Carl Banks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Alex Martellix wrote: > > I think a tiny minority of today's > > architecture and sculpture can rightfully be compared with the > > masterpieces of millennia past. > > Not that I disagree with your overall point, but I suspect a tiny > minority of the architecture and sculpture from millenia past can be > rightfully compared with the masterpieces of millenia past.
True. Most forgettable architecture has fortunately crumbled to dust;-). Still -- there's more of that from millennia past than one might think. I was walking back from grocery shopping today (my daughter having borrowed my car, I had to walk to the market and back), and I noticed a new display in a familiar courtyard. Finally, over 90 years after the original discoveries, they've built a display showcase of the two major pre-Etruscan necropolises -- San Vitale and Savena -- which were discovered before WW 1, when urbanization was first done on the neighborhood I was born in, the same place I currently live in. About 3000 years ago, with little beyond dried mud (the Bologna region was never rich in anything but clay, as building materials go -- and at that time they didn't fire-bake clay into bricks, not regularly, anyway), and wood long since rotten, some unknown, unsung architects put together a small town for the dead, right below the sidewalks I thread every day. My breath was taken away by finally seeing some of their work on display in its rightful place, my birthplace and residence, as opposed to the museums (several blocks away) where it's generally gathering dust in. Have you heard of Villanova, often named as the birthplace of Italian civilization? That's about 15 km away, where I generally go for major grocery shopping at a hypermarket when I _do_ have a car. San Vitale and Savena were way older, more primitive, more essential -- no jewels of gold and amber to gawp at, yet... the pre-Etruscans, pre-Villanovians, still hadn't managed yet to get in gear with the system of commerce and European- and Mediterranean-wide exhanges which later made Etruria the beacon of arts and culture. Within the constraints of a still rather poor material culture, the necropolises of Savena and San Vitale nevertheless exhibit the kind of limpid, geometric symmetry, spiritual balance, and minimalistic play of emptiness and fullness, that _defines_ worthwhile architecture to my soul... How many more jewels like this one are still buried under the soil of Italy (to name just one place, albeit a rather fecund one for that kind of thing)? Nobody knows -- basically, every time you're excavating something, be it to lay foundations for a warehouse or whatever, among your risks as a developer is that the first few shovelfuls will reveal *yet one more* previously unsuspected architectural and archeological treasure, so that your development will be blocked and stalled for years, decades, while the duly appointed officials salvage all that's there. Why, even when you're restoring an already well-known architectural masterpiece from the Renaissance, you STILL risk finding a well-preserved marble amphitheater from Roman times that the Renaissance architects used as part of their _foundations_... happened downtown in Bologna just over 10 years ago -- and Bologna was a somewhat marginal provincial town 2000 or so years ago: just imagine what it must be like as you move southwards through Tuscany towards the heart of Roman culture in Lazio...! ((Being Italian, I tend to focus on the way things are here -- but I heard the projects to restore the city walls in Instambul, aka Bizantium, came upon exactly the same kinds of problems over the last 20+ years... Italy certainly has no monopoly on having layers upon layers upon layers of great architecture and civilization!)) > Then again, millenia past didn't have Frank Gehry (i.e., the Perl of > modern architecture). Uhm -- I count the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao among the _successes_ of modern architecture... yes, it IS rich and redundant and wild and self complacent... it _should_ be, much like (say) the Pantheon or Saint Peter's in Rome, or Saint Nicholas in Prague (and other masterpieces of Flaming Baroque, "Il Barocco di fiamma")... not ALL great art is minimalistic and spare and understated! _Some_ of the time, an artist manages to overwhelm you with perfect mastery of overflowing richness... like, say, Bach's Matthauspassion's richness, wrt the spareness his Art of the Fugue... all I'm saying is that material or formal constraints can HELP art, not that they're necessarily _indispensable_ to it... Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
