What makes a visionary environment?
First it generally embodies in some way
the principle of Gesamtkunstwerk, or 'total artwork'. It should not
just be a building, realised using traditional methods, but should
include the totality of its environment, often including landscaping
and interior furnishings, if any. Visionary environments tend to blur
the boundaries between sculpture and architecture, and between craft
and art. At the very least, the term describes a work that transcends
or transgresses, in some way, the accepted definitions of
architecture, sculpture, land art etc.
Secondly, it seems to be generally
agreed that it should represent the vision (if not the labour) of a
single individual, and it should be sui generis, existing
outside of the aegis of a wider artistic movement. Thus, art nouveau
buildings such as the Watts Chapel, Castel Beranger and the Stoclet
House, though apparently sharing many of the features of visionary
environments, are generally not considered to be examples of the
genre. Similiarly excluded is the tradition of folly building, as
well as romantic architectural fantasies such as Strawberry Hill and
Neuschwanstein Castle. We should perhaps question whether this is
done on any sound intellectual basis, or simply reflects a not always
accurate identification of visionary environments with untutored
creators, working outside of the mainstream artistic tradition.
For, despite a strong association with naïve and outsider art, the
creators of works recognised as visionary environments are not always
lone eccentrics. Many of the works of the Catalan architect Antoni
Gaudi (particularly the
Park Güell and the Sagrada
Familia) are often considered as part of the genre, as are the
architectural works of the Austrian artist Friedensreich
Hundertwasser. Both artists were formally trained and recognised as
significant creative forces within their own life-times. We can,
perhaps, gain a clearer picture of what is generally thought to
constitute a visionary environment if we understand the reason for
their inclusion. In both cases, their works are marked by extreme
idiosyncracy, and give the appearance of a certain naïvete,
eschewing traditional mainstays of western architecture (most notably
symmetry and straight lines). Both had their own reasons for doing
this, Hundertwasser's being the most interesting in terms of the
subject of Utopia and Dystopia. Growing up as a Jew hiding as a
Christian during the Nazi regime in Austria, Hundertwasser developed
a particular understanding of, and detestation for, totalitarianism
in all its forms. Seeing the importance that a certain sort of
architecture (rigid, monumental, imposing, neo-classical) had for
fascism, he developed the supposition that he could create a form of
architecture that, by eschewing regular geometry and incorporating
pre-existing features of the environment (such as trees, which he
allowed to grow through the roofs and walls of his structures), could
in some way discourage people's impulses towards totalitarianism, and
disrupt totalitarian control of the built environment. If, therefore,
we take the narrow definition, sometimes proposed, that visionary
environments should not only represent one idiosyncratic vision, but
primarily be created to satisfy a need created by that vision,
Hundertwasser falls by the wayside.
This definition
highlights one glaring art establishment omission from most lists of
visionary environment creators: the German dadaist Kurt Schwitters
who, in 1923, began the lengthy process of transforming large parts
of the ineterior of his home into an artwork which he initially
called 'The Cathedral of Erotic Misery', but which he later, and more
famously, began referring to as the Merzbau
('Merz Construction').
It is difficult to understand what it is precisely that seperates
this work from examples such as Ferdinand Cheval's Le
Palais idéa, except
Schwitter's artistic credibility. Indeed, we could argue that the
untutuored Cheval is actually a more astonishing, powerful and
authentic creative force than Schwitters (we are allowed to make such
arguments because there is a fairly good chance Schwitters would have
agreed wholeheartedly).
Generally,
therefore, we must note that the term 'Visionary Environment'
contains the same problems as we have previously identified with the
term 'Outsider art'. But what does all this have to do with Utopia
and Dystopia?
Essentially,
we can see the Visionary Environment as a concrete form of Utopia.
The Utopian writer looks around themself, sees an imperfect world and
writes a book in which it is better. The visionary environmentalist
mixes a bag of lime mortar and gets cracking. Whilst this directness
and passion may seem entirely admirable, however, it also serves to
highlight, in a very dramatic way, the core problem of Utopia. The
visionary environment is the vision of one person only, and very
often it is only one person who will ever be able to fully and
comfortably inhabit it. Everyone else is simply a spectator at best.
The anarchist writer Marcel Proudhon famously argued that 'property
is theft'; by this he chiefly meant land; and there is no more
spectacular and absolute way of claiming ones ownership and utter
dominion over a patch of land than creating a visionary environment
within it.
Utopia,
it seems, may be pretty, but it is also antisocial.
