Scholarly record

COMPLEXY OF FIGURE AND THE PURITY OF FORM FROM CUBISM TO MODERNISM, THE STUDY OF PAVEL JANAKВ’S WORK

D. G. Chizzoniti, Q. Wang

Abstract

The study focuses on the work of architect and theorist Pavel Janák (1882-1956) – as an early proponent of Cubist architecture in Bohemia. He was no mere a Cubist but was concerned to develop innovative figures of architecture in Prague that yet possessed both historical continuity and universal validity. The investigation associates geometric relations present in Janák’s theory as proposed in the essay “The Prism and the Pyramid”(1911-1912). This eventually will lead to the description of an original architectural language present in Janák’s buildings within different historical periods. Janák’s creative activity is composed of 3 distinct phases: the first period is of the dominant years of Czech Cubism since 1911, which is consciously directed to the Cubist. The second period is after the WWI, he attempted to create a national style because of the post-war tense nationalism and changed economic conditions. The last period is of functional architecture that is still developing. By tracing the three periods of the development of Janák’s theories and trying to situate the sources within the historical context, the study is to make a depiction of consistencies in Janák’s architectural vocabulary, rules and operations deployed and to discuss the process of attitude’s transformation to deal with the relationship of form and function. The aim of this study is to outline the structure of a possible grammar of Janák’s architectural language, ‘form’ was embraced as a response to the technical separation by offering a universal law of aesthetic independent of extrinsic facts of technological or historical changes. According to Neoclassical rhetoric, if figure is dependent on custom, which is customary or arbitrary beauty, then form becomes the antithesis, which can be viewed as positive or natural beauty, dependent on geometry. Just as figure includes conceptual and associative meaning, form excludes it. Form, in its exclusion, can be reduced to as “a historic degree zero”, which is the result of the expression of the essence of the architecture.

Publication details

Back to publication list