BEAUTY MEMORY ENTROPY

HISTORY AND THEORY

 

Beautiful Disorder: The Ruins of Rocaille

Olaf Recktenwald, McGill University

 

ABSTRACT

The interest in blending architecture with nature consumed Augsburg rocaille engravers thoroughly.  Where one ornamental element left off and another began was often difficult to decipher in their works.  Architecture took on certain characteristics of nature, while nature in turn received the appearance of architecture.  A disbelief in architecture’s capacity to provide authentic dwelling contributed to this intermingling, as did the development of the artificial ruin which demonstrated a similar lack of confidence in the power of architecture to permit such dwelling.  As natural elements merged with architectural ones, a belief that nature should be scrutinized categorically would give way to an expression of nature’s infinite richness and wondrous variety.

This paper will investigate the relationship of rocaille to architectural ruins and examine the widespread eighteenth-century fixation upon representing architecture in a state of decay.  From denying architecture the capacity to distinguish itself from the natural world to allowing the built world to fall into a state of ruin, rocaille work places the insufficiency of human construction at the forefront of its concerns.  The overall disbelief in architecture draws from a long tradition, and, especially in the case of rocaille, from Scriptural writings related to Paradise.

In short, this paper wishes to probe the importance of the ruin with respect to representations of architectural rocaille in Bavaria between the 1730s and the 1770s.  How did ornament’s historical relation to architecture change as a result of this pervasive interest in ruins? The seemingly marginal rocaille engravers from Augsburg come to play a significant role in the evolution of architectural ornament.

 

BIO

Olaf Recktenwald, researcher in history and philosophy of architecture, received his Ph.D. from McGill University, his Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, his Master of Architecture from Yale University, and his B.Arch. from Rice University. His primary research concerns the architecture of eighteenth-century Bavarian ornamental engravings.  Since 2011 he has organized the annual McGill History and Theory of Architecture Lecture Series which he founded while serving as president of the Graduate Architecture Students’ Association.  Prior to McGill he taught for three years at the University of Oklahoma and practiced architecture for eight years in Europe and the US.