CHAPTER THIRTEEN: IMITATION AND NATURAL
FORM
O Nature! -Or What is Nature? Ha! why do I
not name thee God? Art not thou the "Living Garment of God?
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.
Introduction
This
chapter, which broadly covers the first part of the fourth chapter of Garbett's
Treatise, looks at the latter's
response to the imitation debate which had been gaining momentum ever since the
historicist tendencies inaugurated by the architects of the Renaissance. The
number of differentiated and decoded historical styles had increased considerably
during the eighteenth century and become available for imitation. It is because
of this stylistic pluralism and the way in which those styles were being
applied to the structural carcass of buildings, that the distinction between
copyism and imitation became a matter of importance to architectural critics
during the first half of the nineteenth century. What is surprising is the lack
of innovation shown with regard to the conceptual development of imitation.
Many of the ideas Garbett adopts from Reynolds and Quatremère de Quincy have
their direct origin in Greek philosophy and can be seen to have altered really
very little over the centuries. Garbett's originality with regard to the debate
concerning imitation does not reside in the philosophical refinement of the
concept of imitation, but rather in the use he makes of it with regard to the
historical reconstruction of origins.
Nature's justification
It is the highest possible aim of
architecture, as of all the other fine arts, to imitate nature. This has been generally admitted; but
the kind of nature to be imitated, and the mode of imitation seem to be very
variously understood.'
[1]
This
passage highlights the four basic questions which have to be dealt with in this
section: Why is it the highest aim of architecture to imitate nature? It was a
truism to say something like that. And although truisms often reveal a
receptiveness to a bedding of established ideas, it is still necessary to try
to establish what he actually meant by it. What then, was Garbett's concept of
nature? And how did he define imitation? Once those questions have been
adequately dealt with we can concentrate on the last problem: How did Garbett
propose to imitate nature?
In his definition of imitation
Garbett relies heavily on Quatremère de Quincy as well as the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His
response to Francesco Milizia and through him to Laugier and William Chambers,
regarding the paradigm of the "first cause" of architecture as
represented by the primitive hut is, as we shall see, rather hostile and dismissive
but problematic.
Why is it the highest aim of architecture
to imitate nature?
To answer such a
question it is necessary to trespass beyond the scope of architectural doctrine.
Garbett's ideas rest on the residues of Greek and Jewish thought which persisted
in the theological icons developed by Christianity. The attraction of nature was
that it evolved in an orderly and purposeful fashion.
[2]
Science, as has been mentioned earlier, was continuing to develop laws which
expressed that regularity. The application of those laws to human activities
would ensure the beauty of all institutions.
[3]
On top of that, as remarked upon by G. Boas, value has always been associated
with things timeless and immutable.
[4]
The Pythagorean projection of a mechanically perfect and changeless universe
gained immense prestige after the formulation during the seventeenth century of
a number of central scientific laws. Natural theology had again, that is after
its invention during the middle ages, become very popular during the eighteenth
century as a result of seventeenth century science. Natural Theology realigned
theology in relation to science seeking to use the discoveries of science to
prove the existence of a God. Nature, laid bare by science, was confirmed as
the manifestation of the will of God and could on that basis be considered the
embodiment of His perfection. On that theological authority the extension of
His perfections to whatever He produced had automatically to be accepted as
beautiful. Beauty, as defined by a scholastically minded Garbett was synonymous
with perfection. Nature as the embodiment of legible perfections had to
function as a standard, not just for artifice and beauty but for all human action:
Human virtue,
Shaftesbury had written, consists in
following nature, in the sense that it is a reproduction, within the individual
microcosm, of the harmony and proportion so manifest in the greater world.[5]
This
sentence sums up Garbett's program in a nutshell.
Doing as nature does
The Socratic notion that
imitation constitutes the copying of the appearance of things, was an idea
adhered to by Ruskin.
[6]
It was specifically rejected by Garbett. He conceived architecture as an
abstract art. If one were to search nature for a direct model for architecture,
none would be forthcoming. That is a conclusion Laugier had come to exactly 100
years earlier. If, Garbett continued, there were direct models in nature for
the house, then we should be happy to copy them, that is, reproduce the whole
model integrally without any form of abstraction, and use it. The existence of
a natural model for a house would constitute a vindication of copyism. But
there is no natural house and Garbett is frankly dismissive of those who think
they have found one:
Milizia considers the
natural model which this art [architecture] is to imitate (and by correspondence
with which, its merit is to be judged) to be a particular form of timber hut! -
a kind of hut, moreover, which was never yet built, but which the fancy of
Vitruvius composed in imitation of a Doric Temple, in order to serve as a short
and specious way of explaining (without the trouble of investigation into
principles) that of which common sense required some explanation, however
inadequate.(..) But the idea that an art is imitating nature by imitating its
own rudest productions, can hardly be stated without exciting ridicule.
[7]
Garbett
did not reject the reductive logic of Laugier and his followers, he merely
rejected their premises. It was not the idea of a connection between origin and
essence which was unacceptable to Garbett. He was also fond of projecting his
own ideas concerning origins and essences onto a mythical inventor. In his case
it was Dorus, the inventor of the Doric Order. Instead it was the historical
truth of a timber hut as the model for his beloved Doric temple which he simply
could not accept. The Doric temple could not have been translated from wood
into stone. Pugin had ridiculed Greek architecture on that basis and Garbett
accepted that the translation from wood into stone would have implied the
lowering of the status of the Doric order as having been tainted by copyism.
Instead Garbett would prove, positivistically, that the Doric order represented
the apotheosis of reason.
Alexandre Guillamot had written that
the whole of Laugier's system rested on a hollow
foundation that he likes to call nature, because his rustic hut is in no way a
work of nature. Every work by the hand of man is a work of art.[8]
This criticism, confirming the metaphysical divide between nature and (human)
culture, was echoed by Garbett when he dismissed Milizia's adaptation of
Laugier's hut as one of the rudest
productions of art, that is, not
of nature. Even though Garbett accepted the notion that the savage lived according to nature, he did not accept
that everything the savage made was automatically natural, or particularly good
art. Primitive architecture may exhibit a natural politeness, but such
buildings had to be judged on their own terms, that is, with reference to the level of civilisation which the
architect/savage had attained. The perfection of a Greek temple, on the other
hand, needed all the thought and consideration of a super-culture. The
processes of design exemplified by the Greek and the Gothic architects were,
Garbett argued, deduced from nature.
The Doric temple and the Gothic cathedral were the products of a positivistic
logical analysis of nature, an abstraction of nature petrified in stone. The
Greek and Gothic architects, represented by individual geniuses such as Dorus
and Pericles for the Greeks, and William of Wykeham -the English Buonarotti- for the Gothic, represented the vanguard
of a super-civilisation.
For lack of a truly natural model the whole concept of
architectural imitation had to be abstracted:
Architecture, [writes
that enlightened critic M. Quatremère de Quincy] should imitate nature itself in
the broadest sense, and not any particular natural object,-should imitate, not
as a painter does his model, but as a pupil does his master-not copying what
nature presents but doing as nature does.
[9]
Garbett's concept of
imitation as derived from Quatremère de Quincy went all the way back to
Democritus who posited that imitation meant copying the way nature
functions.
[10]
The word Nature traditionally refers
both to a process and to the products of that process. During the middle ages
the first was called Natura naturans.
The idea of nature as a creative force was derived from book II of Aristotle's Physics, where
nature is defined as that which of itself possesses the principle of motion and
repose. The rest was relegated to institution.
[11]
The products of natura naturans are labelled created nature, or natura naturata
which can be further refined to refer to the matter of things and to their form
or essence.
[12]
Institution as defined by Aristotle would seem to coincide largely with this
second medieval category of nature, the codex
dei of St.
Bernard. [13]
Raphael versus Rembrandt, part II
According
to Garbett, Architecture, as man's institution emulating the processes of
nature, had to be the product of deduction and the logical analysis of created
nature. But how should one approach created nature? Should one use the forms of
created nature in all their infinite variety or should one reduce these
variations to their essence; should the emphasis be on the superficial
difference or the underlying resemblance? Should architecture concentrate on
particular natures or generic nature?
The different options personify the
antagonism between copyism and imitation proper as Garbett understood it. The
opposition was again illustrated by the historical antagonism between those who
admired Raphael and those who admired Rembrandt. The opposition of these two
artists had also played a part in the development of the concept of the
picturesque. Garbett quoted Ruskin on their ideological polarity:
"There are (...) two, in
some sort opposite schools, of which the one follows for it's subject the
essential forms of things, and the other the accidental lights and shades upon
them. (...) the one is always recognised as pure, and the other the picturesque
school."
[14]
This
opposition, which Reynolds would have recognised as his own, depicted Rembrandt
as the immortal enemy of Raphael. Any enemy of Raphael, was of course an enemy
of Reynolds, and any enemy of Reynolds was in turn an enemy of Garbett. Here is
Garbett quoting Reynolds:
"...we criticise
Rembrandt and other Dutch painters who introduced into their historical pictures
exact representations of individual objects, with all their
imperfections..."
[15]
This
was a symptom of the value traditionally attached to the changeless and
immutable. The variety exhibited in particular natures, individual people etc.,
was considered to be the result of external factors and for some reason not natural. In a perfect world the
processes of nature would only bother with the creation of genera which would
not subsequently be forced to divide further into individuals. Variety,
although sometimes glorified as a sign of God's infinity, was not helpful to the
struggle towards order and perfection:
Peculiar marks
writes Reynolds and quoted verbatim by Garbett, I hold to be generally, if not always defects...Peculiarities in the
works of art are like those in the human figure; it is by them that we are
cognizable and distinguished from one another; but they are always so many
blemishes, which, however, both in real life and in painting cease to appear
deformities to those who have them continually before their eyes. In the works
of art, even the most enlightened mind, when warmed by beauties of the highest
kind, will by degrees find a repugnance within him to acknowledge any defects.[16]
This
rather dictatorial attitude, rather common in neo-classical circles, was
typical of an idealising tendency inherent to all utopian thinkers. They set
their own, often rather naive conception of perfection, up against the world
they perceived around them and judged the latter hopelessly fallen and
imperfect. The order expressed by mathematics, on the other hand, was deemed
eternal and therefore perfect. On Platonic and Pythagorean authority these men
sought to recreate the ideal in geometric and moral regularities in which the
infinite variety of the creation had to be subdued.
The Democritan concept of imitation
as adhered to by Quatremère de Quincy was further conditioned to Garbett's
purposes by the addition of Aristotle's definition of imitation as adhered to
by Reynolds. Aristotle pointed out that things can be presented both more or
less beautiful than they really are. An idealising art had to project a world
as it could and ought to be. Within such a program, imitation had to limit its
operations to seeking out the desired characteristics of things which were ipso facto believed to be generic, typical and
essential. [17]
Here is Garbett, yet again quoting Reynolds:
HOW CAN THAT BE THE
NATURE OF MAN, IN WHICH NO TWO INDIVIDUALS ARE THE SAME?
[18]
Nature
for Garbett and Reynolds was not matter as it was, but essence as it was hoped
to be:
That which is common to a whole of a given
class or kind of objects, is called their nature.[19]
Imitation
then, as Garbett understood it, was defined as a process, not of assimilation,
but of seeking out the cause of generic form in nature. Generic form could be
defined by its efficiency in relation to the carrying out a particular
function.
Hercules and the principle of
generalisation
The difference between copying natural
objects and imitating nature, lies in the introduction, in the latter case, of
a principle of generalisation.[20]
The
artist had to consider how a natural process, in ideal conditions, would
produce a useful form. This form would exude a character appropriate to its
function. Proper imitation stood for the generalised analysis of form
appropriate to situation and function in nature. This is where Garbett
approached the Platonic theory of Forms. The permanent idea or absolute form,
well removed from the sublunary world, could only be approached through a
process of rational reconstruction or deduction aided by the close observation
of phenomena in nature. But nature, as she presents herself to us, is full of
faults and unique irregularities caused by time and the passive suffering of
violent circumstance. As such nature had to be projected back to her original
perfection.
To achieve a closer approximation to
that ideal, the simple projection of the actual towards its generic idea was
not enough. As far as this was concerned, Garbett admitted Reynolds' theory on
the generalisation of nature to be incomplete. It was not enough to merely
generalise the object under scrutiny, one had to somehow improve upon it at the
same time. The actual has to be exaggerated
into the ideal. To extend extant nature to an ideal, Garbett decided that the
artist would need to exaggerate those generic qualities, to extend them into
perfection. Reynolds, he argued, had not taken account of the methods of the
Ancient Greeks sculptors:
Hercules was not, as [Reynolds] supposed, the
central form of the class represented, or, in other words, the simple
embodiment of what was common to the class of strong men: if so, it would
merely have represented a man of moderate strength. The object...was to
represent superhuman strength; and this required a more refined and extensive generalisation: it
required an investigation and analysis, not only of whatever was common to all
the strong, but also whatever distinguished them as a class from the rest of the
species, or from the class most opposed to them....This was necessary, in order
that the general differences distinguishing the central form of strength from
the central form of humanity might be exaggerated.
[21]
Sir
Charles Bell's studies in physiognomy had tried to explain the apparent
nobility of facial and bodily features in Greek sculpture which were thought to
have transcended the natural:
these unnatural
peculiarities [the deviation of the antique from the natural with regard to the
facial angle] were allowed by every eye to be beautiful, and expressive of a
singular intelligence.
[22]
Had the human species
become so degenerate since the collapse of Greek culture? Were the Greeks closer
to the unfallen state of man? Had their sculptural traditions descended directly
from Adam? The answer to the riddle was given by Sir Charles Bell. The features
of Greek men as sculptured did not necessarily conform to real live examples but
were the result of a careful process of exaggeration of exactly those qualities
in man which distinguishes him from the lower animals.
[23]
If all this was indeed so, where lay the division between exaggerated
imitation and caricature? This was a concern which had been voiced by both
Hogarth and Reynolds. But the duality between the arbitrary and the necessary
offered escape, the same duality which had separated the sublime from the
picturesque and power from delicacy could be used to divide caricature from
exaggeration. Proper imitation confined itself to the generalisation and careful
exaggeration of the central form of the object, selecting all that was necessary
to that form to fulfil its function. Caricature on the other hand focused on the
accidents and circumstances pertaining to the object. The first was seen as a
form of morally healthy idealisation, as exemplified by Raphael and the Greek
sculptors. The second was at best the accurate representation of things as they
are in real life with all their imperfections and at worst the exaggeration of
those imperfections. It was picturesque and as such symbolised by the morally
effete Rembrandt.
[24]
The entasis of force: the Greek column
erupts from nature
One
of the most ingenious and enjoyable arguments in the Treatise is where Garbett tried prove the origin of the Doric
column as the direct outcome of his rational principles. I hope the reader will
forgive me for quoting his arguments in full including the general preamble
working up to the actual example. The purpose is to rehearse some of the points
already discussed and show how various elements such as the deduction from
nature, the exemplification by way of Greek architecture, the process of
imitation are treated as an integrate argument:
If nature had produced complete buildings,
true architecture would consist in a generalised imitation of them, or of a
portion of them, viz., all such as were destined to the same purpose as the
building in hand. Though nature has not done this, she has produced objects,
and parts of objects, agreeing, in certain points of their destination or their
expression, with buildings. Is a building or a member, then required to have a
particular character or expression? There is only one way of giving it, viz.,
by collectively examining all or as many as possible, of those works of nature
which have this particular character,- all which agree in this point (but the
more widely they differ in other points the better),- by analysing them, and
extracting that which they have in common, carefully rejecting everything in
which they differ, these are proved by that very difference to be things
non-essential to the character required; but in whatever point they agree,
these constitute nature's mode of expressing that particular character, and it
is the only mode. When thoroughly eliminated and refined from all things
not essential to it, then, and not till then, it may be pushed further than any work of nature, and thus give the
required expression more strongly, as well as more perfectly (with less
mixture), than nature ever gives it.
[25]
As
soon as the premises and principles were set in place Garbett began with the
historical exemplification itself, projecting his own reasoning into the mind
of Dorus:
We want a column, that is, a long body,
intended for transmitting pressure to or from a flat surface. It evidently
matters not whether the column be pressed against the surface or the surface
against it, nor in what position it be placed. A strut is a column, only placed
horizontally or inclined. The expression we want to give is that of fitness to
receive this pressure.
The
last sentence was central to the argument. Form expresses or symbolises function. On that basis
Garbett could proceed to try and identify the column in nature, dismissing the
traditional models:
Some nations have copied columns from
trees, and some from men, but neither of these are imitating nature; on the
contrary, they are most unnatural, since nature has not made either a tree or a
man to serve the purpose of a column. Are there, then, no columns in nature?
Certainly there are. The limbs of all animals are columns according to the
above definition, the surface against which they press being the ground. The
human arm uplifted to support a weight is a column; and when pushing
horizontally against a wall, it is a horizontal column or strut.
We
have arrived at the natural model, now to apply the process of formal analysis
according to the principle of generalisation as advocated by Reynolds and the
principle of exaggeration as advocated by Bell:
In comparing these various natural
columns, to discover what they have in common, we find, first, that their
transverse section has roundness, therefore we make the artificial
column round. Second, we observe that they vary in length from four to ten
times their greatest diameter, but that in animals remarkable for power and
majesty, they do not exceed six times the said diameter. Therefore, when
this character is aimed at, the columns are confined to a length of between
four and six diameters. third, With regard to their longitudinal outline or
profile, they have a general diminution from their origin to the ankle or
wrist, i.e. to a point near the surface against which they are applied.
Therefore we make the artificial column diminish from its origin to a point near
the surface to be sustained. This diminution is in a contrary direction to that
of the legs of animals or furniture, because they issue from the object
to which they belong, and apply themselves against a surface below; but the
legs of a fixed structure should issue from the substructure, and
apply themselves to the support of that above; otherwise they would appear to
belong to the superstructure, and form with it one mass, distinct from that
below, and made to be moved about like a table. (..) Fourth, Another
circumstance common to all models is, that the diminution above noticed is not
regular or in straight lines, but tends, in the majority of cases, to convexity,
i.e. diminution, at first slow, becomes more rapid towards the wrist or ankle;
and this is accordingly imitated.(..) Fifth, We observe it to be a part of the
nature of limbs that, after passing the smallest part, there is a rapid swelling
to form the extremity (hand or paw), which is what in the column, we call its
capital. This protuberance is, in nature, commonly eccentric with regard to the
axis of the limb, projecting most on the side towards which the animal looks,
and least often (or often not at all) on the opposite side. But this
eccentricity is least in the most powerful animals, and is properly omitted in
the column for two reasons: either as an exaggeration of that which
distinguishes the most powerful models, i.e. those most displaying a quality
intended here to be expressed; or else it is omitted as having an obvious
relation to a property not intended to be expressed, viz., locomotion: for the
foot always projects most on the side towards which it is to move; and as the
capital is not to move, there is no natural example for its projecting on one
side more than another. Sixth, with regard to the outline of the extremity, we
find it to be at first concave for a very short distance, then becoming very
slightly convex, and as it spreads, the convexity slowly increases, till, at the
greatest protuberance from the axis, it rapidly curves round and returns inward
to a small distance. Such are the points common to the outline of every animal
extremity, when applied against a flat surface; and such are those which
constitute that wonderful specimen of generalised imitation, the original Doric
column,-that form on which no subsequent efforts have been able to effect any
improvement in fitness of expression to its particular purpose.
[26]
If
the Doric column is a stroke of genius, this bit of retrospective reasoning by
analogy to nature is certainly not without its qualities; it is compelling to
an extent which even Vitruvius' ideas about trees and men, which are perhaps
based on Greek reconstructions, are not. The explanation is completely
consistent and may, by itself, stand as the justification of Garbett's title to
the Treatise.
The idea was not completely
original, raising questions as to the true extent of German influence on
Garbett's thought. Such an approach to nature and Greek architectural thinking
had been anticipated by Alois Hirt and was more fully worked out by C.G.W.
Bötticher. Garbett usually mentions his sources rather conscientiously for the
time. This in itself raises problems with regard to the provenance of the idea.
Garbett's analogy may possibly have been suggested to him through Alfred
Bartholomew's intriguing drawings of the human body to illustrate the effects
of stress and pressures in a building. Apart from that there are a number of
examples where caryatids, rather than supporting the architrave on their heads,
carry it with their arms, illustrating Garbett's arguments. Another vaguely
possible source of inspiration, unmentioned by Garbett but relevant to both his
ideas on iron construction as well as his interpretation of organic form is
Wiliam Vose Pickett's A New System of
Architecture of 1845 which dwelled on the connection between the form of
animal bones and their consumption of stress.
[27]
Eclecticism: and the commentary on nature:
doing as Raffaelle did
If
generalised nature was proposed as the model for architects to imitate, this
did not mean, as the above example makes perfectly clear, that the products of
civilisation had to be neglected as a consequence. Far from it:
In the study of nature
he must also study the commentaries on her, i.e. all previous productions of his
art. All these are so many annotations on Nature's great and most difficult
book; and he who attempts to read her without their assistance, simply sets up
his own wisdom against all mankind.
[28]
Imitating nature does
certainly not imply the anti-intellectualist ideas of Diogenes and Rousseau.
That was what Laugier and Milizia had, in Garbett's mind at least, tried to
reduce architecture to: the imitation of its own rudest productions. The student
was urged to study history as a control to his study of nature. A thorough
knowledge of history would prevent him from reinventing a wheel which was bound
to be very much worse than the one that had evolved slowly by a collective, or
at least, consecutive effort. Here Garbett was advocating a conservative
attitude to design, a reflective eclecticism.
[29]
Again Raphael was the icon of the perfect artist in this respect, again it was
Reynolds who introduced him into Garbett's theory:
it is from his [Raphael] having taken so
many models [imitating all the styles then known at once, and without their
peculiarities], that he became himself a model for all succeeding painters
-always imitating, and always original. If your ambition, therefore, be to
equal Raffaelle, you must do as Raffaelle did, take many models, and not even him for your guide alone.
[30]
Robert
Adam, referred to as that architect in
the last century was strongly condemned for having allegedly only used
Diocletian's palace for his model.
[31]
Garbett's accusation is not only wrong but also ironic as Adam is now
considered to be the eclectic par
excellence and one who would appear to conform closely to the above
definition of the ideal artist.
4.
Boas
(1973) p. 347. It is interesting that only the divine, and later, with the
arrival of Christianity, the holy, were able to interfere with the immutable.
They were able to reverse the effects of natura naturans by raising the dead
&c. It is fair to argue that the concept of genius was a direct descendant
of this divine power. Genius, which allows the academician to broaden his field
of rules legitimately, is able, and more importantly, allowed to transcend the
orthodox; is able to interfere with established systems. Genius is the secular
heir of the saint and became divine.
6.
Ruskin
on imitation, see "Lamp of Beauty" in Seven Lamps as well as the first volume of Modern Painters.
7.
Treatise, p. 109. On Milizia's
position regarding the primitive hut see Rykwert (1981) pp. 65-69.
9.
Treatise, p. 110 Il faut dire que l'architecture imite la nature, non dans un objet
donne, non dans un modele positif, mais en transportant dans ses oeuvres les
lois que la nature suit dans les siens. Cet art ne copie point un objet
particulier, il ne repete aucun ouvrage, il imite l'Ouvrier et se regle sur
lui. Il imite enfin non comme le peintre fait un modele, mais comme l'eleve qui
saisit la maniere de son maitre, qui fait, non ce qu'il voit, mais comme il
voit faire. Quatremère de Quincy (1832) Vol. II, "Imitation".
Garbett continues: ...it is the
peculiarity, and should be the boast, of architecture, that it consists in this
highest and most difficult kind of imitation alone, and has not like
painting and sculpture, any low, narrow, matter-of fact imitation (more
properly called copying) in which those who are incapable or unprepared for
this only real imitation to take refuge.