果冻影院

In the decades preceding the turn of the eighteenth century a debate developed among European historians over the trustworthiness of textual sources as compared to artifactual evidence. 听More recently, scholars have outlined the role played by architects in this perceived 鈥渃risis鈥� of historical method. 听Erika Naginski, for example, argues that the conventions of architectural representation helped contribute to an emergent 鈥渞egime of visual truth,鈥� one that ultimately transformed the historian鈥檚 basic means of understanding the past. 听

This talk examines the reverberations of the pyrrhonists鈥� debate along the opposite vector. Surely the newfound enthusiasm for material evidence, ranging from coins to tools, altered the 鈥渙bjectscape鈥� of eighteenth-century designers. This shift is especially apparent in a work like Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach鈥檚 Entwurff einer historischen Architectur (Vienna, 1721). The book鈥檚 fifth and final chapter, a graphic collection of Prunkgef盲sse, has consistently befuddled later interpreters. 听What reason could Fischer possibly have for ending his systematic exposition of world monuments with a motley array of vases? 听Alongside his occasional use of medals as supporting evidence for his architectural reconstructions, the vases in the fifth chapter seem to represent his most direct engagement with artifactual evidence. 听And yet, most of the artifacts illustrated are the product of his own fantasy, with fabricated provenance attached. 听What this suggests is a different mode of relating to objects: the activation of an artifactual imagination. 听

This talk reasserts the integral role of the vases in Fischer鈥檚 larger project by reading his final chapter as an explication of design method. Here, Fischer demonstrates an alternative process for translating historically- and geographically distant aesthetics to new architectural scenarios, not via the rule-based system of the orders, but through the intuitive leap in scale from object to building. 听Mirroring the emerging antiquarian methods, but in reverse, Fischer鈥檚 diverse vases become plastic points of entry for new architectural inventions.

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