Edukacja

Architektura w malarstwie – w poszukiwaniu trzeciego wymiaru

Ewa Łukaszewicz-Jędrzejewska

Streszczenie

Tematem referatu jest metoda nauczania historii architektury, jaką autorka prowadzi ze studentami Akademii Sztuk Pięknych we Wrocławiu, którzy wybrali specjalność rekonstrukcja i restauracja ceramiki i szkła. Studenci – artyści – są specyficzną grupą docelową, która z trudem przyjmuje tradycyjną formę wykładu, często wprost manifestując swój brak zainteresowania zagadnieniami pozaartystycznymi. Założeniem merytorycznym programu było wykorzystanie na zajęciach ze styloznawstwa i dokumentacji konserwatorskiej zainteresowania studentów historią malarstwa do prezentacji wątków ściśle związanych z wiedzą o architekturze i dekoracji architektonicznej. Ideą programu było praktyczne wykorzystanie w procesie dydaktycznym teorii reader-response Rolanda Barthesa i metodologii estetyki recepcji Wolfganga Kempa. Bazą ilustracyjną wykładu, prowadzonego z zachowaniem rytmu chronologicznego, stał się zbiór obrazów pochodzących spoza kanonu historycznoartystycznego, w których przedstawiono wizerunki obiektów architektury w różnych kontekstach. W wykładach-prezentacjach znalazły się dzieła, w których detale i elementy architektoniczne oraz ich relacje przedstawione zostały w sposób niemal wzornikowy. Znalazły się w nich obrazy z obiektami architektury w tle – architektury realnej i utopijnej – które, towarzysząc narracji sceny, stawały się dla studentów „tajemniczymi obiektami w tle”, obiektami pobudzającymi ciekawość i chęć ich poznania. W referacie przedstawiono teoretyczne podstawy metody oraz przykłady realizacji dwóch spotkań – wykładów, połączonych z praktycznymi ćwiczeniami.

Słowa kluczowe:
architektura-w-malarstwie

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A huge while rectangle put on the easel and a huge

white rectangle on the drawing board – two planes cre-

ating a coordinate axis. What’s important for an art his-

torian is the points where y-axis and x-axis cross, cre-

ating a drawing, illustration of synergy of both media

of artistic expression. Vitruvius – lover of eurythmy,

symmetry, illusionistic painting and a module based

on human body as a pattern of good proportions – is the

person who symbolically combines these two areas of ex-

pression.

Vitruvius demands that artists only precisely imitate

reality and especially the illusions of spatial depth and

third dimension. There is one more aspect of the Vitruvian

lecture – a colorful tale of antiquity that actually could

be the basis of the scenario of a virtual game called “the

world of an architect” whose main characters would be

a hero-superman and an environmentalist, an incorrupt-

ible architect. a philosopher and a poet, an expert in paint-

ing and a constructor of “ballistas, scorpions and other

war machines” [7, pp. 16–17].

Ewa Łukaszewicz-Jędrzejewska*

Architecture in painting – in search of third dimension

Two white rectangles

Huge white rectangle put on the easel

In my teaching classes I have students of the Academy

of Art and Design, Faculty of Ceramics and Glass who

chose the specialization in restoration and reconstruction

of ceramics and glass. These are difcult studies which

require adequate knowledge of all strictly artistic sub-

jects obligatory for all students of the Academy such as

drawing, painting and sculpture as well as perfect ceramic

craftsmanship. This area of knowledge requires not only

knowledge of application of the techniques and technol-

ogy of ceramics and glass but also specialist knowledge

in the scope of chemistry, physics, and technical draw-

ing required in the designing process. The selected spe-

cialization – restoration and reconstruction of ceram-

ics and glass – requires knowledge of history of archi-

tecture, with special attention to the history of details

and architectural decorations, ability to recognize, date,

analyze, document, restore and stylize them. It requires

from the students almost “Vitruvian” inquisitiveness and

work discipline, which is often difcult to nd among

the temperamental students of the Academy of Art and

Design.

The course of studies teaches humbleness towards

material and technology. The simple basic ceramic forms

made on the wheel or built from rolls of clay gradually

introduce the students to the world of spatial geometry –

the third dimension. During classes on style recognition

the students begin their journey to the past and they learn

about the canon of divisions of entablature, composition

of friezes, discipline of architectural compositions em-

ployed in the Middle Ages and modern times as well as to

solve puzzles of eclectic decorations.

During the classes in conservation documentation,

which the students take at the same time, they deal with

the basic technical problems connected with the drawn

copies of details as well as terminological, stylistic and

typological problems. The students stand in front of ar-

tifacts without any basic description tools which would

enable them to understand their contexts and relations

with the history of architecture. The sensitive students

who developed a sense of form and acquired manual

skills as well as knowledge of compositions of architec-

Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław.

284 Ewa Łukaszewicz-Jędrzejewska

tural details begin with micro-scale structures, studying

historicizing and eclectic furnaces where they see archi-

tectural details in most fantastic relations. However, due

to the fact that the students lack any specic knowledge

of art history – that subject is not included in the curricula

of public secondary schools – the knowledge they learn

in classes is often not connected with specic cultural

context.

Describing architecture

Since the 1950s cultural studies have been an interdis-

ciplinary eld of research dealing with relations between

artifacts, objects or phenomena within the scope of mate-

rial culture in its broad sense and its recipients. For an

art historian operating in that domain what is especially

interesting is the area of visual culture studies. It is a task

of a researcher dealing with the history of architecture to

look at an object in the whole context of aesthetic phe-

nomena accompanying that object and place it in the post-

modern discourse which is sometimes far from a positiv-

istic description [1, pp. 133–135]

The specic features of my classes with the students

require also research of the ability of an object of archi-

tecture to communicate with contemporary recipients

who mentally operate in two spheres – material world and

virtual world. In that relation an object of architecture be-

comes one more visual message searching for a way to

the consumer of the mass media culture. The reception of

such a message depends not only on the cultural founda-

tion of the recipients but also on the degree of their cur-

Positivism is a term describing a research method which relies exclu-

sively on facts, excluding their interpretation. In art history it is a method

of detailed description of a formal work of art, taking into account the

history of its creation, symbols, motifs and biography of the artist.

rent activity in culture. The students of the Academy of

Art and Design constitute a specic target group, meet-

ing at the same time the specic criteria of the author

(sender) of the visual message as well as exceptionally

critical and detached recipients. The educational content

dedicated to that group should then demonstrate features

that would distinguish it from the information noise and

the visual pulp of the mass media. In such a context the

way in which the visual information is read and absorbed

or rejected will depend on decisively subjective factors. In

extreme cases it will be an outright rejection of the didac-

tic proposal, manifested often by such claims as: We won’t

ever need it or We’ve already seen it.

Such attitudes – seen only too often – on the part of

the recipients practically discredit the traditional method

of a positivistic lecture on the history of architecture. In

the light of the multitude of biographical, historical and

topographical information in the area of art history which

is readily available to the Internet users, it does not seem

necessary to further create or copy the encyclopedic texts.

In contemporary didactics it is more important to ask

questions which would enable studies of contextual art

history and opening historical and artistic canon for works

which are present in the visual sphere is only tenuously or

which are absent in that sphere altogether.

Fig. 1. Hubert Robert,

View of the Grand Gallery

of the Louvre, 1796

Architecture in painting – in search of third dimension 285

Condition 1

Determining the degree of satisfaction

I will go back to Roland Barthes’ statement: the pleas-

ure of the text lies not in pinning down meaning, but in

enjoying the free play of words – the gliding of signs – as

the reader catches provocative glimpses of meanings that

surface only to submerge again. I make an interpretation

of text in such a way as to introduce categories referring

to the process of viewing understood as one more visual

experience: the pleasure of the view is not the pleasure of

the text lies not in pinning down meaning, but in enjoying

the free play of visual associations – the gliding of details

– as the viewer catches provocative glimpses of details of

the described images that surface only to submerge again.

In practice this means that the selected image should have

the qualities stimulating the viewer to perceive it actively,

to analyze its cultural context, to discover its message; it

should demonstrate the features evidently distinguishing

it from the series of postcard-like “objects of architecture”

– slides used for decades in lectures on the history of ar-

chitecture. Only in this way can the rst condition be met

– “the pleasure of the view”.

Reading architecture

The theory of reader-response assumes that the sig-

nicance of text “occurs” as a result of reading and it does

not exist as an earlier imposed element of text [2]. Art

historians have adapted that theory to research visual art

where each cultural phenomenon which is subject of in-

terpretation is the “text”. Wolfgang Kemp, who created

the methodology of the aesthetic of reception, was critical

of the traditional techniques of transfer presenting works

of art as lonely beings with no contextual connections

and described them as ubiquitous, homeless, relocated [4,

pp. 180-196]. Introducing the term of “implied reader”,

Kemp also assumes the existence of a specic viewer with

specic visual experiences and he considers reading ar-

chitecture to be another visual experience. It corresponds

to the opinion of Roland Barthes who, while discussing

the practical applications of the reader-response theory,

states that the pleasure of the text lies not in pinning down

meaning, but in enjoying the free play of words – the glid-

ing of signs – as the reader catches provocative glimpses

of meanings that surface only to submerge again

. While

preparing the presentation material for classes in style rec-

ognition I used the reader-response theory. An image of

architecture in painting was the “text” and the student of

the Academy of Art and Design was the “implied reader”.

While selecting iconography I also tried to go beyond the

“historical and artistic canon”

Quote after D’Alleva A., Metody i teoria historii sztuki, Kraków

2008, p. 135.

This is what I call the artworks which are universally recognizable,

copied in various forms and at present in the social visual sphere as well

as in the media.

Fig. 2. Paul Delvaux,

Temple, 1949

Lecture structure

286 Ewa Łukaszewicz-Jędrzejewska

A good example of meeting that condition is the re-

action of the viewers when they are in contact with the

painting by Hubert Robert View of the Grand Gallery of

the Louvre (Fig. 1).

The basis of the discourse is the situation of “a painting

within a painting” with some narrative motifs – a study of

copies made by people in an interior. During the projec-

tion three levels of perception connected with the reader-

response process were observed. The rst one – compar-

ing the composition of the painting to framing a movie

shot, long perspective and closing up in a long shot. The

viewers felt “ushered into” an architectural interior of the

painting, the perspective of the gallery. The term virtual

gallery was used. It was the key moment before going into

the second level of perception, consisting in discovering

the disposition of the interior and the architectural decora-

tions of the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. In the conver-

sations about the painting, they recalled their trip to the

Louvre and the crowds of visitors everywhere blocking

the view. The objective of their trip was the paintings not

the architecture. The painting by Robert became a pretext

to discover the components of the architectural interior, to

search for details and elements of architectural decoration.

The next step was the attempts at reading the “paintings

within a painting” and recognizing the ancient buildings

presented in them. The classes were open, the attempts at

identifying the motifs were corrected by the teacher, and

the correctly identied and named details were incorpo-

rated into the dictionary. The third level of perception was

connected with the attempts at making a drawing copy

of the identied details and nding templates [5, 6, 7, 8].

The drawing exercises were connected with the subject

of style recognition and with specic requirements of the

conservation documentation – making a drawing copy on

the basis of iconographic presentation.

Condition 2

Competences of the “implied reader”

The second stage of learning the canon of ancient

architecture with the use of the reader-response method

was the analysis of the painting by Paul Delvaux, Temple

(Fig. 2).

That painting was selected because of the fascination

with the world of surrealists which is popular among my

students – so the competences of the readers – univer-

sally limited to one author – Salvador Dali. In this case

the “pleasure of the view” was connected with the ele-

ment of surprise and the anxiety to learn about the works

of a different artist. Additionally, the third condition was

met, namely opening of the historical and artistic canon

by introduction to the illustration material an artwork by

Paul Delvaux – a painter who is poorly represented in the