Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

The pilgrimage chapel, the Wieskirche, in Bavaria is from a later date, from the 18th century (Figure 11). It belongs to a different architectural culture, but a similar religious culture to that which produced Chartres. Here, though, the religious community was not composed of highly educated monks, with a concern to embody arcane numerical symbolism in the fabric of the building, but a much more popular band. The church was founded following a miracle witnessed by a peasant. He joined together various bits and pieces from broken carved statues, using leather to make the flexible joints, so the finished figure of Christ is rather puppet-like. It is not a fine work of art, but was effective as a focus for pious devotions, and it was enshrined above the altar of a spectacular Baroque church. It does many of the same things as the Gothic churches did, but by different means. From the outside the building looks quite plain and simple. It is hardly decorated, except around the entrance, and the windows look like straightforward openings in the walls. It is evident from the outside that it is not quite an ordinary building, because it is the largest building around, set among fields, with little else in sight. One might expect that inside it would be more or less a large well-appointed barn. Certainly nothing would prepare the pilgrim for the drama within, modelled on the lavish architecture of palaces of the day. There is gold and profuse ornament, swirling clouds, and draperies that seem to have been caught up in an upward rush of air. Everything is designed as a piece, and expresses movement and fluidity, whilst remaining quite solid and still in fact. Much of the effect is achieved by the use of paint, which is stippled to make the real columns look as if they are made of marble, and painted on flat surfaces to continue the architectural effects into illusionist space, so that the limits of the barn-like space become difficult to define. There are columns piled up on top of one another, draped with impressively solid-looking robed figures, supported by impressively solid-looking clouds. The actual shape of the architectural enclosure was made so as to allow this sort of painting to be done. The edges of the ceiling are curved down to join the walls, so there is no definite break between the two that would make a hard line that the eye could fix upon, and could then accurately find the limit of the room. Instead, we are not quite sure whether we are responding to the real volume or the illusion. Even if we try to see the space without its illusions, it is difficult, and to make the effort is certainly to miss the point. Everything here was conceived for the sake of its theatrical effect, so every detail was considered as part of the whole, and there is no room for standard fixtures and fittings. The pulpit seems to float on air in an agitated way, and even the pews are ornately carved so that they seem to go along with the general exaltation of the spectacle. It is a total all-enveloping work of art — the German word for it is Gesamtkunstwerk. There is the same concern for precious things and for dematerialization of the architecture as in the medieval era, but it is pursued here in a different architectural language, with different technical means. Behind and beneath all the ornament there is still an idea of classical order — Roman columns and entablatures are in there somewhere, giving a basic discipline, which then seems to have been stretched, shaken, and draped with festoons. It is a style of architecture that developed at royal courts in the 17th century, and was showy in a way that the lesser nobility could not match because it was so expensive to build. It remained popular among the peasantry, for whom it represented a form of escapist glamour. Again it is worth looking back to the Brighton Pavilion, which once belonged to this tradition of glamorous royal extravagance, and which now reaches a popular audience, that has its breath taken away by the whole thing (Figure 3). The particular style is different, but something about the motivation that produced it is the same, and so are some of the reactions to it.