I asked Storm: "Why is it that, some three thousand years after its construction, the Parthenon is still the paradigm of Classical beauty? What would it take to reestablish our standards?"
We laud the Parthenon for its purity, its geometric excellence, the systematization of its orders. This is all because of our modern vanities. We believe the Parthenon to have always looked the way we now see it.
How would our perception change if we saw, not a bare and abstract form, not the "culmination of the Doric order," but a temple with Elgin marble intact, statuary and religious rites complete, the hustling crowds of worshiping masses, the colors and the vibrancy?
It would be busy. We would speak more to the tiny diagrams of processing parades that no one can see, the poor engineering of the meandering approach, and wonder if the reason the interior/exterior colonnades are different styles isn't because of a systematic hierarchy, but because the Parthenon was actually a Hellenic-Mannerist piece that fused multiple styles.
Oh, how I'd love if everything we ever thought about classical orders was based on incorrect interpretations of Greek architecture by Vitruvius et al.
<3
Drunk
3 comments:
I <3 this topic. You may be aware. I'm not entirely clear on just how drunk I've been when ranting about it, so.... it could have come across in any number of odd ways.
Haha, yes, he does love this topic. But so do I! We've ranted about it together. Remember my story about Stirling Castle and its recent whitewashing (literal, not metaphorical)? It was so surprising to see a white castle, not a falling-down-out-at-elbows one. But that's how it was!!!
There seem to be two sides to the modern vanity: either, 'This is how this ruin ALWAYS looked,' (a la the Parthenon) - or, as you mention, Stace, the over-corrective restoration, what The Professor calls "The mad idealization of architecture." I think you know my ambiguous opinion to restorations, after I waxed apocalyptic over those same drinks...
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