Review

Reviewed Work(s): Classical Architecture: An Introduction to Its Vocabulary and Essentials,

with a Select Glossary of Terms by James Stevens Curl
Review by: Carroll William Westfall
Source: APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 35, No. 2/3 (2004), p.
77
Published by: Association for Preservation Technology International (APT)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4126408
Accessed: 10-12-2018 11:48 UTC

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 BOOK REVIEWS

ANAT GEVA, Book Review Editor

particular content. Only a blind ideologi-

James Stevens Curl. Classical Architec- invention of wooden forms in our classical
cal position can reject it because the ex-
ture: An Introduction to its Vocabulary buildings. It also fails to note the wonder-
and Essentials, with a Select Glossary of right-winger Hitler liked it. Stalin
treme ful and still classical responses in the twen-
Terms. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., liked it too and, as Curl points out, it was tieth century in Europe and the United
2003; 231 pp., line drawings, black-and-
"the favored style of many democracies in States to the new materials and programs
the 1920s and 1930s, [so] why can it not,
white photographs; paper. ISBN: 0-393- resulting from the technological revolution.
73119-7. $29.95. therefore, be 'Democratic' rather than Despite these lacunae, Curl's book is a
'Fascist'?" useful alternative to the orthodox architec-
James Stevens Curl's new edition of his The rejection of classicism and its tar- tural histories of classicism. Enhancing its
ring with a Nazi brush is part of modern- utility are its index, clearly drawn plans,
fine book on classical architecture is very
welcome. Following his respectful indebt- ism's ideology, which provides the basis for useful glossary drawn largely from his A
edness to John Summerson's 1963 booklet the currently orthodox history of architec- Dictionary of Architecture (Oxford Univer-
The Classical Language of Architecture, ture. That history values a building not for sity Press, 1999), and extensive illustra-
Curl defines a building as classical when its it
embodiment of architectural qualities,tions, principally from Batty Langley's
conforms "in style or composition (orbut for its style. Each period has its own 1745 pattern book, Charles Normand's
both) to the rules or models of Greek unique
and style, and modernism assumed the1852 parallel of the orders, and the Bats-
Roman antiquity. The Classical ideal is obligation to replace all old things with ford archive photographs (many of them
characterized by clarity, completeness,new ones and sever all connections with showing their age). Anyone who delights in
symmetry, deceptive simplicity, repose,the traditional practices supporting classi- the best that the art of building can provide
and harmonious proportions; it is associ- cism. This attitude consigns a classical will value this book.
building to the past, removing it from ar-
ated with civilized life, perfection, taste,
chitectural practice, treating it as an arti- Carroll William Westfall
restraint, and serenity." A classical build-
de- and entrusting its protection to his- School of Architecture
ing is exemplary. Its aim is to provide fact,
toric preservationists. If it must be added University of Notre Dame
light, the origins of which are in the archi-
tect's treatment of the ancient orders as Notre Dame, Indiana
onto, the Secretary of the Interior's Guide-
these have been used and modified within lines state that "new design should always
the rules governing classical architecture. be clearly differentiated so that the addi-
The book presents a chronological re- tion does not appear to be part of the his-
view of buildings embodying the innova- toric resource." Michael J. Lewis. The Gothic Revival.
tions and elaborations to the canonic or- This position is antithetical to the classi- London: Thames & Hudson, Ltd., 2002;
ders and such typical compositions of cal tradition, which seeks to extend tradi- 208 pp., color and black-and-white illus-
classicism as colonnades, triumphal tional practice and synthesize in a building trations, trade paperback. ISBN: 0-500-
arches, and a wide range of other patterns the triad composed of the tectonic (a build- 20359-8. $14.95
developed over more than two millennia. ing's materials and their use in construc-
Italy receives the greatest attention until tion), the formal (its visual appearance), The Gothic Revival movement in architec-
the work of Inigo Jones shifts the focus to and the urban (the cities and rural land- ture was famously assessed in 1928 by art
Britain. France is slighted, the Iberian scapes it helps form). In this sense Curl's historian Sir Kenneth Clark, who, while
Peninsula receives less attention than the treatment is part of modernist orthodoxy he began "to write a sort of satire," ended
Germanic north, and the Americas hardly since it concentrates on a building's formal up "a convert." Clark provided not only
exist. The shortest chapter runs breath- aspects to the neglect of its tectonic and the first work on the subject since 1872,
lessly from Piranesi, Laugier, and the be- urban aspects. But his is not an ideological but also the first real placement of the
ginning of archaeology through the Greek, position. He simply takes more delight in Gothic Revival in its historical and stylis-
Roman, Renaissance, and Baroque re- the classical than in the Gothic or any of tic context. Michael J. Lewis's book
vivals, with illustrations of only three the recent non-classical styles of the last should be seen in part as a response to
post-1900 British buildings. A brief epi- century. After all, in this text Classical, Clark's work: while it demonstrates that
logue illustrates Edwin Lutyen's 1927 Architecture, and Architect are always scholarship has greatly expanded on the
Thiepval Memorial on the Somme and capitalized. subject since 1928, it necessarily incorpo-
mentions other classicists but does not Unfortunately, this focus excludes an rates aspects of Clark's seminal analysis.
convey a sense of classical architecture's analysis of the interplay between tectonics Readers of Lewis's book will, however,
continued vitality. and form. Although its putative origins are benefit from his assessment of not only
This neglect of one of classicism's most in wooden elements, Curl's classical archi- the English manifestation of the Gothic
prolific and inventive centuries, the twen- tecture is a masonry architecture. This lim- Revival (which was Clark's focus) but an
tieth, illustrates the problematic identity its the book's utility for architects in this examination of how France, the United
forced on it. Curl rightly argues that clas- country, where the interplay between tec- States, Germany, and other Northern Eu-
sical architecture does not embody any tonics and form allowed for the creative ropean cultures responded.
77

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