Is Your House Controlling Your Emotions? Apollo vs. Dionysus Essay
APOLLO & DIONYSUS - TEMPERAMENT IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE
JAVIER FERRÁNDIZ GABRIEL
Introduction
The preamble of this written communication interprets and exposes a self-conscious subjective psychometry of the author, wherein his preference for art and architecture is encountered in the form of a metamorphosis. The author concludes that this metamorphosis has its generating principle in his own position regarding the recurring dichotomy in anthropology (the holistic study of the Human Being), invoking the mythological identification of Apollo and Dionysus as a direct Nietzschean reference—though not without first explaining how static equilibrium is achieved through the conception of both, being the receptacle and the medium by which both can be conceived in one: "participation." This idea is an a priori reminder of "Schiller’s aesthetic utopia, which entrusts beauty with the mission of placing us in this intermediate state — mittlerer Zustand —, which is not a sort of hybrid middle ground, but rather the synthesis that links opposites, that is, sensibility and reason..." (Fiz, 1982), and more contextually, of "...the will in this whole process, since this faculty is responsible for promoting mediation between the two impulses, those of reason and sensibility..." (Ibid.).
The Triad
1."The artist's position in relation to this duality conditions their work and constitutes an important datum for understanding their oeuvre."
2."The differing valuation of this duality is conditioned by the culture in which the artist lives and by the natural environment that surrounds them."
Allusion to:
"Je suis l'espace où je suis"
[I am the space where I am.]
— Noël Arnaud, L'état d'ébauche.
3. "The position facing this human duality is subject to continuous fluctuation that varies in each individual and generally dampens as our training consolidates."
Mention of the Kilpatrickian constructivist premise:
"Knowledge is constructively activated by subjective knowledge, not passively received by the environment."
— J. Kilpatrick (1990, p. 39)
Analytical Tool
It generates a dialectic on an observer's appreciation toward an object—in this case, the butterfly. As previously stated, the user's observation discussed here proceeds along two tracks (reason & sentiment), emphasizing the influence of visual magnification and de-magnification toward the object in question, the former nearly in the form of a Cartesian methodical discourse. It recalls the mittlerer Zustand as an introductory reference, developing the concept that through participation, a holistic and indeed transcendental experience of the object is achieved, or as the author relates:
"...running after it without any desire to catch it, solely out of the desire to participate in its flight..."
Yearning for the eternal return
The author proceeds to emphasize the importance of participation and the recognition of both [impulses], which taken individually are considered separate or fragmented—an expression that recalls:
"Everything can be subjected to a combinatorial analysis of fragments that yearns for synthesis as its supreme reward" (Fiz, 1982).
This idea evokes the modern infinite character, indebted to the poem of the Querelle, and the yearning for a past of order and union.
The Catalyst
It leads to the conclusion that an experience or "artistic emotion" is the middle state where:
"Only [when one] is able to think the perfection of the object and, at the same time, be moved before that living reality, will one be able to see the butterfly in its fullness, will one be able to see an artistic object."
And he reiterates with the mythological identification:
"This emotion is the artistic emotion. Outside of it, we enjoy its beauty Apollonically; or we enjoy with it Dionysiacally. Only when both intersect, at that point where two crossing lines cut across one another, only at that point is art."
The author extends this idea into an artistic space, developing Worringer's concept of the urge to abstraction as "the deepest essence of all artistic necessity; the craving for alienation from one's own ego," contributing that it proceeds along two paths: intellectual and sentimental (previously exemplified by the mythological identification). This results in the total alienation of the being being possible only through emotional and rational integration, where the correlate of the receptacle is emotion and artistic enjoyment. The author manifests that the work presented is a kind of holistic analytical tool, expressing the idea that it is appropriate because in architecture "...there are no longer unmovable truths, but subjective interpretations..."
Development
Permanence and Change: The Nature–Architecture Relationship
“At one extreme, we have a world subject to incessant and continuous change. And at the other extreme, an immutable world—one that is absolutely constant and permanent.” The text includes an assessment of John Ruskin’s principles of architecture, concluding that this perspective “is based on a highly subjective assumption: that architecture should seek to mimic the environment in which it is situated.” J.F.G. refutes this premise, noting that “history shows us, on numerous occasions, that the relationship between the environment and architecture is not necessarily mimetic.” Once again, the author turns to mythology—this time to draw an analogy regarding the relationship between architecture and its environment—arguing that “...this brings permanence into contact with change—much like placing Apollo alongside Dionysus—and the presence of both within the same scene lends it a sense of completeness.”
Analysis of two photographs
Here, the importance of analyzing two photographs is discussed, with the author justifying his motive as: “Photography isolates and eternally halts a tiny fragment of that absolute instant...” where he continues, “A tenth of a second of our own history is stopped in the photo” with the objective of analyzing and differentiating them from one another in relation to the proposed duality.
Asplund in His House
Because the photograph shows the architect meditating in front of a lit fireplace inside his home, the author reflects in a symbolic-transcendental way, fixing his attention first on the fire, denoting its symbolic connotation: “Its continuous and frantic oscillation constitutes the best symbol of change” and where this “upon stopping, loses its very essence: movement.” It is worth pausing to meditate on contemporary scopic syndrome and conclude that, in the same way the writer presents it—only on a global scale—the overcrowding of images, especially human ones, constitutes the contemporary “loss of essence.”
The author warns that being in complete Dionysiac participation can cause the spectator to observe the object with too much meticulousness without reverting to a point of view with more perspective—in other words, a dichotomous vision: one meticulous and the other panoramic, wherein the totality of the object is conceived.
From the Terrace of Casa Ugalde
“The spectator will find difficulties in their possible desire for sentimental projection, given the abstraction of the scene, but they will have a magnificent ally in the chair. The image is basically directed at our intelligence since it offers us the extraordinary possibility of understanding it, without denying us a possible sentimental projection through that light and modest chair.”
However, the abstraction of the scene does not in itself present an antagonistic status with respect to nature, or as the narrator puts it better: “We are before a house that from the beginning renounced itself to surrender to the god of nature.”
Provisionality
“Provisionality is an extreme situation of the idea of change.”
“For an object to suggest the idea of provisionality to us, two requirements must be met.”
“The first is that it be found out of its habitual place; that it be a conventional element outside of its convention.”
“The second is that its physical characteristics allow the change to be made effective.”
Proximity and Distance
This develops the warning previously exposed in Asplund in His House.
“...the spectator facing the work of art desires to draw closer, moved by a desire to participate emotionally in it, or else will desire to move away to try to analyze and understand what is happening around them.”
“Upon approaching, their possibility of understanding diminishes while a pleasant feeling of fraternization increases. Both are two sides of the same coin that the Dionysiac man appreciates equally.”
Under the subtitle Man, the author first characterizes empathic art as a means of catharsis, referencing Lessing:
“Of nature and art, we prefer those aspects that are capable of moving us. Aspects of which we can easily feel ourselves participants.”
“By distancing ourselves from the set of circumstances in which we as humans are emotionally involved, we abstract ourselves.”
A phrase that somewhat recalls the one noted by P. Klee in 1915:
“The more horrible this world is, as it is today, the more abstract is art.”
The culmination regarding the topic of "Man" is made through a psychological dialectic with respect to the spectator of the object:
“It will be useless for a spectator's effort to try to awaken an emotion within themselves before an artistic fact when this previously demands an intellectual effort from them; it will be useless for them to try to participate in the subject of the work and project themselves sentimentally into it, when the work demands detachment and independence from them; exactly that which the artist maintained in the creative act. When this happens, the spectator will feel rejected, in which case they will probably claim that it is not understood, when it is very possible that there has not been the slightest desire and effort to understand it.”
Conclusion
J.F. Gabriel hints as the seminal reason for his work the stoic eternal return of bipolar psycho-anthropology, where its components are characterized by the introductory analytical triad. Such a triad navigates the multiverse of art, will, and aesthetics as mediators, or as better cited by S.M.F as the mittlerer Zustand—that intermediate state. This phenomenon, added to Ortega y Gasset’s dehumanization of art and Lipovetskian postmodern nihilism and individualism, combined with the psychic overcrowding of the scopic regime, clarifies the parameters of the framework analyzed by his triad.
Concerning the architectural cosmos, he generates an analysis with his third-term tool, denoting a Jungian archetype, that is:
“Jung thought that the task of each generation is to understand its content and effects differently.”
— Daryl Sharp, Jungian Lexicon, p. 30
J.F. Gabriel does so in a symbolic-transcendental manner.
