SERT-LEGER-GIEDION - Nine Points On Monumetality - 1943
SERT-LEGER-GIEDION - Nine Points On Monumetality - 1943
SERT-LEGER-GIEDION - Nine Points On Monumetality - 1943
One of the prophetic themes to be debated in the 1940s was that of the "new
monumentality." The 1937 World Exposition in París had been the occasion of
modernism's official triumph far most of the participating countries. Al the same
time, though, in the confrontation that took place at the foot of the Eiffel Tower
between Albert Speer's pavilion far the Third Reich, avatar of Prussian
classicism, and Boris lofan's Soviet pavilion, an embodiment of the more
dynamic aspirations of social realism, the new architecture received an implicit
challenge to its potency as a form of civic representation.
The accepted view was that "if it is a monument it is not modern, and if it is
modern it cannot be a monument," as Lewis Mumford wrote in 1938 in The
Culture of Cities. Earlier, Henry-Russell Hitchcock's Modern Architecture:
Romanticism and Reintegra/ion (1929) had helped to inculcate this idea. Yet the
dichotomy between "new traditionalists" and "new pioneers" was an
oversimplification. Many of those within the folds of the modern movement had
realized far a long time that the new aesthetic needed to be infused with a
collective and symbolic content. The dispute over Le Corbusier's League of
Nations project had raised the issue in explicit terms in 1927.
On the eve of the Second World War, J. J. P. Oud, responsible far sorne of
the most distinguished examples of international modernism during the previous
decade, returned to hierarchical massing, symmetrical planning, and a cautious
103-{3 reintroduction of decorative elements in his Shell Building in the Hague. But the
scandal provoked by Oud was only the most extreme example of the effort by
architects at this time to find a synthesis between monumental expression and
progressive ideology. In a catalogue introduction far an exhibition held al the
Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1944 entitled Built in U.S. A.-1932-1944,
Elizabeth Mock lauded a prize-winning design of 1939 by Eliel and Eero
Saarinen and Robert F. Swanson far the Smithsonian Gallery of Art on the Mali in
Washington, D.G., as a monument epitomizing "the very nature of our
democracy."
Sigfried Giedion, José Luis Sert, and Fernand Léger entered the
debate in 1943 with a position paper entitled "Nine Points on Monumentality."
The joint pronouncement by an architectural historian, an architect-planner, and
a painter-all living in New York during the war years and in clase contact-was
intended far publication in a volume planned by the American Abstrae! Artists
which never appeared. A more extended discussion by each of the three from
their respective outlooks was to have accompanied it. 01 these, an essay by
Léger appeared in 1946 in another publication by the American Abstrae! Artists,
while Giedion's essay "The Need far a New Monumentality" carne out in 1944 in
a book edited by Paul Zucker entitled New Architecture and City Planning, a
majar section of which was dedicated to the monumentality question.
The approach taken in both the "Nine Points" and "The Need far a New
Monumentality" was to place monumentality-"the expression of man's highest
cultural needs"-within the historical evolution of modernism 1tself While modern
architecture had earlier been obliged to concentrate on the more immediate and
mundane problems of housing and urbanism, the authors argued, its new task in
the postwar period would be the reorganization of community lile through the
planning and design of civic centers, monumental ensembles, and public
spectacles. This "third step" would involve the collaboration of architects,
planners, and artists. The chie! difficulty, in their view, was to invent forms of
large-scale expression free of association with oppressive ideologies of the past
and historicist bombas! ("pseudomonumentality"). To this end, a repertory of
colorful and mobile forms and lightweight, naturalistic materials was proposed.
The work of contemporary artists like Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, Naum Gabo,
Alexander Calder, and Léger himself was seen as "pointing the way" for an
architecture of full rather than empty rhetoric.
For Giedion this was clearly a shift from the machine Zeitgeist that had
inspirad Space, Time and Architecture, written in 1938-39. In an extended
discussion of the League of Nations competition in that book he had
commended Le Corbusier's entry specifically for its programmatic
accommodation and absence of monumental rhetoric. In his articte in the Zucker
book-which began with the motto, "Emotional training is necessary today. For
whom? First of ali for !hose who govern and administer the people"- he stated
of Le Corbusier's building, "the whole development of modern architecture
towards a new monumentality would have been advanced for decades if the
officials could have understood its quality." Giedion's reversa! seems to have
been in large part occasioned by the new impact of Frank Lloyd Wright. In an
article on Wright's Johnson Wax building entitled "The Dangers and Advantages
of Luxury" published al the end of 1939 in the journal Focus, he celebrated its
overscaled columns and powerful central work hall, acknowledging that a
modern administration building could "for once be based entirely on poetry."
The monumentality debate reached a point al intensity in an issue of the
London journal Architectural Review published in September 1948 with invited
contributions from Gregor Paulsson, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, William Holford,
Walter Gropius, Lúcio Costa, Allred Roth, and Giedion, and a late contribution
107-9 lrom Lewis Mumford in April 1949. lt would surface again at CIAM's eighth
135-36 congress in Hoddesdon, England, in 1951, on the core of the city. But here, at a
125-28 moment when social realism was al its height in Eastern Europe, the theme was
exorcised in the West-at leas! for the moment. In summing up the congress's
conclusions, Giedion stated, "There is no excuse far the erection of a
monumental building mass," shifting the responsibility for producing symbolic
forms to "creativa painters and sculptors."
Yet the impulse behind the new monumentality was not to disappear. lt
would be transformed, mutatis mutandis, in the coming decades: in the
47-54, 270-72 mythopoetic structures al Louis Kahn and the new capitols built in India and
308-13 Brazil, reemerging in the 19605 and 1970s in the historicism of the ltalian
392-98, 446-49 Tendenza and the grandiloquent facades al postmodernism. Meanwhile, in
120-24, 184-88 Eastern Europe the !heme would have a mirror image in the continuing struggle
between social realism and functionalism.
The verse from the French song with which the "Nine Points" opens is
mean! to convey the preciousness of great monuments of civic architecture:
"What would you give. my beauty, to see your husband again? 1 will give
Versailles, Paris and Saint Denis, the towers of Naire Dame, and the steeple of
my native countryside .. ." A partial summary al the literatura on monumentality
may be found in Christiane C. and George R. Collins, "Monumentality: A Critica!
Matter in Modern Architecture," Harvard Architecture Review4 (1984).
1. Monuments are human landmarks which men have created as symbols for their
ideals, for their aims, and for their actions. They are intended to outlive the period which
originated them, and constitute a heritage for future generations. As such, they form
a link between the past and the future.
2. Monuments are the expression of man's highest cultural needs. They have to
satisfy the eternal demand of the people for translation of their collective force into
symbols. The most vital monuments are !hose which express the feeling and thinking
of this collective force-the people.
3. Every bygone period which shaped a real cultural lite had the power and the
capacity to create these symbols. Monuments are, therefore, only possible in periods
in which a unifying conscíousness and unifying culture exists. Periods which exist for
the moment have been unable to create lasting monuments.
4. The last hundred years have witnessed the devaluation of monumentality. This
does not mean that there is any lack of formal monuments or architectural examples
pretending to serve this purpose; but the so-called monuments of recen! date have,
with rare exceptions, become empty shells. They in no way represent the spirit or the
collective feeling of modern times.
S. This decline and misuse of monumentality is the principal reason why modern
architects have deliberately disregarded the monument and revolted against it.
Modern architecture, like modern painting and sculpture, had to start the hard
way. lt began by tackling the simpler problems, the more utilitarian buildings like low
rent housing, schools, office buildings, hospitals, and similar structures. Today modern
architects know that buildings cannot be conceived as isolated units, that they have
to be incorporated into the vaster urban schemes. There are no frontiers between
architecture and town planning, just as there are no frontiers between the city and the
region. Co-relation between them is necessary. Monuments should constitute the most
powerful accents in these vast schemes.
6. A new step lies ahead. Postwar changes in the whole economic structure of
nations may bríng wíth them the organizatíon of communíty lífe in the city whích has
been practícally neglected up to date.
7. The people want the buildings that represen! theír social and community lite to give
more !han functíonal fulfillment. They want their aspiration for monumentalíty, joy, pride,
and excitement to be satisfied.
The fulfillment of this demand can be accomplished with the new means of
expression at hand, though it is no easy task. The following conditions are essential for
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it: A monument being the integration of the work of the planner, architect, painter,
sculptor, and landscapist demands clase collaboration between all of them. This
collaboration has failed in the last hundred years. Most modern architects have not
been trained for this kind of integrated work. Monumental tasks have not been
entrusted to them.
As a rule, those who govern and administer a people, brilliant as they may be in
their special fields, represen! the average man of our period in their artistic judgments.
Like this average man, they experience a split between their methods of thinking and
their methods of feeling. The feeling of !hose who govern and administer the countries
is untrained and still imbued with the pseudo-ideals of the nineteenth century. This is
the reason why they are not able to recognize the creative forces of our period, which
alone could build the monuments or public buildings that should be integrated into new
urban centers which can form a true expression for our epoch.
8. Siles for monuments must be planned. This will be possible once replanning is
undertaken on a large scale which will create vas! open spaces in the now decaying
areas of our cities. In these open spaces, monumental architecture will find its
appropriate setting which now does not exist. Monumental buildings will then be able
to stand in space, for, like trees or plants, monumental buildings cannot be crowded
in upon any odd lot in any district. Only when this space is achieved can the new urban
centers come to lite.
9. Modern materials and new techniques are al hand: light metal structures; curved,
laminated wooden arehes; panels of different textures, colors, and sizes; light elements
like ceilings which can be suspended from big trusses covering practically unlimited
spans.
Mobile elements can constantly vary the aspee! of the buildings. These mobile
elements, changing positions and casting different shadows when acted upon by wind
or machinery, can be the source of new architectural effects.
During night hours, color and forms can be projected on vas! surfaces. Such
displays could be projected upan buildings for purposes of publicity or propaganda.
These buildings would have large plane surfaces planned for this purpose, surfaces
which are nonexistent today.
Such big animated surfaces with the use of color and movement in a new spirit
would offer unexplored fields to mural painters and sculptors.
Elements of nature, such as trees, plants, and water, would complete the picture.
We could group all these elements in architectural ensembles: the stones which have
always been used, the new materials which belong to our times, and color in all its
intensity which has long been forgotten.
Man-made landscapes would be correlated with nature's landscapes and all
elements combined in terms of the new and vast facade, sometimes extending for
many miles, which has been revealed to us by the air view. This could be contemplated
not only during a rapid flight but also from a helicopter stopping in mid-air.
Monumental architecture will be something more !han strictly functional. lt will
have regained its lyrical value. In such monumental layouts, architecture and city
planning could attain a new freedom and develop new creative possibilities, such as
those that have begun to be tell in the las! decades in the fields of painting, sculpture,
music, and poetry.
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