83RD ACSA ANNUAL MEETING HISTORY/THEORYICRITIClSM 1995 177

The Sublime and Modern Architecture:

Unmasking (an Aesthetic of) Abstraction

KATE NESBITT
University of Virginia

INTRODUCTION beauty as an architectural issue. Similarly, the subjectivity

of beauty's reciprocal, the sublime, led to its demise.
This paper proposes that an aesthetic capable of accounting
By arguing that the sublime exists incognito in the work
for modern architecture has begun to coalesce in the
of the 20th century avant-garde, one can begin to re-situate
postmodern period. Its fundamental category is the sub-
lime.' The significance of the sublime as a subject of art and the architectural discourse, and to displace formalism. (I
will review the received formal preoccupations of theory
architecture lies in its conceptual reach or its spiritual
during modernism only as they affect the ~ublime.~) The
dimension. The sublime refers to immense ideas like space,
potency of the sublime as a transgressor of periods and
time, death, and the divine.
disciplines is obvious in recent writing on this rehabilitated
The 18th century saw the development of aesthetics based
subject. In architectural theory, the sublime presents itself
on a dialectic of the sublime and the beautiful, orginating in
today in several guises, including the uncanny and the
literature and crossing disciplinary boundaries to consider
grotesque. These psychoanalyticand aesthetic categories, as
the visual arts. Kant's and Burke's treatises2 form the basis
used by Anthony Vidler and Peter Eisenman, will be read
of my discussion of these aesthetic concerns. Their catego-
against Lyotard's postrnodern model in a project of revision.
ries of the beautiful and the sublime were applied to the study
The latter's notion of the sublime as questioning the founda-
of nature, to the character of men, and to their artistic output,
tions of representational painting will be examined as part of
in particular, poetry, painting, and architecture. Roughly
a definition of the contemporary sublime. These recent
contemporary with these philosophical treatises, the archi-
theoretical positions are fundamental in constituting a mod-
tects E.L. Boullee and C.N. Ledoux advocated an architec-
ernist aesthetic. They remove the mask of avant-garde
ture of the sublime, expressed in a reductive architectural
repression which has limited our ability to see modem
language (albeit neoclassical) which led to their designation
architecture in terms of a continuous dialectic of the sublime
as the "first modern^."^
and the beautiful.
Around the turn of this century, avant-garde challenges to
I am suggesting that the sublime offers an alternate,
the pictorial traditions of painting were mirrored by
aesthetic route to understanding modernity. The recupera-
architecture's rejection of the classical language and of
tion of the sublime (and therefore of the beautiful7) as
historical eclecticism in favor of a new expression. The
outlined herein will allow a significant opening up of the
abstraction of form adopted by both avant-gardes did not
architectural discourse.
signal an absence of content, but rather, a less accessible
content. Jean-Francois Lyotard has characterized this con-
PHENOMENOLOGY
tent in painting as "presenting the unpresentable," the inde-
terminate, or the n~ndemonstrable.~ Contemporary architectural theory is heavily influenced by
In 20th century architecture, any mention of the sublime the philosophical domain of phenomenology, especially the
and the beautiful seems to have been deliberately repressed work of Martin Heidegger and Gaston Ba~helard,~ which
by theorists and designers anxious to distance themselves laid the groundwork for the emerging aesthetic of the
from the recent past.' To assert a radical break with the contemporary sublime. Phenomenological approaches have
history of the discipline, the terms of aesthetic theory had to foregrounded human sensory and spiritual apprehension of
be changed. A modernist polemic calling for an aesthetic phenomena, via a process described as the "renovation of the
tabula rasa (of abstraction) and the application of scientific body".9 Visual, tactile, olfactory, and aural sensations are
principles to design supplanted the preceding rhetoric. Posi- the visceral part of the aesthetic reception of architecture, a
tivist emphasis on rationality and function marginalized medium distinguished by its three-dimensional presence.
 178 8 3 R D ACSA ANNUAL MEETING HISTORYTTHEORY/CRITIClSM 1995

Recently, the bodily and unconscious connection to ar- Beautiful and the Sublime. Their constructions of the
chitecture has again become an object of study. Juhani sublime operated to "restrict the type and forms of experi-
Pallasmaa addresses the psychic apprehension of architec- ence that are held to be generative of sublime sensation""
ture by "opening up a view into a second reality of percep- and became the foundation for later definitions.
tion, dreams, forgotten memories and imagination."1 This Typical of the formulations of both Burke and Kant is the
is accomplished in his work through an abstract"architecture pairing of the term sublime with that of the beautiful.
of silence."" Pallasmaa's investigation of the unconscious Sometimes presented as opposites, and other times as poten-
parallels Freud's idea of the uncanny, while his architecture tially co-existent qualities, the sublime is always considered
of silence resonates with the sublime. to be a higher order emotion by romanticists. As Kant said:
Along similar lines, phenomenologist Alberto Perez- "The sublime moves, the beautiful charms."18 For him, the
Gomez claims that the apprehension of architecture as beautiful is the result of the mind working harmoniously
meaningful requires a "metaphysical dimension" which while attending an object.I9It is easily distinguished from the
"reveals the presence of Being, [or] the presence of the experience of the sublime which is an irrational, violent
invisible within the world of the everyday."12 (There is a reaction.
strong correspondence between his definition of the meta- Burke's definition of the beautiful is as measured as his
physical in architecture and the contemporary sublime, sublime is visceral: "beauty is some quality in bodies, acting
including Lyotard's claims about modernist, abstract paint- mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of
ing.) But for Perez-Gomez, the invisible is to be signified the senses."20 On the other hand, his sublime is a curious
with a symbolic, figurative architecture.I3Following Boullee, mingling of pain and pleasure provoked by terror and awe in
I would argue that the abstraction of the sublime, "deprived the face of ovenvhelrmng greatness. One fears deprivation
of all ornament" as Boullee said,14offers a more promising of life, company, light, or freedom. The pleasure comes in
existential foothold than a representational architecture. the suspension of the threat of deprivation.
Burke and Kant thus explain the impact of the sublime in
MAN AND NATURE terms of the primary motivation of men: self-preservation,
which can be manifested as fear. Beauty, on the other hand,
A long-standing philosophical problem which has been inspires only a secondary motivation: love. In addition to the
highlighted by phenomenologists is the question of the fury of nature, representing the effects of ravaging time and
relationship between man and nature. Nature as "the other" the depiction of mythological sites are common ways to
in relation to culture has been a stabilizing theme for invoke the romantic sublime. English garden follies and the
centuries. In fact prior to industrialization,the production of Romantic painting tradition epitomize the fascination with
meaning in architecture relied upon structured references to the ruin and with sacred places. More generally, Burke cites
or associations with nature. Even today, architects' work the following absolutes as sources of the sublime: infinity,
literally and symbolically overcomes the forces of nature to vastness, magnificence, and obscurity. One might extend to
provide shelter. The human struggle with a threatening the political arena Burke's statement: "I know of nothing
Nature also characterizes Enlightenment ideas of the terrify- which is sublime which is not connected to the sense of
ing sublime. Thus, aesthetics also provides a philosophical power."21
framework to handle such issues. It is clear that in architecture, manipulation of scale,
monumentality, and light are important to evoke the sub-
AESTHETICS lime. Etienne-Louis Boullee's unbuilt work, comprising an
Aesthetics analyzes a work of art or architecture "in regard "architecture of shadows," is one of the first deliberate
to form and sensory qualities, its processes of production," investigations of the application of Burke's sublime to
and its reception, and proposes a theory of taste with stan- ar~hitecture.~~ The Reign of Terror clearly influenced the
dards for j~dgement.'~According to Kant, the nature of imprisoned Boullee in his designs for institutions of the state.
aesthetic response is disinterested appreciation: a direct, Projected buildings such as the National Library relied on a
active, and unmediated experience.16 Let us now focus minimalist palette and endless repetition of similar elements
for their power.
briefly on the mid 18th century consideration of the relation-
Similarly, Ledoux's many unbuilt works relied upon an
ship between the sublime and the beautiful. This discussion
austere language of facade and rigorously pure geometry in
will be followed by sections on the recent postulations of
plan and section. He investigated the sublime power of
Jean-Francois Lyotard, Anthony Vidler, and Peter Eisenman.
composition with platonic solids in projects like the cannon
forge. Ledoux's architecture parlante developed to an
BURKE AND KANT:
extreme the 18th century notion of ~haracter2~, the idea of an
THE 18TH CENTURY SUBLIME
appropriate expression for each building type. A number of
The origins of the Romantic sublime can be found in Burke's his projects consciously pursued a sublime expression. Pris-
A Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and ons, for instance, should inspire fear of crime and imprison-
the Beautiful, and Kant's Observations on the Feeling of the ment. The Royal Saltworks were designed to inspire respect
83RDACSA A N N U A L MEETING HISTORYTTHEORYICRITICISM 1995 179

and fear of the director in the king's laborers. the unpresentable. Thus modem painting should avoid
In the modem, industrial world the power of the machine figuration but not allusion, "a form ofexpression indispensible
and limitless technology came to be perceived as sublime. to works which belong to an aesthetic of the sublime."34
G.B. Piranesi's shadowy etchings ofthe Carceri illustrate the There is one other aspect of the sublime which Lyotard
potential menace of technology. touches on: the importance of time. Visual representations
As in Piranesi's chiaroscuro, clarity for Burke is antitheti- of the passage of time were an important motif of the
cal to the passions.24He explains that it is through obscurity romantic sublime. For modernists, he says, "The avant-
of language that poetry incites the imaginati~n.~~ Burke's garde task is to undo spiritual assumptions regarding time.
obscurity becomes important for the avant-garde because it The sense of the sublime is the name of this di~mantling."~~
creates distance from the subject and defamiliarizes the Lyotard advocates a critical position, resisting the corrup-
artistic object and medium. tion of the marketplace, workmg from within the discipline
to focus on the most essential questions of contemporary
LYOTARD artistic practice. The historical program of art, creating
images of order and identity for a unified cultural commu-
Lyotard has read this emphasis on poetic obscurity as a nity, is no longer possible or relevant. Instead, a self-
critique of the limitations of figurative representation in referential focus will allow a different role for avant-garde
mimetic painting.26The rejection of figuration indicates that art: "a metaphysical program of making the world transpar-
abstraction will be hndamental to Lyotard's modernist ent through reason."3h
aesthetic of the sublime. Since the late 1970's Lyotard has
been writing on the sublime, based on Burke and Kant, in APPLICATION TO MODERN ARCHITECTURE
relation to avant-garde art.27We shall examine his claim that
the sublime is the one artistic sensibility characteristic of the The application of Lyotard's ideas to architecture would
result in a critical attitude toward the architectural canon,
In the context of his discussion, which I will extend to examplars of which might never manifest themselves di-
architecture, Lyotard's sublime derives from facing the rectly in the work. The content of the work instead, would
essential question for the discipline: What is painting? He be the asking of fundamental questions and eventually,
argues that these difficultphilosophical investigations should definitions of a new societal role for architecture.
be the subject of twentieth century painting, instead of In order to extend Lyotard's concepts hrther, architec-
mimetic representation or narrative. This type of inquiry tural theory will need to determine what problems architec-
implicitly acknowledges the history of the discipline, with- ture faces today and what would constitute the equivalents to
out resulting in resemblance to precedents. The modern pictorial rules in this discipline. What is absence of form, or
aesthetic question is not "What is beautihl?' but "What can negative representation, in architecture? What is the inde-
be said to be art?"29 These statements suggest that the terminate? Not building? Structure, or the limits of space?
question of beauty is somehow outmoded. Does this kind of questioning constitute a deconstructionist
Lyotard notes that modern artists were forced into reflect- undermining of the foundations of the discipline?
ing on their discipline by the challenge of photography and
the technological perfection of its beauty. If the camera THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS
could master all the pictorial rules, then painters would IN ARCHITECTURE
subvert them. Thus came subversions of the traditions of Technology
linear perspective, tonality, the frame, surface, and medium Advanced technology has changed the relationship between
of painting.30 The sublime arises from the frustration of man and nature by reducing the urgency of our survival
attempting to present the unpresentable, the indeterminate, struggle. It has even been suggested by deconstructionists
or the invisible within the visible realm of art. The indeter- that the ancient naturelculture opposition has been dis-
minate might be color for painting, silence for music, or placed, rendered irrelevant. If this is true, what stands in its
stillness for dancers. The commitment to critical work place as the other in relation to architecture? Having
evident in the twentieth century avant-garde produced what conquered nature, the challenge now comes from the oppo-
Lyotard calls a "heroic" century of Western ~ainting.~' He site end of the spectrum, from man's knowledge and its
continues: "The spirit of the times is surely ... that of the instrumentalized form, technology.
immanent sublime,that of alluding to the n~ndemonstrable."~~ Technology in the form of a hyperreal, televisual culture
Abstraction,or negative representationin Kant's terms, is comprises one of two threats to architecture's provision of a
the vehicle to demonstrate the presence of absolutes such as physical center of culture. The dematerialization of commu-
infinity, the divine, or the end of history. (Even though nication of the electronic global village challenges the
Lyotard recognizes that "the inadequacy of images, as solidity and permanence symbolized by architectural pro-
negative signs, [will only] attest to the immense power of duction. As Peter Eisenman says, "The electronic paradigm
Ideas."33) He defends the use of abstraction on the basis of directs a powerhl challenge to architecture because it de-
Kant's notion that "absence of form" is a possible index to fines reality in terms of media and simulation, it values
 180 83RD ACSA ANNUAL MEETING HISTORYTTHEORY/CRlTIClSM 1995

appearance over e~istence.")~So making or marking a ARCHITECTURAL THEORISTS:

physical place, expressive of an ordered public realm, may VIDLER AND EISENMAN
be redundant or rhetorical in the future.
Following psychoanalytic and deconstructionist models,
several theoreticians argue that the route to a revitalized
Social Issues: Diversity and Community
architecture requires uncovering its repressed aspects.42
The second current challenge is to the notion of community Within the concealed material, vulnerable assumptions are
and the attainability of a cultural consensus which might be often found about the foundations of the discipline. For
meaningfully represented in architectural language. What Anthony Vidler and Peter Eisenman, the uncanny and gro-
will be represented and will the language be understood by tesque are buried. Vidler says, "the uncanny in this context
all? Thus the possibility of communicating the significance would be ...the return ofthe body into an architecture that had
of place or any other meaning, fundamental concerns of our repressed its conscious presence."43 Clearly related to the
discipline for centuries, are endangered by societal changes uncanny is Eisenrnan's notion of the grotesque as "the
and the collapse of the so-called grand narratives. condition of the always present or the already within that the
beautiful in architecture attempts to repress."44 Their ideas
THE LANGUAGE OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE start to define the contemporary sublime.
Throughout the twentieth century, an aesthetic of the beau-
tiful and the sublime in architecture has been suppressed by VIDLER AND THE UNCANNY
several alternative formal issues. First, the development of
An astute scholar of architecture from the 18th century to the
a new architectural language was problematized by the
present, Vidler has completed a study of the architectural
avant-garde in the categories of representation versus ab-
uncanny.45 The uncanny as described by Freud is the
straction. For the most part, the content to be communicated
rediscovery of something familiar which has been previ-
by architecture was a limited expression of function. Mi-
ously repressed; it is the uneasy feeling of the presence of an
metic representation was rejected in favor of the autonomy
absence. The mix of the known and familiar and of the
of form and an internal, self-referential discourse.
strange surfaces in the German word for the uncanny, which
Next, architecture was preoccupied with the translation of
literally translated is "unhomely." One common theme is the
spatial constructs from avant-garde painting like transpar-
idea of the human body in fragment~.~"idler sees a
ency and layering. Third, the 19th century legacy of
"deliberate attempt to address the status of the body in post-
typology repressed aesthetics with arguments about design
modem theory"47which is necessitated by the fact that, as he
method in terms of imitation versus inventi~n.'~
says, "The body in disintegration is in a very real sense the
image of the notion of humanist progress in disarray."48 His
THE SUBLIME AND MODERN ARCHITECTURE
uncanny is the terrifying side of the sublime, with the fear
The significance of the sublime for twentieth century archi- being privation of the integrated body.
tecture is finally emerging in critical writing from recent The uncanny can also be considered at the social scale.
years. The sudden rebirth of interest in the sublime is Freud described it as a product of the anxiety of life in the
explicable on a number of levels. First is the emphasis on the turn-of-the-century urban milieu. Vidler hails the uncanny
knowledge of architecture through phenomenology, which "as a dominant constituent of modem estrangement and
foregrounds a fundamental issue in aesthetics: the effect on alienati~n,"~~ in the same way that Lyotard sees the sublime
the viewer of a work of architecture. In the case of the as the essential modernist sensibility. In the "attempt to
sublime, the experience is visceral and spiritual. The destabilize the conventions oftraditional architecture," Vidler
immanent sublime is the path through which architecture notes that "critical theories of estrangement, linguistic inde-
achieves metaphysical import. Furthermore, it allows the terminacy, and representation have served as vehicles for
recuperation of the other term in the pair: beauty. In recent avant-garde architectural experi~nent."~~
theory, beauty is reemerging in the context of the sublime. For instance, Bob McAnulty cites the recent theoretical
One might expect that given its privileged position in investigations of architects Diller and Scofidio, which delve
Enlightenment theory, the sublime would repress beauty. into the spatial structures and social practices that order our
But for the provocative theorist Peter Eisenman, the beauti- bodies, such as habits of dome~ticity.~' The results, exhibited
ful has instead been a repressor, dominating the grotesque.39 as museum installations, are decidedly uncanny, suggesting
Perhaps Diana Agrest's dialectical stance offers a model for a haunted house, or one which operates in a different life-
reconfigunng the relationship between these two aesthetic world. Dining chairs and a table hover above the floor, a
categories: if the beautiful is the "normative" discourse of double bed is cleaved along its length and hinged into two
aesthetics, the sublime can be seen as an "analytical and parts. In choosing the house as the site of their work, the
exploratory discourse"40 in opposition to it. This notion architects defamiliarize the homeliest of spaces with
would coincide with another description of the sublime as a unhomely effect.
"self-transforming discourse" which influenced the con- Vidler makes a number of important connections between
struction of the modern ~ubject.~' the uncanny and the sublime. First, his "spatial uncanny" is
dependent on and an outgrowth of Burke's articulation of the the sublime indeterminacy of avant-garde painting, the
sublime.52Second, he identifies an "aesthetic dimension,"of urbanlspatial uncanny, or the grotesque in architecture.
the uncanny, which consists of "a representation of a mental Whether presented as a modern phenomenon capable of
state of projection that precisely elides the boundaries of the social critique, or as an aspect of psychological encounter,
real and the unreal to provoke a disturbing ambiguity, a the profile of the contemporary sublime is emerging. It
slippage between walung and dreaming."53 encompasses Lyotard's and Eisenman's advocating disci-
By focusing his phenomenological study on the uncanny, plinary deconstruction and the indeterminacy of abstraction.
Vidler hopes to discover the "power to interpret the relations Under the rubric of the architectural uncanny, it includes
between the psyche and the dwelling, the body and the house, Vidler's phenomenological articulation. All of these recent
the individual and the metr~polis."~Theorizing the uncanny theoretical positions lift the mask of avant-garde repression
is the start of "rewriting modem aesthetic theory as applied which concealed a continuous dialectic of the beautifid and
to categories such as imitation, repetition, the symbolic and the sublime in architecture. The interdependency of these
the sublime."s5 In an aesthetic agenda for modern architec- terms means that if one is suspect, both are rejected. This
ture, the uncanny's role is to identify and critique these occurred during the high modem period ofthis century, when
significant contemporary issues via the link forged with aesthetic discussion was stifled in favor of other issues.
phenomenology. Contemporary representations of these conditions are
essential in resituating modernist aesthetic discourse. Sepa-
EISENMAN AND THE GROTESQUE rated more by nomenclature than by substance, the sublime,
Vidler recognizes the use of defarniliarizing "reversals of the uncanny, and the grotesque also engage the major
aesthetic norms, [and] substitutions of the grotesque for the philosophical framework of phenomenology. A phenom-
sublime,"shas avant-garde formal strategies addressing alien- enological consideration of architecture has started to dis-
ation. Perhaps this explains Peter Eisenman's exploration of place formalism, a shift which has also been effected from
the grotesque as "the manifestation of the uncertain in the feminist and post-structuralist ideological stances. The
physical."" His interest in the grotesque clearly parallels recuperation of the sublime (and therefore of the beautifid)
avant-garde painters' use of the sublime to invoke "the has been part of a process of opening up the discourse.
indeterminate or nondemonstrable."
In the article "En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes," NOTES
Eisenman critiques the traditional contrast between the Historically, the sublime can be traced to the writings of the
qualities of the beautiful (which is the good, rational, and classical rhetorician Longinus in the first centuries A.D. Trans-
true) and of the terrifying sublime (which is the unnatural, lated into French by Boileau in 1674, On the Sublime deals with
uncertain, and unpresent). He follows Kant in envisioning issues of form and style in oratory, the equivalent of literature
"a containing within,"58as an alternate to the exclusionary in general for this time period. The republication of this ancient
rigidity of dialectical aesthetic categories. Present within the treatise had unexpectedly major effects on aesthetics.
Edmund Burke, An Inquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and the
beautiful is the grotesque, which encompasses "the idea of Beautiful (Oxford, 1987) and Irnrnanuel Kant, Observations on
the ugly, the deformed, and the supposedly unnatural."59 the Feelingofthe BeautifulandtheSublime,trans. J. Goldthwait,
Eiseman's concern about oppositional categories stems (Berkeley, 198 1).
from the "notion... [that] any form of the occupation of space Joseph Rykwert, The First Moderns: the Architects of the 18th
[such as architecture] requires a more complex form of the Century (Cambridge, 1980).
Jean-Francois Lyotard, "Presenting the Unpresentable: The
beautiful, one which contains the ugly, or a rationality that Sublime,"ArtForum, 22.8, (Apr 1984), p.64.
contains the irrati~nal."~~ See Theodor Adorno on the corruption and exhaustion of the
The utility of this expanded aesthetic category lies in sublime in Vidler, "Notes on the Sublime: From Neoclassicism
advancing Eisenman's usual agenda: he sees the possibility to Postmodernism," Canon: The Princeton Journal, 3 (1 988),
of displacing architecture, and its 500-year dependence on p. 180.
normative beauty, through the grotesque. He claims the See longer version of this paper in New Literary History, Feb
1995. Thanks to the editor, Ralph Cohen, for his reading of the
grotesque will "provoke an uncertainty in the object, by original.
removing both the architect and the user from any necessary The link between these co-dependent terms cannot be easily
control of the object... it is now the distance between object severed.
and subject-- the impossibility of possession --which pro- Gaston Bachelard, 7'he Poetics ofspace, (Toronto, 1964 transl.)
vokes this anxiety."h' But there is a caveat: as with painters' and Martin Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking," from
Poetry, Language, Thought, (New York, 1971 transl.), p.145-
attempts to present the unpresentable, we are warned that the 229.
grotesque "can be conceptualized, but not designed."h2 Alberto Perez-Gomez, "Architectural Representation in the
Eisenman thus hints at the difficulty of realizing this theo- Age of Simulacra," Skala 20, (1990), p.42.
retical agenda. Juhani Pallasmaa, "The Social Commission and the Autono-
mous Architect," Harvard Architecture Review 6, (1987),
CONCLUSION p.119.
Juhani Pallasmaa, Lecture at the University of Virginia, 1993.
So once more anxiety is encountered, whether the source is Perez-Gomez, p.42.
 ACSA A N N U A L MEETING HlSTORYflHEORYiCRlTlClSM 1995

l3 Ibid. tically aesthetic epistemological problem," Frances Ferguson,

l4 Anthony Vidler, TheArchitecturalUncanny (Cambridge, 1992), The Solitude of the Sublime: Romanticism and the Aesthetics of
p. 170. Individuation, (New York, 1992), p.31.
l 5 Dagobert D. Runes, ed., Dictionary of Philosophy Revised and 39 Peter Eisenman, "En Terror Firma..."in Form; Being; Absence:
Enlarged (Savage, 1982), p.20. Architecture and Philosophy, Pratt Journal of Architecture, 2,
'"ohn Goldthwait's introduction in Kant, Observations, p.35. (New York, 1988), p. 1 11-2 1.
l 7 Peter de Bolla, The Discourse of the Sublime: Readings in 40 Diana Agrest, Architecture from Without: Theoretical Framings
Histoiy, Aesthetics, and the Subject (Oxford, 1989), p.20. for a Critical Practice, (MIT Press, 1993), p. I .
' W a n t , Observations, p.26. 41 Peter de Bolla, The Discourse of the Sublime: Readings in
l 9 Goldthwait in Kant, Observations, p.21. History, Aesthetics, and the Subject (Oxford, l989), p.12.
20 Burke, An Inquiry, p.xx. 42 For example, Agrest believes the "system" of architecture (i.e.,
21 Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes the Western architectural tradition) is defined both by what it
and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970's (Cambridge, includes and what it excludes, or represses. "Architecture from
1990), p.30. Without: Body, Logic, and Sex," Assemblage 7, (1988), p.29.
22 Vidler, Architectural Uncanny, p. 169. 43 Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, p.79.
23 Alan Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Ar- 44 Eisenman, "En Terror Firma," p.114.
chitectural Essays 1980-1987 (Cambridge, 1989), pp.57-87. 45 Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny and "Theorizing the
24 Jean-Francois Lyotard, "The Sublime and the Avant-garde," Unhomely" in Newsline, vo1.3, no.3 (1990), p.3.
ArtForum, 20.8 (Apr 1982), p.40. 46 Lacanian developmental psychology has revealed that children
25 Burke, An Inquity, pp.157-61. do not immediately understand themselves as integrated beings.
26 Lyotard, "The Sublime and the Avant-garde," p.40. But once having perceived themselves as bodily unities, (via the
27 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report mirror stage), the idea of the fragmented or "morselated" body
on Knowledge, transl. Bennington and Massumi, (Minneapolis, is banished to the unconscious. This hidden knowledge, when
1984), p.71-82. reencountered, explains the impact of horror films and dismem-
2X Lyotard, "The Sublime and the Avant-garde," p.38. berment fantasies. Vidler, "6eorizing the Unhomely," ibid.
25 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p.75. 47 Ibid.
30 Lyotard, "Presenting the Unpresentable," p.67. Marcel 4"bid.
Duchamp's readymades raised other radical questions for art- 49 Ibid.
ists. For instance, about the alchemical validation of the artist's 50 Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, p.xi.
signature, the role of the hand in manufacture, ideas of the 5 ' Robert McAnulty, "Body Troubles," in John Whiteman, ed,
original and authenticity, and the privileged status of places of Strategies in Architectural Thinking, (Cambridge, 1992), p. 191-
exhibition. See my article "Construction/Demolition, Object1 6.
Process" in Proceedings of the 1991 ACSA Southeast Regional 52 Vidler, "Theorizing the Unhomely," p.3.
Conference (Charlotte, 1992), p.42-7. 53 Ibid
- - -

3 1 Lyotard, "Presenting the Unpresentable," p.69. 54 Ibid. The writing here echoes the chapter on "The House" in
32 Ibid. Bachelard's classic Poetics of Space.
33 Lyotard, "The Sublime and the Avant-garde," p.40. 55 Ibid.
34 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p.80. 56 Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny, p. 13.
35 Lyotard, "The Sublime and the Avant-garde," p.43. 57 Eisenman, "En Terror Firma," p. 114. All subsequent quotations
" Lyotard, "Presenting the Unpresentable," p.64. are from this same article. [pp. 115, 114, 115, 121, 1 16.1
j7 Peter Eisenman, "Visions' Unfolding: Architecture in the Age 58 Ibid, p.115.

of Electronic Media," Domus, 734 (Jan 1992), pp.21. 55 Ibid, p.114.

38 "The aesthetic discussion that emerged in the 18th century 60 Ibid, p.115.
located an anxiety about the relationship between the individual 6' Ibid, p.121
and the type, the particular and the general... as the characteris- 62 Ibid, p.116.