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AP®︎/College Art History
Course: AP®︎/College Art History > Unit 6
Lesson 1: Enlightenment and revolution- Cabrera, Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery
- Fragonard, The Swing
- Thomas Jefferson, Monticello
- David, Oath of the Horatii
- David, Oath of the Horatii
- Jean-Antoine Houdon, George Washington
- Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait
- Goya, And there's nothing to be done (from the Disasters of War)
- Painting colonial culture: Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque
- Ingres, La Grande Odalisque
- Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
- Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
- Thomas Cole, The Oxbow
- Thomas Cole, The Oxbow
- Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge
- Turner, Slave Ship
- Charles Barry and A.W.N. Pugin, Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)
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Charles Barry and A.W.N. Pugin, Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)
Charles Barry and A.W.N. Pugin, Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament), 1840-70, London
Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker . Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker . Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- what does elizibethein mean?(3 votes)
- The Elizabethan Era was the time when Queen Elizabeth the First reigned over England, successfully.(1 vote)
- So, this was ultimately an attempt by modern people (at the time) to use current techniques and advances to pay homage and respect to a culture they idealized? To hold such high esteem of a culture long past is a great honor to them, indeed!(4 votes)
- what exactly caused the Palace of Westminster to catch on fire??(2 votes)
- What artistic period would this piece of architecture be from? Impressionism or post-impressionism? Or maybe something different?(2 votes)
- It is a Gothic Revival architecture of the Romanticism in "Later Europe and Americas".(1 vote)
- why did the new palace design have to be either Gothic or Elizabethan?(1 vote)
- At the time, Gothic and Elizabethan were seen as styles that were native to England. They were believed to have originated in England. The government wanted their seat of power to reflect English culture, power, and virtue, so it made sense for them to want an English style.(4 votes)
- Where was the primary seat of the government prior to 1840? What architect designed that building?(2 votes)
- The seat of government was in London, but the old building burned down. the architects were Charles Barry and Augustus W. N. Pugin.(1 vote)
- I think we have similar situation in a present date about the state of modern architecture which is often despised by public. Yes, of course there are brilliant and beautiful buildings built today, but they are to few and far between.
Since Victorians experienced somewhat similar feelings about buildings erected during their period, do present architects actually look at the past for inspiration?(2 votes)- Of course they do, but the big question is how much thought even goes into architecture these days. Far too often, building projects are merely cheap and fast. Here's a great lecture that explains the problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ(1 vote)
- Apart from mentioning that the houses of parliament sit on a concrete foundation and are designed for ventilation, I heard nothing else about the engineering features that made this a modern building with a gothic facade. So, what were the contemporary features of the building that made it NOT a gothic building, but merely a "costumed" one?(2 votes)
- The way the gothic elements are organized is very classical. It's all bout order, balance, and regularity, unlike the drama and organic feeling you get from true Gothic architecture. There's also the tower that was added to increase ventilation. 5:29(1 vote)
- I understand that this building is in Gothic style, but what is it about "classic style"?(1 vote)
- the classical part of it is the order, balance, regularity, and repetition of different parts. Because of that, the long parts of the building that faces the Thames is similar to facades like those in the Palace at Versailles and the Louvre, even if they contain gothic elements. I think they said in the video its like a classical building with gothic decorations. 5:29(2 votes)
- What are the colorful tents in front of the building for? Are they permanent? Are they there because of the rain? Is that some kind of bus stop shelter?(1 vote)
Video transcript
Voiceover: We're looking
across the River Thames at the Houses of Parliament in London. Voiceover: It's tempting
to think that this was built hundreds of
years earlier than it was. It was built in the early Victorian era. Voiceover: There was a great fire in 1834 and it burned down the old
palace that had been here and there was a competition that was held for designs for a new building. The competition had the stipulation that the new structure had to be designed in one of two historical styles. It had to either be Gothic
or it could be Elizabethan. That is, from the time of Shakespeare. Voiceover: There was
something like 97 entries to the competition and the vast majority were in the Gothic style so that's why this looks like it was built
hundreds of years before. It's in the style of the Gothic which dates from the late medieval period. Voiceover: The competition was won by an architect who's
name is Charles Barry with the assistance of Augustus Pugin, who's responsible for the interior designs as well as the stained glass and some of the exterior decorative forms. Voiceover: Pugin was known
for his love of the Gothic, for his belief in the Gothic as the right and true moral style of architecture and also style of architecture that was associated with Englishness. This is why the competition stipulated it needed to be Elizabethan or Gothic. We think about the Gothic as French, but in England in the 19th century, the Gothic was English. Voiceover: I think it raises the issue why was the 19th century so fascinated with reviving older architectural styles? What was that about and, of course, the reason has to do
with industrialization with the new modern world and the way that that unsettled people. Voiceover: Well, the
modern era seemed ugly, a period of factories and steam engines. It seemed like there was
nothing beautiful about it. When they looked at the past, they saw the beautiful
architecture of the Gothic period. They looked at the classical paths and they saw beauty, but when they looked around them, they didn't see beauty. They saw the industrial world. Voiceover: This was now a period when you could buy cheaply made goods for the first time and the old systems of handicraft had been replaced. People had moved from the country where people had learned
through apprenticeship traditions of making things, but now things were being
produced by factories and it was an unsettling period so I think it's natural
that people looked back to historical styles,
especially a building like this which was meant to be
the seat of government. Voiceover: And is still
today the seat of government. This is where the House of Commons meets. This is where the House of Lords meets. This building represents
the Parliamentary system so you're right, it had to
really speak of tradition. Voiceover: But it really
speaks of a kind of falsehood. This is not the Gothic. It is a modern invention. In fact, the building itself uses quite a number of modern innovations in its constructive techniques. It's an enormous building
on a concrete bed, certainly not a medieval tradition, concerned with ventilation. In fact, the central tower
was added to the design in order to help support
ventilation in the building and so this building really is a product of the 19th century. Voiceover: Architectural
historians call this the Gothic Revival and
the Gothic really did stand for a kind of Victorian fantasy, a 19th century fantasy, of medieval artisan craftsmanship, of a time of really taking care in making things by hand, and so we look at this and we just see an architectural style, but it's a style that's really associated
with very specific values that the Victorians were
trying to return to. Voiceover: And, in fact, Pugin, one of the two architects
who worked on this building, published a book called Contrasts, which paired the modern
and the medieval worlds and the modern world
did not come out well. It was a deeply moralizing book that looked at the way in
which medieval society was full of moral virtue
but the modern society had squandered that, so for example, there was one famous plate that showed the modern city where the skyline was dominated by factories and smokestacks versus the medieval
city where the landscape was dominated by church steeples, that is, by a reverence for
God, a kind of moral center. Voiceover: Comparison between a world guided by faith that he imagined was the medieval Gothic world and a world guided by hunger for money. He's drawing very stark contrasts, but the Victorians loved to do that. They loved to compare the
old medieval world of faith with the new modern quest
for money and fortune. Voiceover: And so it's important for us to understand a building like this within that Victorian context. Let's get back to the building itself. We see this magnificent exterior that just spans the edge of the River Thames and we can see this reference back to the medieval style of
the perpendicular Gothic and, in fact, it was very self consciously based on the Chapel of Henry VII in this late Gothic style that
we know as the perpendicular. It's just at the east
end of Westminster Abbey, which is the building that
is just behind this one and here we can see these large windows and emphasis on the rectiliner, on the vertical, on tracery and lacework. Voiceover: We can see that each window has had its top tracery work that divides the glass up, almost like a filigree of fact. The architect is really
maximizing the window space and this is a feature of the high Gothic. Voiceover: Barry had traveled extensively and really loved the classical tradition, even though he's building
here in this faux Gothic. But if you look closely, you can see Barry's
interest in the classical. Look at the regularity of this facade. Look at the sense of rhythm and balance. And it's really only the
exterior decorative forms that refer to the Gothic style because the building
as a whole is laid out with a kind of symmetry regularity that is really at odds even with the conception of the Gothic from the
18th and 19th centuries where the idea of the picturesque, the idea of the organic, the idea of the asymmetrical
was so important. Voiceover: So we could say that this is, in some ways, a classical building with a Gothic skin on it. Voiceover: Nevertheless or perhaps because of this, the Houses of Parliament is just such an extraordinary example of the 19th century's
concern for historical style. Voiceover: And an interest in avoiding confronting the modern.