INGLÉS II – TRABAJO PRÁCTICO Nº 3

TEXTO: WEINGARDEN, LAUREN S. Naturalized Nationalism. A Ruskinian Discourse

on the Search for an American Style in Architecture. An Offprint from: Winterthur
Portfolio. A Journal of American Material Culture. Volume 24. Number 1. Spring 1989.
Winterhur Museum. The University of Chicago Press.

1- Lea el título, la información bibliográfica y la primera oración de cada uno de los

párrafos. Reflexione sobre el posible contenido de este texto.

2- Observe lo expresado en cursiva y negrita. Determine su significado según contexto:

Párrafo 1

a) …an organic means of expression…

b) …a style grounded in nature and the forces that shape it…

Párrafo 3

c) Sullivan's lineage with Furness and Richardson is not just a personal construct; rather,
these three progressive American architects are joined by a cultural continuum.

Párrafo 5

d) …these symbolmaking procedures…

Párrafo 6

e) …a naturalistic and symbolic means of pictorial representation…

3- Explique las ideas vinculadas por Although y rather than en el primer párrafo.

4- ¿Qué plantearon los propios contemporáneos de Sullivan?

5- Descubra el referente de lo subrayado en el segundo párrafo.

6- Explique las ideas vinculadas por On one hand…On the other hand… en el segundo
párrafo.

7- ¿Por qué se habla de un continuo cultural en Sullivan, Furness y Richardson?

8- Explique las ideas vinculadas por That is en el cuarto párrafo.

9- Descubra el referente de lo subrayado en el cuarto párrafo.

10- ¿Qué hace Emerson para lograr una forma de arte indígena? ¿Por qué?

11- Explique las ideas vinculadas por not only…but also en el quinto párrafo.

12- ¿Cuál es la crítica planteada por Emerson? ¿Cuáles eran sus expectativas en cuanto al
rol del artista como poeta?

13- En el sexto párrafo Because determina una relación de causa y efecto. Determine cuál
es la causa y cuál es el efecto.

14- Descubra el referente de lo subrayado en el sexto párrafo.

15- ¿Cómo procede Ruskin según los preceptos mencionados en el texto?

NATURALIZED NATIONALISM
A Ruskinian Discourse on the Search for an American Style in Architecture

1
Although modernist historians and critics identified Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) as a
"prophet" of twentieth-century functionalism, his place in nineteenth-century architectural
traditions is now being reassessed. Indeed, when Sullivan's own contemporaries praised his
artistic originality, they discerned in his work an organic means of expression that raised
architecture, as a practical art, and modern technology to the level of a fine art. Through
these earlier assessments we can gain access to Sullivan's artistic procedures for creating a
new American style, a style grounded in nature and the forces that shape it. In this paper
modernist concerns will be suspended so as to take a retrospective rather than a
prospective view of Sullivan's artistic choices and his formation of an innovative means of
organic expression.
2
From the start of his career Sullivan searched for a native style by aligning himself with
both a distant and immediate naturalistic past. On one hand, he used medieval styles –
Gothic ornament and Romanesque mass composition – as historical points of departure. On
the other hand, he forged a more recent artistic link with Frank Furness (1839-1912), in
whose office he apprenticed in 1873, and with Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886),
whose designs he assimilated between 1885 and 1893.
3
Sullivan's lineage with Furness and Richardson is not just a personal construct; rather,
these three progressive American architects are joined by a cultural continuum. Each
architect was guided in his search for an American style by the naturalistic connotations
that John Ruskin (1819-1900) assigned to medieval styles. Even more significant is that
Ruskin's aesthetics were mediated to them through New England transcendentalism. The
immediate reception in America of Ruskin's first edition of "The Seven Lamps of
Architecture" 1 can be directly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson's earlier expectations for
a new American art.
4
Written as part of his essays on nature, dating from 1836 on, Emerson's statements on the
fine arts nurtured the Edenic myth of America as "Nature's nation". That is, America's
primeval forests, lakes, and mountains provided both a record of the nation's past and the
setting for its nature growth. To sustain this myth and thereby attain an indigenous art form,
Emerson instructed artist in every medium to use the poet and poetic techniques as models
for averting an imbalance between material gains and spiritual growth. As Emerson
explained, the poet intuitively reads and translates all things natural and man-made as
symbols of the divine mind. He thus wrote, "Nature offers all her creatures as picture-
language…because nature is a symbol in the whole and in every part".
5
For Emerson, these symbolmaking procedures would not only ensure America’s moral,
spiritual, and cultural progress but also guarantee a spiritual-organic unity between the fine
arts and the “applied”, mechanical, and utilitarian arts. Emerson admonished his nineteenth-
century American audience for severing “beauty from use”, a “division”, he said, that “the
laws of nature do not permit”. But he added that rather than expect the poet-artist to repeat
the unity of beauty and use that existed in the “old arts”, our native genius “will find beauty
and holiness in new and necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop and mill”.
Emerson further prophesied, “Proceeding from a religious heart, the poet-artist will raise to

1
“The Seven Lamps of Architecture”

1. Sacrifice – dedication of man's craft to God, as visible proof of man's love and obedience.
2. Truth – handcrafted and honest display of materials and structure. Truth to materials and honest
display of construction were bywords since the serious Gothic Revival had distanced itself from the
whimsical Gothic of the 18th century.
3. Power – buildings should be thought of in terms of their massing and reach towards the sublimity of
nature by the action of the human mind upon them and the organization of physical effort in
constructing buildings.
4. Beauty – aspiration towards God expressed in ornamentation drawn from nature, his creation.
5. Life – buildings should be made by human hands, so that the joy of masons and stone carvers is
associated with the expressive freedom given to them.
6. Memory – buildings should respect the culture from which they have developed.
7. Obedience – no originality for its own sake, but conforming to the finest among existing English
values, in particular expressed through the "English Early Decorated" Gothic as the safest choice of
style.
a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the joint stock company, and…’our great
mechanical works’ in which we see now only an economical use”.
6
Because Emerson and his followers anticipated that a truly American art would result
from such a unity between the material and the divine, Ruskin’s ideas about raising
architecture to a fine art were especially well received. Ruskin also promoted an organic-
spiritual unity among the arts. To this end he first pronounced: “No man can be an
architect who is not a metaphysician”. Later he added: “A great architect must be a great
sculptor or painter…If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.” According
to these precepts, Ruskin formulated his architectural principles of design as consonant
with a naturalistic and symbolic means of pictorial representation.