Editorial. Contextos históricos

L’adequada preservació de tot allò relacionat amb la nostra història s’inicia de manera decidida al segle XVIII, quan moviments com ara la Il·lustració i figures com la de l’alemany Johann Joachim Winckelmann n’assenten el concepte i estructuren els continguts. Des de llavors, els coneixements sobre el nostre passat han anat augmentant de manera continuada, alhora que ho feia la consciència per preservar-los i per tindre cura de tot allò físic que n’ha estat testimoni i n’és prova. A l’actualitat, aquesta adequada preservació té una importància cabdal.

Gandy’s Arkaiology: The Deluge and Romantic Climatologies of Architecture

ABSTRACTNumerous renowned antiquaries and architects in Georgian Britain were enthralled by a strange craze: they declared the ark of Noah to be the origin and divine model for architecture worldwide. This article analyses the fashion for 'arkaiology’ (as the poet Robert Southey mockingly called it) by focusing on one of its most spectacular exponents, the architect Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843). Taking Gandy’s theories as the starting point to reconstruct a broader debate on climatological thinking about art and architecture, the article shows that the fascination with the deluge is best understood as a reaction against the climatic theory of the origins of architecture associated with Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the implicit cultural relativism that it entailed. The case of Gandy also sheds fresh light on the search for origins in late (Romantic) classicism. Instead of submitting to a climatically determined vernacular tradition, Gandy’s arkaiology allowed him to theorise the distant past as a space for speculative artistic reconstruction of the principles of architecture.

Dear to the Gods, yet all too human: Demetrios Capetanakis and the Mythology of the Hellenic

Philosopher and poet Demetrios Capetanakis (1912-1944) struggled withthe ideas of Hellenism and Greekness throughout his short life while moving across languages, cultures, and philosophical traditions. In one of his early essays, Mythology of the Beautiful (1937; in Greek), Hellenism is approached through the lens of eros, pain and the human body. Capetanakis distances himself both from the discourse put forth by the Generation of the Thirties and from the neo-Kantian philosophy of his mentors, and in particular Constantine Tsatsos, while attempting a bold synthesis of Platonic philosophy with the philosophy of despair (Kierkegaard, Shestov). By upholding the classical over and against the romantic tradition, as exemplified in the life and work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, he seeks to present Hellenism not as a universal ideal, but as an individual life stance grounded on the concrete. His concern for the particular becomes more pronounced in a later essay, “The Greeks are Human Beings” (1941; in English), where, however, one senses a shift away from aesthetics, towards ethics and history.