A Rational, National Architecture: Viollet-le-Duc's Modest Proposal for Russia

Abstract

Viollet-le-Duc earned a privileged place in the annals of modern architecture by elaborating a general theory that could respond flexibly to a variety of local traditions, cultural practices, and material resources. In 1877 he undertook to test this theory by applying it to an unfamiliar case-the architecture of Russia. The first study of its type to appear in the West, L'Art russe chronicled Russia's architectural past and predicted its future. The book touched a nationalist nerve in the Russian audience and engendered a heated debate in Russia about the nation's ethnic identity and architectural destiny. Analysis of the text and its critical reception will demonstrate the political timeliness of Viollet-le-Duc's argument for the eminent rationality of allowing national traditions, tastes, and resources to inspire the architect's design choices.

Viollet-le-Duc and the body: the metaphorical integrations of race and style in structural rationalism

“…3 We must remember that the Dictionnaire project was partially inspired by a desire to draw an ethnographic relationship between medieval art forms and the political and ethnic origins of the contemporary French nation-state. In this sense, a synthetic relationship between race and historical style was already implicit in Viollet-le-Duc's architecture theory since at least the early 1860s.…”

“…As this prototypical race type settled and adapted to different local geographies he claimed it gradually developed into the five race types he catalogued in his treatise. 17 that only the first few physiognomic illustrations were used to identify pure race types [2,3]. Afterwards, each illustration registered a mixture of races that propelled historical progress.…”

Part II. THE IMPERIAL MYTH IN ARTISTIC TEXTS

“…A law of 1854, confi rmed in 1862 by Alexander II, gave the Directorate an absolute monopoly of administrative control over theatrical performances. 11 During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, theater became the cultural medium par excellence of the Russian autocracy and serf-holding nobility, what Richard Stites has described as an "empire of performance." Th e ethos of performance originating in the Baroque court assumed the character of an imperative.…”

“…imperial court during his formative years. 11 A ward of the President of the Academy of Sciences, Princess Dashkova, and a pupil in the Page Corps, Olenin numbered among the elite, and as such, he was dispatched to Dresden, ostensibly to study artillery. Th ere he could view the renowned collections of Renaissance and Baroque art in the Zwinger Palace and the Green Vault and read the works of Johann Winckelmann as well as other eighteenthcentury German scholars.…”

“…13 At the same time, German scholars were extending Winckelman's concept of the range of ancient art to include monuments and everyday objects unearthed during archaeological excavations. 14 Olenin followed their example, seeking and collecting objects that could reveal details about the culture and mores of past times in addition to their artistic achievements, and, as Director of the Academy of Arts, introducing 11 Faibisovich links his views with Catherine the Great's "Greek Project," her plans to create a Greek empire, allied with Russia, which she promoted during Olenin's formative years at the end of the eighteenth century. Faibisovich, Aleksei Nikolaevich Olenin, 241-6; Stuart, Aristocrat-Librarian in Service to the Tsar, 5-6).…”