Designing Versailles: landscapes and the perspectival peace

IF 0.8 Q2 LAW
Therese O'Donnell
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article analyses the importance of the 1919 peace treaty's signing at Versailles and the consequent signalling (both explicit and implicit) about its terms, particularly regarding then emerging notions of self-determination, one of US President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. Given the treaty's enduring significance as a site for testing the possibilities of international law, particular attention is given to the troubling negotiating arrangements concerning the Middle East. In acknowledgement of the backdrop's grandeur and the Council of Four's cartographic approach, the design discipline of landscape architecture is employed for estimating how far self-determination was (or was not) realised. For Louis XIV, Versailles's landscaping represented Culture's triumph over Nature. Equally, for the 1919 peacemakers the treaty symbolised law's triumphant return after the unequalled annihilation evident on the Western Front and Dardanelles beaches. Both grand projects suggested Cartesian notions. More compellingly, both Louis XIV and the Four (and in particular Clemenceau and Lloyd George) fetishized an avaricious hegemonic order. As well as embracing aesthetic, pictorial meanings in the visual arts, tellingly, 'landscape' also concerns 'limited section[s], administrative area[s], territory'. Although the treaty-artefact was a matter of fact, it was also a historically situated aesthetics : framed and presented in particular ways, in a particular interior, to situate the gaze of specific viewers and imply certain political associations. Like many design ideals devised to dazzle passive onlookers, attractions were firmly located in the creators' eyes. The construction of Versailles’s artistically stunning landscape had emphasised an all-authoritative French territorial state. In 1919 Versailles was also a cultural practice and its landscape had value '…as a process by which social and subjective identities' were formed. In June 1919, just as in the curve of the seventeenth into the eighteenth century, power's material realisation was confirmed at Versailles.
设计凡尔赛:风景与透视的和平
本文分析了1919年在凡尔赛签署的和平条约的重要性,以及随后对其条款发出的信号(无论是明示的还是隐含的),特别是关于当时新兴的自决概念,这是美国总统伍德罗·威尔逊的十四点之一。鉴于该条约作为检验国际法可能性的场所的持久意义,人们特别注意有关中东的令人不安的谈判安排。为了承认背景的宏伟和四人委员会的制图方法,景观建筑的设计学科被用来估计自决(或没有)实现的程度。对于路易十四来说,凡尔赛宫的景观代表了文化对自然的胜利。同样,对于1919年的和平缔造者来说,该条约象征着在西线和达达尼尔海滩上无可匹敌的歼灭之后,法律的胜利回归。这两个伟大的项目都提出了笛卡尔的概念。更令人信服的是,路易十四和四世(尤其是克列孟梭和劳合·乔治)都崇拜贪婪的霸权秩序。除了在视觉艺术中包含美学、图像意义外,引人注目的是,“景观”还涉及“有限的区域、行政区域、领土”。尽管条约人工制品是一个事实,但它也是一种历史上的美学:以特定的方式,在特定的内部,以特定的方式构建和呈现,以定位特定观众的目光,并暗示某些政治关联。就像许多设计理念旨在让被动的旁观者眼花缭乱一样,景点牢牢地位于创作者的眼中。凡尔赛令人惊叹的艺术景观的建设强调了一个完全权威的法国领土国家。1919年,凡尔赛也是一种文化实践,它的景观具有价值,“作为形成社会和主观身份的过程”。1919年6月,就像17世纪进入18世纪的曲线一样,权力的物质实现在凡尔赛得到了证实。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.60
自引率
0.00%
发文量
17
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