Enfilade

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, De Romanorum magnificentia et architectura: Della magnificenza ed architettura de’ Romani (Rome, 1761). ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Rar 1311.

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From the press release for the exhibition:

The Hidden Horizontal: Cornices in Art and Architecture
Die unterschätzte Horizontale: Das Gesims in Kunst und Architektur
Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, 25 August — 14 November 2021

Curated by Linda Schädler and Maarten Delbeke, with Anneke Abhelakh, David Bühler, and Emma Letizia Jones

In architecture, the cornice hides in plain sight. Omnipresent as the elaborate junction between roof and wall, or wall and ceiling, this ornamental element seems to have attracted far less attention from architects, critics, or theoreticians than, for instance, columns or the architectural orders. But in a new exhibition at the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, the cornice makes its long overdue grand entrance, displaying its many incarnations in art and architecture. Over 150 drawings, prints, books, and objects from the 15th century to the present day are united in a new dialogue, some shown for the first time in Switzerland.

Cornices are everywhere. Once you start looking, their ubiquity is almost irritating. Windows, doors, ceilings, mirrors, and wall panelling from across the centuries sport elaborate profiles at their edges. The skyline of any city street is a ragtag procession of cornices in various states of materiality, refinement, and maintenance. It does not stop there. Cars and clothes, furniture, and household objects feature their own cornice-like elements. Strips, bands, and lines of paint act like cornices by framing, delineating, or crowning almost any kind of artefact. Still, they attract far less attention from architects, critics, theoreticians, or even the general public than other building parts. In response, a reappraisal of this underrated element are presented in the current exhibition at Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, where the cornice is placed at centre stage.

Giuseppe Gallli Bibiena, Sketch for Set Decoration ‘Scena per angolo’, 1700–50, pen and ink drawing (Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich).

The cornice, once an essential part of any classical composition, incurred the wrath of modernists at the beginning of the 20th century. It has, at various times, been identified as the most expressive part of architecture, as well as the most problematic. It has drawn attention to itself in drawings, etchings, and other works of art. Hence, a history of the cornice in many ways offers a new window onto the multiple histories of architecture and its representations. For, on account of its ubiquity, the cornice carries several layers of meaning: as an element defined by, and defining building regulations; as the solution to the technical problem of joining wall and roof; and as a site to expression of social aspirations or distinction. As the visual limit of a construction, the cornice is as much about the individual building as it is about the city or the landscape. As an ornament applied to buildings, it involves matters of taste and aesthetics as much as of craft and industrial production. And as a subject depicted in two-dimensional works of art on paper, it allows us to interrogate the art historical conventions of image-viewing and composition. Finally, as a complex three-dimensional object, the cornice raises questions of cultural representation and communication through material transfers over time.

The exhibition unites a unique selection of drawings, prints, books, and objects from the 15th century to the present day. Authors and artists exhibited include Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Gottfried Semper, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier, amongst many others. By bringing works from earlier centuries from the ETH collections into direct dialogue with loans from important institutions in Switzerland and abroad—including the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, the Louvre, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, the Drawing Matter Collections (UK), the Berlin State Museums, the Rietberg Museum Zurich, and more—the exhibition exposes the ‘hidden horizontal’ at the centre of five centuries of art and design thinking.

Featuring works by:
Cherubino Alberti, Daniel Badger, Ottavio Antonio Baiardi, Baccio Bandinelli, Pietro Santi Bartoli, Nicolas Beatrizet, François-Joseph Bélanger, Stefano della Bella, Ferdinando and Giuseppe Galli Bibiena, Jacques-François Blondel, Jan van Bronchorst, Andreas Buschmann, Richard Cahan, Cesare Cesariano, Charles Chipiez, François Collignon, Francesco Colonna, Le Corbusier, Pascal Coste, Marco Dente after Raphael, Deutscher Werkbund, Wendel Dietterlin, Giovanni Dosio, Albrecht Dürer, Louis-Émile Durandelle, Charles Eisen, Theodor Fischer, Domenico Fontana, Johannes Gachnang, George Jackson and Sons, Ludger Gerdes, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Hubertus Goltzius, Karl Adolf Graffenried, Michael Graves, Iain Hales, Herzog & de Meuron, Utagawa Hiroshige, Jacques Hittorff, Daniel Hopfer, Lucas Kilian, Henri Labrouste, Mari Lending, Johann Baptist Marzohl, Johann Matthäus Mauch, Meister GA mit der Fussangel, Nicoletto da Modena, Richard Nickel, Friedrich Ohmann, Ordinary Architecture (Charles Holland and Elly Ward), Andrea Palladio, Manuel Pauli, Georges Perrot, Pablo Picasso, Christiane Pinatel, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Marcantonio Raimondi, Mies van der Rohe, Diego Prévost Sagredo, Antonio Sangallo the Younger, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Gottfried Semper, Sebastiano Serlio, Hermann Spielberg, Philippe Starck, Christian Ludwig Stieglitz, Gabriel Ludwig Stürler, Johann Georg Sulzer, Charles Heathcote Thatham, Philippe Thomassin, Constantin Uhde, Agostino Veneziano, Howard Charles Walker, Frank Lloyd Wright, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Hans Vredeman de Vries, and Nicolai Zabaglia.

The presentation is jointly organised by the ETH collection of prints and drawings, Dr. Linda Schädler, and the chair of the History and Theory of Architecture ETH Zürich, Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke. Additional curatorial support has been provided by Anneke Abhelakh, David Bühler, and Dr. Emma Letizia Jones.

Programming details including guided tours, a lecture series, and walks can be found here.

Publications

Illustration from Vorbilder für Fabrikanten und Handwerker (‘Patterns for Manufacturers and Handicraftsmen‘), edited by Christian Peter Wilhelm Beuth and Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1821).

A special edition of gta papers (the journal of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture ETH Zurich) dedicated to the cornice will be published in Fall 2021 to coincide with the exhibition (retail price: Fr. 25.–). Edited by Maarten Delbeke, Erik Wegerhoff, and Adam Jasper, the issue features an introduction by Maarten Delbeke and texts by Richard Anderson, Guido Beltramini, Emma Letizia Jones, Edoardo Piccoli, Linda Schädler, Oliver Streiff, David Bühler, Flavia Crisciotti, Linda Stagni with Claudio Gianocelli, Xu Han, and Maxime Zaugg.

The September 2021 issue of werk, bauen + wohnen focuses on the cornice as well. It contains an introduction by Maarten Delbeke, the first German translation of Luigi Moretti’s 1952 text “I valori della modenatura: Wert und Wirkung plastischer Profile,” a text by Mario Rinke, and reviews of projects by De Smet Vermeulen Architecten, 31/44 Architects, KilgaPopp Architekten, Joos & Mathys Architekten, Lütjens Padmanabhan Architekten, and Studio Anne Holtrop.

From the press release for the exhibition:

Paris–Athens: The Birth of Modern Greece, 1675–1919
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 30 September 2021 — 7 February 2022

Curated by Marina Lambraki Plaka, Anastasia Lazaridou, Jean-Luc Martinez, and Débora Guillon

2021 is the bicentenary year of two events: the beginning of the Greek War of Independence, traditionally dated to 25 March 1821, and the arrival at the Louvre of the Venus de Milo in the same month of the same year—on 1 March 1821—following its discovery in April 1820. The proximity of these two events is rich in meaning, raising the question of the special place of ancient Greek art in the Louvre’s collections and the singular role of Greece in the construction of the cultural identity of Europe, and of France in particular. However, the fascination with Greek antiquity continues to obscure our knowledge of modern Greece, which the French began to rediscover from the 18th century onwards. The birth of the Greek nation in the 19th century was determined to a large extent by the development of scientific archaeology and by French and German neoclassicism. This exhibition spotlights the cultural, historical, and artistic links between the two nations—links that led to the definition of modern Greece.

The exhibition is organised chronologically and divided into eight key periods.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, ambassadors on their way to the Sublime Porte (the central government of the Ottoman Empire) in Constantinople discovered an Ottoman province, which aroused the interest of artists and intellectuals. In 1821, the Greek War of Independence received military and financial support from certain European countries and generated considerable popular enthusiasm. Following its liberation in 1829, Greece proclaimed Athens as its capital in 1834. Influenced by the German and French presence on its territory, the new Greek state drew inspiration from French and German neoclassicism to build a modern cultural identity. The European contribution to the preservation of the Greek national heritage is illustrated by the founding of archaeological institutes, such as the French School of Athens in 1846, which revolutionized knowledge of the material past of Greece. This exhibition is a first attempt to cross reference the history of archaeology with the development of the Greek state and of modern art. The excavations of Delos, Delphi and the Acropolis led to the rediscovery of a colourful Greece—a far cry from the neoclassical ideal. The great Universal Exhibitions held in Paris in the late 19th century (in 1878, 1889 and 1900) presented a modern Greek art bearing the imprint of the country’s Byzantine and Orthodox identity. Our exhibition ends with works by the Techne group, Greek artists who were close to the European avant-garde and who exhibited in Paris in 1919.

Ottoman Greece and the War of Independence

The territories that make up present-day Greece were part of the so-called Byzantine Empire, under Ottoman rule from 1071 onwards. Athens was captured by the Turks in 1456, but the Christian tradition endured and the Orthodox religion remained a central part of Greek culture. The exhibition opens with the visit to Athens in 1675 by the Marquis de Nointel, Louis XIV’s ambassador to the Sublime Porte. At that time, the French saw Greece as a rather sleepy province of the Ottoman Empire.

Eugène Delacroix, Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1826, oil on canvas, 82 × 58 inches (Museum of Fine Arts of Bordeaux).

On 25 March 1821—now a Greek national holiday—Archbishop Germanos of Patras incited the Greeks to rise against the Ottoman Empire, marking the beginning of the War of Independence. After the liberation of Athens, the Peloponnese, Missolonghi and Thebes, Greece declared its independence on 12 January 1822. The Ottoman Empire launched a fierce war against the province, destroying Souli and massacring the inhabitants of the island of Chios. Eugène Delacroix depicted this dramatic battle in his painting The Massacre at Chios. The battle of Missolonghi was also depicted by Romantic artists, inspired by the heroic pride of the Greeks and the example of Lord Byron who, after committing himself to the Greek cause in his writings, went on to participate in the military action and died in the besieged city of Missolonghi in 1824. Delacroix, who had a close artistic friendship with the English poet, paid him a vibrant tribute with his painting Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, which he presented at an exhibition in support of the Greeks at the Galerie Lebrun in Paris, in 1826. The philhellenic movement in Europe was nourished by this Western perception of Greece and by support for the Greeks’ aspiration to independence and freedom.

The Greek proclamation of independence on 12 January 1822 sparked a violent response from the Ottomans. After the intervention of the great European powers and the Russian declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire, the modern Greek state came into being in 1829. A European dynasty was established in Greece with the ascension to the throne of the Bavarian prince Otto in 1832, and Athens became the new capital in 1834. For the Greeks, the monuments of the ancient city were reminders of their former glory; for the Germans, they were symbols of power. The young Greek state now faced the challenge of becoming a modern nation like its European neighbours. How did the Byzantine and Ottoman past fit into this scheme of things, and how did Germany and France contribute to defining the new Greek identity?

To make a clear break with the five centuries of Ottoman occupation, the Greek state had to reinvent everything and create a new European identity. New codes of language had to be established and a new kind of urbanism (inspired by Munich) needed to be defined. This remodelling appealed to Western photographers, who soon turned their attention to Athens and Greece.

Archaeology

The discipline of archaeology was truly established in the mid-19th century with the emergence of a more scientific approach to excavation. Before then, highly qualified students of history or classics had been sent to excavate in Greece, where they attempted to locate the great ancient sites through research on ancient texts, such as those of Homer and Pausanias.

The creation of archaeological institutes, beginning with the French School of Athens in 1846, spurred the development of archaeology as a truly scientific discipline. The French School of Athens conducted its first excavations in 1870 on Santorini, bringing an unknown history of Greece to light. From then on, archaeologists turned their attention to periods predating what is now known as ‘classical Greece’. At the same time, after the War of Independence, the Greek authorities introduced protective measures for antiques, such as a ban on exports.

When the Archaeological Society of Athens was founded, excavations at the great archaeological sites were shared out among the European institutes present in Greece—mainly those of Germany and France. That is how the site of Olympia came to be excavated by the German School (from 1875 onwards), and how Delphi—and Delos in particular—came to be explored by archaeologists from the French School. Those ancient sites still attest to the strong ties between the two countries, as French archaeologists continue to work there today.

With the advent of new scientific techniques—such as photography (which facilitated documentation), casting, stratigraphic drawings, etc.—the reception and treatment of archaeological discoveries also evolved. During excavations, archaeologists began to record their finds in notebooks which they filled with diagrams and sketches. Photography also made it possible to document excavations in detail, recording both the context of finds and the excavation techniques used. Furthermore, plaster casts of the new discoveries were circulated or used for study purposes. This archaeological adventure will be illustrated in our exhibition by a mosaic from Delos and rare bronzes from the Museum of Delphi, presented for the first time. The exhibition will also feature a reconstruction of the French archaeology display at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900.

Colour in Antiquity and the Construction of Greek Identity

In the 18th century, two British travellers, James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, were surprised to find traces of polychromy on fragments of Greek architecture. This discovery contradicted the accepted theory of the whiteness of Greek sculpture, associated with classical beauty. Despite more and more evidence of polychromy, the myth of whiteness in classical Greek art remained deeply rooted in people’s minds. Little by little, however, the idea that ancient sculpture may have been painted gained ground, and by the late 19th century the polychromy of ancient architecture had become an accepted fact. This is reflected in the reconstructions of polychromy on Greek monuments (notably the Parthenon) proposed by French architect Benoît Loviot, at the request of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

The Gilliéron family, Swiss artists who settled in Greece in 1877, helped raise awareness in Europe of Greek archaeological finds. Émile Gilliéron set up a business creating a new national imagery, which was widely circulated on the occasion of the first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens in 1896. The images of archaeological finds he reproduced on postage stamps, bank notes, diplomas and posters contributed to awareness of the finds themselves, but also to the construction of a modern national identity.

The Rediscovery of the Byzantine Past

In their battle against the Ottoman Empire and their desire to assert their Orthodox and Byzantine identity, the Greeks endeavoured to increase their knowledge of the Christian past by expanding their collection of archives and drawings.

The Byzantine past of Greece was long overshadowed in France by the ancient classical period. Travellers to Greece in the 17th and 18th centuries and the first half of the 19th century took little interest in the Byzantine period, and it was not until the 1840s that interest developed in Byzantine Greece, with travellers such as Adolphe Napoléon Didron and Dominique Papety (who were not always accurate in their dating of monuments, some of which actually post-dated the fall of Byzantium in 1453).

The first Byzantine excavations conducted by French archaeologists, in about 1900, were led by Gabriel Millet, whose interest in Byzantine Greece led him to amass a wealth of documentation on Byzantine monuments, churches, and art objects. The material thus made available for the study of Byzantine art history in France was equivalent to the documentation on ancient Greek archaeology. The Greek architect Lysandros Kaftantzoglou also played a key role in the preservation of Byzantine art. In 1849, just after the destruction of the Byzantine church of the Prophet Elijah at the Staropazaro (the Athens wheat market), he had a mid-15th century fresco detached and sent to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

The Entry into Modernity and the Construction of a European Identity

The Athens School of Fine Arts opened its doors in 1836, shortly after a Bavarian dynasty ascended to the Greek throne and Athens was chosen as capital (in 1834). There was constant exchange between Bavaria and Greece, particularly in the field of art—as reflected in the influence of Munich-style neoclassicism. Due to the political and cultural links between Greece and Germany, Munich continued to be the city of reference for Greek artists—and their favourite place to study—until the late 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, however, the artistic centre of Europe moved from Munich to Paris, and increasing numbers of Greek artists went to study in the French capital.

The Universal Exhibitions of 1878, 1889, and 1900, each in turn, marked an important step in the development of the Greek artistic identity. The Greek artists present at the 1878 Exhibition included the most distinguished representatives of the Munich School. They asserted their presence on the European art scene with painters and sculptors who inspired comparison with their great ancient ancestors. Although the classical tendencies characteristic of the Munich School endured, some Greek artists began to study in other European capitals such as Brussels—and especially Paris. The Greek pavilion at the Universal Exhibition of 1889 was still distinctly classical in style: a triangular pediment, straight lines, and ancient Greek letters surrounding a sculpture by Leonidas Drossis based on the statue of Minerva by Phidias. The Greek presence was far stronger at the Exhibition of 1900. The great names in Greek painting (the upholders of tradition) were still represented, but other artists, such as Iakovos Rizos (aka Jacques Rizo), who had studied in Paris, distinguished themselves by their modernity. Rizo was awarded a silver medal for his painting Athenian Evening—a work strongly influenced by artists of the Parisian Belle Époque, Alexandre Cabanel in particular.

The Greece of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was strongly marked by a number of geopolitical events. At the Berlin Conference of 1878, the European powers defined new borders in the Balkan Peninsula, mainly in order to counter the Greek ‘Great Idea’ of uniting all Greeks within a single nation state, with Constantinople as its capital. This arbitrary division of territory led to the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Greece—weakened by the wars, territorial losses, and the ‘National Schism’ between the Germanophile monarchists who supported King Constantine I and the partisans of the Triple Entente who backed Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos— was late to enter World War I alongside the Allies. The king abdicated in 1916 after a coup d’état led by Venizelos, who took his country into war against Bulgaria.

The Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920 between the victors of World War I, divided up the Ottoman Empire and awarded eastern Thrace and Smyrna to Greece. However, Turkey recovered those territories as a result of the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–22, putting paid to the ‘Great Idea’ and causing the ‘Great Catastrophe’—the displacement of populations in horrendous conditions.

The Greece that emerged from these multiple conflicts was a profoundly changed country, and this transformation was reflected in its artistic output. The Techne Group, which exhibited in Paris, imposed a new vision of the Greek artistic identity: its artists, inspired by the European avant-garde, put paid to the Parisians’ clichéd view of Greece with an art that was European through and through.

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The exhibition is curated by Marina Lambraki Plaka, director of the National Gallery–Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens; Anastasia Lazaridou, Directorate of Archaeological Museums, Exhibitions and Educational Programmes of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Athens; Jean-Luc Martinez, Honorary President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, assisted by Débora Guillon.

Jean-Luc Martinez and Débora Guillon, eds., Paris–Athènes: Naissance de la Grèce moderne, 1675–1919 (Paris: Louvre éditions/ Hazan, 2021), 504 pages, ISBN: 978-2754112123, €39.