1968

Roberto Mariotti (G.R.A.U.)

“Nuovo cimitero di Nizza 1982-1986” - Ingresso, 1985

(con Paola Chiatante, Aldo Coacci, Gabriella Colucci, Franco Pierluisi, G.X. Marguerita, M. Schwartz)

China, matita e pastelli colorati su carta da lucido, 46,5x69,5 cm.

Copyright: Roberto Mariotti (G.R.A.U.)

Courtesy: Francesco Moschini e Gabriel Vaduva A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna

... the problem we want to discuss here is architecture as art.

Art is thought: multiplicity as unity, truth, judgement.

A thought that enacts and realises itself through specific organisation of signs and techniques, particular for every art.

That specific organisation of signs is closed; only within the organic relations inside the artistic object  we can witness the realisation of the concept or artistic truth.

The true artistic value in the architectural object is found in the organised relations, thought with specifically signs. This kind relationship is:

– semantically closed;

– objective.

Up to this, the idea of relationships between signs is pretty generic: we must precise it, find its true historical meaning, its particular, determined sense. By doing so, we can't but criticise and analyse the modern-days artistic way of doing, its concepts, and confront them to verify which concept is now old and must be purged, so that the whole process of artistic creation can develop on: we must understand at what point we are still inside those problematics, those issues of the MODERN MOVEMENT AVANT-GARDE, and how much of them we have rejected.

Without fear of appearing brutal, due to the shortness of the space we have, we identify two main figurative fronts...

In the gestural language of the romanticism, symbolism, expressionism, dadaism, informal and so on... the gesture itself is what guarantees the continuity of signs, immediate expression of feelings, flash of inspiration at an imaginative level; it present itself as a synthesis, unity, but a unity made of sensations, image tout-court; its unity (if we can define as such) its the immediacy of presence of matter, not the matter-in-relation, because known by thought, historically valid in the exact moment when it is confronted with the abstraction of "pure reason", the old XIX century academic idea of relations of abstract ideas, by a sudden return to "existence" of matter and bodies; in the moment it continues to present itself, not as a moment of knowing but as a mean of knowing, it becomes an unacceptable error, abstracting matter itself and turning it into an abstract category.

Relationship as a catalogue of analysed elements, it is part of rationalist poetics (neoplatonism, cubism, futurism in a particular mediation with expressionism, suprematism, purism, constructivism, op art, programmed art, kinetic art, etc.). It corresponds with the second phase of knowledge, when matter is analysed and broken down in generic components, as if those elements existed and could be studied by themselves.

Figuration in painting is definitely demolished: lines, pure colors, geometry are born; in architecture the organism as a whole element is disintegrated: free plan, linear structures, simple geometrical volumes, free sculptural elements are generated.

Those generalized elements are sew together again through "composition" that does not change their nature of abstract things, separated and differentiated among them (and in this way unchangeable). Their composition is only at an existential level, non conceptual. Composition is line placed beside geometry and color, a plan flanked with elementary volumes and linear structure, but every element still reside in its own theoretical plan and in its abstract autonomy. The result is that variability can't be of quality but only of quantity, and the balance of this "composition" depends solely on the quantity of singular elements, of different weights. There's no relationship meant as unity, defined since the beginning (a unity that means qualitative transformation of elements that become part of a whole) but it exists only at an empirical level, together with thousands of other possibilities of combination, in fact it becomes an open, dynamic composition, substantially unbalanced (even if sometimes is mindfully balanced), susceptible of transformation... and if it admits a center point, it is always centrifugal, never centripetal...

A whole century has passed since everything had to be unhinged, unbalanced, reduced to mere existence, to matter, to elementary simplification, to an enormous catalogue of technical notions, sensations, images, new techniques, after that the crystallized body of the Academia has been devoured and led to a swarm of forms, those poetics have now reached an historical role, they have completed their role of necessary moments of knowledge. But since they are still trying to be universal meanings of working with arts and are still using poetics and stylistics that are updated with  rules of cultural consumption but outdated from a level of true knowledge, those poetics must be debunked and rejected, since the artistic gesture is not of mere sewing or composition as an afterthought, but a preconceived synthesis, conceptual relationship verified and realized in a unity of matter and sign, molded and organized. Abstraction defined through specific architectural signs;

Relationships cannot be, then, open, unbalanced, dynamic, centrifugal, transformational, subjective. On the contrary it is closed, balanced, static, centripetal, objective.

original text in G.R.A.U. isti mirant stella - Architetture 1964-1980, edited by Kappa / A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, 1981, Roma - Città e progetto 1. Collana di Architettura diretta da Francesco Moschini