The Cathedral of Obverse Obsessions
By 1994 I had substantial ill-organised writings on my computer that were frequently plundered for other uses and provided the DNA for subsequent books. Initially masquerading as a work of fiction, the assemblage was titled The Cathedral of Obverse Obsessions. Over six weeks from mid-April 1994 I made a large drawing under this title. It grew from the notion that architecture was cathedral-like – an unruly edifice constructed over eons with contributions by many and inevitably in need of maintenance.
Initially I drew cliffs and clouds, establishing an atmosphere and the right tonal values while delaying a commitment to a building. I could think architecture, while producing dots. The view of the world around – or at least to the east of – the architecture is somewhat dark, foreboding. It is rainy, probably stormy. But the image offers no clue as to the direction the gloom is processing – is it passing or threatening? The drawing does not enlighten, and to the west the landscape is calm.
The cathedral is pictured in hazy, late morning light. The number of spires or towers visible in the drawing is eleven, suggesting a transept spire is hidden (or fallen) and that the building has twelve, being the number of the apostles – important in the numerology of a Gothic building, but also the number of the signs of the zodiac and the number of months. Ordering notions have been important throughout the history of architectures in different cultures which have given some form of expression to their conception of cosmic order through their architecture.
Because I was drawing a cathedral, I began from my fascination with Gothic. It was always visualised as a vast construction, one that the viewer must look up to. I also saw it as transcendent, aspiring as did Gothic and other cathedrals to some higher plane. As I drew it transformed. I began to think of what different elements might have been contributed to architecture at different times. I wondered what might have happened had there been such alterations and additions and to imagine what stylistic differences might be seen in such an edifice. In a literal and formal sense, I explored what could be juxtaposed together with some plausibility – parts that made some contribution to the idea of the difficult whole and made no concessions to blending with prior styles. Because each piece of the drawing was dominantly complete prior working on the next section, I was constantly posing myself questions about what any current piece should be like: should the next intended element match, or contrast, should it harmonise, argue with, or even deny the parts completed previously? There was no preconceived overall form or detail. Instead, I was a constantly alert to, and sometimes searching for, new possibilities. Equally, I had to find a way to draw each part, a task satisfied with varying degrees of confidence.
The original building that had entranced me and formed the starting point for the choir was the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca. Something about the density and rhythm of the buttresses and the sea-edge locale invaded my thinking, although I did not visit the building until the following year and knew it from photos only, they provided a powerful beginning for my intended invention. The eastern end of Notre-Dame d’Amiens Cathedral, was also constantly present, but in my recollection more than in my slides. The complexity of the smaller forms of chapels and chapter houses in all the Gothic cathedrals I had visited I expected to be able to extend, more in the form of some European castles, and cascade down the cliff face.
Being right-hand dominant, I largely worked from left to right in drawing the building and from spire tips down. The choir was one of the latter parts to be properly inked in, and by then lower levels inexplicably acquired Renaissance characteristics. I had in mind the back of St Peters, Rome, and buildings from the first two thirds of the sixteenth century by Palladio, Vasari, or Sansovino, rather than any specific building. From its eastern end emerge first a chapel in the vein of Amiens (and thus three centuries earlier); then a reflected near quotation of part of the Dojon of the Egret castle, Himeji-jo, Japan, which dates from 1580; and finally, a construction paying homage to those whose work was labelled deconstructivist around the time of the drawing. It occupies the edge and as a proportion of the whole over-represents that time in architecture, but we are occupied with the present and recent past and thus imbue it with undue significance.
The double transept plan derives from Lincoln Cathedral which in turn was based on the monastery at Cluny thus tying it to a great tradition. The main spire is intended as a strong and simple statement to be balanced by the more complex, lower Georgian tower and spire. Its antecedents are the spires of Saint Mary Redcliffe, Bristol and Salisbury Cathedral which in their present forms date from 1872 and 1330 respectively. Salisbury Cathedral tower was the dominant model for the main crossing tower beneath it, although Lincoln Cathedral tower probably got a look in as I had previously drawn it. Spires mark conceptual and existential centres. The geometric centroid of this drawing lies nestled in emptiness. It falls between three spires.
The other visible spires on the northern transepts echo the main spire. To the west, the spires pay homage to Notre-Dame de Chartres, one being under repair as is common in historic buildings, but also an almost constant condition, I would argue, of architecture. Chartres also provided the model for the early 13th Century nave, although it was originally thought of as possibly somewhat derelict with at least a patch of burnt-out roof. (This might have been too prophetic given what happened to Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019.)
The uneven height towers on the major southern transept started life as spires but transmuted into these towers. The chhatri topping them are influenced by numerous Indian chhatri, perhaps filtered through Edwin Lutyens at New Delhi, but also owing something to coastal fortifications. The suggestion of the insertion of a Bridge of Sighs was made by Marcel Colman. On investigation the Ponte dei Sospiri, Venice, designed by Antonio Contino around 1600 seemed to fit and is more-or-less quoted. Beneath them, the façade of the main southern transept draws from the Taj Mahal, built thirty to fifty years later. It is a structure which combines building traditions of Central Asia, Iran and India. Another Mogul period building, from 1571, also near Agra, India, the Buland Darwaza Gate of Victory to the Jama Masjid, Fatehpur Sikri, also provided a model. Somehow, the inner wall of the transept turned towards 19th Century Romanesque in a questionable fashion. Perhaps there are echoes of visits to Alfred Waterhouse’s Natural History Museum, London of 1871-81.
The south-east transept relates most to a project by Louis Kahn: The Salk Meeting House, La Jolla, California (1959-65) and to his Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (1966-72). The towers vaguely echoed those on the Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Buildings, University of Pennsylvania (1957-61), but you would be excused for not making the connection as they turned circular. The Georgian spire draws from St. George’s Church, Hardwicke Place, Dublin, 1802-13 by Francis Johnston, and alternative tower designs by James Gibbs for St Martin-in-the-Fields published in his Book of Architecture, 1728. This and the spaces between the buttresses of the choir are the only real signs of classicism, although this is hardly representative of architecture if this drawing is to be read as some sort of catalogue of styles across time and continent. Greece and Rome must be represented on the other side of the building – perhaps beyond some cloisters – along with anything from anywhere not acknowledged. Siting the cathedral in an Avebury-like stone circle may bypass those periods but is an attempt to tie architecture back to a known historical past of considerable antiquity without resort to mythical huts in paradise. There is a potential hut, a temple, or perhaps a pavilion on the stepped path up the hill.
My concern was with the whole and with the informing metaphor, rather than with the amount and choice of various styles represented in the drawing. For me it was a first attempt to draw with as little preconception as possible and to evaluate and shape the product as it emerged. The mode of starting with limited ideas of what could or would transpire, progressing, adjusting, and seeing what happens was followed two years later in the series of models. This explored in the Fabrication section below.
I had broad intentions, and frequently resorted to the books in my library – while the internet was alive and functioning, the visual usefulness of the web was just spluttering to life. I drew in ink on Fabriano paper, mostly with a 0.18mm drafting pen.
750mm wide by 550mm high
14 April 1994 to 29 May 1994
Over the duration of model production other works have been made which are detailed here.