The Joumal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 3
Maarten Oelbeke
Introduction
'This is not an easy book', opens Vincent Scully's
introduction to Robert Venturi's Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture (1966).' Nonetheless,
the object, as weil as the aim, of Complexity and
Contradiction seems straightforward enough: a
theory of design providing an alternative to 'orthodox modernism'.2 Venturi is also quite explicit
about his method and his preferences. Still, Scully
Architecture
OOI: 10.1080/13602365.2010.486562
268
Mannerism and meaning in
also represented;
the neo-baroque
architecture
of
Armando
It is determined
attracted'
As an 'architect
to understand
'relying
new sensibilities
that he is interested
in 'talk[ing]
to 'concentrate
lars within
it rather
about
This declaration
it'"
ambitions.
tecture:
that
Venturi
than
are wholly
about architecture,
appealing
specifically
and
ambitions
and rococo
intersect
and ambiguous,
particularity
ings both
It triggers
the
architecture.
Venturi's
architecture
tural
Venturi's
knowledge
Richard Krautheimer,
the
first-hand
defines two
to the fellows
and directed
baroque.'3
Venturi's
to engage
with
who
is examined
and
on
in his own
contradiction.
mannerist,
styles, which
in
that Venturi
of the American
whom
Venturi
correcting,
with
of th is part of architec-
readily
available.
Nikolaus
Giedion's
general,
Rudolf
but selective,
Wittkower's
over-
Art and
baroque
by
or a
of these build-
defined
by
para-
combining,
testing.'12
first
contextualisation
activity
was
Venturi
the American
Academy;
still,
images
from
these
Portoghesi's
image-driven
baroque-Roma
exploration
of his pub
mediaeval,
When Kra
(from the
if anythinq
corpus. Jar
'5
immensely
VII (1985)
interventiol
order to un
tecture and
propagatior
papacy. Kr
about 'atte
things',
to
what Camp
The instn
resonate w
Contradictie
volume thai
at the Am
of
essay to a
barocca-would
appear
as Complexity and
(1955), whi
year
in Venice hE
historian Gi
more to Venturi's
cal architecture
than
to the corpus
baroque al
New Vork
'urban his
These
than
in the
Richard ~
architectur
KrautheimE
towards
work,
kind of critical
history
knowledge
acted as
of Complexity and
edition
undoubtedly
more thorough
tural
of
attention
Krautheimer,
in the second
'4
in historica I
historian
Academy
interest
provided
easier abstractions
of intent
The immanence
expunging,
also shaped
however, external
edition),
the
factors
into his
A5 Complexity
himself.
an omission
and, ultimately,
Contradiction (repairing
approach.
architec-
insight
particu-
own work
historical
him with
on the difficult
employs
architecture
about
and
and self-
thanks
architecture
complexity
Venturiwrites
baroque
clear-cut
inherent
contained:
mannerist,
architecture's
is to say, he wants
cal contexts.
complex
the
proceeds to stress
two
of feeding
buildings
finds
less on
characteristics
of the present.'
of
is seemingly
more amply
is 'easily
and contradiction.
product
This appreciation
rococo architecture
by providing
of Roman
baroque.
Krauthei-
notion of histori-
art was fO
rhetoric, or
expert access
feature of al
By the 19505,
ter of a techl
269
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 3
In other words, if in Argan's view baroque is rhetorical, the real centre of baroque art does not lie in religion or Catholicism, but in its instrumentality. This
instrumentality is not confined to any particular
medium: its finality, Argan argues, resides in mediating the new-and equally complex-social structures of the seventeenth century.
Venturi does not refer to Argan in Complexityand
Contradiction, nor are there indications that he
knew of Argan's essay22 Nonetheless, the idea
that formal complexity in architecture helps to
mediate the complexity of society is key to both
Complexity and Contradiction and-profoundly
modified-Learning from Las Vegas, a point I will
return to below. It should be noted th at Argan's
essayindicates that baroque studies in art and architectural history were less preoccupied with understanding whether, or how, architecture and the
arts operated in subservience to politica I or religious
agendas, than with defining the artistic principles
that were active and important within that
context: according to Argan, these principles were
essentially literary. Still, context mattered, for
Argan ascribed the emergence of an ostentatious
technicality and rhetorica I vigour in expression to
specific historical circumstances. His baroque is a
function of the seventeenth century, and closely
tied to the religious and political context of the
moment.
This is not how Venturi wants to think about
formal complexity. When he writes that 'the
function of ornament is rhetoricai', th is is not-a5
in Argan-because the ornament is an appropriate
technique within a socially determined economy
of communication, but because it exceeds the
270
Mannerism and meaning in
271
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 3
absent from Complexity and Contradiction, geometry and modular systems-mainstays of modernism-are
not. Le Corbusier's definition
of
architecture from Vers une Architecture as the play
272
Mannerism and meaning in
Complexity
and Contradiction
in
Architecture
Maarten
Oelbeke
arches40
As Sypher acknowledges, his notion of mannerism is
indebted to Wittkower's article on Michelangelo's
how mannerism, and the distinction between mannerism and baroque, operates in Venturi's design
theory and defines how and why architecture
signifies.
Literary mannerism
Wylie Sypher introduces the concept of 'double
functioning of members' when he refers to mannerist architecture and especially faades:
In mannerist faades there isa frank display of illogicality in the frequent double functioning of
members, particularly where there appears a
kind of architectural pun, a single member
having a duplex use-a molding, for example,
used as a sill. There is also a "principle of inver-
in four stages:
One might, indeed, say that styles in renaissance
painting,
sculpture, and architecture
run
Sypher's:
273
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 3
of mannerism finds
its way
into
274
Mannerism
and meaning
in
To Sypher, baroque is an art of 'certainties'; contradiction firmly belongs with mannerism. Similarly,
mannerist architecture, but before the bulk of Complexity and Contradiction was written, in 1962 -63,
when a preliminary manuscript was submittedS6
TS. Eliot when he describes the operation of criticism in the opening paragraph of his books7 In
the section on 'Ambiguity' in Complexity and Con-
central
to
Complexity
and
Contradiction
are
275
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of Architecture
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15
Number
1
But perhaps more fundamentally, New Criticism
formulated the idea that the meaning of a work
resides in its specific, particular form, independent
of externalor
contextual meanings62 And as
Sypher observes, rejecting context as a source of
complexity and contradiction in architecture'concludes with the remark that '[. .. 1 literary critics
especially have pointed out the inherently paradoxical quality of the language of art', which becomes
much developed in the final book in the passage
quoted above66 There, a reference to the painter
invokes many levels of meaning' with 'and combinations of forms', attenuating the emphasis on
signification with a reference to design. A5 we
276
Mannerism and meaning in
Oelbeke
277
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number
conventions
do not
pertain
to an 'order',
and image:
modernist
architects'
of their medium',
weil as mannerism
to
'analogy,
the 'chapel
bemoans
where
as in
'[glorying]
but
'propagandistic
architecture'
in the uniqueness
tecture
book,
analysis' of Borromini's
alle Quattro
making
'reference
symbolic
meanings'
Fontane,
to
the
as pure
the historical
form
and
'[appreciatedl
dictions of Mannerist
faade
complex
for
layering
77
contain
building
space' . Modernist
architects
and contradictions:
convention,
are now
complexity
grounded
in
and contra-
in referentiality.
A5 a
overwhelms
is unabashedly
under
Vegas',
the
baroque.
heading
Scott
Brown
persuasively
up a
through
This
is the historical
to
Rome,
the
on a mobile
more
inspired
to draw
late-sixteenth
iconography
even
Las
Rome
the painstaking
century83
to
of the
mid-eighteenth
passage
This analogy
and Izenour
registration
transformations
in the
Rome
to the 'pilgrim's
topographical
becomes
Very early
'From
of the Counter-reformation'.
Venturi,
the
and contra-
symbolism
from
in Sicily',
Nolli-map
complexities
cred-
is chided
its ornaments
although
digm
are different
Martorana
82
The dominance
Giedion,
and rococo,
of the Byzantine
explicit
serves as Venturi
when
and
the
same
Rauch's entry
to
of 1978 organised
of Rome, where
ventions
Mannerism
tial symbolism
which
of modernism,
'represent
tion'-when,
tion
at
naked
steel-frame
all79
Rewriting
a point
funcin
an assur-
neither
'Mies
nor
Venturi
his followers
forms
symbolically
to
convey
architectural
meaning:81
A5 such, modernism,
imagined
inter-
introduced
architects
construc-
twelve
used
other-thanas
be understood
less as from
form
to symbolism,
notion of convention
to a lin-
Las Vegas revisits themes and motifs from Complexity and Contradiction in order to drawasharp
line
between
'architectural'
and 'referential'
meaning,
rephrasing
the original
ambitions
of the older
book87 After all, as I have argued, Complexityand
278
Mannerism
Complexity
and meaning
and Contradiction
in
in
Architecture
Maarten
Oelbeke
Arehiteetural
Venturi's
and
detects
notion
41;
Mass.,
2004),
6. In this,
Belknap
Graham
Museum
Foundation
and Doubleday,
from
notions
M.
Robert
Venturi,
and
mannerism
in the texts
'In
the
Academy's
pp. 42-55,
arrived
however,
that
and
Robert
canonical
publication.
view
almost teleological
taining
to
somewhat
it will
'form'
of
the
pp. 126-145,
with
esp. p. 127.
of Modern
Architecture,
Museum
catalogue
Bowron
many views
about
two
books,
and
1 (New
Foundation,
5. For instance,
of an exhibition
Brasini
Museum
of Art, March
and
see: E. Peters
MerreIl,
2000)
revisited':
readdress th is work
R. Venturi,
Mass,
Learning to 'symbolism'-is
11
Venturi,
pp
in 'Armando
Complexity per-
Art
1977), p. 19.
their
Art Papers on
of Modern
Doubleday,
preoccupation
as recent
and
Vork,
2000J
both
reductive.
Denise Scott
8. R. Venturi,
of
relationship-with
and
affirm
expressed
of
process of
Perspeeta, 28 (1997),
Venturi',
Vegas. As a consequence,
has
the concept
[Philadelphia
himself,
esp.
Venturi,
Garden:
Revision of
Press,
to locate Venturi's
baroque
University
AA Files, 56 (2007),
9. This is an explicit
this essay attempts
Davidovici,
Arehiteeture as
Brown,
Harvard
the Grand
of mannerism
Irina
Stierli,
diction.' I do believe,
2. Ibid., p. 23.
4. In other words,
instance,
Press of
p. 11
3. Ibid, p. 11.
in
whoie' . On Venturi
1966),
(1967),
baroque
D. Scott
my reading
differs
Brown
of Modern
1 (New Vork,
and
Modernism',
see, for
R. Venturi
26,
ture,
difficult
and Artifice',
7. P. Barriere
R. Venturi,
[JSAH],
an echo of Wlfflin's
of 'the
mannerism,
'Abstraction
Historians
pp. 318-19,
(Cambridge,
pp. 59-61
19-20.
279
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 3
Press,
P 14.
15. Venturi, Complexityand Contradiction, 1966, op. cit:
of
Rome',
Daidalos,
66
(1997),
pp 76-83.
1948.
26. P Barriere and S. Lavin, 'Interview with Denise Scatt
Brown and Robert Venturi,' op. cit, p. 136 'Weil,
speaking of influence and Palladio, one of the most
rt
thrilling
all-it
interpretation of Palladio
Historians
27. A. A. payne, 'Rudolf Wittkower and Architectural Principles in the Age of Modernism', Joumal of the Society
of Architectural
pp. 322-342.
28. R. Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of
Humanism, with a new introduction by the author,
3rd ed. (New York and London, Norton, 1971), p. 76.
29. Ibid., p. 76. Here my reading of Wittkower's Architec-
pp 33-46.
280
Mannerism and meaning in
Complexity
and Contradiction
in
Architecture
Maarten
Oelbeke
as an example.
emphasis.)
31 Ibid, pp. 83-84.
44. Ibid, p. 6.
45. Ibid, p. 4.
Style: Transformations in Art and Literature 14001700, by Wylie Sypher, College Art Journal, 15, 3
principle'
33. Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction, 1966, op. cit.,
p.22.
p.26.
37. Ibid, p. 51
pp. 32, 34. See also the remark that the 'Mannerist
p.38.
earlier, unrelated
methodology
transposition
onto literature
of Wlfflin's
is proposed by Fritz
'Michelangelo's
Biblioteca Laurenziana,'
1956),
(Munich,
Lehnen
Verlag,
Venturi's argument.
56. Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction, 1966, op. cit..
'Acknowledgments'
in
and,
of mannerism, as
281
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 15
Number 3
Theory: A
p.18.
a review related to
the
following
publications:
R. Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 2nd ed, 1977, op. cit., R. Venturi, D. Scott
c. W
Press, 1977);
we
Archithese, 7-8
(Julyj August,
1977); Progressive
L'Architecture
D'Aujourd'hui,
147
(June,
1978).
pp 1-9, esp. 2.
65. R.Venturi, 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture: Selections from a Forthcoming Book', Perspecta,
282
Mannerism and meaning in
73.
Oelbeke
points:
'Pop
Art
has demonstrated
that
these
Miche/angi%
soup can in
from Las Vegas, op. cit, p. 72. The work of Allan Col-
pp. 8, 131-132.
It should be
p.45.
81
84. 5ee also Venturi, 'Notes for a Lecture', op. cit, p. 54.
85.
86.
87.
barely figure
was subtitled
1977,
Architectura/ Form.
the conventional element in Comp/exity and Contradiction. Again, it is instructive to compare two similar