Book Review: Hendrik W. Dey, The Afterlife of the Roman City: Architecture and Ceremony in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

The latest book by Hendrik W. Dey examines the afterlife of the Roman city in the territories of the erstwhile Roman Empire until roughly the ninth century. As a scholar with multiple threads of training in classics, Dey writes his book with a strong archaeological research method that emphasizes the perseverance of urban paradigms of the Greco-Roman world beyond literary tropes or oversimplified economical and demographical analyses. The Afterlife of the Roman City looks in particular at monumental architecture and urban topography by highlighting their importance in the definition of the urban space as a place of ceremonial manifestations of the glory of kings, emperors, caliphs, and bishops during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages

Book Review—Maria Cristina Carile, The Vision of the Palace of the Byzantine Emperors as a Heavenly Jerusalem

In this inspiring book, The Vision of the Palace of the Byzantine Emperors as a Heavenly Jerusalem, which is based on her doctoral dissertation (joint doctorate Università degli Studi di Bologna and the University of Birmingham, 2007), art historian Maria Cristina Carile provides an interdisciplinary study about the relationship between the Imperial Palace and the Heavenly Jerusalem

Evocations of Byzantium in Zenitist Avant-Garde Architecture

The Byzantine legacy in modern architecture can be divided between a historicist, neo-Byzantine architectural style and an active investigation of the potentials of the Byzantine for a modern, explicitly nontraditional, architecture. References to Byzantium in avantgarde Eastern European architecture of the 1920s employed a modernist interpretation of the Byzantine concept of space that evoked a mode of “medieval” experience and creative practice rather than direct historical quotation. The avant-garde movement of Zenitism, a prominent visionary avant-garde movement in the Balkans, provides a case study in the ways immaterial aspects of Byzantine architecture infiltrated modernism and moved it beyond an academic, reiterative formalism. By examining the visionary architectural design for the Zeniteum, the Zenitist center, in this article, I aim to identify how references to Byzantium were integrated in early twentieth-century Serbian avant-garde architecture and to address broader questions about interwar modernism. In the 1920s, architects, architectural historians, and promoters of architecture came to understand the Byzantine concept of space in ways that architects were able to use in distinctly non-Byzantine architecture. I will trace the ways Zenitism engaged the Byzantine architectural construct of total design, in which structure joins spirituality, and related philosophical concepts of meaning and form derived from both Byzantine and avant-garde architecture. This reassessment of Zenitism, an Eastern European architectural movement often placed on the margins of the history of modern architecture, has broad implications for our understanding of the relationship between tradition and modernism

Micro-architecture as a Spatial and Conceptual Frame in Byzantium: Canopies in the Monastery of Hosios Loukas

The use of architecture as a visual and conceptual frame is well attested in medieval art. For example, in medieval illuminations, architectural frames are often used to separate images from the accompanying texts. Such architectural 140 frames signify potent transparent boundaries between the space of the beholder and the space of that which is seen and, therefore, define perceptible liminal spaces. Actual architectural frames and their role in defining sacred space, however, have been studied far less

The Rhetoric and Performativity of Light in the Sacred Space: A Case Study of The Vision of St. Peter of Alexandria / Риторика и перформативность света в сакральном пространстве: Видение св. Петра Александрийского

Light is most pervasive in the sacred space because, in addition to its natural qualities, it can be associated with spiritual and miraculous light, and it is often understood as an attribute of the holy.1 In order to understand the role of light in the creation of sacred space, art and architectural historians often link relevant visual and textual references. This approach, however, usually results in a split between the representational and the performative, despite the fact that within the religious context ritual is closely intertwined with its visual or architectural frameworks, which emphasize the centrality and meaning of the sacred.2 Moreover, the rhetorical capacity of religious images and architecture, which persuasively frames the reality beyond the visual and the spatial, is particularly significant in the creation of the sacred. -- Авторитетный «перформативный» текст из Нового Завета «Я свет миру, кто последует за Мною, тот не будет ходить во тьме, но будет иметь свет жизни» (Ин 8:12) отождествляет Христа со светом и недвусмысленно обещает спасение его последовате- лям. В этом контексте истинные последователи Христа-света не только извещены («просвещены»), но как реципиенты боже- ственного знания («просветления») наследуют божественную жизнь. Концепция божественного света, таким образом, при- обрела заметную роль в церкви, став духовной составляющей и тесно вплетаясь в религиозную жизнь верующих. Религиозный контекст задействует не только риторический и концептуаль- ный аспекты, но использует различные виды световых эффек- тов для обрамления мистической, божественной сути нетварно- го, невместимого бытия, которое невозможно чувственно осязать. Световые эффекты внутри сакрального пространства или связанные с ними художественные репрезентации ставят своей целью передать опыт божественного присутствия доступ- ными зрителю способами, а именно: визуально, интеллектуаль- но, эмоционально, перформативно и концептуально

The rhetoric of architecture in the Byzantine context: The case study of the Holy Sepulchre / Реторика архитектуре у византијском контексту: пример цркве Светог гроба

This paper examines the rhetorical capacity of architecture, and in particular, “the rhetoric of architecture” rather than the usually examined “rhetoric about architecture.” In this work, the rhetoric of architecture is understood as codified visual and architectural conventions as a series of transpositions that frame specific meanings other than and beyond visible and spatial. Here the proposed “rhetoric of architecture” is also more about its capacity as a “mnemonic tool” and about the “craft of composition” rather than about persuading others or about representation based on exact likeness. This concept is particularly significant in the creation of the sacred. By focusing on the architecture of the critical building of the Holy Sepulchre that enclosed the Tomb Shrine in Jerusalem as described by Patriarch Photios in the ninth and Abbot Daniel in the early twelfth centuries, this paper argues for the recognition of the mnemonic links that the Byzantines may have used not only for remembering the Tomb of Christ, but also for their several reconstructions of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem as well as for embedding the meaning of Jerusalem and New Jerusalem in their churches built elsewhere. -- Реторички описни текстови о архитектури го- воре о значају визуелног изражавања и саставни су део рецепције појединих архитектонских објеката и сећања на њих у византијској култури. Коришћењем архитектуре за епистемолошко разумевање визан- тијске културе могуће је испитати реторику архи- тектуре уместо реторику о архитектури, то јест описивање архитектуре у тексту. У овом раду под ре- ториком архитектуре подразумева се серија кодифи- кованих визуелних и архитектонских конвенција које путем низа транспозиција стварају оквире особених значења што надилазе видљиве и просторне аспекте архитектуре. Tако схваћена, реторика архитектуре разматрана је више као потенцијал за успостављање меморијских веза важних за сећање на поједине архи- тектонске објекте и за вештину композиције него као реторичко пропагандно средство које једнозначно треба да убеди посматрача у значење објекта или као могућност прецизног копирања архитектуре на осно- ву тачно одређене форме

Book Review: Unfinished Modernisations: Between Utopia and Pragmatism, edited by Maroje Mrduljaš and Vladimir Kulić

Vladimir Kulić and Maroje Mrduljaš co-edited two invaluable books in 2012: Unfinished Modernisations: Between Utopia and Pragmatism and Modernism In-Between. The Mediatory Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia. These complementary books deal with modernism in architecture and urbanism in the territories of former Yugoslavia from its post-WWII period until its phased dissolution in the 1990s. The authors are trained as architects with distinctive background in the field. Kulić and Mrduljaš obtained their professional degrees in architecture in the former Yugoslavia, at the University of Belgrade and the University of Zagreb, respectively. Kulić further specialized in modernism in 1950s and 1960s socialist Yugoslavia, which is also a focus of his forthcoming book based on his doctoral dissertation in architectural history from the University of Texas in Austin (2009). He currently teaches architectural history and design at Florida Atlantic University in the United States. Mrduljaš, who currently works at the University of Zagreb, is an architectural critic and editor of the journal Oris. Among his numerous projects, are studies about architecture of hotels along the Adriatic Littoral and about the role of Team X on the architecture in the region of Southeastern Europe. These two substantial books result from their expertise in architecture and, in particular, from their professional collaboration on an international research project sponsored by the European Commission Culture Programme (2010-12) concerning architecture and urban planning in socialist Yugoslavia and the successor states

The Relational Spiritual Geopolitics of Constantinople, the Capital of the Byzantine Empire

Strategically located on a peninsula on the European side of the narrow Bosphorus strait that connects the Mediterranean and the Black Seas (by way also of the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles), Constantinople; the capital city of the medieval Roman Empire that we know as the Byzantine Empire (324-1453), was the largest and most thriving urban center in the Old World.1 The city was founded by the first Roman Emperor who embraced Christianity, Constantine I (d. 337), as the eponymous capital outside historically dominant urban centers and as the alternative to the city of Rome. This chapter outlines the physical production of the geopolitical landscape of Constantinople. By highlighting the critical elements of Constantinopolitan spatial configuration this essay questions how the geopolitical landscape of Constantinople was then emulated at alternative sites of authority, in related capital cities of emerging medieval states that adopted Byzantine cultural values and its Orthodox version of Christianity in medieval Bulgaria, Rus and Serbia

The Phiale as a Spatial Icon

This paper examines phialae as spatial icons by focusing on their micro-architecture and related spiritual and sacramental meanings. Similar in architectural form and meaning to ablution and baptismal fonts, phialae were distinct installations for holy water fonts, which were used for ceremonies related to the blessing of holy water but would also invoke references to the cleansing of sins and the sacrament of baptism

Earth, Visual Arts

Earth is mentioned in the opening verses of the first book of the HB/OT in reference to creation (Gen 1 : 1), thus attaining great significance for both cosmological and theological discussions. One can also find numerous references to earth in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Kings, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, the Gospels, the Apocrypha, and related religious texts of liturgical poetry, such as Christmas hymns and carols. References to earth may be related to the earthly realm and place of “God made manifest,” as in the NT narrative of the nativity in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Earth also takes a prominent place in the narratives about the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment. In addition, earth is a natural entity with its appropriate topography (rocks, caves, waters) and natural phenomena (earthquakes, see Isa 24 : 19; winds, fires, and floods as in Noah’s story, Gen 6–9). Earth is the soil and ground (see Gen 2 : 7), a cultivated space of abundance (see Gen 49 : 25); it is occasionally related to a city as the representative of nations and kingdoms of earth (see Jer 33 : 9 about Jerusalem) but also to the wandering wilderness and the desert (see Gen 4 : 12, 14; Job 38 : 26)