ETIENNE-LOUIS BOULLÉE’S VISION OF NATURE IN ARCHITECTURE

By

LIANG SHUI

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2019

© 2019 Liang Shui

To my parents, mentors and friends, I couldn’t have done this without you

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would first like to thank my thesis chair Dr. Hui Zou of the School of Architecture at

the University of Florida, who has consistently allowed this thesis to be of my own work, while

pushing me diligently to the right direction when he thought I needed it.

I would also like to thank the co-chair of the committee Dr. Vandana Baweja without

whose wholehearted dedication and passionate participation the validation of the thesis could not

have been successfully conducted.

I would also like to thank the graduate advisor Sheryl McIntosh for her unimpeded

support and patience.

Last but not the least I thank my family for supporting me spiritually throughout the

writing of this thesis and for having always been the rock of my life.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4

LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................6

ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................8

CHAPTER

1 NATURE UNDER THE LIGHT OF ENLIGHTENMENT: 18TH

-CENTURY FRENCH

DISCOURSE ON NATURE AND ITS ARTISTIC RERESENTATION .............................10

Natural Aesthetic in 18th

-Century ...........................................................................................12

French Garden: Nature in Order ......................................................................................13

English Garden: Nature in Disinterestedness ..................................................................15

Boullée between Two Gardens ........................................................................................17

Boullée’s Collage of Beautiful, Sublime, and Picturesque .............................................18

Sentimental Transition in Space and Time ......................................................................22

Nature in Moral and Rational Models ....................................................................................26

2 NATURE IN COMPOSITION...............................................................................................30

Tableaux, a Self-sufficient Visual Structure ...........................................................................31

Panorama and Horizon ...........................................................................................................32

The Grand ...............................................................................................................................35

New Grammar in the Neoclassic Interlude .............................................................................39

3 NATURE IN SENTIMENT ...................................................................................................45

Re-creating Nature through Phenomenology .........................................................................45

Sublime as the Aesthetic Experience of Nature ..............................................................47

Death, the Most Sublime of All .......................................................................................49

Theatre of Nature .............................................................................................................54

The Mise-en-Œuvre of Nature ................................................................................................58

4 NATURE IN CONTEMPLATION ........................................................................................64

The Mourning Nature .............................................................................................................64

Cenotaph for Newton, the Reunion of Nature and Human ....................................................66

LIST OF REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................74

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................................................77

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

1-1 Painting of Funeral of Phocion, by Nicolas Poussin (1648). National Museum,

Cardiff. ...............................................................................................................................14

1-2 Painting of Harbor Scene with Grieving Heliades, by Claude Lorrain .............................15

1-3 J. Benoit, View of the Castle from the Southern Garden...................................................15

1-4 Drawing of La Bibliothèque Nationale, by E. Boullée ......................................................21

1-5 Detail of La Bibliothèque Nationale. .................................................................................22

1-6 Watercolor painting of Ruines et tombeaux, by Hubert Robert. ........................................26

1-7 Frontispiece of Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essai sur l'Architecture, by Charles Eisen. .......29

2-1 Drawing of Cirque deuxième projet, by E. Boullée...........................................................35

2-2 Drawing of Le Fort, by E Boullée. ...................................................................................38

2-3 Detail of Le Fort. ...............................................................................................................38

2-4 Section drawing of Eglise de Madeline, by E. Boullée. ....................................................44

3-1 Drawing of a hermitage gate and a hunting retreat , by Jean-Jacques Lequeu ..................46

3-2 Drawing of Nécropoles, by E. Boullée. .............................................................................47

3-3 Drawing of Funerary Monument, by E. Boullée. ..............................................................53

3-4 Detail of Funerary Monument. ..........................................................................................54

3-5 Drawing of Cenotaph proposal for the 1785 Grand Prix competition, by Pierre

Fontaine..............................................................................................................................54

3-6 Drawing of Cemetery Entrance by the Moonlight, by E. Boullée. ....................................57

3-7 Detail of Cemetery Entrance by the Moonlight. ................................................................57

3-8 Drawing of Cénotaphe en forme de pyramide, by E. Boullée ...........................................58

3-9 E. Boullée, Drawing of Cénotaphe Tronqué, by E. Boullée..............................................62

3-10 Section drawing of Cénotaphe Tronqué, by E. Boullée ....................................................63

4-1 Drawing of Cénotaphe de Newton, by E. Boullée. ............................................................72

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4-2 Drawing of l’effet de nuit intérieur, by by E. Boullée. ......................................................72

4-3 Section drawing of Temple of earth, by E. Boullée. ..........................................................73

8

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School

of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Architectural Studies

ETIENNE-LOUIS BOULLÉE’S VISION OF NATURE IN ARCHITECTURE

By

Liang Shui

May 2019

Chair: Hui Zou

Member: Vandana Baweja

Major: Architecture

Relations with what is called “nature” are often fundamental to the understanding of our

experience of the world, and therefore of our knowledge and our everyday life. Through

centuries artists and architects have attempted relentlessly to integrate nature into the creative

process. However, the meaning of nature is as ambiguous as it is complex and any attempt to

systemize it once and for all will end in failure as nature by itself is multifaceted construct in

constant evolution. Nevertheless, it is possible to examine specific narratives of nature in a

particular section of history, which will provide critically important archeological examples that

could potentially help today’s society to better understand our relations with nature. In this

regard, the thesis conducted a hermeneutic study of the 18th-century French architect Etienne-

Louis Boullée’s vision of nature by examining his architectural works from three major

perspectives: composition, sentience, and contemplative value. Boullée's architectural designs

are paradigmatic of the 18th-century French understanding of nature and at the same time they

represent the distillation of his critical thinking about nature. Boullée's architectural works are a

successful attempt to reconcile the infinite nature and finite mankind and moreover, they

9

provided today's architects with a way of articulating the abstract concept of nature through

tangible architectural language.

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CHAPTER 1

NATURE UNDER THE LIGHT OF ENLIGHTENMENT: 18TH

-CENTURY FRENCH

DISCOURSE ON NATURE AND ITS ARTISTIC RERESENTATION

It does not seem to me that there is any other way at all surer than to admire

Nature herself and, in general, to examine for a long time and very attentively in

what manner Nature...has arranged the surfaces on beautiful members.1

—Leon Battista Alberti

Treaties on Painting

Alberti stated in his book Treaties on Painting that it was equally important to imitate the

appearance nature as its governing laws and principles. The imitation of nature has been a long-

standing concept deeply rooted in the western culture since ancient Greece when Aristotle

described nature as the reality accessible to senses and the Stoics postulated the idea of Natura

sive Deus (God or Nature) which equated nature to the life-creating power. During the

Renaissance, Alberti expounded on the medieval dichotomy of natura naturans and natura

naturatas and asserted the imitation of nature as the fundamental principle of architectural design.

Over the course of western history, the understanding of imitation of nature was propelled to

constant changes under overlapped theoretical structures. Accordingly, the study of architecture

developed into the exploration of nature and its creative power. The intricate concept of nature

entailed many perplexing questions: What is nature? What is the imitation of nature? How does

architecture imitate nature? And how is nature related to human dwelling? These puzzling

questions became so intertwined that it was virtually impossible to untangle them by looking at

the whole landscape of architectural history. However, it is possible to procure certain

clarifications of these questions by reframing them in a certain historical time frame. The thesis

aims to set a discussion on the 18th-century French architect Etienne-Louis Boullée and his

vision of nature, as well as how he imitated and re-created nature through architectural

1 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Rocco Sinisgalli (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011),

55.

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representations. The thesis chooses Boullée as the research subject because Boullée’s theoretical

thinking exemplifies the 18th

-century philosophy of natural aesthetic that reshaped the neoclassic

understanding and artistic representation of nature, and at the same time it is unique in

articulating such philosophy in the form of architecture. The methodology of this thesis is to

apply historical hermeneutic study to Boullée's theoretical treaties Architecture, Essai sur Art

(1794), and his drawings. The thesis first develops arguments for the graphic characters of

Boullée's drawings and interweaves them with interpretations of his writing to elucidate how

Boullée visually articulated the imitation of nature through tangible architectural language. The

research then explores the sensational and phenomenological aspects of the architect's designs

and lastly, based on Boullée's personal experience recorded in his Essai, the thesis leaps to a

discussion on the relationship between mankind and nature and how Boullée enacted their

connection. It is my intention that the thesis can bring to today's architectural world a small

speck of critical understanding of humanity and its poetical dwelling within nature.

O nature! Qu’il est bien vrai de dire que tu es le livre des livres, la science

universelle! Non, nous ne pouvons rien sans toi! Mais si u recommences tous les

ans le cours le plus instructif, le plus intéressant, combine peu d’hommes assistant

à tes leçons et savent en profiter!2

Oh nature! It is true that you are the book of books, the universal knowledge! No,

we can do nothing without you! Although you restart each year the most

interesting and instructive course of study, how few men pay attention to your

lessons and know how to benefit from them!3

The presence of nature perpetuates the theoretical discourse of Etienne-Louis Boullée. In his

treaties Architecture, Essai sur l’Art, Boullée evoked the famous discussion about the conceptual

2Étienne-Louis Boullée, Essaie Sur l’Art, ed. Helen Rosenau (London: Tiranti, 1953), 43.

3 Unless otherwise stated, all English translations from French are my own. I could not seem to find any complete

translation of the Essai except some excerpts. I consider my translation not entirely unsuited for the purpose of the

clarity of expressing the general idea of the author. Some subtle details might be lost in the translation but I believe

it will not hinder the comprehension regarding the original text.

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origin of architecture between two most influential architects of the time, Claude Perrault and

Jean-Francois Blondel. Perrault, the architect of the Peristile du Louvre, advocated that

architecture was the “pure invention de l’imagination d’homme”4 whereas Blondel insisted that it

was nature that provided architecture with the creative ground. Boullée, taking the same stance

as his teacher Blondel, upheld the firm conviction that “il est incontestable qu’il n’y a pas d’idee

qui n’emane pas de la nature” (It is incontestable that there is no idea that does not derive from

nature).5 In many Boullée’s quasi-utopic projects one finds his attempt to recreate the ennobling

impression that nature made upon the spectator in the form of architecture. Nature to Boullée,

with its changing seasons and fleeting light, was a constantly shifting aesthetic construct

constituted of intricate logic and principles that ought to be regarded as the paradigm of

architectural design.6 This particular appreciation of nature was typical of the 18

th-century desire

for an alternative and secularized model of aesthetic experience independent from monarchical

power and religious authority. To understand the relations between nature and Boullée’s

architecture, one must first understand how the philosophy of natural aesthetic came to its

formation under the cultural climate of the 18th

century.

Natural Aesthetic in 18th

-Century

Until the late 17th

century the notion of nature was still informed by church and

monarchical authority exemplified by the supreme royal landscape design, le jardin à la

française (the so-called French garden). The courtly French order later gave way to its liberal

counterpart, le jardin à l’anglaise (the so-called English garden) promoted by the thriving

philosophy in natural aesthetic. There was certainly a heated debate between the French garden

4 Boullée,44.

5 Ibid., 41.

6 Ibid., 40-42.

13

and English garden regarding which one of them should prevail in terms of representing the truth

of nature accurately. The result of this debate is not of interest for the thesis as it constitutes

merely an interesting historical anecdote, nor is there any point to decide which garden acquired

the truth of nature for nature is no longer an objective object once it enters the man-made cultural

construct. The eminent subject here is the aesthetic of nature, as in how it is understood,

interpreted and represented in such construct.

French Garden: Nature in Order

In the 17th

century, the French garden was still the unchallenged landscape model of

Europe. The intention of the French garden to display monarchical authority through the great

perspective and the perfectly controlled symmetry was as obvious as its desire to dominate

nature. The unbalanced dynamic between the secular power and nature was the direct result of

French classicism and Newtonian-Cartesian ideology that regarded nature as an untamed force to

be subjugated by humanity. The expansion of such stance on nature was commonly witnessed in

landscape paintings as well, such as Nicolas Poussin’s The Funeral of Phocion and Claud

Lorrain’s Landscape with Cattles and Peasants (Figure 1-1 and Figure 1-2). In both paintings,

the submissive relationship between nature and human power was overtly illustrated: forest was

divided to give view to the distant castle on the hill; wild grass field gave way to the sinuating

road to bring out the theatricality of the site whereas the intimidating mountains were discreetly

tucked away in the background.

The most sterling architectural example of the French order is to be found in the Château

de Vaux-le-Vicomte (Figure 1-3) outside of Paris. The building was laid out in the late 1650s by

the renowned French landscape designer Andre le Notre who was also the author of the garden

of Versailles. The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte embodied the very essence of French landscape

paradigm: everything was arranged in absolute symmetry, flattening the existing nature so as to

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create the impeccably ordered arrangement of parterres, fountains, and tree rows and reflecting

pools. A grand perspective was set to be observed from the central chamber at one end of the

terrain, in opposition to the statue of Hercules on the other end of the chateau, standing as the

reference of the ancient era to which the time of Enlightenment zealously aspired. The alleyways

were arranged at the same intervals by statues and fountains, perfectly placed along the

symmetric axis. The Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte presented an extremely logical, rational and

majestic imagery of monarchical authority that subdued the wild nature.

As Jacques Boyceau wrote in the Traité du jardinage selon les raison et l’art de la nature,

French gardening theory in the 17th

century saw no conflict between nature and symmetry and

was dedicated to the highly rational, regular and geometric landscape model conceived to

emphasize the possibility of fine art to control and transform the most violent and chaotic nature.

From this perspective, it would therefore be erroneous to assume that nature’s power was

negated in this concept; on the contrary, the French garden model acknowledged the immensely

compelling character of nature, only with the additional assumption of its defective state and the

unbridled ambition to harness its power.

Figure 1-1. Painting of Funeral of Phocion, by Nicolas Poussin (1648). National Museum,

Cardiff.

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Figure 1-2. Painting of Harbor Scene with Grieving Heliades, by Claude Lorrain (1640).

Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne.

Figure 1-3. J. Benoit, View of the Castle from the Southern Garden, from Wikipedia.

English Garden: Nature in Disinterestedness

The dominance of French garden eventually gave way to a new thriving force known as

le jardin à l’anglaise which first appeared in the 18th

century in England exemplified by the great

English landscape designer, Lancelot “Capability” Brown who left an abundance of

extraordinary garden designs around England. Interestingly the transition from the French garden

16

to the English Garden was not instigated by professionals in the discipline of landscape design. It

was the intellectual men of letters who pioneered the revolution of aesthetic philosophy. In the

18th

century, philosophers started to regard nature as the paradigmatic aesthetic experience. The

similar appreciation of nature was also found in what was known as natural religion which was

set to reconcile the traditional Christian religion with the contradictory empirical ideology that

had little tolerance with myth and miracle revelation. The natural religion deemed nature as the

agglomeration of all beauties and therefore its existence must be the proof of God’s benevolence.

Along the development of the philosophy of natural aesthetic came the concept of

disinterestedness conceived to purge all aesthetic experience of personal interest. The concept

was first elaborated by English scholars Lord Shaftsbury, Joseph Addison and Francis Hutcheson

and brought to exhaustion by Immanuel Kant who formally instituted the idea of nature as the

exemplary object of all beauty, completing the discourse around disinterestedness. On a more

rational and logical level, the appreciation of nature in absolute purity was also manifested in

Diderot’s life work the Encyclopedia where he claimed that art ought to imitate true nature:

Les productions de l’Art seront communes, imparfaites et faibles, tant qu’on ne se

proposera pas une imitation plus rigoureuse de la Nature. La Nature est lente dans

son opération. S’agit-il d’éloigner, de rapprocher, d’unir, de diviser, d’amollir, de

condenser, de durcir, de liquéfier, de dissoudre, elle s’avance a son but par les

degrés les plus insensibles.7

The works of art would be common, imperfect and thin if the artist does not

propose an imagination more rigorously to Nature. Nature is slow in its own

operation; it is about distancing itself, approaching itself, unifying, separating,

ameliorating, condensing, hardening, liquefying, and dissolving. Nature advances

in its own pace in the most undetectable manner possible.

The new appreciation of nature resulted in its different artistic representation, particularly in the

inherently intertwined arts of paining and landscape design. The leading figure of English garden

7 Denis Diderot, Pensées Sur l’interprétation de La Nature, ed. Colas Duflo (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), 97.

17

“Capability” Brown castigated the overly emblematic nature of traditional French garden and its

lack of natural authenticity; and as a response to the problematic design aesthetic, the

revolutionists created the concept of le jardin expressif (expressive garden) to build an

immersive and spontaneous experience for viewers by ameliorating artistically real natural

scenes while preserving their authenticity to everyday-life experience. Among the scholars who

initiated the development of English garden is Joseph Addison whose contribution to the English

garden model mostly takes the forms of essays and letters (It is intriguing to remark on how men

of letters instead of professional architects performed as the early engine of a landscape

movement). Addison postulated in his book The Spectator that the constituents of the beautiful

landscape were naturalness and rich diversity in opposite to the artificial arrangement of the

French order.8 Addison’s aesthetic predilection towards the innate quality of nature reflected the

reversed role between art and nature where art was no longer the dictator of the wild landscape

but became an ancillary expression of its feral essence.

Boullée between Two Gardens

The aesthetic and theoretical construct of Boullée’s architectural designs, when compared

to that of French and English garden, present a multitude of divergence and similarity,

conforming to neither the French regularity nor English Spontaneity. In his theoretical treaties

Essai sur Art, Boullée laid down three cardinal aesthetic principles of architectural design

stemming from his observation of the beauty of regular geometries:

Pour quoi la figure des corps réguliers se saisit-elle au premier aspect? C’est que

leurs formes sont simples, que leurs faces sont régulières, et qu’elle se

répète… La symétrie plait…parce qu’elle présente l’évidence, et que l’âme, qui

chercha sans cesse à concevoir, embrasse et saisit sans peine l’ensemble des

8 Joseph Addison, The Spectator, ed. Donald Frederic Bond and Richard Steele, 477 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1965), 3.

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objets qu’elle présente…La variété nous plait parce qu’elle satisfait un besoin de

l’âme qui, par sa nature, aime à s’étendre et à embrasser de nouveaux objets.9

Why we perceive regular bodies at first glance? This is by the virtue of their

simple forms, their regular faces, and their repetitions…The symmetry pleases us

because its presence is self-evident and that our souls look incessantly to

comprehend, embrace, and capture figures that present themselves in whole…The

variety delights us because it satisfies the desire of the soul to embrace new

objects by extending itself.

Boullée’s predilection towards regularity and symmetry remained the taste of French classicism

in accordance with the rational aesthetic of Chateau de Vaux-le-Vicomte and le Palais de

Versailles, whereas his third principle, variety, seemed to have more affinity with Addison’s

postulation about the desired effect of “variety” which was to replace the prevailing regularity of

French gardens.10

The similarity and discrepancies found in Boullée’s architectural designs in

comparison to French and English gardens implied the reconciliation of these two opposite

landscape models in Boullée’s designs and his unique understanding of nature that made such

reconciliation possible.

Boullée’s Collage of Beautiful, Sublime, and Picturesque

The clarification of the notion of aesthetic in terms of disinterestedness helped

disassociate the aesthetic perception of nature from personal interest and thereby laid down the

intellectual ground for three major concepts quintessential to natural aesthetic: beautiful, sublime

and picturesque.11

9 Boullée, 35.

10 Addison, 3.

11 Allen Carlson, “Environmental Aesthetics,” ed. Edward Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 27

(2015): 58–76.

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The concept of beauty is independent of sublime and picturesque. Edmund Burke, the

English philosopher that partly founded the philosophic framework for aesthetics defined beauty

as:

By Beauty, as distinguished from the Sublime, I mean that quality or those

qualities in bodies by which they cause love, or some passion analogous to it, I

distinguish love, or the satisfaction which arises to the mind upon contemplating

anything beautiful, from desire, which is an energy of the mind that hurries us on

to the possession of certain objects.12

Burke’s vision of beauty is decisively different from the long-standing classic doctrines that bind

beauty to the proportion and symmetry based on the analogy of the human body; In Burke’s view,

things perceived as beautiful are characterized by their clarity and self-evidence and in this

regard his conception of beauty bears a certain connotation to Boullée’s definition of regularity.

The delicate characters of beauty were associated by Burke with objects of relatively small scale

and smooth surface that is the “principal cause of pleasure to the touch, taste, smells, and hearing,

it will be easily admitted a constituent of visual beauty.”13

The sublime is that which is vast, immense, overwhelming and terrifying. It approximates

the ides of beauty as an aesthetic experience but differs in physiological and psychological terms.

Burke thinks that the origin of the sublime comes from pain in opposite to pleasure which

constitutes the source of beauty.

The concept of picturesque resides in the middle ground between beauty and sublime. It

was also the notion most frequently applied in the practice of landscape design during the 18th

century, first by English gardeners who looked to recreate the beautiful “picture-like” scenery

from the classic Greco-Roma paintings. William Gilpin, one of the creators of the term

12

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Oxford

World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 83.

13 Ibid., 137.

20

“picturesque,” advocated in his book Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty that a picturesque

view was often rich in the variety of elements, lavish in curious details and expressive in

atmospheric rendition:

Disputes about beauty might perhaps be involved in less confusion, if a

distinction were to be established, which certainly exists, between such objects as

are beautiful, and such as are picturesque, between those, which please the eye in

their natural state; and those, which please from some quality, capable of being

illustrated by painting.14

There is no direct reference in the Essai that suggests the influence of natural aesthetic on

Boullée’s design philosophy. But it is unlikely a coincidence that most of his reputed theoretical

achievements and proposals happened to be concentrated at the same historical time where the

three concepts beauty, sublime, and picturesque were reaching a prominent position in aesthetic

philosophy. Boullée’s architectural drawings present a collage of these aesthetic concepts.

Boullée was, for example, fond of employing elementary geometries of unadorned surfaces for it

spoke to the mind easily. The smoothness of the surface and legibility of the project clearly

answered to the concept of beauty; however the notion of beautiful was contradicted by the

immense dimension, which was set by Boullée intentionally to evoke the feeling of awe and

terror, a signature character of the concept of sublime. The character of picturesque was less

apparent in Boullée’s designs, at least in the literal sense partially due to the fact that Boullée had

very little drawing of direct depiction of landscape and the concept was inherently a landscape

one that simply by nature was relatively less compatible with architectural design. However

certain projects of Boullée were able to translate the concept of picturesque into an interior

context. In the drawing of the project l’Expansion de la Bibliothèque Nationale, he set up an

arrangement that would provide the most space at the least expense, vaulting an existing

14

William Gilpin, Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty, on Picturesque Travel, and on Sketching Landscape.

(Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 2001), 3-4.

21

courtyard (Figure 1-4). His defense of the project was based on the perspective of functionalism,

stating that his proposal provided most of the space for storing books.15

Utility of the project

aside, the artistic representation of the interior resonated strongly with the essence of picturesque

(Figure 1-5) in some representation details: Boullée was so diligent in rendering the most

exquisite details that he drew the books one by one; the visitors of the library were dressed

deliberately in ancient Greek robes to allude to the academic allure typical of the 18th

-century

Greco-Rome fantasy; the figures were arranged in an intriguing way like pictorial elements in a

landscape painting; the light falling from the ceiling added a gentle final touch to soften the

atmosphere. Boullée’s imagination of the interaction between space and people constituted a rich

palette that brought three aesthetic concepts together and merged them into a new color that

Boullée used to paint his own universe.

Figure 1-4. Drawing of La Bibliothèque Nationale, by E. Boullée (1780). National Library of

France, Paris. Courtesy of Jean-Claude Lemangny,Visionary Architects (1968),

Figure 36.

15

Boullée, 76.

22

Figure 1-5. Detail of La Bibliothèque Nationale. Courtesy of Jean-Claude Lemangny,Visionary

Architects (1968), Figure 37.

Sentimental Transition in Space and Time

Towards the end of the 18th

century, the concept of picturesque continued to be expanded.

Landscape gardens were regarded as places of emotions and memories, offering to visitors a

complete experience that went beyond visual stimulations. The complexity of sensual experience

was reinforced by landscape designers’ attempts to build up a transition between space and time.

In many gardens, historical references were gathered and dispersed all around the terrains; ruins

were kept in place with the rustic appearance intact as a reminder of the ancient era. Horace

Walpole in The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening commented on the use of ruins as an

active player of landscape design: “He leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden.”16

The allegory described vividly the change in media of landscape representation. The exemplary

nature of landscape paintings on which the former garden design was based on had its innately

confined frame which excluded the factor of time. The new concept of landscape improvement

reached far beyond the expression of spatiality and offered visitors a journey through time in

their individual perceptions.

16

Horace Walpole, The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening: Journals of Visits to Country Seats (New York:

Garland, 1982), 313.

23

The newly discovered temporal value of historical architecture echoed with the

increasing use of ancient motif in cemetery design, mainly that of the pyramid. Hubert Robert,

the renowned French landscape painter used extensively pyramidal shapes to erect the image of

sorrow and nobleness (Figure 1-6). Similar appropriation of historical relics was also frequently

encountered in a series of cenotaph project designed by Boullée in which the symbol of pyramid

was assigned, in Boullée’s words, the eruptive power of nature.17

The temporal aspect of

architectural space is fully articulated by crossing boundaries in history and aesthetic experience.

The transition from space to time was later to be further elaborated by Boullée into a discourse of

light and shadow, which the thesis will expound in Chapter 3.

The emphasis on creating an immersive experience in gardens alluded to certain

sentimentalism that regarded personal perspective and feeling as important accounts of designing

narrative. No longer governed by the rational order of French gardens, the new garden genre was

to be conceived with “no center, no focus, no dominant aesthetic idea or message, signifying a

truth that ‘nature’ itself possessed and revealed.”18

Curious details were placed as “accidental

irregularities” to keep the visitors surprised and pleased, not knowing what awaited them at the

next turning point. Through the kinesthetic experience, nature was experienced and appreciated

in motion outside the limitation of a static painting frame, opening up a dynamic dialogue

between the landscape and spectators.

The kinesthetic experience is paradigmatic of Boullée’s works of cemetery designs

whose primary concern is erecting the image of mortality, a concept inherently characterized by

temporality. To enhance the melancholy feeling of the cenotaph designs with experiential force,

17

Boullée ,48.

18 Maiken Umbach, “Classicism, Enlightenment and the ‘Other’: Thoughts on Decoding Eighteenth–Century Visual

Culture,” Art History 25 (June 2002): 327.

24

Boullée followed his teacher Jean-Jacques Blondel’s advice to lower the level of the cemetery

from the surrounding terrain to invite the spectators to the entrance of cemetery by descending,

thereby evoking a powerful effect of kinesthesia. The transition from the ground level to

subterranean plane prefigured the journey to the afterlife by conjuring up human kind’s latent

and imbued anxiety of mortality. Boullée’s desire to transform space into a kinesthetic

experience to deliver the power of nature was analogous to that of many of his contemporaries in

the realm of landscape design.

The growing importance of sentimentalism in aesthetic philosophy also encouraged

architects to explore the possibility of combining the abstract natural effects with architectural

designs, and light is among the various natural phenomenon the instrument that translates

abstraction to tangible articulation. “C’est la lumière qui fait l’architecture!”19

Boullée wrote in

the Essai, emphasizing that the proper character of architecture could only be articulated through

various light effect. The prominence of light in forming appropriate spiritual experience was

reiterated by Boullée’s contemporary Le Camus de Megeres in his comment about the interior

light condition of the Church of Val-de-Grace:

The interior of the church of Val-de-Grace, that of the Sorbonne and that of the

Collège Mazarin or Collège des Quatre Nations are such as to inspire quiet

meditation. Observe how the openings are arranged: a half-light prevails, our

sentiments are fixed, there are no distractions, and the soul concentrates within

itself. Cast an eye on our Theaters: the Opera in Paris, made ready for the Ball,

and that of Versailles, above all, inspire sentiments related to the diversions, the

entertainments, the festivities that they promise. The last named unites decorum

with grandeur. It is an enchantment, in which there is everything to occupy the

mind and nothing to hold it captive.20

19

Boullée ,48.

20 Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières, The Genius of Architecture, or, The Analogy of That Art with Our Sensations,

trans. Robin Middleton and David Britt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 78.

25

Le Camus’s view on the “half-light” echoed with Boullée in regards that controlling direct

natural light was an effective approach to generate a mysterious and serene interior atmosphere

for sacred buildings, and moreover, to keep the sentiment of spectators remain at a tranquil, non-

disturbed state. In the Essai Boullée advocated that to properly deliver the character of

architecture to onlookers, their sentiment must be protected from potential distractions and focus

only on what was essential to their perception:

Le sentiment qui en résulte constitue son caractere; ce que j’apelle mettre du

caractère dans un ouvrage, c’est l’art d’employer dans une production quelconque,

tous les moyens propres et relatifs au sujet que l’on traite; en sorte que le

spectateur n’éprouve d’autre sentiments que ceux que le sujet doit comporter, qui

lui sont essentiels, et dont il est susceptible.21

The sentiment that we feel makes characters of architecture; what I call by

character of architecture is, in any design, the art of using all possible ways

appropriate and relevant to the subject, so the onlookers only feel the sentiments

that are essential to them and to which they are susceptible.

This view on the relation between spiritual practice and sentiment was reflected in his design of

the Church of Madeleine, where Boullée arranged a columnar screen and occulted skylights to

prevent the visitors from being disturbed by the robust direct lighting.22

21

Boullée, 96.

22 Ibid., 45-47.

26

Figure 1-6. Watercolor painting of Ruines et Tombeaux, by Hubert Robert (1778). Musée du

Louvre, Paris. Courtesy of Sarah Catala and Gabriel Wick, Hubert Robert et la

Fabrique des Jardin (2017), Figure 29.

Nature in Moral and Rational Models

The acceptance of nature and the thriving of natural aesthetic reflected a much more

important revolution of the late 18th century: the quest for greater naturalism. The traditional

French classicism dictum decides that art ought to imitate the ideal nature governed by a

universal rational order. But for late- Enlightenment thinkers of natural aesthetic such as Diderot,

this ideal nature prescribed by classicism is artificial and forced, standing opposite to the real

nature which is inherently ever-changing and ought to be taken as the foundation of fine art.23

In

23

Denis Diderot, “Beautiful,” in The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative, trans. Philippe Bonin

(Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, 2006), 160-170.

27

the rational model of architecture, nature was regarded as the source of architectural legitimacy.

Abbé Laugier, a contemporaneous architectural theorist of Diderot as well as the teacher of

Boullée, created a parable of the origins of architecture based on the natural hut to clarify the

naturalist argument and ground it with rational deduction:

Il en effet de l’architecture comme de tous les autres arts: ses principes sont

fondés sur la simple nature, et dans les procèdes de celle-ci se trouvent clairement

marquée les règles de celle-là. Considérons l’homme dans sa première origine

sans autres secours, sans suture guide que l’instinct naturel et ses besoins. Il lui

faut un lieu de repos. Au bord d’un tranquille ruisseau, il aperçoit un gazon; la

verdure plait à ses yeux…il est vrai que le froid et le chaud feront tenir leur

incommodité dans sa maison ouverte de toute partie; mais alors il remplira

l’entre-deux des piliers, et se trouvera garanti.24

It is for architecture as for the other arts: its principles are founded in simple

nature, and in the proceeding of nature are found clearly marked the rules of

architecture. Let us consider man in his first state without assistance, without any

guide other than the natural instincts. He needs a place to rest. At the bank of a

tranquil stream he spies a lawn; its young grasses please his eyes and its softness

invited him…It is true that cold and hot will bother him inside his house; but he

will fill in the space between the pillars and find himself secure. Such is the way

of simple nature: art owes its birth to the imitation of these proceedings…It is by

staying close to the simplicity of this first model that one will avoid the essential

defaults and that one will achieve true perfection.

Laugier’s parable of the primitive hut was then rendered allegorically by Charles Eisen for the

frontispiece of the later edition of the former’s treaties Essai sur l’architecture (Figure 1-7). The

etching depicts a goddess, possibly symbolizing Nature (and architect), pointing to the primitive

hut with a winged cherub.25

As illustrated by the etching, the hut is impractical, rustic, and highly

inhabitable; and yet it is pure in its representativeness of Laugier’s naturalist paradigm that

architectural principles are founded in natural simplicity. Boulle was later to interpret his

teacher’s idea of natural simplicity into elementary mass in the form of Euclidean geometries.

24

Abbe Laugier, Essai sur l’Architecture (Paris: Duchesene, 1755), 8.

25 Richard Etlin, Symbolic Space: French Enlightenment Architecture and its Legacy (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1994), 93.

28

It is important to point out that Laugier’s primitive hut was not an empirical imitation or

an anthropological inquiry into the first house of mankind as this hut has not been constructed by

human force; rather, the hut was a Platonic idea anchored by reason and invested with the

primitive status of nature. It belongs to the same realm of discourse as Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s

idea of the natural man, a hypothetical first human grounded in empirical reasons whose true

happiness and virtue come from the inspiration of the natural world. Nature in the late-

enlightenment stage was recognized not only as an aesthetic paradigm, but also as the

authoritative figure which highlighted in contrast what was deemed injustice and errors in human

moral. This particular relationship between nature and the exploration of one’s self will be

further discussed in detail.

Here has been laid out a general discourse regarding the notion of nature and how it

developed throughout the century of enlightenment. The thesis could only offer a glimpse of the

broad social and cultural construct of the 18th

century in relation to the ever-evolving narrative of

nature, in hope to smooth the understanding of the relation between nature and Boullée’s

architectural designs, as well as its aesthetic connotations.

29

Figure 1-7. Frontispiece of Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essai sur l'Architecture, by Charles Eisen

(1755). Courtesy of Richard A. Etlin , Symbolic Space (1994), Figure 50.

30

CHAPTER 2

NATURE IN COMPOSITION

Boullée’s architectural drawings are admittedly the most direct outlook of the fascinating

world of his creative mind. Rarely presenting unfinished sketches, Boullée endowed his

architectural oeuvres with the finest artistic rendition layered by a ghostly monochrome hue. The

masterful craft of his drawing is an inevitable result of his years of professional training as the

apprentice of the famous painter Jean-Baptiste Pierre.1 Upon examining the exquisite drawings

of Boullée, it comes clear that Boullée saw more possibility in conveying his ideas in painting

than in practicality of building, making his artistic representation of architecture the linchpin of

his design philosophies. In comparison to his contemporary Ledoux who had a more successful

career in the market of commission, Boullée had relatively little built project to leave behind;

however his architectural legacy prevailed in his theoretical treaties Essai sur l’art and the ink

wash drawings that he bequeathed to the National Library of France in Paris.

The drawings of Boullée ought not to be considered as mere explanatory graphic

expressions of his ideas architectural proposals; rather, as Emil Kauffmann poignantly said, they

are “the direct expression of his artistic will.”2 For Boullée, the properly conceived and executed

drawing is quintessentially the art of architecture itself; it was the tableaux of architecture

founded on the most profound understanding of nature and its various effects:

Les tableaux du ressort de l’architecture ne peuvent être faits sans la plus

profonde connaissance de la nature: C’est de ses effets que nait la Poésie de

l’architecture. C’est la vraiment ce qui constitue l’architecture un art; et c’est

aussi ce qui porte cet art a la sublimité. Les tableaux en architecture se produisent,

en donnant au sujet que l’on traite, le caractère propre d’où nait l’effet relatif.3

1 Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, and Lequeu (Philadelphia: American

Philosophical Society, 1952), 453.

2 Ibid., 467.

3Étienne-Louis Boullée, Essaie Sur l’Art, ed. Helen Rosenau (London: Tiranti, 1953), 41.

31

It is impossible to create the imagery of architecture without having the most

profound knowledge of nature: it is from the effect of nature that is born the

poetry of architecture and it is such poetry that makes architecture an art and

sublime art. The imagery of architecture will be created when the subject that we

design is given the character that creates the desired effect.

Before proceeding further into details regarding Boullée’s artistic representation and his vision of

nature, it is necessary to understand the word “tableaux” within its specific 18th-century

timeframe on account of its highly frequent appearance in Boullée’s treaties and its overly

simplified contemporary translation which often causes misinterpretation and confusion.

Tableaux, a Self-sufficient Visual Structure

Michel Foucault stated that “the center of the knowledge in 17th

and 18th

centuries is

tableau”.4 Indeed the concept of tableaux occupied a rather prominent position in the cultural

discourse of 18th

-century. Encompassing an innumerous account of disciplines in its later

blossom, the concept of tableaux first budded in the art of painting. Claude Perrault, in his essay

“Parallels des anciens et des modernes,” classified the art of painting into three categories; the

first two which were the representation of figure and expression of passion had already been

developed les anciens artistes as Perrault called. The third category, la composition du tout

ensemble (the composition of all), was still a bright new idea at the time.5 The new genre of

painting was quickly recognized and translated into English by Lord Shaftesbury in obvious

analogy to literature to replace the general term “picture.”6 In Shaftesbury’s definition, the word

tableau has two meanings: the first one in the literal sense refers to a surface bearing an artistic

representation, and the second one, which bears more interest for this thesis, refers to a visual

4 Michel Foucault, Les Mots et Les Choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 89.

5 Thomas Puttfarken, The Discovery of Pictorial Composition: Theories of Visual Order in Painting 1400-1800

(New Haven: London, Zale University Press, 2000), 280.

6 Ibid., 281.

32

structure conceived as an organic whole existing in a coherent, mutually sustaining relationship

with its constituent parts the same as the different members in an organic body.

Under the contemporaneous understanding of the term, the word tableau (tableaux in

plural) within the context of Boullée’s drawings hence refers to a self-sustained visual construct

of intricate interconnections between the constituents and the whole. The composition of

drawing, the exquisite details and the moderate use of monochrome color constituted the

vocabularies and grammar of Boullée’s theoretical framework and hence are central to the

understanding of his architectural works.

Panorama and Horizon

Boullée’s architectural representations are perceived primarily in frontal views with the

main structure situated in the middle and secondary structures extending to the edge of the frame

(Figure 2-1), framing the drawings in an elongated composition. The horizontal outlook of

Boullée’s drawings shares a striking similarity to the panoramic view that newly emerged at the

end of the 18th

century. Perhaps such similarity was no more than a coincidence in art history,

but Boullée’s preference of quasi-panoramic view over the predominant bird’s-eye view cannot

be passed only as a personal aesthetic fancy.

Until the late 18th

century, the most commonly applied viewing technique was the bird’s-

eye view. This type of view situates the viewer at an impossibly elevated ground from which

they are able to perceive the totality of landscape all at once. The emotive power of the bird’s-

eye view is undoubtedly compelling in its immediacy for it constitutes a visual simulacrum of

the perspective of God. However, the greatest merit of the bird’s eye view is also its gravest flaw

in regards to the lack of true human perspective; in other words, the visual impact cast on the

viewers is strange and foreign, disconnected with reality and the human recollection. This

disengaging disadvantage found its remedy in the invention of panorama by Scottish portraitist

33

Robert Barker who exhibited a painted landscape in 360-degree view on a circular canvas strip

surrounding the viewers. The introduction of the panorama to landscape painting inaugurated a

new mode of vision that was both subjective and self-reflexive in the way it isolated and

controlled what it was possible to see. The spectator of the panorama would have to engage in an

immersive movement along the elongated painting to perceive and learn the entirety of the

landscape by reconstructing it in his mind through the recollection of memory, thereby realizing

the limit of human vision, making the whole experience intimate and closer to reality.

In Boullée’s architectural drawings one finds a panoramic composition. The onlooker

was placed from afar with his viewpoint traversed by the symmetry axis; the entirety of the

architecture and landscape were perceived at once as if through a horizontal window. The

panoramic frame opened up the immense landscape to the viewer and filled him with joy that

“nous procurent, sur la terre, les grands spectacles de la nature” (we obtained from the earth and

the grand spectacles of nature). In the simulacrum of real human perspective, the panoramic

drawings of Boullée delivered to the viewers an interactive experience with which their souls and

bodies were familiar. As Boullée stated, when we perceived whatever was grand we rejoiced and

delighted because we all have experienced the joy of discovering the view after climbing on top

of a magnificent mountain.7 By placing the viewer at a natural, human point of view, the

panoramic composition of Boullée’s drawing offers an imagery susceptible to the viewer’s

memory through the process of recollection (in the example given by Boullée the memory

referred to sight viewing from mountaintop), thereby evoking feelings that are more personal,

more sincere, and more familiar to human sensibility.

7 Boullée, 48.

34

The panoramic composition of Boullée’s drawing brought out the important concept of

the horizon, which had always been a critical mental construct in western architectural culture.

Horizon was historically perceived as the visual reference that defined the in-between limits of

the sky and the earth, an omnipresent representation of the concept of separation and continuity

in the visible world, and a form of universal measurement. This long-standing understanding

about the horizon was interpreted by Boullée with a subtle twist by which the measuring role of

the horizon is substituted by nature that helped man perceive the world accurately via assigning

different scales to different objects:

Ce n’est pas par la grandeur constante de chaque objet que nous pouvons juger de

l’étendue, en ce que les objets qui sont contenus dans un espace quelconque, nous

font juger du contenant. Sans cette assignation particulière des choses; quel

jugement pourrions-nous porter et quelle comparaison juste pourrions-nous

faire?... Rapprochons–nous donc des jouissances que nous procurent, sur la terre,

les grands spectacles de la nature. Ce sont eux qui nous permettront les

comparaisons, les calculs, et qui nous donneront une idée nette de ce que nous

devons entendre par le grand, pour en faire une application particulière à l’art.8

Is it not by the constant size of each object that we are able to judge the distances,

for what is contained in a certain space enables us to judge what contains it.

Without this particular assignation of size, how can we judge and what kind of

comparison can we carry out? ... Let us move closer to the joy that the grand

spectacle of Nature on earth gives us. It is the spectacle of nature that allows us to

the comparison and calculus (of measure and scale), and gives us the clear idea

what we understand as grand so that the particular application (of such a grand

spectacle) can be applied to art.

As explained previously, Boullée’s tableau was a self-sufficient organic whole, therefore it must

be equipped with its own scale to which all the constituents could be measured. This scale was

undoubtedly the vast horizon looming in the backdrop as it was “not only an imaginary line but

also a structure that holds together the individual elements of a particular situation by the

8 Ibid.

35

continuity of reference.”9 In other words, nature manifested its role of the universal scale in the

form of the tangible horizon, making it susceptible to architectural “manipulation” in the way

that it can be better integrated into the creative design process.

Figure 2-1. Drawing of Cirque deuxième projet, by E. Boullée (year unknown). National Library

of France, Paris. Courtesy of Jean-Claude Lemangny,Visionary Architects (1968),

Figure 33.

The Grand

If Boullée’s designs were built, they would probably stand taller than most of historical

monuments. The particular panoramic composition could be considered to a certain degree as a

necessary framing strategy to accommodate the most distinctive character of Boullée’s

architecture, the colossal dimension, a particular form of presentation described by Jacques

Derrida as “almost too large for any presentation.”10

It is with the deepest conviction that “La

noblesse nait surtout de l’art de savoir offirir de grande images (the nobleness comes from the art

of creating grand images),” that Boullée repeatedly endowed with his creations with the colossal

dimension (Figure 2-2 and Figure 2-3).11

9 Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of

Production (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004), 390.

10 Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 125.

11 Boullée, 101.

36

It must be made clear that the quality of grandeur is not merely a concern of size; in fact,

Boullée never supported the idea of “the bigger, the better.” In his strident critique on the

St.Pierre de Rome Basilica, Boullée discerned the notion of grand from that of gigantic:

Pourquoi donc la Basilique de St. Pierre de Rome parait–elle bien moins grande

qu’elle ne l’est en effet? Cet intolérable défaut provient de ce que, loin d’offrir le

tableau de l’espace, par le nombre d’objets que doit naturellement contenir une

grande étendue; l’Architecte a réduit l’effet de son ensemble, en donnant aux

parties qui le composent, une proportion colossale; et en croyant selon

l’expression des artistes, faire grand, il a fait gigantesque.12

Then why the St. Pierre Basilica of Rome appears less grand than it is in reality?

This intolerable blemish derives from the failure of offering the image of space by

the numerous objects that the great expansion should naturally contain. The

architect has reduced the effect of the building’s great mass, by giving to its

components the colossal proportion; instead of making the image of grand, the

architect made gigantesque.

The phenomenon of gigantesque, in Boullée’s view, comes from the architect’s mishandling of

proportion between the parts and the whole. St. Pierre de Rome Basilica’s reduced visual impact

was the direct result of the discord between the constituent details and the general mass of the

edifice. True grandness according to Boullée stems from the properly composed proportion that

the space can naturally contain, and is therefore inherently beautiful:

Il est donc vrai que le grand s’allie nécessairement avec le beau, et sous

différentes acceptions, soit que les objets nous soient agréable, soit encore qu’ils

nous fassent horreur. Paraître grand, en quoique ce soit, c’est annoncer des

qualités supérieures.13

It is hence true that the grand is necessarily beautiful under all different aspects,

whether it appears horrible or agreeable. Appearing grand is to announce the

superior virtue.

To further elucidate the concept of grandeur in order to establish a tangible theoretical structure

that could be applied methodologically, Boullée advocated in the Essai that “l’art de faire grand

12

Ibid., 47.

13 Boullée, 48.

37

en architecture provident d’une combinaison ingénieuse des parties avec le tout (the art of

creating grand images comes from the ingenious combination of parts with the whole).”14

The

emphasis on the causal relation between architectural components and the aesthetic outcome was

paradigmatic of the concept of tableau which was predominant in the field of architecture, music,

and literature during the 18th century. All constituents ought to be arranged in coherence to form

the most significant mass that instigates the noblest feelings in onlookers. Crediting nature for

having inspired him the idea of“combinaison ingénieuse,” Boullée described in detail the

aesthetic characters of what was considered an image of grand in the Essai:

A l’imitation de la nature, l’art de rendre les grandes images en architecture,

consiste a disposer les corps qui forment l’ensemble général, de manière qu’ils

ayant beaucoup de jeu, que leur masses aient un mouvement noble, majestueux, et

qu’elles soient susceptibles du plus grand développement.15

As in nature, the art of creating grand images in architecture lies in the disposition

of volumes in the way that there will be many plays between them, that their

masses will have a majestic movement and the volumes will have the fullest

possible development.

Although Boullée still applied classical architectural elements such as freestanding columns and

pediments in his projects, and his theories on the “combinaison ingénieuse” resonated strongly

with Vitruvius’ idea of eurythmia defined as the “beauty and fitness in the adjustments of the

members that is found when the members of a work are of a height suited to their breadth, of a

breadth suited to their length, and, in a word, when they all correspond symmetrically.”16

The

way in which Boullée arranged these elements were utterly different from any precedent

Vitruvian references, and the actual visual results are even more so. Boullée was not the only

14

Ibid., 98.

15 Ibid., 47.

16 Vitruvius Marcus, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 15.

38

adventurous architect who challenged Vitruvius’s classical canon in an attempt to explore the

new architectural paradigm; in fact, in 18th

-century France, Many prominent figures in

architecture such as Laugier, Cordemoy and Blondel, each in their proper way and modesties,

tried to form a new architectural grammar to give architecture a new identity.

Figure 2-2. Drawing of Le Fort, by E Boullée (1781). National Library of France, Paris.

Courtesy of Jean-Claude Lemangny, Visionary Architects (1968), Figure 23.

Figure 2-3. Detail of Le Fort. Courtesy of Jean-Claude Lemangny, Visionary Architects (1968),

Figure 23.

39

New Grammar in the Neoclassic Interlude

The language of the late-18th

-century French architecture remained, in general, a classic

one. Classical architectural elements inherited from Vitruvius’s rules were still frequently

encountered in civic buildings; however, their composition was no longer strictly adhered to the

classic canon as a new architectural grammar promoted by the neoclassic architects was on the

rise. Dalibor Vesely explained the advent of this new grammar as the result of the phenomenon

of architectural fragmentation, meaning that architectural constituents were emancipated from

their original cultural context inherited from the classic order. These “autonomous architectures,”

as termed by Emil Kauffmann, are thus treated as independent elements of individual meaning

and context susceptible to free expression.

The desire of ridding of the constraint of Classical order to cultivate new architectural

identity was an ineluctable attempt to remedy the decadence of Baroque which was left with

little scope to thrive in the neoclassic interlude by the growing empirical interest in reason and

logic. The early champions of neoclassicism considered that the exuberant Baroque style

violated the inherent law of architecture, which was founded on the underlying order of nature,

and was therefore confusing and simply not beautiful.17

To reinforce the relationship between architecture and the natural world, Laugier created

the story of the first human hut. In rejecting what he considered as the deformation of the

Baroque style and promoting the new architectural principles derived from natural simplicity,

Laugier became the promoter of the elementary geometric forms and pioneered the architectural

movement towards a pure and collected aesthetic.18

Though not all subsequent architects have

17

Richard A. Etlin, Symbolic Space: French Enlightenment Architecture and its Legacy, 92.

18 Ibid., 96.

40

adhered to the principles devised by Laugier, neoclassical architecture in general moved from

using purely visual elements such as broken entablatures and engaged columns to more

delineated and functional forms regarded as the manifestation of nature’s simplicity.19

Among

them all, the most astonishing examples were created by Laugier’s student, Boullée.

Like Laugier, Boullée kept the columns as independent, freestanding elements, sharing a

similar preference to a simple, precise and clear architectural aesthetic. His architectural

grammar was in a way paradigmatic of the neoclassic doctrine: grand facades composed of the

continuous blank wall and columnar screens. For Boullée and many other contemporaries

seeking architectural principles in nature, they saw in regular forms the potential of powerful

architectural expression surpassing the Baroque complexity:

Pourquoi la figure des corps réguliers se saisit-elle au premier aspect? C’est que

leurs formes sont simples, que leurs faces sont régulières, et qu’elles se répètent.

Mais comme la mesure des impressions que nous ressentons, à la vue des objets,

est en raison de leur évidence, ce qui nous fait plus particulièrement distinguer les

corps réguliers, c’est que leur régularité et leur symétrie sont l’image de l’ordre, et

que cette image est celle de l’évidence elle-même.20

Why can we recognize the shape of the elementary (regular) shapes at a first

glance? It is because it is simple in its form, its plane is regular and it repeats itself.

We grasp the impression that object makes upon us (when we see it) by its clarity;

what makes us single out the regular body in particular is its regularity and its

symmetry, which makes up the image of order; and such order, is clarity

(evidence).

Boullée’s praise of the natural and symmetrical virtue of elementary figures held a mirror to the

general anxiety of 18th-century French architectural society about the excessively complicated

late Baroque style which, according to Boullée, presented nothing distinguished but confusing

images.21

The inability of Rocaille and Baroque style to express itself to its audiences in a

19

Ibid.

20 Boullée, 35.

21 Ibid.

41

concise manner was agonizing for the architects of neoclassicism whose aesthetic taste was

based on the clear concept of tableau. The idea of tableau decided that any sound artistic

representation must be a self-sufficient system. This "self-sufficiency" interpreted by modern

language is best worded by what Vesely called "meaningful":

Meaning depends on the continuity of communicative movement between

individual elements and on their relation (reference) to the preexisting latent

world…In that sense, the meaning of a work can be judged by how legible and

comprehensible it is.22

The legibility of architecture, in Boullée’s opinion, relies on regularity, symmetry and variation.

Regularity gives the beautiful shape, symmetry the order and variation the diversity.23

The

concordant combination between these three rules is what eventually gives rise to the

harmonious proportion.24

Regarding the notion of proportion, Boullée appeared to still be in

agreement with certain principles pertained to classic architecture. As in his description

regarding the grandeur, Boullée employed Greek temple as an example of the prudent

application of ornament in creating harmonious proportion:

On doit dans un grand ensemble mettre en usage les moyens de l’art ingenieux

don’t nous avons parlee, afin de multiplier les objets, autant qu’il sera possible,

mais dans un juste rapport avec le tout, dans ce juste rapport que nous remarquons

dans les Temple des Grecs.25

In a large project, we must use all the means of ingenious art at our disposal to

multiplier the objects, but in a right proportion to the whole that we found in the

Greek temple.

In brief, the thesis argued that Boullée’s new grammar in the neoclassic interlude is essentially

articulated through the concept of tableau, the aesthetic discourse in direct analogy to the human

22

Vesely, 345.

23 Boullée, 35.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., 48

42

organism with the primal focus on the coherent interconnection between parts and whole. In

Boullée’s view, it is from the ingenious combination that stems the noble quality of the grand

and the harmonious and architects own the knowledge of such combination to the creative power

of nature:

Il est donc démontré que la proportion et l’harmonie des corps sont établies par la

nature, et que, par l’analogie qu’elles ont avec notre organisation, les propriétés,

qui découlent de l’essence des corps, ont du pouvoir sur nous sens.26

It is hence shown that the proportion and the harmony of figure are established by

nature; and by (nature’s) analogy with our body, (harmony) has the power over

our senses.

The analogous relation between the harmonious proportion and human body proffered

convincing reasons why the new architectural grammar appeared desirable to the

contemporaneous architect: it appears to man because it speaks directly to human being’s innate

perceptions regarding beauty without having its complete meaning lost in the literal translation.

The affinity between architecture and the human body constitutes essentially what Boullée

considered as beautiful:

Ce que nous qualifions de beaux, les objets qui ont le plus d’analogie avec notre

organisation, et que nous rejetons ceux qui, depourvus de cette analogie, ne

conviennent pas a notre maniere d’etre.27

What we qualify as beautiful are the objects that are the most analogous to our

organism, and we dislike those lacking this resemblance which does not

correspond to our body.

It must be remarked that the relation between architecture and human body in Boullée’s view

differs from that of Vitruvius in a physiological way: the logic behind the distribution of scale in

classic architecture is largely based on a literal translation of body narrative into the architectural

lingo. However, in the case of Boullée, the physiological connection is virtually non-existing;

26

Ibid., 36.

27 Ibid., 34.

43

Boullée’s concern with the issue of proportion boils down to the principle of tableau in regards to

the interconnection of parts, in terms of whether they are arranged to function holistically like an

organic body.

An exemplary instance of Boullée’s application of the three rules is the project of Madeline

Church (Figure 2-4) where the classical vocabularies were articulated by a completely new

grammar. As the drawings showed, freestanding columns were used as the main components of

the building, forming the lower body of the edifice which was reined over by a dome elevated by

two drums of shorter freestanding columns. The columnar screen was Boullée’s attempt to create

an illusion that the building was emerging from the interior space, where the “forest of columns”

reined. The continuous columns also provided indirect light to the interior, creating a mysterious

atmosphere.28

The columns in the ails would join up with those of the dome, conferring on it all

the richness of architecture: the immense row of the columnar screen would multiply to the

extent that the eyes of the beholder could no longer follow; the perspective would visually

prolong the columns to render them even grander.29

With a single architectural type that featured

freestanding columns, Boullée was able to imitate the immensity of nature through architectural

form. Despite having proved his originality and creativity by the majestic Madeline Church,

Boullée humbly credited Nature for his ingenious achievements, stating that he was essentially

an imitator who merely borrowed beauty from nature to create his own art:

J’évite avec la plus grande soin de mettre l’art aux prises avec la nature.

J’emprunte les effets précieux de celle-ci, je les approprie à l’art, et c’est à la

faveur des dons de la nature que j’offre les moyens d’élever l’art à la sublimité.30

28

Ibid., 52.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., 54.

44

I try my best to avoid conflict between art and nature. I borrow the precious effect

from the latter (nature) and I bring it to art, it is by the gifts of nature that I am

able to elevate art to sublimity.

For Boullée, nature was the most vibrant palette of all effects and it was by borrowing from the

abundant natural effects that Boullée was to transcend architecture through the power of

sentience.

Figure 2-4. Section drawing of Eglise de Madeline, by E. Boullée (year unknown). National

Library of France, Paris. Courtesy of Jean-Mare Perouse de Montclos, Etienne-Louis

Boullée, Theoretician of Revolutionary Architecture (1974), Figure 38.

45

CHAPTER 3

NATURE IN SENTIMENT

Re-creating Nature through Phenomenology

The way of creating grandness is through the ingenious combination of parts and whole,

as Boullée advocated. However, merely presenting a grand image with well-articulated volumes

does not represent the full landscape of Boullée’s architectural intention in recreating nature’s

greatness. As he eloquently wrote in his critique on Vitruvius’ classic canons:

Mais lorsqu’on la considère dans toutes son étendue, on voit que l’architecture

n’est pas seulement l’art de présenter des images par la disposition des corps,

qu’elle consiste aussi a savoir rassembler toutes les beautés éparses de la nature;

pour les mettre en œuvre. Oui je ne saurais trop le répéter, l’architecte doit être le

metteur en œuvre de la nature…C’est des effets de nature que nait la Poésie de

l’architecture.1

But when we consider the scope of architecture, we perceive that it is not only the

art of creating images through the arrangement of volumes. But it also involves

the savoir-faire of how to combine all the scattered beauties of nature and to put

them to work. I cannot repeat enough that architects must make nature work…It is

from the effects of nature that derives the poetry of architecture.

Boullée missioned himself to be the “metteur de la nature” (to put nature into work) through his

architectural creations, and yet graphically he rarely used direct references of the natural world to

remind the viewers the naturalist nature of his oeuvres. Unlike his contemporaries Ledoux and

Lequeu (Figure 3-1), Boullée’s architecture works are vastly unadorned in simplicity and

functionalism.

Boullée’s austere artistic expression hence raises the question: How did Boullée, as an

architect who missioned himself to “mettre la nature en oeuvre” (to put nature in work), succeed

in doing so while abstaining himself from using natural references freely?

1Étienne-Louis Boullée, Essaie Sur l’Art, ed. Helen Rosenau (London: Tiranti, 1953), 41.

46

To answer this seemingly self-contradictory question, one must commit himself to

hermeneutic exploration of Boullée’s drawings where his latent philosophic thinking was

manifested through beautiful brush strokes. In the project Nécropoles (Figure 3-2), Boullée

presented an immense edifice dedicated to the heroic spirits; the monument integrated seamlessly

into the landscape in its fullest expansion. The sacred mountain of which the summit is crowned

with clouds reigned over the city of death by its monumentality. The curves and lines of the

contour of the building formalize discreetly the silhouette of the hill that rises in the background.

This particular composition suggests that the building is not simply in symbiosis with the

mountain, but moreover, it is a metaphor for it. Through bare and unadorned walls, the city of

death stands as a metaphor to the immensity of nature. Boullée was therefore trying to re-create

nature in the form of architecture. On the level of design approach, Boullée has stepped out from

the shallow formal imitation of nature and elevated his designs to the realm of phenomenology

where his focus falls on translating the higher principles of the natural world into the tangible

spatial experience. Among all the experiences of which he desired to create the most desired was

the feeling of sublime.

Figure 3-1. Drawing of a hermitage gate and a hunting retreat, by Jean-Jacques Lequeu (date

unknown). National Library of France, Paris. Photos taken by author.

47

Figure 3-2. Drawing of Nécropoles, by E. Boullée (date unknown). National Library of France,

Paris. Courtesy of Jean-Claude Lemangny, Visionary Architects (1968), Figure 14.

Sublime as the Aesthetic Experience of Nature

Vesely described sublime as an experience emerging in the 18th century as a result of the

unbridgeable gap “between our ability to form concepts of totality, wholeness, and infinity and

our incapacity to experience them on the level of the finite and sensible.”2 It is a secularized

version of the previous theocentric understanding of infinity. In the universe of sublime, the

search of infinity coincides with individual creativity’s ability of inventing anything out of

formless chaos. Such chaos seen as the primordial ocean of all creation is the basic intuition of

the sublime, and this intuition is perceived as a form of aesthetic. Hence the sublime in the 18th

century pre-Romantic narrative was regarded as an aesthetic experience; and as an experience, it

is therefore susceptible to and largely decided by the unbounded individual creativity and

subjectivity. It is this sense of freedom of imagination and expression that informed many

architectural works contemporary to Boullée.3

The 18th-century architectural idea of sublime was greatly structured by the philosophic

framework provided by two important philosophers, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. Burke

posited two types of sublime: pain and pleasure. The thesis will mainly focus on the sublime of

2 Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of

Production (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004), 333.

3 Ibid.

48

pain for it bears more relevance to the general architectural understanding of sublime whereas

the latter is more associated with society and interactions between individuals.

Burke’s theory on sublime and pain established a causal relationship between the sublime

and terror, suggesting that what was susceptible of creating the feeling of terror was capable of

evoking the sense of sublimity:

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say,

whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates

in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive

of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling…When danger or

pain press too nearby, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply

terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and

they are delightful, as we everyday experience.4

The wild nature had always been regarded as a raw, untamed force that the empiricists had no

power over despite their relentless attempts; it was seen as the harbinger of the immense power

and secret knowledge that men could not resist. Boullée called nature “le livre des livres” and “le

science de l’univers” as he was astounded by its overwhelming power.5 With the concept of

sublime transforming terror into an aesthetic experience, the 18th-century western culture in

general found new resources for approaching the aesthetic appreciation of the natural world in

the uncontrollable and unpredictable character of nature. Natural objects that were feared by

human kind suddenly obtained new meanings; the dark sea, the pale moon, the stretching horizon

in the distance, all engaged in the discourse of natural aesthetic.

Looking back at the project Necropolis, one would see more clearly how Boullée

recreated the ennobling impression of nature by channeling the sublime experience through

architectural metaphor: by placing the edifice in direct juxtaposition with the sacred mountain,

4 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press, 2008), 36.

5 Boullée, 35.

49

Boullée projected the immensity of nature upon the building, endowing the edifice with the

terror and noble sensation borrowed from nature. The symmetric composition further enhanced

the imposing and severe imagery, and the pyramidal shape of the mountain which is

complemented by the panoramic framing