Communion

In these readings on Corbusier and the ideas put forward about the nature of criticism in general and architectural criticism specifically, I find perhaps the most dangerous word to be the title of this post.  The communion of artistic and architectural criticism seems, to me, a dangerous manner in which to think about the appraisal of artistic value, primarily because of its exclusionary reality, and that one must be part of, necessarily, a fellowship to communicate one’s art to the world.  The architecture presented by Corbusier, was itself, and at its time, strictly out of sync with the canon, with the communion, and only through this radical departure (and much personal suffering on his part) was there a shift in the politics of processing architecture.  Commune comes from the word common, and to make common is to turn one’s eyes distinctly away from change.
The architecture presented by Corbusier, though perhaps common in scope, particularly with the relationship regarding reproduction and his almost fetishistic desires towards mass production, nonetheless produced a manner of seeing outside of eyes.  The direction about the object became idyllic construction, airbrushing away a certain sense of the world for the purposes of scoping the presentational discourse.  Though this afflicts our current modernity, with art largely either refuting life outright due to its lack of presence, or art embracing the commons to such an extent as to become farcical, it is in the balance of escaping the commune and presenting constructs that we see the beauty of the medium.
The medium is not purely the message, rather the medium mediates messages, and with careful consideration the medium states an appearance.  When criticism is brought forth, it states friction with the commune, and unless one is willing to escape, any criticism levied against the message will fall flat, simply due to its inability to fight against the message, to break away from the accepted discourse and provide a richer, more complete discourse.  Each new discourse is to an extent, a house built upon a house, and determinately, is unstable, forcing occasional shifts to new sites, upon which a new bedrock of discourse may be formed.  These shifts are far rarer, but generally more valuable to a discourse about forms, and about the history of the various communes and canons as established by communities.
I had a rather difficult time addressing these articles, particularly addressing them in a way that gives respect to both their historical arguments and arguments about the nature of architectural criticism.  Taking them apart in any meaningful manner is extremely difficult.  I’m not really sure if what’s above is even meaningful, it feels like mental gobbledegook to me as my brain attempts to unwrap these extraordinarily complex processes, particularly the shifts from production to reproduction, what that means to architecture, architectural photograph and representation, as well as what it actually means to represent something.  It’s hard to picture something being representative of anything other than itself.  Yes, a picture may intend to be something else, but it makes very little sense, conceptually, to believe that a picture is both itself and an intention of something other than itself.  What’s more, Corbusier also had to contend with what he saw as a historical problem of attempting to preserve versus attempting to, in a sense, “show off” what architecture represents.  Colomina also presents many arguments, some on the various obvious nature of Corbusier’s own tendencies towards poorly analyzing “the other” and those various sensitivities, as well as his general inability to understand the architecture as a critical object nearly so much as an idyllic one, particularly relating to the airbrushing and reconstructing of architecture into more perfect forms through representation.