Dalibor Vesely and the Model of the Late Baroque

AbstractThis article explores the value and lessons of the late baroque for Dalibor Vesely as an example of the role that it played for many architectural educators in the 1970s and 1980s. It shows the specific roots of Vesely’s interpretation of the late baroque in the context of the influence of his mentors, the art historian Vaclav Richter, and the phenomenologist Jan Patočka whose thought positioned the late baroque in relationship to the crisis of modernity. It then shows how Vesely used the late baroque in his studio and seminar teaching in the 1980s at the University of Cambridge school of architecture, not only to develop his students’ historical and theoretical critique of modern architecture, but as a model for contemporary design practice, finding in examples of late baroque churches, such as Johann Michael Fischer’s renovations of the church at Zwiefalten Abbey (1739–65), an architecture of ambiguity, complexity, sensuality, imagination, and holism that could inspire contemporary architecture.Keywords: Dalibor Veselyphenomenologyarchitectural educationbaroqueJan Patočka Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Vesely had written about the emergence of instrumental representation and emancipated representation before, but it was not until the publication of his book that he coined the phrase “divided representation” to name a time in which “instrumental non-communicative” representation emerged as a separate domain from “symbolic communicative” representation. See Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 175–77.2 Copy of Memorandum written by George Gunther, October 20, 1975, included in the 1975 School NAAB Accreditation Report, Kentucky University School of Architecture library.3 Dalibor Vesely, Diploma Unit 2 (1987–88), Exhibition Catalogue 1988, 22.4 Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation, 218.5 Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation, 222.6 Plato uses the term metaxis in The Symposium, 202d13–e1.7 Now classic interpretations of the emergence of autonomous art out of the emancipation of rocaille ornament in the late baroque can be found in Hans Sedlmayr, Art in Crisis: The Lost Centre (London: Hollis and Carter Limited, 1957), originally published as Verlust der Mitte: Die bildende Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts als Symptom und Symbol der Zeit (Vienna: Otto Müller Verlag, 1948); Karsten Harries, The Broken Frame: Three Lectures (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1989); and Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).8 Hans Sedlmayr and Hermann Bauer, “Rococo,” Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. 12 (New York: MacGraw Hill, 1966), 230–74; Henry-Russell Hitchcock, “The Limits of Rococco: The Work of Johann Michael Fischer and J.B. Neumann,” Rococo Architecture in Southern Germany (New York: Praeger, 1968), 175–229; and Karsten Harries, The Bavarian Rococo Church: Between Faith and Aestheticism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983).9 Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation, 75, 86.10 See, for example, their published correspondence: Jan Patočka, Dopisy Václavu Richterovi (Prague: Oikoymenh, 2001).11 On this topic, see Joseph Bedford, “Dalibor Veselý’s Performance of Crisis,” Journal of Architectural Education 76, no. 2 (2022): 70–82.12 Tomáš Murár, Art as a Principle and Pattern: Vojtěch Birnbaum’s Concept and Method of Art History (Prague: Archiv výtvarného umění, 2017), 146–26; Milena Bartlová, “Continuity and Discontinuity in the Czech Legacy of the Vienna School of Art History,” Journal of Art Historiography 8 (2013), 7.13 Vaclav Richter, review of Bauten and Baumeister der Barockzeit in Bohmen, by H.G. Franz, Umění 12 (1964), 316–17, trans. Lívia Gažová.14 Jan Patočka, “Prostor a jeho problematika,” Estetika 28, no. 1 (1991): 1–37. The essay was translated into French and published in Jan Patočka, Qu’est-ce que la phénoménologie? (Grenoble: Editions Jérôme Millon, 2002), 18–96.15 Richter, review of Bauten and Baumeister der Barockzeit in Bohmen, 317.16 Vesely explained Plato’s Divided Line to his students, for example, in his seminar in the 1988–89 academic year, including to some students who travelled with him to Munich. “[T]he visible and the intelligible, represent them by a line divided into two unequal sections, A:B B:C. Now, cut each section again into the same ratios. And then as an expression of the ratio of their comparative clearness and obscurity you will have of one of the sections of the visible world, images, so suppose that … I'll draw it. … the visible territory is divided in the same proportion as this is to that. So that is simple.” And as Vesely put it in a later seminar in 1988: “You can see immediately within it the Plato structure of 1, 2, 3, 4 moving the ontological understanding of one and many into the visible and so forth.” Dalibor Vesely, MPhil seminar 4 and 5 (dates uncertain, 1988–89 academic year), transcript of recordings made by Daphne Becket and donated to the project archives maintained by the author (hereafter Daphne Becket personal archives).17 Plato, The Republic, 509d–11e.18 Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation, 75, 81, 100–4, 345.19 For the 1964 Husserl seminars, see Jan Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl’s Phenomenology (Chicago: Open Court, 2018); and for the 1968 seminars see Jan Patočka, Body, Language, Community, World, ed. James Dodd (Chicago: Open Court, 1999); see also Jan Patočka, Plato and Europe, trans. Petr Lom (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).20 Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation, 225.21 Dalibor Vesely, MPhil seminar 11 (June 20, 1989), Daphne Becket personal archives.22 Vesely, MPhil seminar 11.23 Dalibor Vesely, “Architecture and the Ambiguity of the Fragment,” in The Idea of the City, ed. Robin Middleton (London: Architectural Association, 1996).24 Joseph Bedford, “The Cambridge Collage: Dalibor Vesely, Phenomenology and Architectural Design Method,” in Architectural Education Through Materiality Pedagogies of 20th Century Design, ed. Elke Couchez and Rajesh Heynickx (London: Routledge, 2022), 104–24; and Joseph Bedford, “Whitewashing Philosophical Graffiti: Dalibor Vesely and the Conflict between Education and Research at Cambridge University,” Oase 102 (2019): 81–90.25 On Boyarsky’s AA and the role of the unit system see Irene Sunwoo, “Between the ‘Well-Laid Table’ and the ‘Marketplace’: Alvin Boyarsky’s Experiments in Architectural Pedagogy” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2013); and for a good portrait of Vesely at the AA see Richard Patterson, “Situating Dalibor Vesely,” in An Architect’s Guide to Fame, ed. Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Paul Davies (London: Elsevier Architectural Press, 2005), 297–92.26 Interview with student, August 5, 2014, London.27 Interview with student, April 27, 2013, London.28 Dalibor Vesely, “Dosliv” to Kde Budeme Zit Zitra, by Michel Ragon, trans. Vera Smetanova (Prague: Jan Cejka, 1967).Additional informationNotes on contributorsJoseph BedfordJoseph Bedford is an Associate Professor of Architectural History and Theory at Virginia Tech. He is the director of the Architecture Exchange, a platform that fosters discourse and exchange in architecture through podcasts, conferences, books, workshops, oral history projects and teaching resources. He is the editor of Is There an Object-Oriented Architecture? (Bloomsbury 2020), the series editor of a new book series at Bloomsbury Press called Architecture Exchange: Engagements with Contemporary Theory as well as for the e-flux Architecture series Theory’s Curriculum. His scholarship explores the intellectual history of architectural thought in the later third of the twentieth century as it lays at the intersection between philosophy, theory and architectural education.