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The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture
A deeply erudite, clearly written, and wide-ranging deconstruction of the system of column and beam known as the "orders of architecture," tracing the powerful and persistent analogy between columns and/or buildings and the human body. Joseph Rykwert is one of the major architectural historians of this century, whose full humanistic understanding of architecture and its historical significance is unrivaled. The Dancing Column is certain to be his most controversial and challenging work to date. A decade in preparation, it is a deeply erudite, clearly written, and wide-ranging deconstruction of the system of column and beam known as the "orders of architecture," tracing the powerful and persistent analogy between columns and/or buildings and the human body. The body-column metaphor is as old as architectural thought, informing the works of Vitruvius, Alberti, and many later writers; but The Dancing Column is the first comprehensive treatment to do this huge subject full justice. It provides a new critical examination of the way the classical orders, which have dominated Western architecture for nearly three millennia, were first formulated. Rykwert opens with a review of their consequence for the leading architects of the twentieth century, and then traces ideas related to them in accounts of sacred antiquity and in scientific doctrines of humor and character. The body-column metaphor is traced in archaeological material from Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Levant, as well as from Greece, drawing on recent accounts by historians of Greek religion and society as well as the latest discoveries of archaeologists. Perhaps most important, Rykwert reexamines its significance for the formation of any theoretical view of architecture. Chapters cover an astonishing breadth of material, including the notions of a set number and a proportional as well as an ornamental rule of the orders; the theological-philosophical interpretation Christiana of antiquity on which the domination of the orders relied; the astrological and geometrical canon of the human figure; gender and column; the body as a constantly refashioned cultural product; the Greek temple building and the nature of cult; and the endurance of ornamental forms and the function of symbols.
- GenresArchitectureArt
616 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 1996
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March 22, 2021
I only read about 150 pages of this ENORMOUS book, and I'm not sure I will return to it any time soon. The material that I did read was as heady and intoxicating as the "narcotic moisture-loving plant" that the self-loving youth Narcissus is named after on page 118 - and it left me simultaneously excited and bewildered. Disappointingly, it also left me suspicious that I might be able to find something similar but shorter and somehow 'safer,' somewhere else.
There is often something exciting about a book that goes rogue, slipping off-topic and into unchartered woods. In this case, however, there seem to be as many diversions as there was core analysis. For example, is a ten-page review of physiognomy (where he rolls backward and forward in history to confuse things further) relatable to the column-capital vs head analogy? At first I think it probably was for proto-scientific classification reasons. However, by the time I got to Descartes' accounts of eyebrow movements, I'm not sure. Equally, I understand the back-story of Loos' 'ornamentation is a crime' and the relationship with tattoos. Still, as squeamishly fascinating as it was, I'm not sure why we needed an explanation of the natural tools that people used to tattoo themselves, including sharp stones, thorns and fish bones, accompanied as they were with ceremonial groans and screams. [If you do like this sort of thing, can I recommend Kafka's short story about life in the colonies and the tattooing-machine he invents for a truly 'harrowing' tale!]
I'm also concerned with some of Rykwert's internal arguments. For example, here he is talking about Greek sculpture and architecture, and the column-body relationship: Greek sculpture "more than the sculpture of any other culture – concentrated on the isolated human figure, whether clothed and female or naked and male. Since the designers of major buildings were usually famous bronze or stone sculptors, this alone can give the analogy between the represented body and the designed body a certain plausibility." For me however, his example is more of a refutation than supporting evidence. A column is rarely freestanding or isolated like a sculpture, so it isn't that plausible to say that an artist of isolation-expertise would suddenly be an architect comfortable with a collection of 'bodies'.
When I searched the book's small online preview for the word 'metaphor' I noticed two things. The first is that for the whole 400 pages (plus the 200 pages of footnotes and bibliography), Rykwert rarely moves too far from this central theme of "the column is a metaphor for the human body." Secondly, he kept using the word metaphor when his central theme is more of a simile. 'A column is like a person' is a simile, it draws a comparison between two similar things. A metaphor on the other hand, is supposed to draw attention to the similarity between two different things, and then, synergistically, create an imagined 'other' (think of a mermaid; half fish, half-human, all wonderful). I suppose that building-material and flesh-and-blood are different, and it is the upright declarative, 'I am here,' that they have in common. Still, I feel as though by making the comparison between the two so often, so completely, his idea becomes a simile, and as such, there's something flat and mimetic about his proposal – it loses its wonder.
I suppose it shouldn't matter – but – the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I am. Even the title about 'dancing' is a strained metaphor. Although Frank Ghery's 'Fred and Ginger' building comes to mind with its leggy and 'dancing' columns, there are only a couple of other examples that I can squeeze into this description. For example, Venturi's 'caryakids' with their painted overall star-jumps and Harry Seidler's pronged piloti under Grovsner Place in Sydney have something of a Mexican-wave about them. On the whole, however, columns are unequivocally stationary, standing stock still like a row of soldiers. If they are 'human', then they more like Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt, a volcanic freeze-frame from Pompeii, a badly weathered and featureless caryatid, an army of reliable and orderly dependents. Columns rarely dance, and for me it's their reassuringly sober stance that is what makes them so huggable. A good column is like a designated driver, always there, always upright, constantly propping up beams and everyone else. It's what makes a column so dignified and civilised. Moreover, it's this vague and inexplicable extrapolation, this abstraction, rather than anything concrete, that makes them eternally powerful.
All that said, there is a lot of fascinating material in this book. I can relate to his preface statements in which he thought of himself as a young modernist in his youth. He assumed that he had to understand classicism, with its control and cleanliness as a sort of apprentice to modernist design. Like him, I also thought that 'the orders' were orderly, and a defining feature of the ancient structures. It was interesting to realise that not everyone who used classical motifs used them in the same way, or with the same understanding as classical designers, which I suppose I knew for the Postmodernists, but I had assumed the Renaissance neo-classical mannerists would have. However, the way he compares and contrasts the different approaches is so circuitous that I start to forget where we started and what we were initially debating.
A theme that runs through the work is that the classical orders had a "primordial and perennial validity". Rykwert uses examples of the Doric columns appropriation by Loos (Tribune Tower), Asplund (at his woodland cemetery) and Gaudi (Parc Guell) to demonstrate how each could take the old form and fashion it into a more personal statement. For example, be it the notion of absolutism, fragments of civilisation, or dead forms for spaces of the dead. [Unwin's illustrated book on architectural metaphor has a helpful breakdown of Asplund's cemetery. He also only uses a few pages to demonstrate the relationship between a stationary person and a column, with perhaps an Easter Island monolith or maybe a totem pole in between. And he does so without the high word count. It also from memory suggests a relationship between standing stones and a ring of dancing people – perhaps it is the repetition of columns which is the strongest association with dancing; rhythm. (As another aside – I don't think Rykwert has any totem poles or similarly carved beauties such as those in Rudofsky's Architecture without Architects - which seems like a bit of a missed opportunity in my opinion).]
His book reminds me a lot of Robin Evans' Projective Cast, which had the same gravitas and frustration-inducing wordiness. Rykwert's work seems deep and intense – but – not entirely original. I know it's not meant to be; it's more of an investigation of other investigations, but as a result it felt a bit dry to me. His super-smartness becomes more like a giant stack of high-fibre-crackers rather than the sweet-treats I prefer. I know I should like it – it's good for me – but I'm afraid it's just too big and too complex and too wordy for the likes of me.
There is often something exciting about a book that goes rogue, slipping off-topic and into unchartered woods. In this case, however, there seem to be as many diversions as there was core analysis. For example, is a ten-page review of physiognomy (where he rolls backward and forward in history to confuse things further) relatable to the column-capital vs head analogy? At first I think it probably was for proto-scientific classification reasons. However, by the time I got to Descartes' accounts of eyebrow movements, I'm not sure. Equally, I understand the back-story of Loos' 'ornamentation is a crime' and the relationship with tattoos. Still, as squeamishly fascinating as it was, I'm not sure why we needed an explanation of the natural tools that people used to tattoo themselves, including sharp stones, thorns and fish bones, accompanied as they were with ceremonial groans and screams. [If you do like this sort of thing, can I recommend Kafka's short story about life in the colonies and the tattooing-machine he invents for a truly 'harrowing' tale!]
I'm also concerned with some of Rykwert's internal arguments. For example, here he is talking about Greek sculpture and architecture, and the column-body relationship: Greek sculpture "more than the sculpture of any other culture – concentrated on the isolated human figure, whether clothed and female or naked and male. Since the designers of major buildings were usually famous bronze or stone sculptors, this alone can give the analogy between the represented body and the designed body a certain plausibility." For me however, his example is more of a refutation than supporting evidence. A column is rarely freestanding or isolated like a sculpture, so it isn't that plausible to say that an artist of isolation-expertise would suddenly be an architect comfortable with a collection of 'bodies'.
When I searched the book's small online preview for the word 'metaphor' I noticed two things. The first is that for the whole 400 pages (plus the 200 pages of footnotes and bibliography), Rykwert rarely moves too far from this central theme of "the column is a metaphor for the human body." Secondly, he kept using the word metaphor when his central theme is more of a simile. 'A column is like a person' is a simile, it draws a comparison between two similar things. A metaphor on the other hand, is supposed to draw attention to the similarity between two different things, and then, synergistically, create an imagined 'other' (think of a mermaid; half fish, half-human, all wonderful). I suppose that building-material and flesh-and-blood are different, and it is the upright declarative, 'I am here,' that they have in common. Still, I feel as though by making the comparison between the two so often, so completely, his idea becomes a simile, and as such, there's something flat and mimetic about his proposal – it loses its wonder.
I suppose it shouldn't matter – but – the more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I am. Even the title about 'dancing' is a strained metaphor. Although Frank Ghery's 'Fred and Ginger' building comes to mind with its leggy and 'dancing' columns, there are only a couple of other examples that I can squeeze into this description. For example, Venturi's 'caryakids' with their painted overall star-jumps and Harry Seidler's pronged piloti under Grovsner Place in Sydney have something of a Mexican-wave about them. On the whole, however, columns are unequivocally stationary, standing stock still like a row of soldiers. If they are 'human', then they more like Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt, a volcanic freeze-frame from Pompeii, a badly weathered and featureless caryatid, an army of reliable and orderly dependents. Columns rarely dance, and for me it's their reassuringly sober stance that is what makes them so huggable. A good column is like a designated driver, always there, always upright, constantly propping up beams and everyone else. It's what makes a column so dignified and civilised. Moreover, it's this vague and inexplicable extrapolation, this abstraction, rather than anything concrete, that makes them eternally powerful.
All that said, there is a lot of fascinating material in this book. I can relate to his preface statements in which he thought of himself as a young modernist in his youth. He assumed that he had to understand classicism, with its control and cleanliness as a sort of apprentice to modernist design. Like him, I also thought that 'the orders' were orderly, and a defining feature of the ancient structures. It was interesting to realise that not everyone who used classical motifs used them in the same way, or with the same understanding as classical designers, which I suppose I knew for the Postmodernists, but I had assumed the Renaissance neo-classical mannerists would have. However, the way he compares and contrasts the different approaches is so circuitous that I start to forget where we started and what we were initially debating.
A theme that runs through the work is that the classical orders had a "primordial and perennial validity". Rykwert uses examples of the Doric columns appropriation by Loos (Tribune Tower), Asplund (at his woodland cemetery) and Gaudi (Parc Guell) to demonstrate how each could take the old form and fashion it into a more personal statement. For example, be it the notion of absolutism, fragments of civilisation, or dead forms for spaces of the dead. [Unwin's illustrated book on architectural metaphor has a helpful breakdown of Asplund's cemetery. He also only uses a few pages to demonstrate the relationship between a stationary person and a column, with perhaps an Easter Island monolith or maybe a totem pole in between. And he does so without the high word count. It also from memory suggests a relationship between standing stones and a ring of dancing people – perhaps it is the repetition of columns which is the strongest association with dancing; rhythm. (As another aside – I don't think Rykwert has any totem poles or similarly carved beauties such as those in Rudofsky's Architecture without Architects - which seems like a bit of a missed opportunity in my opinion).]
His book reminds me a lot of Robin Evans' Projective Cast, which had the same gravitas and frustration-inducing wordiness. Rykwert's work seems deep and intense – but – not entirely original. I know it's not meant to be; it's more of an investigation of other investigations, but as a result it felt a bit dry to me. His super-smartness becomes more like a giant stack of high-fibre-crackers rather than the sweet-treats I prefer. I know I should like it – it's good for me – but I'm afraid it's just too big and too complex and too wordy for the likes of me.
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