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KLASİK İLE ‘YÜCE’ ARASINDA PİRANESİ

PIRANESI BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND SUBLIME

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Abstract (2. Language): 
The eighteenth century saw an increasing number of debates and polemics in aesthetical theory. One of these concerned the difference between the beautiful and the sublime, which influenced especially philosophical approaches to art and design in poetry, music, painting, as well as in architecture (2). Two philosophers contributing to the discussion, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Edmund Burke (1729-1797), held diverse views on the concepts of the beautiful and the sublime: while agreeing that they were essential to appreciating human creativity, the philosophers sustained rather opposite positions concerning their respective origins and whether or not they were inherent to human nature. Moreover, architects and artists utilized the notions of beautiful and sublime in their work both conceptually in their writings and visually in design. In this lively environment flourishing around the two concepts, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) etched in 1765 the fragment of a statement on the sublime by Julien-David Le Roy (1724-1803). The fragment came from Le Roy’s 1758 Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce and Piranesi placed the words on the inscription plate at the center of the façade, directly above the entrance of the building he was depicting. The etching was published in Plate VIII of his dialogue Parere su l’architetture (Figure 1): “Pour ne pas faire de cet art sublime un vil métier où l’on ne feroit que copier sans choix”: ‘In order not to render this sublime art a vile craft where one would only copy without discretion’ (Parere, 139, 152-153 n.139). The wider context of Le Roy’s words in Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce had called for discretion on the architect’s part in situating himself between blind compliance with classical norm and ‘accepting no rules whatsoever’ (“n’addmettre aucunes règles”) in the design of monuments (Le Roy, 1758, 1). Le Roy had further warned that, A fair appreciation of these principles should help us avoid two very dangerous improprieties in architecture: that of accepting no rules whatsoever and taking caprice as the only guide in the composition of PIRANESI BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND SUBLIME (1) Fatma İpek EK and Deniz ŞENGEL Received: 08.06.2006; Final Text: 18.05.2007 Keywords: Giovanni Battista Piranesi; Immanuel Kant; Edmund Burke; Roman architecture, eighteenth-century aesthetical discussions; beautiful; sublime. 1. An early version of this article comprises Chapter 6 of the master thesis “The Archaeological Sublime: History and Architecture in Piranesi’s Drawings,” presented to the İzmir Institute of Technology (Ek, 2006). This article was made possible by a Scientific Research Grant from the Institute, 2005 İYTE 11. 2. For an overview of the emergence of the concepts of the sublime and beautiful, identified as ‘picturesque’, in the British context, see Mallgrave, 2005, 51-55.Monuments; and that of accepting too many [rules]; constraining thereby Architects’ imagination and making of this sublime Art a species of craft in which each only copies, without discretion, that which has been done by some ancient Architects (1758, 1). Le Roy was using the term sublime to describe the architecture of monuments. Piranesi had used Le Roy’s statement as the central inscription of precisely a monument, identifying sublime architecture with architecture of monuments (Figure 2). Piranesi had changed by one word Le Roy’s statement in order to render it more emphatic, substituting “un vil métier” (a vile craft) for Le Roy’s more neutral “un espèce de métier” (a species of craft). Le Roy too, however, had conceived of dogged compliance with classical norm as something lowly -a kind of ‘craft’ rather than Art. Both Piranesi and Le Roy were obviously within the bounds of eighteenthcentury European culture in their view of a hierarchic distinction between art (art) and craft (métier) (3). While the profession of architecture had since Vitruvius been considered to be equally art and craft (De arch. Book I: II-III C), the eighteenth century was increasingly separating the two domains and establishing a hierarchical relationship between them in which art superseded craft. The result was discussion in architectural environments as to the implications of this new division for the discipline. Le Roy, as we saw, was alerting his reader that the artist-architect could commit faults that would degrade the work into craft. Piranesi’s paraphrase of Le Roy with vil métier went further and described craft as ‘vile’ or ‘lowly’, identified mimetic architecture with craft, and made the difference between sublime architecture and classical imitation even more trenchant. By identifying architecture of monuments with a particular, elevated style, however, both Piranesi and Le Roy participated in a hierarchic genre theory that remained Aristotelian and thus, classical.The eighteenth-century debate on the beautiful and sublime concerned architecture in a particular way: it engaged the distinction between ‘beautiful architecture’ and ‘sublime architecture’ with a view on the degree of presence of classical rules as opposed to freedom from these rules and identified their difference as the gap between ‘Art’ and ‘craft’. Refraining from entering into a discussion of the art/craft distinction as this has been excellently conducted elsewhere (4), this article investigates Piranesi’s drawings of sublime architecture against the background of the contemporary philosophical debate on the beautiful and sublime, and situates the eighteenth-century notion of sublime architecture in terms of the culture’s revisionary, but ambiguous, attitude to classicism. The example of Piranesi should prove particularly significant in the said context as this prolific architect of the sublime was at once firmly rooted in classicism as, among others, Plate VIII of the Parere evinced.
Abstract (Original Language): 
On sekizinci yüzyılda, estetik biliminin olduğu kadar mimarlık tarihinin de doğuşu bağlamında ivme kazanan tartışmalar, mimarlık disiplinini doğal olarak etkilemişti. Estetik tartışmaların temeli mimarilerin tarihsel köken tartışmalarına bağlanıyor ve ‘güzel’ ile ‘yüce’ olmak üzere iki etki üzerine odaklanıyordu: ‘Güzel’i temsil ettiği düşünülen Yunan tarzı, ‘yüce’yle özdeşleştirilen Roma ve Mısır tarzlarının karşısına yerleştirilmekteydi. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) gibi mimar ve düşünürlerin görsel ve yazınsal çalışmalarında söz konusu estetik ve tarihsel savlar takip edilebiliyordu. Piranesi, Roma mimarlık ve uygarlığının kökenini ‘güzel’ Yunan’a dayandıran Winckelmann gibi çağdaşlarının aksine, Roma mimarî estetiğinin ‘yüce’ unsurlar barındırdığını, dolayısıyla Mısır medeniyetinden türediğini savunuyordu. Tüm çizimlerinde antik Roma’nın ‘yüce’ mimarisini resmeden Piranesi, böylece estetik tartışmaların ‘yüce’ cephesinde yerini alıyordu. On sekizinci yüzyılın iki önemli filozofu Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) ile Edmund Burke (1729-1797) estetiğin bileşenleri ‘güzel’ ve ‘yüce’ üzerine çalışmalarıyla tartışmaları hızlandırmıştı. Bu iki kavram on sekizinci yüzyıl felsefe ve tasarım kuramlarını aynı ölçüde etkilemekle birlikte, makale temel olarak Kant ile Burke’ün ‘yüce’ tanımları üzerinden Piranesi’nin görsel ve metinsel çalışmalarının karşılaştırmalı okumasını yapmaktadır. Kant ve Burke’ün ‘yüce’ açıklamalarında küçük ayrılıklar görülmekle birlikte ikisi de temelde aynı şeyi söylemişlerdir. Özellikle Kant’ın Güzellik ve Yücelik Duygusu Üzerine Gözlemler (1764) ve Burke’ün Yücelik ve Güzellik Fikirlerimizin Kaynağı Hakkında Felsefî bir Araştırma (1757) başlıklı çalışmalarındaki ifadeler Piranesi’nin çizimlerinde takip edilebilmektedir. Piranesi, Kant’ın ve Burke’ün anlattığı ‘yüce’yi mimarî çizim diliyle aktarmıştı. Piranesi, on sekizinci yüzyıla egemen olan ‘yüce’ etkiyi Venedikli bir mimarın gözüyle yeniden yorumluyordu.
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