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Disenchantment With Modernism: The New English Classicists
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13806 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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12 / 1988 |
2,552 Words |
| Author
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Kenneth Powell
Kenneth Powell is an architecture writer for the London Daily
Telegraph. |
"In the back of every dying civilization," wrote the critic Herbert Read, "sticks a bloody Doric column." The current revival of Classical architecture in Britain is a matter of intense, and even bitter, controversy. For die-hard Modernists, the revival is symptomatic of cultural stagnation and decay. Some allege that late twentieth-century Classicism possesses elitist and even authoritarian undertones. Yet the revival—if such it can be called—is rooted in widespread public disenchantment with the architectural and planning ideals of the Modern movement. The new Classicists are more than mere stylists, tacking on period facades to modern blocks. Among their ranks are some of the most trenchant and effective campaigners for the revival of civilized urban values.
This radical spirit was expressed in the Prince or Wales' now famous Mansion House speech delivered last December. The Prince urged architects and their clients to display "generosity of vision, elegance, dignity." He continued, "We can make choices about the surroundings in which we live and work. Prosperity and beauty need not exclude one another." Thoroughgoing commitment is the mark of the true Classicist, so that the concept of a "movement" is perhaps not so farfetched. Such talented British Postmodernists as Terry Farrell, Jeremy Dixon, and Piers Gough frequently use Classical details (as do American architects like Philip Johnson and Charles Moore), but they do not revere the Classical orders. (In contrast, Quinlan Terry, often seen as the leader of the revival, believes the origin of the orders to be divine, their essential truth to be immutable.) The exhibition Real Architecture, held in London last year and effectively a review of the movement's progress to date, conspicuously excluded such part-time Classicists.
Those Hostile Fifties and Sixties
The stream of Classical architecture never, of course, quite dried up in Britain, even during the hostile years of the 1950s and 1960s. Raymond Erith (1904-1973) practiced quietly from the small market town of Dedham in Essex. His drawings were regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy, and the architectural establishment respected him as a quaint survivor. His designs for urban projects rejected, Erith depended for a living on small-scale domestic commissions. Another survivor is Francis Johnson (b. 1911), who resides in the Yorkshire seaside town of Bridlington and continues to design in the pure Georgian tradition. He is a country house specialist, designing new homes and stripping others of "unseemly" Victorian additions. Roderick Gradidge (b. 1929), on the other hand, was a founder of the
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