Foundling: Historicism and Revivalism

Question 1

Historicism

Answer 1

• Styles recreated or closely inspired by historic styles
• had some positive virtues in that the architect was challenged to find new aspects, adaptations and aesthetics albeit still within the reptoire of elite Western styles
• C18 and C19 original styles such as Gothic, Romanesque, Roman, Greek, etc. were surveyed, measured, studied comparatively and published
• This wealth of exactitude enable expansion of architectural repetoire and the illusion of novelty craved by the educated elite and architects themselves
• enhanced in tandem with literature of the age (e,g, Sir Walter Scott and later Kipling) and history of art
• Historicism became especially strong from the 1850s in Ruskin’s advocacy of Gothic Revival as possessing ethical character appropriate to English society

Question 2

Acquisition

Answer 2

• Related to historicism in that it reflects C19 preoccupation with novelty but also in conflict with Ruskinian revivalism
• More concerned with scientific and Imperial expansion, museology and the classification of knowledge that underlined later Enlightenment
• Acquisition is accumulating information, facts, sometimes driven by Romantic desire for possession, and prosaic desire for Knowledge, ownership and wealth in sense of ownership of peoples, societies, land, etc – so highly political
• Encapsulated in Napoleon’s collecting tour of Egypt and Elgin’s in Athens
• Supplied enormous riches for their national museums, impact on further style changes, luxury, appealingly exotic or rational and educational all at the same time - anathema to Ruskin’s appeal for purifying aesthetic rooted in moral worth.