LUDWIG SEYFARTH: MIES VAN DER ROHE AND THE GROTESQUE BODY / REFLECTIONS ON ANDREA PICHL’S »FOR EVER AND EVER«
There is good modern architecture and there is bad modern architecture. The Mies van der Rohe House in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen is a widely acknow- ledged masterpiece – quiet and perfect in form. Another building by Mies van der Rohe is Berlin’s N ew N ational G allery. This is now seen as a high point in modern museum architecture.Architectural jewels such as these evince qualities akin to a public sculpture at its most perfect. Either the building stands out heroically, in silhouette as it were, aganist its environment, or it tones in, in per- fect harmony with its surroundings, as if it had al- ways been there. The Mies van der Rohe bungalow has a garden which reaches as far as the lake.
If one looks towards the bungalow from the garden one sees the house meditating quietly to itself in spite of the mass of buildings, the Wilhelminian style houses and multi-storey prefabricated apart- ment blocks (Plattenbauten), which rise up behind it. It must be admitted, however, that the building has been deprived of its context. It does not serve any normal function. It is not a dwelling house, nor is it a shop, still less a nursery school or some public au- thority building such as a library. It is an exhibition space, a space which exhibits not only individual art works but the building itself as well.
Let us now glance at that the sculpture which is to be seen in the adjoining garden. It becomes imme- diately apparent that the sculpture compliments the Mies van der Rohe House. What then, one might ask, is this has rather grotesque piece, looking as if it had been patched together with some parts sticking out as as if it were an unfinished building surrounded by scaffolding or a strange climbing frame in a children’s playground, and what has it to do with Mies van der Rohe’s cohesive edifice? Elements of the dimensional ratios which characte- rize Mies van der Rohe’s building and which form an integral part of its plan, have been incorporated into Andrea Pichl’s sculpture on a one to one basis. Note the height of the eaves, for example, or the interior height, or the window grid. But these pro- portions alone are an insufficient explanation. There is a certain pungent irony to the way in which the artist draws our attention to these elements.
We can see that architecture, however varied it may be, is based on similar formal principles: both geo- metrical simplification and seriality lie at the heart of Mies van der Rohe’s creativity as evinced in his historically iconic work. These principles also from the basis of the prefabricated housing estates of the German Democratic Republic and other socialist countries, however much they may be treated with contempt. In her press text on »For ever and ever« Wita Noack writes: »The cause of the failure of these housing estates is the economic weakness«. However the reference to social difference implied in this statement should be born in mind. On the one hand, for example, we have the »Lemke Country House« which was Mies van der Rohe designed in 1932 for a manager of a Berlin printing works. It is »a small and modest residential house« which »on nice days could be extended into the garden«. On the terrace Lemke held receptions for his clients. On the other hand, we have the prefabricated build- ing complexes in which people in the medium and lower income groups lived and which were not designed by well-known architects.
For many years now, as is clear from her work, Andrea Pichl has shown a particular interest in this despised architecture. Time after time she has come upon interesting details: intriguing ornaments, pro- jecting roofs, joints one wouldn’t expect in a univer- se of serially connected panels. These have served as starting points for many of her photographs, draw- ings, installations, and sculptures.
She is inspired by the inconsistencies and contra- dictions, by the strange ways in which interstices are bridged, by often neglected details, as well as by elements which »officially« are considered to be a failure. The many versions of socialist architecture form the primary focus of her research and she has travelled far afield in search of further examples. In 2010, for example, she made a trip to the Uzbek capital Tashkent, as part of her research. There can be no doubting the challenge involved in dealing directly with the formal perfection of Mies van der Rohe and other heroes of modern architec- ture. It is a challenge to make a work which forms a contrast with the geometrical clarity and transparen- cy, the »classicsm« of their buildings. »Is Modernity our Antiquity?« was one of the central questions of documenta 12, implying that one can now refer to modernity in the same way that classicism referred to antiquity.
Nor should we underestimate the challenge invol- ved in questioning the classical categories of qua- lity: not to strive for purity and beauty, but rather to focus on those elements which are considered weird, awkward, remote, or indeed ugly. One soon finds oneself in pursuit of the grotesque, the antithe- sis of the classical ideal of beauty.
If we were to conceive architecture as a human body, we could compare the work of Mies van der Rohe to the Renaissance concept of the well-propor- tioned body as analysed by Leonardo da Vinci. On the other hand, the sculpture of Andrea Pichl confronts us with the grotesque body. This has been described by the Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin, in the middle of the 20th century, as being defined by its orifices rather than by its confines: »The grotesque image ignores the closed, smooth, and impenetrable surface of the body ...« (Bakhtin, Rabelais and his world. – Indiana University Press, 1984, p. 317)
Andrea Pichl contrasts Mies van der Rohe’s well- formed architecture, which, for all its outward ope- ness still emphasises its own formal harmony, with a grotesque body based on similar dimensional ra- tios. It is a kind of caricature, a poor cousin. It relates to the clarity and visual unity of the van der Rohe bungalow by calling to mind a determinedly prefa- bricated building with its awkwardly patched joints. The sculpture does not »fit in« with the Mies bunga- low although designed according to its propor- tions. The sculpture is something of a puzzle. It is not put together the right way, somewhat like a face which has been taken apart and reassembled so that the mouth, nose and eyes are not in their normal place but put together the »wrong« way. The viewer sees the sculpture in the same way that the first view- ers experienced the faces in Picasso’s paintings. Picasso has long been classified as a Classic Modernist. So too, Mies van der Rohe, however classical his work may look today, arranged the elements of his work in a way different to what his contemporaries were used to. They too were shocked when pillars, decoration, gable roof and other elements which were thought to be essential for good architecture, were missing.
And so, in the long run, Andrea Pichl’s intervention may well become the starting point from which to trace the non-classical in Mies van der Rohe’s work, that element which has been for so long been over- looked. Discoveries are to be made, not only by examining the »sins« of modern town-planning, but by taking a fresh in-depth look at architects’s achieve- ments, both great and small. Beyond categories and standards imposed by architectural history, Andrea Pichl offers an artistic view which draws our atten- tion to areas where systems, orders, calculations do not work. The characteristics of good or bad archi- tecture may not be clear, »For ever and ever«, but rather are being continually questioned.
Ludwig Seyfarth