Collapsing Architecture

The warning signs of Toronto's latest architectural addition

The new Royal Ontario Museum's (ROM) extension sits on the narrow curb of Bloor street as if ready to fall on the innocent pedestrians. Its architect, Daniel Libeskind, who also started the Twin Towers memorial, but later on had to cede the design to another architect for fear of an unstable structure, has been very buoyant during his interviews about his new Toronto structure.

The new Royal Ontario Museum exterior

The new Royal Ontario Museum interior

Interviewer: Your addition is radically different from the existing ROM building. Along with the praise, you’ve heard lots of criticism of it.

Daniel Libeskind: When the Eiffel Tower was built, it was condemned universally. But what would Paris be without the Eiffel Tower?

Libeskind hubristic response equating the Eiffel Tower with the new ROM extension is not even correct. The Eiffel Tower was built in the spirit of triumph, celebrating the one hundred years of the French Revolution and man's perceived victory against fate, at least the fate of ordained Kings and serfdoms, by lofty (if misguided) ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It was also an ode to the science and technology, and the achievements of the industrial age.

What has Libeskind's convoluted structure to offer? Libeskind's consistent response is that his buildings are "different" and "progressive." That's it, according to him. That's their value.

But there is another undeclared layer that Libeskind is not articulating. Either he doesn't really know it, or is too clever to mention it. His buildings all convey destruction, the opposite of architecture. But why is that? I think primarily because of uncertainty. Libeskind has no principles to build on. Liberty, equality, science, centennials? None of these words figure in his interviews. Instead abstract and empty ones like "different" and "radical" describe much of his intentions.

Libeskind is essentially a nihilist. And since art is always the projector of its creator's thinkings, his buildings emerge as potentially (imminently) crumbling edifices. And his interiors are no different. There is a sense of claustrophobic despair inside his structures, as though the wall are about to fold in. In fact that was one of the strongest criticisms of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, another of his buildings on the verge of collapse.

Whenever architects and artists distort our structures to the point of collapse, I believe that danger is nearby. This was what happened just before the horror of the Nazis. German filmmakers were making their own nightmarish films, and claustrophobic buildings about to cave in figured prominently in their stage sets. But there was at least a sense of awareness of impending doom by the German filmmakers. They chose, unwisely, to deal with it in metaphorical terms. Libeskind, on the other hand, keeps cheerfully giving interviews about the renaissance of Toronto, with, of course, his exemplary contribution.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Wiene, 1920. Exterior and interior scenes

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Winter Wonderland

New Year's Day, 2008

Street Scene with Overhanging Trees

Fir Tree in the Park

View of the Allan Gardens

The Allan Gardens Conservatory

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Priez Pour Nous et Pour les Musulmans

Notre Dame d'Afrique

Notre Dame d'Afrique across the Mediterranean from
Notre Dame de la Garde

During their colonization period in Algeria, the French built the Basilica Notre Dame d'Afrique in Algiers. Miraculously, the place still stands, and is still used as a place of worship for Catholic Algerians. The Church lies at the northern coastline of Algiers, and is thought to be a complement to the Notre Dame de la Garde across the Mediterranean in Marseilles.

Religion is a combination of tradition, architecture, geography and symbolism. And the French Catholics were susceptible to all of them when transferring their Catholicism to Algeria.

The statue of Mary in Notre Dame d'Afrique has fine Caucasian features, but is ebony black. The reasoning has to be that this metaphorically black Madonna would be a gateway into the rest of Africa at this point of entry, and act as an incentive for and a familiar guard over her new converts. It is also a clear indication that Algerian and French Catholics are two different peoples.

The positioning of the Basilica is also very important. As a new church, facing the hill-top Notre Dame de la Garde across the Mediterranean would give Notre Dame d'Afrique the support and the protection (and the prayers) from her mature brethren in Christ from across the sea.

Finally, the French modeled the Basilica after the Byzantine Eastern churches, which influenced the great domed mosques of the Ottoman period, who took their example from Constantinople's Hagia Sophia. Mosaics, also a feature borrowed by mosques from the Byzantines, figures both inside and outside Notre Dame d'Afrique. Thus this north African church, in the land of the Muslims, who wished to draw them into her interior, wouldn't be so strange and alien in her Islamic surroundings.

And what an interior, with the prayer: "Notre Dame d'Afrique pray for us and the Muslims" written across nave facing the alter. And what a difference from Constantinople's Hagia Sophia, which after being converted into a Mosque by the Ottomans, now bears Islamic calligraphy plates which cover Christian images.

God helped the French to build the perfect church in Notre Dame d'Afrique. The proof is that it she still standing and performing her rites.

The Interior of Notre Dame d'Afrique with the mosaics,
the Black Madonna and the inscription "Prier pour nous
et pour les Musulmans"

[Click images to see a larger versions]

To get more information on the French presence in Algeria, Gallia Watch covers it along with several posts on Sarkozy's trip to Algeria, and also mentions Notre Dame d'Afrique at this post.

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A Sample of Connected Thoughts

Figuring out the cracks
Shibboleth, by Doris Salcedo. Currently at the Tate

Ugly Betty is a show about an ugly Hispanic woman who ends up working in the New York fashion industry. Yet, in real life, the Ugly Betty star (ironically named America) is cute and charming. Why couldn't she be cute (although she is somewhat charming) in the movie? I suspect it is an attempt to tell the average viewer that beauty is only skin deep, and that we have been judging ethnic women by unfair and wrong standards. Yes, she's ugly, but look at how good she is.

But why not have a show of a "Beautiful Maria", or some such title? Wasn't Maria good enough with beauty to top it off, to be a star in West Side Story? Maybe they're just worried that all beautiful Hispanic female leads might never get their hero.

Still, ugly Betty didn't stop Ugly Betty from becoming a hit.

Julie Taymor made the Lion King, a glorification of Africa with African songs, African American (and African) actors, and African animals.

She also recently directed Across the Universe, using Beatles songs to stage her own anti-establishment movie/musical berating American traditions and culture.

Why is Taymor able to make such a glorified and grand musical about Africans, but does such a terrible job at directing a movie full of the lovely Beatles melodies?

I suspect it is quite simple. Taymor finds more to admire in an alien, distant, culture than she does in her own. Although, for all purposes, she seems to know very little about this alien culture apart from a few clichéd, feel-good examples.

The Tate Gallery has sponsored and set up an installation which required a fissure in its floor. The Colombian artist who made the crack in the floor says "it represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred...It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe."

After the installation is removed, there will be a "scar", which the Tate owners are quite happy about since it will be a "memorial to the issues [the artist] touches on." So much for artistic defacing of architecture. Impromptu free associations, this time not on paper but on real live concrete.

Why a scar?

To expiate their deadly sins, which includes not letting in illegal (i.e criminal) Third Worlders into their society. The irony is many British are so overwhelmed by these forsaken immigrants, that they in turn are leaving for Australia, New Zealand, and yes for Canada.

The Louvre will be loaning out some of its master paintings to Abu Dhabi. Critics are concerned they will be censoring religious paintings, and of course the famous nudes. I would think also that other more "benign" paintings will be censored. For example, Delacroix’s Marianne, a strong female figure leading her countrymen to freedom.

Is it all in the name of money?

I doubt it. The Louvre is also expanding its Islamic art section with millions of dollars funding from Saudi Arabia. The French are selling off one of their most famous national words, Liberté, and getting nothing back in return.


Liberty Leading the People, by Eugène Delacroix, 1830

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Toronto's Latest Casualty

To urban "development"

This lovely house



which became my inspiration for this rendition



and later on this repeat pattern design



became yet another casualty in the Toronto architectural landscape sometime last summer.



And just as I predicted, a condo-style building is rising up to accommodate all those mystery tenants, and progress is going fine, as of September 2007.



I've blogged about it, and those suspicious new tenants here.

Funny how intuition works sometimes. I wonder who will thank me for making a historical record

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The Holy as Transparent

Like a gemstone



The Holy is transparent, whereas the unholy is opaque.

And that which is in the middle, which can go either way, is neutral.

This is the discussion of a couple of Rabbis at this weekly show.

I think the idea of gemstones (or stones in general) wonderfully explains this concept.

A beautifully cut gem, like a diamond or an aquamarine, gives so much pleasure to our eyes because it is so transparent. The more transparent, the more expensive. What gives it this transparency is the work that went into making it so faceted. Holiness requires work to achieve its perfect transparency.

Those uncut gemstones, which have the potential to be worked on to be transparent (cabochons for the precious stones, and others like turquoise or lapis lazuli) are less attractive to us because of their middle-ground. But, we still desire them because we see the potential in them.

Yet, sometimes what looks like a potential turquoise can end up looking like an opaque pebble. We are least attracted to this pebble, and most likely to discard it at some point.

And that is exactly what the judicious Rabbis say. The opaque requires no judgment. They call it evil at one point, but prefer in the end to describe it as something which wouldn't bring us closer to God, and therefore something to be discarded.

On a more practical level, evil (the opaque) always leaves us questioning and probing (why, how what, etc...) whereas we marvel at the clarity of Holiness.

But, rather than judge it with our limited capacity, it is better to leave the opaque aside, and concentrate instead on the Holiness that is in front of us.

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Confident Christianity

The strength of a society

In a recent post on Nietzsche, Christianity and the West, Lawrence Auster of the View from the Right was asked by a reader:

What did Nietzsche miss in your estimation? What did he not see? What era of Christianity is the exemplar of a healthy (non-weak) Christianity that did not give rise to, or aid and abet, liberalism?

and replied thus:

Throughout the history of Christianity we find examples of this, but mainly in the Middle Ages. We can't experience this in America. If you visit Ireland, and see the remnants of the Christian buildings from the Dark Ages, or the stone crosses and Romanesque churches from the high middle ages, or look at the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells (illuminated manuscripts from the ninth century) you will experience through them a living Christian truth, a consummate state of being. If you visit medieval churches in England, you will experience the same. Or if you read The Stripping of the Altars, about the actual Christian practice (such as Corpus Christi processionals and Holy Week observances) that were followed by ordinary people in the communities and the guilds of 15th century England, you well get a glimpse of a complete order of life based around Christianity.

I would add that a non-Western country which lived in this total, life-giving Christianity is Ethiopia. After a long hiatus following the conversion of the Axumite Kings around 300AD, a confident and well-prepared population returned to a culture infused and fortified by Christianity around the 12th century. This is exemplified by their grand rock-hewn and underground churches, and the many biblical art pieces which they produced to permeate every level of society.

This confident Christianity continued its way into history, surviving isolation, pagan incursions and the great devastation of the Muslims during the 15th century, until the mid-20th century. At this moment, modernism in its various guises proved the temporary victor.

Still, although the people have lost their footing, all that they have received is nihilistic communism and atheistic capitalism. Despite this lack of confidence, a return to the ancient faith seems to be the only solution.

On a related note, I recently sent a letter to the art critic and professor at the University of the Art, Camille Paglia, regarding her on-line article at Arion "Religion and the Arts in America." I just wanted to clarify the different traditions and histories of Christianity in Africa.


St. George and the Virgin Mary, Ethiopian pendant icon,
ca. 17th century
[Click on picture to see bigger version]

Bete Giyorgis Church in Lalibela
[Click on picture to see bigger version]

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