Lara Eggleton is an art historian, art writer and editor based in Leeds. She examines art across time and cultural spaces, most recently through the metaphor of folly. She has published extensively on the Alhambra and its interpretation by European travellers, antiquarians and designers in the nineteenth century. Lara is managing editor at Corridor8, the contemporary art writing journal, and lectures part time on the subject of Islamic Art and its Western reception, among other things.
In consolidating Curation and Library Services at Leeds Arts University, it is fitting that our f... more In consolidating Curation and Library Services at Leeds Arts University, it is fitting that our first exhibition in the new gallery should explore a contemporary revision of Saint Jerome — the patron saint of libraries and an enduring figure of intrigue for artists, especially during the Renaissance. As part of our commitment to Northern artists, we have invited Nicola Dale to be our first resident researcher. In her practice, Dale has been consistently interested in the potential connections between libraries and curation as primary sites of knowledge making. Primarily working in the realms of sculpture, installation and performance, Dale’s practice is conceptually rooted. She is chiefly concerned with how knowledge is made visible. ‘Figurehead’ is contemplative and deeply art historical. The exhibition and related performances present the findings of Dale’s research trip to Rome in October 2018 (generously funded by The British Council and ACE). Thirteen contemporary portraits of ...
The Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palatine city located in Granada, Spain, is examined in this the... more The Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palatine city located in Granada, Spain, is examined in this thesis as the product of material transformations and changing visual perceptions over time. Selected areas of the Nasrid palatial complex (1238-1492) are explored within the context of their production, their later alterations under Christian rule, and in relation to the interpretations of British travellers, historians, designers and enthusiasts throughout the long nineteenth century. Through the formation of individual and collective identities, responses to cultural difference, and an active engagement with the past, the Alhambra grew to become a commemorative monument of multiple and interrelated histories. In addressing the overlapping structural and ornamental layers which make up its form, this study challenges the historiographic limitations of categories such as 'medieval' and 'modern', as well as formal categories such as 'ornament' and 'architecture&#...
The Alhambra, a palatine fortress perched on a mountainous outcrop above the city of Granada, has... more The Alhambra, a palatine fortress perched on a mountainous outcrop above the city of Granada, has held a unique place in the historiography of Islamic architectural monuments, owing both to its European location in modern-day Spain and to the character of its 'rediscovery' by European travellers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Originally constructed under a succession of Nasrid rulers between 1232 and 1492, the exceptionally well-preserved palace complex later became archetypal to Western scholarship of 'Moorish' architecture and ornament, despite its many subsequent alterations under the Catholic monarchs.1 Like all residential monuments with long histories of continuous use, the Nasrid fortress had been occupied and altered numerous times following its capture in 1492; after the conquest by monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I (who ruled as joint sovereigns of Aragon and Castile from 1479 until Isabella's death in 1504), the site was occupied by the...
This paper explores British travellers' initial encounters with the landscape and architectur... more This paper explores British travellers' initial encounters with the landscape and architecture of Granada and the Alhambra fortress-palace throughout the nineteenth century. Travel journal descriptions are examined alongside handbooks and guides to Spain, and considered in relation to the architectural tropes and viewing techniques that became common during the era of picturesque travel. Travellers' expectations and preconceived notions are revealed through their negotiation of style and integration of features within the view and through the association of the ruin with the Islamic monument and, in some cases, with the city of Granada. The resulting body of travel literature is shown to play a role in the historical positioning of modern Spain on the cultural outskirts of Europe.
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, 2014
A review of Alina Payne’s From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism, publis... more A review of Alina Payne’s From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism, published in 2012 by Yale University Press.
Abstract: This article examines the impact of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century European per... more Abstract: This article examines the impact of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century European perspectives on the development of Alhambra scholarship. An Islamic palatine fortress built near the city of Granada during the Nasrid period (1232-1492), the ...
Architectural Theory Review, 18:3 (Special Issue: Reception), Dec 2013
This paper explores British travellers' initial encounters with the landscape and architecture of... more This paper explores British travellers' initial encounters with the landscape and architecture of Granada and the Alhambra fortress-palace throughout the nineteenth century. Travel journal descriptions are examined alongside handbooks and guides to Spain, and considered in relation to the architectural tropes and viewing techniques that became common during the era of picturesque travel. Travellers' expectations and preconceived notions are revealed through their negotiation of style and integration of features within the view and through the association of the ruin with the Islamic monument and, in some cases, with the city of Granada. The resulting body of travel literature is shown to play a role in the historical positioning of modern Spain on the cultural outskirts of Europe.
This article examines the impact of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European perspectives... more This article examines the impact of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European perspectives on the development of Alhambra scholarship. An Islamic palatine fortress built near the city of Granada during the Nasrid period (1232-1492), the monument has undergone substantial transformations under Christian occupation, and through its ‘rediscovery’ by foreign visitors in the nineteenth century. The fragmentation of its surfaces through a variety of Romantic and modernising frameworks served to dislocate its decorative forms from their historical and architectural contexts, leading many historians to discuss its designs in relation to previous periods and traditions. The pervasive view of the period and its art as ‘past-facing’ would postpone a critical consideration of the ornament of the Alhambra on its own formal and ideological terms. Only in recent decades has this position been challenged and the monument discussed in terms of its regional specificity and its multiple periods of production and reception.
The Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palatine city located in Granada, Spain, is examined in this the... more The Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palatine city located in Granada, Spain, is examined in this thesis as the product of material transformations and changing visual perceptions over time. Selected areas of the Nasrid palatial complex (1238-1492) are explored within the context of their production, their later alterations under Christian rule, and in relation to the interpretations of British travellers, historians, designers and enthusiasts throughout the long nineteenth century. Through the formation of individual and collective identities, responses to cultural difference, and an active engagement with the past, the Alhambra grew to become a commemorative monument of multiple and interrelated histories. In addressing the overlapping structural and ornamental layers which make up its form, this study challenges the historiographic limitations of categories such as 'medieval' and 'modern', as well as formal categories such as 'ornament' and 'architecture', which render some art histories more visible than others. A series of case studies examine the conditions that allowed for its reshaping, and the variety of ways its hybrid spaces have been re-envisioned. Chapters one and two focus on the visual manifestations of political agendas across both Muslim and Christian periods of rule, and challenge the application of binary models of influence and conflict to the periods leading up to and following the conquest of Granada in 1492. Subsequent chapters address nineteenth-century perspectives, revealing the perceptual frameworks that informed different impressions of the monument for popular and critical audiences. Descriptions and representations are discussed in accordance with Romantic visualising tropes such as the Gothic and the Sublime, and the Alhambra is situated within debates over national identity and technological progress during the Great Exhibitions of the mid-century. The Alhambra is thus understood both in terms of its cumulative value, and its individual layers of meaning that belong to plural histories and trajectories of influence.
This paper examines a peculiar case of overlapping panels within the Alhambra's royal garden or '... more This paper examines a peculiar case of overlapping panels within the Alhambra's royal garden or 'summer' residence, a private complex built a short distance from the main Comares and Lions palaces. I argue that this particular example of layering of plaster carved ornament reveals something about each period of production and the distinct but interrelated interests of two Nasrid kings separated by a maternal bloodline. In order to gain the support of their subjects they were expected to defend (and, if possible, expand) their diminished territory from advancing Christian forces, while civil pressures required them to fortify their independent legacies to avoid forced abdication or assassination. During both of their reigns, the revisiting of the past in relation to the present became a meaningful and empowering gesture in both art and architecture. A reading of each panel in relation to precedent motifs shows how a sensitivity to the past was articulated through the appropriation and variation of stylistic forms, generating a dual message of cultural affiliation and individuated rule. Through a nostalgic or past-facing lens, the characteristics of past eras were borrowed and reconfigured to create new, localised motifs. Far from being seen as derivative, rulers' identities appear to have been strengthened by the adaptation of visual elements from the former dynasties of al-Andalus, as well as centres of power in Rome, North Africa and the Middle East
In consolidating Curation and Library Services at Leeds Arts University, it is fitting that our f... more In consolidating Curation and Library Services at Leeds Arts University, it is fitting that our first exhibition in the new gallery should explore a contemporary revision of Saint Jerome — the patron saint of libraries and an enduring figure of intrigue for artists, especially during the Renaissance. As part of our commitment to Northern artists, we have invited Nicola Dale to be our first resident researcher. In her practice, Dale has been consistently interested in the potential connections between libraries and curation as primary sites of knowledge making. Primarily working in the realms of sculpture, installation and performance, Dale’s practice is conceptually rooted. She is chiefly concerned with how knowledge is made visible. ‘Figurehead’ is contemplative and deeply art historical. The exhibition and related performances present the findings of Dale’s research trip to Rome in October 2018 (generously funded by The British Council and ACE). Thirteen contemporary portraits of ...
The Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palatine city located in Granada, Spain, is examined in this the... more The Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palatine city located in Granada, Spain, is examined in this thesis as the product of material transformations and changing visual perceptions over time. Selected areas of the Nasrid palatial complex (1238-1492) are explored within the context of their production, their later alterations under Christian rule, and in relation to the interpretations of British travellers, historians, designers and enthusiasts throughout the long nineteenth century. Through the formation of individual and collective identities, responses to cultural difference, and an active engagement with the past, the Alhambra grew to become a commemorative monument of multiple and interrelated histories. In addressing the overlapping structural and ornamental layers which make up its form, this study challenges the historiographic limitations of categories such as 'medieval' and 'modern', as well as formal categories such as 'ornament' and 'architecture&#...
The Alhambra, a palatine fortress perched on a mountainous outcrop above the city of Granada, has... more The Alhambra, a palatine fortress perched on a mountainous outcrop above the city of Granada, has held a unique place in the historiography of Islamic architectural monuments, owing both to its European location in modern-day Spain and to the character of its 'rediscovery' by European travellers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Originally constructed under a succession of Nasrid rulers between 1232 and 1492, the exceptionally well-preserved palace complex later became archetypal to Western scholarship of 'Moorish' architecture and ornament, despite its many subsequent alterations under the Catholic monarchs.1 Like all residential monuments with long histories of continuous use, the Nasrid fortress had been occupied and altered numerous times following its capture in 1492; after the conquest by monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I (who ruled as joint sovereigns of Aragon and Castile from 1479 until Isabella's death in 1504), the site was occupied by the...
This paper explores British travellers' initial encounters with the landscape and architectur... more This paper explores British travellers' initial encounters with the landscape and architecture of Granada and the Alhambra fortress-palace throughout the nineteenth century. Travel journal descriptions are examined alongside handbooks and guides to Spain, and considered in relation to the architectural tropes and viewing techniques that became common during the era of picturesque travel. Travellers' expectations and preconceived notions are revealed through their negotiation of style and integration of features within the view and through the association of the ruin with the Islamic monument and, in some cases, with the city of Granada. The resulting body of travel literature is shown to play a role in the historical positioning of modern Spain on the cultural outskirts of Europe.
Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, 2014
A review of Alina Payne’s From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism, publis... more A review of Alina Payne’s From Ornament to Object: Genealogies of Architectural Modernism, published in 2012 by Yale University Press.
Abstract: This article examines the impact of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century European per... more Abstract: This article examines the impact of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century European perspectives on the development of Alhambra scholarship. An Islamic palatine fortress built near the city of Granada during the Nasrid period (1232-1492), the ...
Architectural Theory Review, 18:3 (Special Issue: Reception), Dec 2013
This paper explores British travellers' initial encounters with the landscape and architecture of... more This paper explores British travellers' initial encounters with the landscape and architecture of Granada and the Alhambra fortress-palace throughout the nineteenth century. Travel journal descriptions are examined alongside handbooks and guides to Spain, and considered in relation to the architectural tropes and viewing techniques that became common during the era of picturesque travel. Travellers' expectations and preconceived notions are revealed through their negotiation of style and integration of features within the view and through the association of the ruin with the Islamic monument and, in some cases, with the city of Granada. The resulting body of travel literature is shown to play a role in the historical positioning of modern Spain on the cultural outskirts of Europe.
This article examines the impact of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European perspectives... more This article examines the impact of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European perspectives on the development of Alhambra scholarship. An Islamic palatine fortress built near the city of Granada during the Nasrid period (1232-1492), the monument has undergone substantial transformations under Christian occupation, and through its ‘rediscovery’ by foreign visitors in the nineteenth century. The fragmentation of its surfaces through a variety of Romantic and modernising frameworks served to dislocate its decorative forms from their historical and architectural contexts, leading many historians to discuss its designs in relation to previous periods and traditions. The pervasive view of the period and its art as ‘past-facing’ would postpone a critical consideration of the ornament of the Alhambra on its own formal and ideological terms. Only in recent decades has this position been challenged and the monument discussed in terms of its regional specificity and its multiple periods of production and reception.
The Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palatine city located in Granada, Spain, is examined in this the... more The Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palatine city located in Granada, Spain, is examined in this thesis as the product of material transformations and changing visual perceptions over time. Selected areas of the Nasrid palatial complex (1238-1492) are explored within the context of their production, their later alterations under Christian rule, and in relation to the interpretations of British travellers, historians, designers and enthusiasts throughout the long nineteenth century. Through the formation of individual and collective identities, responses to cultural difference, and an active engagement with the past, the Alhambra grew to become a commemorative monument of multiple and interrelated histories. In addressing the overlapping structural and ornamental layers which make up its form, this study challenges the historiographic limitations of categories such as 'medieval' and 'modern', as well as formal categories such as 'ornament' and 'architecture', which render some art histories more visible than others. A series of case studies examine the conditions that allowed for its reshaping, and the variety of ways its hybrid spaces have been re-envisioned. Chapters one and two focus on the visual manifestations of political agendas across both Muslim and Christian periods of rule, and challenge the application of binary models of influence and conflict to the periods leading up to and following the conquest of Granada in 1492. Subsequent chapters address nineteenth-century perspectives, revealing the perceptual frameworks that informed different impressions of the monument for popular and critical audiences. Descriptions and representations are discussed in accordance with Romantic visualising tropes such as the Gothic and the Sublime, and the Alhambra is situated within debates over national identity and technological progress during the Great Exhibitions of the mid-century. The Alhambra is thus understood both in terms of its cumulative value, and its individual layers of meaning that belong to plural histories and trajectories of influence.
This paper examines a peculiar case of overlapping panels within the Alhambra's royal garden or '... more This paper examines a peculiar case of overlapping panels within the Alhambra's royal garden or 'summer' residence, a private complex built a short distance from the main Comares and Lions palaces. I argue that this particular example of layering of plaster carved ornament reveals something about each period of production and the distinct but interrelated interests of two Nasrid kings separated by a maternal bloodline. In order to gain the support of their subjects they were expected to defend (and, if possible, expand) their diminished territory from advancing Christian forces, while civil pressures required them to fortify their independent legacies to avoid forced abdication or assassination. During both of their reigns, the revisiting of the past in relation to the present became a meaningful and empowering gesture in both art and architecture. A reading of each panel in relation to precedent motifs shows how a sensitivity to the past was articulated through the appropriation and variation of stylistic forms, generating a dual message of cultural affiliation and individuated rule. Through a nostalgic or past-facing lens, the characteristics of past eras were borrowed and reconfigured to create new, localised motifs. Far from being seen as derivative, rulers' identities appear to have been strengthened by the adaptation of visual elements from the former dynasties of al-Andalus, as well as centres of power in Rome, North Africa and the Middle East
Visiting lecture for THE ALHAMBRA AND SPAIN'S ISLAMIC PAST NEH Summer Institute for College and U... more Visiting lecture for THE ALHAMBRA AND SPAIN'S ISLAMIC PAST NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers.
As the nineteenth century in Britain spurned a new generation of middle-class sightseers, the rem... more As the nineteenth century in Britain spurned a new generation of middle-class sightseers, the remains of Islamic monuments in Western Europe increasingly represented an accessible and exotic frontier, whilst colonial inroads to the Indian Subcontinent and its rich Mughal heritage were well established. The volumes of testimonies, texts, illustrations and photographs that captured the experience of these very different regions also helped to shape an early historical conception of Islamic architecture in accordance with value-laden definitions of the decorative and the ornamental. While the views of British architects, designers and antiquarians have been extensively explored within studies of Victorian Orientalism, an anthropological reading of tourists’ and sightseers’ first-hand accounts (such as through the lens of transculturation) offers a fresh perspective on Western architectural historiography and the non-specialist encounters that helped to shape it.
This paper examines how Victorian encounters with remains of Islamic architecture and ornament in former Muslim occupied regions in Spain and Portugal, as well as those of Mughal India, impacted upon perceptions of cultural difference throughout the nineteenth century. Journals, handbooks and visual materials produced by men and women travellers reveal a diversity of perspectives that informed readings of Islamic architecture in relation to commercial and internationalising forces in Britain. But rather than a purely Orientalist or postcolonial discussion of these texts, this paper is concerned with their anthropological dimension, critically examining the precise nature of the encounter between traveller and monument. A series of examples will reveal a range of individual experiences of Islamic buildings and ruins, and their importance to an emerging global history of architecture.
Representations of landscapes and cityscapes can tell us a great deal about the personal and cult... more Representations of landscapes and cityscapes can tell us a great deal about the personal and cultural perspectives that informed them. The specific ways in which monuments, figures and natural features are organised within a tripartite view (foreground, middle ground and background) often reveal multiple layers of interpretation or artistic biases. This talk will explore the use of picturesque devices within a number of drawings, prints and paintings from the Romantic period, highlighting a particular process of 'editing' through which British artists and travellers negotiated their views.
In this talk I will discuss two photographs depicting a group of ‘gitanos’ or Spanish Romany take... more In this talk I will discuss two photographs depicting a group of ‘gitanos’ or Spanish Romany taken in Granada in 1862 by Charles Clifford, British expat and royal photographer to Queen Isabel II. Posed ‘candidly’ within a courtyard of the Alhambra palace in traditional dress and surrounded by their instruments, the Romany ‘types’ are staged in a distinctly ethnographic manner. Significantly, Clifford chose the Court of Lions for his backdrop, the same ‘exotic’ setting where European tourists were often photographed dressed in Arab costume. By situating the Romany musicians within the walls of a crumbling fourteenth-century Islamic monument, I argue that he effectively collapsed two very different historical moments and cultural contexts within a single frame.
The mid nineteenth-century opinions presented by designer-architect Owen Jones and artist-antiqua... more The mid nineteenth-century opinions presented by designer-architect Owen Jones and artist-antiquarian John Ruskin have had a lasting influence on popular and critical perceptions of the Alhambra, a medieval Islamic palace located in Granada, Spain (c.1238 –1492). Through his reproductions of its ornamented surfaces, Jones' strong advocacy of new print and design technologies amplifyied the the 'pro-industry' position of the design reform movement and thus came in direct conflict with the naturalist aims of Ruskin and his supporters. This paper examines their opposing views as a basis for understanding the changing attitudes toward the industrialisation of artistic processes, alongside the development of Western European cultural identities.
Jones’ mechanical reproductions of the Alhambra through print publications and a life-size replica at the Sydenham Crystal Palace (1854), caused critics such as Ruskin to deem its style as morally corrupt and derivative. At the heart of Ruskin's disapproval was a number of formal principles that were actually shared by the design reformers, such as natural representation, decorative propriety, and 'truth to materials'. Jones and Ruskin's adverse approaches to the same set of principles reveal the problems inherent to the reading of 'style' as a measure of moral integrity and national character within an increasingly industrial climate. This paper examines these former constructions as part of the making of cultural and historical meaning in Victorian England, and the popular reception of Near Eastern art and architecture in relation to industrial progress.
In the early 1830s Welsh born designer-architect Owen Jones visited the monuments of Egypt, Const... more In the early 1830s Welsh born designer-architect Owen Jones visited the monuments of Egypt, Constantinople, and Islamic Spain, meticulously documenting examples of ornament that he felt most accurately captured the style of each culture. He subsequently became an important authority on the subject of ‘Oriental’ art in Britain, and was commissioned to build an architectural reproduction of an Alhambra palace court at the Sydenham Great Exhibition of 1854. While many assumed that his court was a replica of the original in Granada, it was in fact a compilation of selected elements intended to demonstrate the way that geometric patterns could be repeated and used interchangeably to create new designs. This was a principle Jones outlined more fully in The Grammar of Ornament of 1856, and later applied within his commercial work.
Pre-empting the ethos of graphic expression adopted by Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury group in the following century, Jones used commercial reproduction to expose designers and the public to the abstract forms of Islamic art. However, through his reproductions the ornament of the Alhambra became diluted and homogenized, resulting in a generic Orientalist style known as the ‘Alambresque’. In this paper I follow the transition from Jones’ fastidious copying of the original palace to the stylized rendering of its ornament within his wallpaper and print designs. Drawing upon postcolonial and linguistic models of hybridity, syncretism and translation, I problematize the original/copy binary within the context of mechanical reproduction and an emerging ‘grammar of world ornament’ within Victorian Britain.
This paper examines the pervasive use of the past within creative processes, and the way that art... more This paper examines the pervasive use of the past within creative processes, and the way that artists from different periods and backgrounds have negotiated historical spaces within their work. Through the critical engagement or ‘use’ of certain pasts, artists help to shape an idea of national and cultural identity from personal or individual perspectives. The practice of borrowing from precedent styles to create new meaning is seen within some art histories as derivative or lacking in innovation, while within others the recontextualisation of historical events or stylistic periods is considered central to a postmodern sensibility, and artists who work with historical themes are perceived as visionaries. Looking at a number of examples of how history is ‘made’ and ‘remade’ within both historical and contemporary contexts, I identify a recurring theme of ‘historical mindedness’ (Stephen Bann, The Inventions of History) that informs artistic practice across cultural and geographic boundaries.
21-22 March 2014. Co-convened by Richard Checketts and Lara Eggleton, with support from the Henry... more 21-22 March 2014. Co-convened by Richard Checketts and Lara Eggleton, with support from the Henry Moore Foundation and the University of Leeds
The descriptive terms ‘decorative’ and ‘ornamental’ are in many ways synonymous with superfluity and excess; they refer to things or modalities that are ‘supplementary’ or ‘marginal’ by their very nature. In the West, such qualitative associations in made objects intersect with long-standing and inter-related philosophical oppositions between ‘form’ and ‘matter’, ‘body’ and ‘surface’, the ‘proper’ and the ‘cosmetic’. Accordingly, this has weighed both on determinations of value in artistic media, and on the inflexions of related histories – particularly histories of ‘non-Western’ art, design and culture, where a wide range of decorative traditions are deemed unworthy of critical attention.
Yet such frameworks are no more historically stable than they are culturally universal. To take one very clear and ‘central’ counter-example, decoration in some strands of Renaissance architectural theory (Filarete, Alberti) emerged as a rigorous codification of meaning, as an essentially functional (political) language. In many ways the history of ornament may itself be seen as a process of marginalisation of such ways of thinking, and the separation of ornament from any form of social practice.
This two-day conference seeks to explore the various ways in which ornament might be regarded as itself productive of its objects and sites. How might the technologies, techniques, and materials of ornament be related to the conception and transformation of modes of object-making? How might ornament be understood to inform its objects, disrupting the spatial categories of ‘surface’ and ‘structure’, and the temporal models in which ornament ‘follows’ making? What are the relations between ornament and representation, and what is at stake in the conventional oppositions between these categories? What are the roles of ornament in larger dynamics of copying, hybridisation and appropriation between things? In what ways have practices and thinking on ornament staged cultural encounters, and engendered larger epistemological and social models?
Uploads
Papers by Lara Eggleton
Books by Lara Eggleton
This paper examines how Victorian encounters with remains of Islamic architecture and ornament in former Muslim occupied regions in Spain and Portugal, as well as those of Mughal India, impacted upon perceptions of cultural difference throughout the nineteenth century. Journals, handbooks and visual materials produced by men and women travellers reveal a diversity of perspectives that informed readings of Islamic architecture in relation to commercial and internationalising forces in Britain. But rather than a purely Orientalist or postcolonial discussion of these texts, this paper is concerned with their anthropological dimension, critically examining the precise nature of the encounter between traveller and monument. A series of examples will reveal a range of individual experiences of Islamic buildings and ruins, and their importance to an emerging global history of architecture.
Jones’ mechanical reproductions of the Alhambra through print publications and a life-size replica at the Sydenham Crystal Palace (1854), caused critics such as Ruskin to deem its style as morally corrupt and derivative. At the heart of Ruskin's disapproval was a number of formal principles that were actually shared by the design reformers, such as natural representation, decorative propriety, and 'truth to materials'. Jones and Ruskin's adverse approaches to the same set of principles reveal the problems inherent to the reading of 'style' as a measure of moral integrity and national character within an increasingly industrial climate. This paper examines these former constructions as part of the making of cultural and historical meaning in Victorian England, and the popular reception of Near Eastern art and architecture in relation to industrial progress.
Pre-empting the ethos of graphic expression adopted by Roger Fry and the Bloomsbury group in the following century, Jones used commercial reproduction to expose designers and the public to the abstract forms of Islamic art. However, through his reproductions the ornament of the Alhambra became diluted and homogenized, resulting in a generic Orientalist style known as the ‘Alambresque’. In this paper I follow the transition from Jones’ fastidious copying of the original palace to the stylized rendering of its ornament within his wallpaper and print designs. Drawing upon postcolonial and linguistic models of hybridity, syncretism and translation, I problematize the original/copy binary within the context of mechanical reproduction and an emerging ‘grammar of world ornament’ within Victorian Britain.
The descriptive terms ‘decorative’ and ‘ornamental’ are in many ways synonymous with superfluity and excess; they refer to things or modalities that are ‘supplementary’ or ‘marginal’ by their very nature. In the West, such qualitative associations in made objects intersect with long-standing and inter-related philosophical oppositions between ‘form’ and ‘matter’, ‘body’ and ‘surface’, the ‘proper’ and the ‘cosmetic’. Accordingly, this has weighed both on determinations of value in artistic media, and on the inflexions of related histories – particularly histories of ‘non-Western’ art, design and culture, where a wide range of decorative traditions are deemed unworthy of critical attention.
Yet such frameworks are no more historically stable than they are culturally universal. To take one very clear and ‘central’ counter-example, decoration in some strands of Renaissance architectural theory (Filarete, Alberti) emerged as a rigorous codification of meaning, as an essentially functional (political) language. In many ways the history of ornament may itself be seen as a process of marginalisation of such ways of thinking, and the separation of ornament from any form of social practice.
This two-day conference seeks to explore the various ways in which ornament might be regarded as itself productive of its objects and sites. How might the technologies, techniques, and materials of ornament be related to the conception and transformation of modes of object-making? How might ornament be understood to inform its objects, disrupting the spatial categories of ‘surface’ and ‘structure’, and the temporal models in which ornament ‘follows’ making? What are the relations between ornament and representation, and what is at stake in the conventional oppositions between these categories? What are the roles of ornament in larger dynamics of copying, hybridisation and appropriation between things? In what ways have practices and thinking on ornament staged cultural encounters, and engendered larger epistemological and social models?