A NEW BUILDING at this school in the San Gabriel Valley in southern California is predicated on the centrality of the library in the young person’s education, that is, learning by first learning what other people have learned. (Foothill Country Day School, Claremont CA, Learning Center Preliminary Study, 2022)
Art historians of the 20th century created narratives in which artists influenced other artists (Michelangelo/ Borromini, Twombly/ Basquiat) by implying that it was somehow a transaction from copied to copier when it could only ever be the other way around. Artists influence other artists if artists are willing in some way to look at other artists’ art and copy what they see. But influenced as these historians were (and contemporary critics are) by the originality cults of the Romantic and Modern movements in art (or is it the other way around?) they recoiled at the idea that any “great” artist would copy anything (despite proclamations to the contrary by artists such as Picasso among others).
WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO IMITATE early in life will follow you throughout your life (Michelangelo’s 15th century copy of a 3rd-2nd century BC Roman sculpture,” Eros Sleeping”, above; Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” ca 1499, Vatican, Rome, below)
THE SHOCK OF REALISM in the 1990s and 2000s was for a moment contrarian if not avant-garde and depended on relearning skills by copying masters from as long ago as the 16th century while also commanding attention through personally, edgy subject material (Caravaggio, 16th century, above and below left; John Currin, 21st century, above and below right)
CELEBRATED FOR HIS SKILLS the young contemporary painter Salman Toor first developed those skills by copying old master paintings while employing more contemporary subject matter, then moving on to copying modernists like Picasso while also employing more contemporary subject matter (19th century French Old Master painting and a “Blue Period” Picasso painting, above and lower left; early and more recent Salman Toor paintings from his Old Master phase and from his ”Green Period” above and below, right)
Once again contemporary computer science has learned some hard lessons from which we in the arts can relearn what we should already know. Imitation, computer scientists are discovering, is inherently (and possibly uniquely) human. It is difficult to teach to an animal or a machine. It involves not just observation but an understanding of intent, considerations of the motivations of the originator of whatever it is you want to imitate. So far, today’s robots can sometimes learn to exactly replicate a particular action, but they can’t imitate in the way that even children can, because instead of developing an understanding of what they want to emulate they like old school AIs are merely looking to replicate patterns of movement.
THOUGHTFUL IMITATION can produce copies that are better than the original
IN THE CASE OF SHAKESPEARE in which the original texts are not only not entirely certain and instead entirely ambiguous, creative interpretation about the possible meanings found in the texts is an open ended, and continually renewing process with each new generation (Old school 20th century interpretations of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, above and below left; Robert Icke’s 21st century interpretations, above and below right)
Imitation rarely entails automatic or mindless duplication. It instead entails cracking a code—solving what social scientists call the “correspondence problem”, the challenge of adapting an imitated solution to the particulars of a new situation. This involves breaking down an observed solution into its constituent parts, then reassembling the parts in a different way. It demands a willingness to look past superficial features to the deeper reason why the original solution succeeded, and an ability to apply that underlying principle in a novel setting. Imitation thusly considered demands not mimicry but creativity.
SUPERFICIAL IMITATION produces mediocrity at best and disaster at worse (Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, above left and right; Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes below left and right)
UNDOUBTEDLY A BAD IDEA TO BEGIN WITH as modernist totalitarian urbanism was, we will never know, because the built imitations (especially the American ones) of the unbuilt propositions were so bad (Ville Radieuse, Le Corbusier, ca 1920, above; New York Public Housing, developed by Robert Moses et. al., ca 1940s and 1950s below)
In art (and architecture) true originality is a search for origins, a deep understanding of them then nothing more (or less) than the successful application of that understanding to something new. We doubt this could ever be taught but we have no doubt that without the skills engendered by techniques of imitation—those techniques with which we teach ourselves-- there is no hope that true originality can ever emerge.
DEGRADATION THROUGH IMITATION can be witnessed in the devolution of revivalist styles in southern California
UNINFORMED WEALTH IN IMITATION OF ENLIGHTENED WEALTH yields little more than self-indulgent vulgarity (Versailles, France 17th century, above; Versailles, Florida, 21st century, below)
Much has been said about the originality of Frank Gehry’s architecture and its genesis. One anecdote (probably originating from the architect himself) that describes childhood encounters with fish in his grandmother’s bathtub (as they waited to be turned into gefilte fish) has often been offered as a tidy psychoanalytical explanation for his compulsion for fish shapes, at first literal (Barcelona Olympics 1992) then metaphorical (Bilbao Guggenheim, 1997). But it’s more likely that his early exposure to and interest in furniture design and later experiments with furniture fabrication that -- maybe second only to his association with his artist friends -- most influenced his approach to building design.
MODELS AND PROTOTYPES are the closest that architects get to making things firsthand, because the art of making buildings, unlike any other art is always mediated through drawings and models. (Frank Gehry models and furniture)
Furniture design is less mediated than building design and depends crucially on the making of prototypes—a full-size model and a detailed understanding of the materials of its parts and how they fit together. Its design cannot be separated from how it is made. Buildings, like furniture are made, but the design of them is highly mediated through drawings and models. Models of buildings are not buildings in the same way that a furniture prototype is like the furniture of which it is a model.
THE ACT OF MAKING MODELS AND PROTOTYPES is a way to get closer to how buildings are built and to reintegrate how buildings are built into how architects design them (Frank Gehry models and buildings)
ARCHITECTURE IMITATING ART in the case of Gehry copying Oldenburg was an innovation
ARCHITECTS APPROPRIATING ARCHITECTURE from other architects is part of the art of being an architect and legitimate when recognized as moving beyond or even improving upon that which has been appropriated (Aalto’s vase and Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, above and below left; Gehry’s Easy Edges chair and Vuitton Foundation Museum, above and below right)
REDISCOVERY OF OUR ROOTS in the practices of the master builders of ancient and medieval times is at the heart of the Gehry enterprise
Gehry chose models as his primary design tool when most of his peers relied on drawings. Like furniture design he shapes buildings by employing models—sometimes so huge they are almost like prototypes—to understand the behavior of materials and how to shape and assemble them. This process—the emphasis on large models and construction methods -- is an example of an application of the correspondence problem. He applies a technique taken from one genre, furniture design (the full-scale prototype) and translates it through a change of scale into another genre, building design (a technique he borrowed from his artist friend Claus Oldenburg). The innovation was not to copy from other architects but from other genres.
TO DENY WHAT WE ADMIRE and pretend we’re neither inspired by nor inclined to copy it is self-defeating and leads only to creative constipation (Disney Concert Hall, Frank Gehry, 2007, Los Angeles, CA above; Los Angeles Trade Technical College Student Services/Administration Building, Johnson Favaro, Los Angeles, CA, below)
HAVING ADMIRED PAWSON’S WORK for over twenty years we are never far from appropriating his ideas wherever we can (Our Lady of Novy Dvur Monastery, Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, 2004, John Pawson, above; McKinley School Classroom Building, Santa Monica, CA, Johnson Favaro, 2022, below)
This was a leap, a difficult one to pull off, and risky with failed or mediocre attempts occasionally giving way to spectacular results some of it pretty close to inimitable. But Gehry’s contribution was also as much a recovery of tradition as it was innovative—a recovery of pre-Renaissance building traditions, a return to the unmediated experience of the master builders of cathedrals and monasteries who relied less on drawings and instead enjoyed hard earned, passed down, hands on knowledge of building techniques, the behavior of stone, and its outer limits of performance. His originality, while guided by predecessors such Aalto, Utzon and Saarinen who he clearly emulated, is rooted in having through his own personal, painful, and protracted process of discovery, rediscovered architecture’s origins in our desire to push at the boundaries of what can be built and how to build it.
WE BORROW FROM WHEREVER WE CAN, including ancient motifs and even our own motifs. (Roman grill above, McKinley School, Santa Monica, CA 2022, classroom building middle and library below)
WE EVEN COPY OURSELVES within the same project by transforming motifs through changes of scale and context (McKinley School, Santa Monica, CA 2022, classroom building above and library below)
AND WE COPY OURSELVES across different projects (McKinley School, Santa Monica, CA, above; Foothill Country Day School, Claremont, CA, below)