” search engine on the Beinecke’s homepage), for which the Fantasies now make a fine companion volume as welll as an exquisite addition to the General Modern Collection’s holdings of Russian Constructivism and European avant-garde architecture.The second part of Piranesi's published response of 1765 takes the form of a Socratic dialogue between the characters Protopiro (who represents the classical "rigorists" seeking to simplify and limit ornamentation) and Didascalo (the mouthpiece for Piranesi). Petersburg, but in 1916 he switched to architecture and eventually graduated as a certified practicing architect in 1925. ![]() After graduating from the Odessa School of Art in 1914, he moved to Petersburg, where he initially continued his studies in painting at the Academy of Arts in St. A latecomer to Constructivism, Chernikhov had himself long been interested in relations between painting and architecture. It was above all the last of these, Architektura Fantazii, that earned him the reputation of being “the Soviet Piranesi.” Featured here, the color plates at the back of this volume capture the interplay of architecture, painting, interior and graphic design that was a hallmark not only of Russian Constructivism, but also of many other modernist movements– De Stijl, Bauhaus, Elementarism, to name a few–that likewise strove to integrate the creative arts in a way that would not only reflect the new utopian societies they imagined, but would actually serve as vehicles for their realization as well.Ĭhernikhov’s bold use of line, color, empty space, and multivalent form seems to blur the distinction between painterly abstraction and architectural drawing, much as Lissitzky’s prouns had done a decade or so earlier, but from the other direction. ![]() 102 pp., 101 leaves of color illustrations.įantasy #67: Linear Resolution of 3-Dimensional Architectural Rendering in Axiometric Perspectiveīetween 19, Iakov Chernikhov published three major works that together compose a vivid documentation of Constructivist architecture in Soviet Russia. Iakov Chernikhov, Architekturnye Fantazii: 101 Kompositsiia v Kraskakh, 101 Architekturnaia Miniatura (Leningrad: Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga, 1933). ![]()
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