1 of 16
Years ago I attended an exhibition of late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural drawings. On the entrance wall the curator had placed a phrase lifted from the writings of the architect Louis Kahn. It read,
The joint is the source of every ornament.
The sheer clarity of that simple declaration struck me then, and still strikes me now, with great force. Of course today the word "ornament" is archaic in discussions of art, and we must look past its quaintness to the real insight of the claim, an insight that feels to me almost primal. What this statement lays bare is the generative dynamic that begets all manner of human making far beyond architecture. Indeed, what is revealed in this statement is not so much about the language of architecture as it is about the architecture of all "language." I say "language" because I mean here every system for signifying human thought and meaning, whether verbal, plastic, aural, or gestural.
At heart, the observation is that wherever a "joint" exists between the meeting of two things there arises in the human psyche a need to mark that place of encounter. Apparently the human eye is not satisfied by simple, blunt juxtapositions. Nor is the mind willing to leave such encounters alone. It must offer some "ornament," some "finish," some mediation or transition. The "joint," it seems, is too naked. It causes discontent in the human mind. The mind wants to clothe it.
This is abundantly clear in architecture. Where the plane of a wall meets the plane of a roof, the blunt encounter feels unresolved. Without jambs and moldings, the opening of a doorway through a wall feels like a gaping hole. The great architect Louis Sullivan said that such bare-bones structures amounted to buildings that were "nude." For thousands of years the nudity of the "joint" has been clothed by the softening transition of cornice, entablature, molding, jamb, and pilaster. These mediate, reconcile, unify, negotiate. The mind likes a weaving together of the parts. Such ornaments are like the gracious hostess who softens the awkwardness between strangers at her table by naming people they know in common. In this way, she mediates the social gap between them, her words creating a transition between strangeness and friendship. Like the rows of jamb figures at the cathedral's door, her introduction allows strangers to pass with dignity through the portal into communion.
The psychic dis-ease caused by the "joint" extends to matters far beyond architecture. "Joint" and "ornament" are both literal and metaphoric. We humans have designed an almost endless skein of "social ornaments" in order to negotiate the otherwise disjointed relationships between things and our experience of them. A simple oak threshold articulates the meeting between my house and porch; a fence adorns (but also resolves) boundary disputes at the property line; a surveyor's plat articulates where the debt of one mortgage leaves off and the next begins; a guard, passport, and required stamp navigate the borders between countries; all these and more articulate and weave together myriad joints in the social, economic, and political architectures of modern life.
The same is true of more personal and intimate "joints" between persons. I involuntarily clear my throat softly in the library's silence when approaching the circulation desk. To speak out loud might startle the librarian lost in her concentration. A man waits to see if a woman returns his gaze before bridging the gap between them with conversation. Or in reverse, a young lover cannot easily say goodnight and go home; parting requires the repetition of phrases and kisses to salve the widening joint of separation as they diverge. "Social ornaments" have a complex history, as when a teenage boy approaching an unknown boy on the street nods his head almost imperceptibly, this cool gesture signifying that no challenge is intended as they pass; this gesture itself being an understated grandchild of his father's fathers, who would have tipped their hats to one another in greeting. And that tipping of hats, as Erwin Panofsky reminded us, is itself a descendent of the medieval knight's gesture when he raised his helmet visor as a signal to an approaching knight that he intended no battle.
share this page
RSS Feed
