Anti-ugly : excursions in English architecture and design

274 Pages·2013·6.28 MB·English

by  Stamp

Anti-Ugly

Anti-Ugly
Excursions in
English Architecture and Design
Gavin Stamp
Contents
Foreword vii
A Vision of England 1
Anti-Ugly 6
The Curse of Palladio 12
Palladian Games 18
Surreal Recall 23
Guinness isn’t Good for You 28
Keeping an Open Mind 34
Robert Byron 39
Cartoon History 44
Betjemanic 49
Hawksmoor Redivivus 55
Shakespeare in Stone 60
The Destroyer 65
Slightly Subhuman? 69
God’s Architect 74
Midland Grand Hotel 79
The Second Greatest Briton? 84
The Spirit of Ernest George 89
Forgotten Prophet 94
Spence’s Charm 99
Knight’s Tale 104
Dreaming Towers 109
Englishmen’s Castles 114
Flogging Off the Silver 119
Nature Versus Culture 124
Gothic Revival 129
Inspired Patronage 135
Sell the Rubens 141
A Tomb for a King 146
The Empty Plinth 151
A Canova for Today 157
Too Many Memorials 162
The War Goes On 168
Tragic Triumph 173
Steam Ahead 178
Long Journey’s End 183
Battlebridge 188
Tent for a Prince 192
An Artist’s Villa 197
Villa Frankenstein 202
Post-Haste to Closure 207
In Carceri 212
Taking the Plunge 218
Aerial Travellers 223
Streamlined 227
Bring Back the Railings 233
Out With the Old 238
Looking After Liverpool 244
Dreamland 249
Lost Lululaund 254
List of Illustrations 259
Foreword
Architecture is the only art you cannot escape. We can go
through life oblivious to music, of painting, of sculpture,
but buildings have a profound effect on the way we live, work
and feel. Yet it is difficult to find places to write about them
seriously. Newspapers grudgingly acknowledge architecture
but are more interested in what a building costs than in who
was responsible for the way it looks, and why. And as archi-
tects decline to criticise each other and shelter behind jargon
and professional exclusivity, the architectural journals do
not engage with the wider public. Architectural criticism is
less well established than art or literary criticism, and critics
enamoured of the new often have no interest in or knowledge
of the old. As for architectural history, it can be an esoteric and
dull business. All of which makes Apollo magazine, in which I
have written about architecture both new and old for almost a
decade, an admirable and precious publication.
viii Anti-Ugly
As a freelance architectural historian, I once wrote for news-
papers and weekly journals for my bread and butter. ‘One
doesn’t keep journalism, does one?’ Sir John Summerson
once remarked. It is true that most journalism is ephemeral
and much of it hastily and thoughtlessly composed, although
that cannot be said of the journalism produced by this great
architectural historian and writer. One of his earliest articles –
in the Scotsman in 1930 imagining the Edinburgh of the future
(mercifully unrealised) as ‘a glittering spectacle of steel, glass
and concrete’ – is often still quoted. Summerson’s career,
indeed, suggests that journalism can be good training for
producing readable architectural history and criticism.
It depends in part on the publication. Articles dashed off
overnight for a newspaper’s deadline are different from pieces
written for a regular column or commissioned by a specialised
journal. In the case of Apollo, the ‘International Art Magazine’,
there is more time for reflection as it appears only monthly.
And we authors know that Apollo’s readers are serious and
informed. I therefore like to think that my regular column on
architecture in the magazine encourages me to ponder, research
and write as best I can. The results are, I hope, worth keeping.
The articles reprinted here are almost half of those I wrote
for Apollo between 2004 and 2013. A criterion for selecting
them was that they should be about England (very occasion-
ally about Britain) or Englishmen. My thoughts on architecture
and art abroad – in Berlin, St Petersburg, Budapest, Malta,
Istanbul, New Delhi, Bombay and elsewhere – must remain,
for the moment, in back numbers of the magazine. Rereading
my articles to make this selection made me realise that many
are, to a degree, autobiographical but I hope this may be for-
given. I have been writing about buildings for over forty years
and it is natural that in my pieces for Apollo I draw upon per-
sonal enthusiasms and experiences.
The articles here reflect my love of churches, both ancient
and modern, and many of the articles were the result of my
Foreword ix
continuing interest in and enthusiasm for Victorian architec-
ture, acquired at an early age (I am proud to record that I joined
the Victorian Society when still, just, at school because of the
threat to St Pancras Station). Out of this came my long-standing
interest in the work of the Scott dynasty: in the great Sir Gilbert,
in his brilliant tragic son, George Gilbert Scott junior, in his son,
the great Sir Giles, and in his son Richard, an underrated talent
and a dear friend. I have also never lost my enthusiasm for the
monumental, sublime architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor, to
whose London churches I think I was first pointed, again as a
schoolboy, by Nairn’s London, an inspiring book by that great
eponymous architectural journalist: Ian Nairn. From that fol-
lowed my admiration for the work of the greatest of English
architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Some articles are the result of other long-standing enthu-
siasms: for railways – still the most civilised and enjoyable
form of transport – and railway stations; for war memorials
and in the melancholy, sublime architecture of the memorials
and cemeteries of the Great War which grew out of my passion
for Lutyens. It is sad, perhaps, that war memorials remain a
topical subject as so many – too many, mostly of deplorable
quality – have been erected in Britain in the last couple of
decades: a phenomenon which may well engage and puzzle
future historians. They deserve comment as they are, by their
nature, public monuments and public art and sculpture require
more attention than they usually receive. In this context I have
written about the work of Alexander Stoddart, the modern
Classical sculptor who I regard as an artist of rare skill and of
genius. For this I make no apology, for although he is a Scot his
work is to be seen in London and elsewhere in England.
Re-reading what I have contributed to Apollo, I am surprised
that there is so little about Scotland where I lived and worked
for over a decade. There is nothing, for instance, about another
architect-hero, Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson of Glasgow, but I
conclude that when I came back home to England in 2003 I
x Anti-Ugly
had banged on long enough about Scottish matters and was,
as it were, written out on the subject. In consequence, much of
what I have written for the magazine concerns English archi-
tecture and English concerns: hence the subtitle of this book,
Excursions in English Architecture and Design. After all, I cannot
help being English myself, and am decidedly not a ‘Brit’.
My first article in Apollo, in May 2004, was an opportunity
to rehearse the scandal of the mutilation and desecration
of one of the great Mediaeval buildings of Europe, King’s
College Chapel, perpetrated when I was an undergraduate
in Cambridge and still not rectified. On the whole, however,
architecture has greatly improved over the intervening decades,
becoming more varied, better made and sometimes more
influenced by tradition. I cannot, however, join in the current
glass-worship which operates at the expense of other more
important architectural qualities. It has been extraordinary to
see how Modernism, once shoddy but altruistic, has morphed
into the vulgar style of arrogant capitalism. Nevertheless, over
the same period, the fight for conservation (of the ordinary
as well as of the best, in all styles and of any date) and for
a less destructive approach to urban development would
seem to have been won – as symbolised by the resurrection
of once-doomed St Pancras (never could I have imagined
when I first saw the despised and neglected Victorian Gothic
hotel that, over forty years later, I would stay overnight in
the magnificently restored building prior to its triumphant
reopening) – although, at the time of writing, what with the
ruthless economies being imposed by an ideologically-driven
government on English Heritage as well as on local authorities,
the future for many historic buildings looks bleak and more
big battles may come.
I was able to bang on about King’s Chapel and much else
thanks to Michael Hall, who worked wonders for Apollo after
he took over the editorship that year. I am most grateful to
him, and to his successor, Oscar Humphries, for allowing me