COMPARE AND CONTRAST

 Apples and Oranges, Chalk and Cheese.  Vincent Scully and Bannister Fletcher had very different approaches to History of Architecture, but both made huge contributions. 

I have known Sir Bannister’s door-stopper of a book since I was a teenager and it immediately appealed to the young drawing addict that I was (still am).  Vincent entered my life later, stumbling across a copy of his “The Natural and the Man Made” in a second hand bookshop in Harare, Zimbabwe about 20 years ago.   

 

THE GREEK TEMPLE WAS an image of victory. It embodied the Greek conquest of the Aegean … expressive of human qualities and challenging the divinity who was embodied in the landscape's shapes. The old imitation of the forms of the earth was given up ... out of that confrontation between nature's fact and human desire, the luminous structure of Greek Classic thought took form … Architecture itself was never to be the same again. It developed a new language, strictly structured, supple, and intense

 

 

Does …

the belief in a single jealous male god of uncertain temper represent a “higher” spiritual state than the belief in many gods male and female alike, each an embodiment of some aspect of human life as it can be empirically known and experienced …

Seems like an open question to me. Greek gods don’t promise eternal paradise to humanity, but they do

aid human beings who pursue their ways with spirit. Any modern man who says he does not know them does not know his own mind, because if he has tried to deal with the reality of things as they are, the appropriate Greek gods have been there with him, cloaking him in their power. Aphrodite in love, Apollo in clear reasoning, Dionysos in ecstatic passion, Zeus in justice, Athena in right action and divine effrontery, Ares, the big-kneed in the loutish skills of war.

 

Bannister Fletcher provided images for me to embed in my families to guide the modelling process, but Scully is more valuable in trying to place myself within the emotional bodies of their builders and to search for meaning that may cast a distant light upon our present predicament.

This is written in a weekend where Fidel Trudeau is waging war against the perceived bigotry and intransigence of the sweaty mob of common people who had the temerity to challenge his supreme will.  This is Greek Tragedy of the highest order perhaps. 

 

The majority of Greek Temples follow the Doric Order.  There are a few Ionic examples and some use of the Corinthian.  Romans added the Tuscan which is not to be confused with Doric, in my view, but easily is because there is such a thing as “Roman Doric” which appears to be a hybrid of Greek Doric and Roman Tuscan.  It seems that they were determined to confuse modernity yet further because they also added the Composite order, another hybrid combining Ionic scrolls with Corinthian acanthus leaves below.

We tend to remember the 5 orders by their capitals, but they also have different approaches to the entablatures (decorative treatment of the lintels that span the columns)  Doric is known by its triglyphs, simple rectangular motifs, divided into three vertical strips.  (The metopes are the gaps ... god of the gaps anyone? ... often hosting a kind of 3D strip cartoon: heroic tales in bas relief)

I have incorporated a simplified version of these into my modular, scalable “Pediment” family.  Type in the number of elements you require along front and side.  Typically they double up the rhythm of the columns and are said to be derived from the beam ends of wooden temples that preceded the stone versions. 

 

 

 

From 1620s as “native or inhabitant of Doris.” Dorian was the name the ancient Greeks gave to one of their four great divisions (the others being the Aeolians, Ionians, and Achaeans). In addition to architecture and music, The Dorians had their own calendar and dialect (see Doric) and the Dorian states included Sparta, Argos, Megara, and the island of Rhodes.

On looking up Doric on Etymonline, I discovered (realised?) that the name “Doris” is a reference to the Greek region/culture/style/musical scale.  I grew up thinking of it as an old woman’s name like Gertrude and Mabel. 

 

One of the first movies I saw when I moved to Zimbabwe was the premier of “The Grass is Singing” by Doris Lessing.  Those were the days when we thought Robert Mugabe was the best thing since sliced bread.  She was an interesting character, rebellious, penetrating, fiercely independent of thought.  I neve met her, though I did bump into Michael Raeburn, the young director of that film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Raeburn?wprov=sfla1

Here is a quote from Doris on modern-day Religion.  It seems she anticipated the views of people like John McWorter on “the woke elect”

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness. What they would really like me to say is, 'Ha, sisters, I stand with you side by side in your struggle toward the golden dawn where all those beastly men are no more.' Do they really want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women? In fact, they do. I've come with great regret to this conclusion.

— Doris Lessing, The New York Times, 25 July 1982