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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Hawksmoor

21:06 / 02.12.01

So Catherine's article is up on Barbelith - what do people think?

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:16 / 02.12.01

Well, I think the photography is splendid...

Seriously, though, I think it's good stuff. I walked around a stack of the Hawksmoor churches with Kit-Cat and was interested to hear hir views on the buildings, particularly the thoughts that Hawksmoor's work may not have the mystical significance ascribed to it by psychogeography, no matter how appealing the idea is. It's a good start at explaining why his churches have such an effect on the viewer - a good attempt to describe that strange feeling one gets whenever walking past Christ Church...

And to be fair, I know fuck-all about architecture, and could understand the article - something I think is a Good Thing. Well done!

11:13 / 03.12.01

Oooh yes, I found the article interesting. I'd very much like to visit churches in London.

Kit-Kat Club, the following passage in particular set me thinking about the concept of the uncanny, the unheimlich, as it relates to the churches you describe:

"Some have seen Hawksmoor's obsession with monuments and monumentality as morbid, and it's easy to see how the characteristic flattened arches of the interiors and the massive character of the recessed walls contribute to the impression of weight and gloom. The ambiguity of the spaces creates a slight feeling of unease."

Churches, like homes, are frequently figured as places of comfort and security. Yet here the heaviness, gloom, and ambiguities of style (from ancient cultures perhaps perceived as alien and unknown) seem to open them to the possibility of secret intrusions of terror.

12:06 / 03.12.01

Yes, I think there is a great deal of truth in that. It seems to me that it is principally the spatial disorientation that causes the visitor to feel uneasy, or to have unheimlich feelings (is that a reasonable way to put it? Not sure) - a creation of mental fissures.

I think the tension comes from Hawksmoor's obsession with funerary architecture combining with the idea of the church - which is another reason why it may be dangerous for us to assume that the character or meaning of these churches has always been fixed. I doubt very much whether the concept of a church is the same now as it was in the early C18. It might be the case that we (especially those of us who are less religious) see the church as more of a mausoleum than a religious building - a house of the dead rather than the focus of a living and ongoing community. On the other hand, it's likely that the church and the parish were less important in early modern London than elsewhere (high rates of migration and mortality would mean that the population was constantly in a state of flux). But I suspect that the feelings inspired by the churches when they were first built were of a more godly awe.

Thank you for the kind words!

14:33 / 03.12.01

Incidentally - I have a weblog which I never update. Might it be a good idea to use the space for a gazetteer of London churches? I do know something about them, and could find out more without too much trouble...

14:40 / 04.12.01

Or even interesting London buildings in general... architectural resources on the web are a little thin on the ground (well, they are for the English baroque at any rate - but I think many people regard that as Not Proper Architecture).

17:45 / 04.12.01

Yes.

And it's important to point out that churches are supposed to be unheimlich - in the literal sense, un-home-ly.
A space where the sacred reaches down to the mundane, where normal reality gets a bit thinner.

04:31 / 05.12.01

Hmmm. Grant, I'm not sure that unheimlich, which carries connotations of the foreign, the threatening and sinister, is quite the right word for the (sacred) space/type of heightened awareness you describe.

Isn't your religious (more Romantic??) concept closer to what Coleridge is on about when he draws on Longinian aesthetics to contrast Gothic with classical Greek architecture and argues that only the Gothic is sublime:

'On entering a cathedral, I am filled with devotion and awe: I am lost to the actualities that surround me, and my whole being expands into the infinite; earth and air, nature and art, all swell up into eternity.' - ?

Both the uncanny and the sublime are, of course, overlapping and difficult aesthetic categories. And Burke argued for the sublime as a source of terror...

Kit-Kat Club, that'd be great. I've bashed Rothkoid's (virtual) ear a bit about my particular interest in the churches.

07:47 / 05.12.01

hi all - long time listener, first-time caller.

first up catherine's article is fantastic...

And a gazetteer would be a great idea Cavatina - I dare say you've seen Psychogeography.co.uk???

I had an interesting conversation with a rather attractive theology graduate about the construction of churches as "emotion-machines" which fits in with the discussion here of unheimlich

Unfortunately I was drunk and desparately trying to get her phone number, so I can;t remember much of it. However I do remember recommending a great primer on the primative mechanics of big, stone, emotion-machines; written and illustrated by an old professor of mine, Simon Unwin.

Companion website to "Analysing Architecture" by Dr. Simon Unwin

Analysing Architecture by Dr. Simon Unwin [amazon.uk link]

His new book (which I haven't read) sounds good too...

[QUOTE]Synopsis
"An Architecture Notebook" builds on the foundation of Simon Unwin's previous book "Analysing Architecture" (Routledge, 1997). Using numerous examples, illustrated with clear line drawings, this volume describes and illustrates the many powers attached to one of the most basic of architectural elements, the wall. Exploring its primitive origins in relation to the natural walls of cliffs and caves, illustrating the effects and opportunities of its evolution into the artificial and then the naked cave, and examining the ways in which it is used to frame and organize the spaces of our lives, this book presents the wall as one of the most powerful inventions of the mind. Like its predecessor, "An Architecture Notebook" is a stimulus to thinking about what one can do with architecture. It also offers an example to student architects of how they might keep their own architecture notebooks, collecting ideas, sorting strategies, generally expanding their understanding of the potential of architecture in changing the world. /QUOTE]

An Architecture Notebook by Dr. Simon Unwin [amazon.uk link]

16:23 / 05.12.01

quote:Originally posted by Cavatina:
Hmmm. Grant, I'm not sure that unheimlich, which carries connotations of the foreign, the threatening and sinister, is quite the right word for the (sacred) space/type of heightened awareness you describe.

Well, I was thinking simply in terms of "home/not-home". Something extraordinary.

Of course, the sublime would be what a sacred space should aim for - but sometimes that's a bit of a subjective call. Depends on what you think is in the "out there" your building is pointing to.

Was Hawksmoor more of a "God is Love" type or a "Sinners in the hand of an angry God" type?

07:11 / 06.12.01

TBH, I have no real idea. Very little is known about his personal life - and actually I think his religion would have had very little to do with his architecture. Most likely answer is C of E with mild Dissenting tendencies - in other words, erring on the 'Sinners in the hands of an Angry God' side of moderate.

The churches are designed in accordance with the demands of the Anglican Church (and the High Church to boot) - hence the axial planning & so on (which IMO creates a sort of tension with the pagan classical forms he uses, but maybe I've read too much Ruskin for my own good). I think the use of bold classical elements is interesting in this context (and something that only Inigo Jones and Wren had really done to any extent) and also it feels slightly different to the use of Italianate baroque classicism by James Gibbs (St Martin-in-the-Fields, St Clement Danes).

What it seems to me to do is to create a tension between the congregation and the architecture - something which doesn't happen with, say, Wren. The churches are built in an architectural grammar which is at least partly ceremonial rather than oriented towards services, and is certainly monumental rather than domestic in proportion. In this sense it is similar to major Gothic cathedrals - but I think with those it is the scale rather than the grammar that brings on the shivers. Perhaps that's why unheimlich seems more accurate to me than 'sublime'.

Blackbeltjones - thank you very much for those links. I didn't realise that the journal was running - that article on walking in the C18 city is veery interesting.

07:40 / 06.12.01

I didn't know of Psychogeography either, blackbeltjones, and look forward to perusing it. Thanks for that, and the other links.