eT RANSPARENCY ~AUTONOMY & RELATIONALITY Detlef Mertins he binary distinction announced by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s well-known essay of 1963, "Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal’, has been deeply absorbed within American architectural culture. Ic continues to be re- iterated and reformulated by teachers, cities and even historians grappling with the shift from orthodox mid-century modernism to post-modern and post- steuctural problematics ~ grappling all the more for now recognizing that contemporary preoccupations have emerged out of, as much as in reaction to, mod- cernism in its vatious guises." Wichour meaning to detract from the brilliance of Rowe and Slutzky’s essay or to diminish the produc- tive role that the iguishing between two ‘species’ of modernism has played in architecture, I would like to suggest that this setting-apart was more complex and unstable than i is usually taken to have been, Elsewhere I have suggested that the literal eransparency of machine aesthetics ~ as much Ametican as German in its conception? ~ is inadequate to the ideal of trans- parency promoced by Sigftied Giedion and Lészlé Moholy-Nagy, for whiclt Rowe and Slutrky mobilized the term. As early as 1978, in a largely overlooked ctitique, Rosemary Haag Bletcer observed that Rewe and Slutzky’s analysis was ‘too erratic to make workable categories’, and their ‘unorthodox’ inter- pretation of cubism and constructivism was sensible nly i formal and not in historical terms? Just as Rowe and Slutzky believed that post-cubist trans- Parency was not as simple as seeing clearly through has, so too did Giedion and Moholy-Nagy. Their concept of transparency was likewise based on a phenomenology of spatial perception, albeit « four- dimensional one in which the boundaries beewees inside and outside, subject and object were dissolved for an observer assumed to be fioving frely in space and time. In contrast, Rowe and Slutrky invoked a two-dimensional phenomenology that fixed the cbserver in a position on axis with the plane of the facade as if viewing 2 painting: And, while Rowe and Slucaky characterized Giedion as championing Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus at Dessau, in fct Giedion too ‘ook the experiments of cubism as the origin of a transparency whose ultimate exemplar in architecture 4. Competition project forthe Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 19 ‘by Rem Koolhaas and OMA. Pho of model: Hans Werlemann. 2, Léselé Moboly- Nagy, Photogte Courtesy George Bastman House.119: Literal ecta $ (1963), Robert Cobers ultancous an Gris's 107 showing ‘ion of ining mand sees of 26, ‘y showing ‘ron of Fleer’ sand wde-Monsie was Le Corbusier's Purim." Dividing the avant-garde into two oppoting caimps and favouting one over the other, Rowe and Slutaky staked their distnes tive claim to the legacy of cubism, the azchitecrne of Le Corbusier and the phenomenology of spare hile dismissing the parallel claims of their opponeng, and reducing the ambition oftheiremterptisero wore thing they characterized as simple and literal’ onsidered today, however, Rowe and GC Slutzky’s claim should be recognized as based. (perhaps unconsciously) on assumptions and ‘opoi of the late nineteenth century whose reiteration atthe end of che twentieth may be of limited strategic value, Reviewing the formal characteristics that under- pinned che categories of literal and phenomenal trans. parency, one cannot help but be struck by their correspondence to those deployed by Heintich Wall Jin in forging a distinction between linear and paint. ecly styles, s0 important for his theory of historical change in art. Wolfflin had inaugurated this influ- ential polarity in Reyaisance and Baroque of 888 and later systematized it in his Principles of Art History of 1935.7 While Wolfflin’s binary had recast Friedrich Nietsche’s portrayal of the conflict between Apol- Jonian and Dionysian impulses’ in more psycholog cal, formal and historical terms, Rowe and Slutzky’s interpretation of the phenomenal eschewed the issue of historical change and with it che strategic potential of tensions between the formed and the formless. ‘Theis preference for the (classical) archivectonics of Femand Léger and Juan Gris displaced the (baroque) movement, disintegration and participation of L4szl6 Moholy-Nagy and Robert Delaunay as a model for modernism (Figs. 3, 4). Instead, they argued fora self contained form whose underlying theory of spatial and aesthetic perception privileged stasis, fatness and the self reflexive autonomy of the aesthetic object? Where Giedion considered modern space t0 be four-dimensional, indivisible from time and the per- ception of subject moving freely in the same space as the object — he called it ‘relational space’ — Rowe and Slutzky conceived of space as emphatically evo- dimensional, For them time, like the viewer, eflec- tively stood still, To be more precise, time was con- sumed ina movement internal to the eye for che eye's oscillation between layered planes was thought © generate a thick spatial. This phenomenal space was considered to be purely optical, in the sense suggested in the late nineteenth century by the aesthetician Conrad Fiedler when he speculated 0 the possibility of extracting ‘pure visibility’ as 4” autonomous element in respect to the object, leaving its tactility behind." “Che planar model of spatial perception on which Rowe and Slutzky’s inter pretation rested sought an objective congruence be tween the physiological optics considered inherent to sight and the self-referentially inscribed form - the building, On this basis, they assumed a new kit of cognition and a new kind of pleasure as the build ing attempted to present itself in ideal visual 7% sa muss Percent wor para of y gro. reve pres plan inst bein othe plas plan orga ver the trav v may and and oss and bail cape agin Krat Row i Gie« ines Spaccedenevertheless with the limitations of material pearances, ‘Although Rowe and Slutzky’s portrait of the gar- en facade of Le Corbusier's Villa Stein-de-Monzie at ‘arches (1926-7) is well known (Fig, 5), would like > rehearse it here in order to trace the resonance of its ary particular cerms with the theory of artistic exception that underlies it. To begin, the authors ask 1e reader to imagine the villa — they use the classical sam ‘facade’ and not the modernist ‘elevation’ — as a laminated version of Fernand Légers painting “bree Faces of 1926. They present the building as an nalogous ‘system of spatial stratification’ and ‘a fcld aodeled in low relief in which the impression of ‘epth is generated by fluctuations in figure-ground alations among flat, highly contrasting shapes tied gether by horizontal bands and common contours. nother words, they ask the reader to suspend con- ‘ntional understanding long enough ~ of to step sack far enough ~ to consider the cubic volume and internal spatial order of the building as operating ex lusively om a two-dimensional surface, As well, they sk the reader to ‘enjoy the sensation that posibly the taming of the windows passes behind the wall sur- 4ace’, to follow the hint provided by the side walls (st rack from the principal plane of the fagade) in order 0 recognize there ‘a narrow slot of space traveling, parallel to it, and to imagine that, ‘bounding this slot af space, and behind it, there lies @ plane of which the round floor, the freestanding walls, and the innet creals of the doors all form a part’. The authors axesent this ‘imaginary (though scarcely less real) slane that lies behind? 2s a ‘conceptual convenience’, nstrumental in achieving the cognitive effect of ‘our deing made conscious of primary concepts which “interpenetrate without optical destruction of each other.” They draw the reader's eye to other parallel slanes, both in front of and behind this slot of space, planes that are incomplete*yet contribute to the organization of the fagade in such a way as to imply ‘a vertical layerlike stratification of the interior space of the building, a succession of laterally exiended spaces traveling one behind the other." ‘While the three-dimensionality of the building may not actually be in question, what concetns Rowe and Slutzky is that, from point deep in the garden and aligned with the central axis of the building, it is possible to entertain an analogy with Parist painting and to construct an imaginary model of the entire ilding in the mind’s eye. It was in relation to this capacity of Purist architecture to stimulate the im- aginative participation of the viewer — configuring a virtual representation of the building which Rosalind Krauss apzly termed a ‘hermeneutic phantom’ ~ that Rowe and Slutzky drew on Gydrgy Képes's Gestale- based theories of visual communication in Language of Vision (1944) t0 set themselves apart from both an Moholy-Nagy. Yet Képes's book abounds in examples of Moholy-Nagy’s work, and Giedion’s introduction to it reads like a synopsis of his own Space, Time, and Architecture (494i) ~ which was after 6, Le Corbusier (Charles ie Seanneret), Still Life with PL Book, 1920. Oil on canvas, & 9.7 em, Museurn of Modern ‘New York. Van Gogh Purch Photograph © 1997 Museum “Madern Art, New York. 7. Le Corbusier, Stil Life fe Pavillon de I Esprit Nouve: Gil on canvas, 8rxz0 om. f Le Corbusie, Pars. 8 View of the ground-floor area of Le Corbusier’ Villa it Paty of 1929-30, as pub Le Corbusier et Petre Jeas ‘Guvre complete de 1925~ pb,