Hundreds of four people of artistic youth gathered to listen to the lecture ‘Sex and architecture’; it is possible that someone was attracted by a tempting name, rather scandalous, although, as usual, there was no scandal in the lecture. In fact, this name is a provocative play on words: strictly speaking, ‘sex’ in this case is translated into Russian not as “sex”, but as “sex”. The famous critic has long been dealing with the problem of manifestations of gender relations in architecture and has written several books on this topic. However, maintaining an ambiguous, playful tone, Betsky initially even warned the audience that a couple of pictures would be obscene.
Aaron A. Betsky:
“In the history of mankind, men and women play certain social roles and take their places in the hierarchy of power. It just so happened that men are always on top, women are at the bottom. Men represent strength, power and violence, they are always outside - their prerogative is idealized classical architecture, columns, temples, tombs, etc. Women have nothing to do there, on the contrary, they are inside, their sphere is the interior. We live in this absurdity, we are indignant, although we ourselves have designed this environment ….
By the way, when Betsky first encountered architecture, he, by his own admission, did not even think of being a critic, let alone a teacher, he wanted to become a great architect, at least the new Frank Gehry or Michael Graves, for which he graduated from architecture school. Perhaps he would not have lasted long at a penny job if at 23 he had not been invited to teach courses at the University of Cincinnati, where Betsky turned out to be the youngest teacher, and therefore was forced to do the impossible for himself - to come to lectures at 8 in the morning. Naturally, he wanted to read about architecture, but he got the interior design, and not only he got it, but also those 40 women who attended these lectures. It was not the first time that Betsky wondered why women were not allowed into big architecture and how, in general, gender relations are manifested in this area.
Aaron A. Betsky:
“Since antiquity, architecture has been a man's production. One of its main aspects is that there is a certain absolute order (it can be interpreted in different ways, for example, in Le Corbusier it is a play of form and light). From the production of pure and absolute order, from what, in fact, is not human, architecture began. I mean tombstones, pyramids, temples to the ancient gods - all of this is subordinate to the absolute, but at the same time it has to do with death and the gods, i.e. to that which is above nature and above man. From here comes classicism - we impose a pure, alien order on nature and turn it into a dead order, into unreality.
But the ideal cannot be built, just as one cannot live in it. The idea of classical architecture just doesn't work. The other side of this architecture is that it is always violent. We talk about Vitruvius, for example, as the beginning of classical architecture, but his books also talk about war, about military installations. Architecture in the service of the state, for example, in the time of Louis XIV, imposed itself as something violent. So men imposed their worldview on the architecture of Rome. Moreover, only men can live in this ideal city - there are simply no women here. But it is impossible to completely go into the ideal, we are faced with the world of chaotic and imperfect reality, the world of houses. Inside these houses, people are hiding from architecture ….
Working at one time as the editor of the Metropolitan House magazine, writing about various kinds of "shelters", Betsky noticed for himself that architecture, as something big, expensive, rational, makes people want to get rid of it. “This house is dedicated to the life of an architect, but not to my life,” say the townsfolk. But it turns out that there is another history of architecture - an imperfect one, the history of the interior, entirely the prerogative of a woman.
Aaron A. Betsky:
“This story begins in a primitive hut - it is here that the connection between man and nature, in contrast to tombs and temples, is the most complete. You can even say that these are elements of nature, formed into a kind of building, natural materials that shelter you in space. At one time, there was even such an opinion that architecture began not with a column, but with clothes, because we all came out of the tents of nomads. The first cities were ruled by women - there were no towers, temples, pyramids, walls, only dwellings or interiors. But the men took power from the women, and they were locked up. And then women began to create an artificial world inside - in the interior.
When women emerged from their captivity and began to penetrate into public life, new types of interiors appeared, right in the middle of the street - passages. But despite the emancipation that took place in the 20th century, there are still only a few women in the world of architecture, and their work is directly tied to their gender. For example, Zaha Hadid does not accidentally create sensual forms, tries to remove the contradiction between external and internal, exterior and interior. Of course, she will say that this is based on her theories, technology, but not on the fact that she is a woman …"
Betsky offered an original interpretation in terms of gender in this context for the Italian and Northern Renaissance.
Aaron A. Betsky:
“According to Alberti, art is a window to another world, this is how it is conceived in the culture of the Italian Renaissance, with a dominant masculine principle. While art in Flanders is a metaphor for a mirror, it reproduces an already existing, typically feminine approach. The Flemish interior condenses the northern culture; these are not abstract and logical laws of architecture, but their own rules, your personal world. And this world is ruled by women. The interior becomes a picture of your daily life, and not an ideal that you strive for."
Betsky's concept is not limited to two poles - male and female in architecture, in his opinion, there is something third, middle, for the description of which he refers to the works of Sebastian Serlio, where he writes about three scenes of architecture.
Aaron A. Betsky:
“The first is a tragic scene, which corresponds to the neoclassical understanding of architecture. We are talking here about violence, power, death, lofty ideas - in general, about everything that we attributed to the masculine. The second scene is comic and reflects a woman's everyday life or world. These are not columns and porticos, everything is much simpler here. Finally, there is also a third scene - this is a satire, when it is not clear whether you are talking seriously, or joking, whether you are talking about ideas, or about something insignificant. Half of them are made by nature, half by humans. From the point of view of gender, this is the third sex, men and women of non-standard orientation, who bring their special wishes into architecture, stand their own world.
Thus, a house can be both a place of order and a hut. Postmodernism has just interpreted all three scenes together and turned architecture into a theater where the artificial and the natural are mixed. But today the history of the human body, the history of architecture and history itself, have come to an end. In the world of instant communication, in a world where it is possible to change our gender, where it is not clear what is artificial and what is not artificial, indisputable truths are called into question. Remembering Michel Foucault, we must be very careful, because soon the idea of humanity will sink into history. We are no longer so sure what the human body is and what the architecture is that connects us with other people.
What will architecture do next in this foggy world? I believe that architecture needs to reveal everything, to make the space around it free, to get what the buildings hide. It is necessary to reorganize the world according to three scenes, and only the transformation of the world will be effective in this situation."
At the end of the lecture, Aaron Betsky recalled Frank Gehry, whose architecture Betsky likes because Gehry never introduced anything from the world of ideal forms into it, never used "all these abstract circles and squares." Instead, according to Betsky, Gehry seeks to express in his buildings what we encounter on a daily basis, which is real architecture. The rest of the evening was devoted to the presentation of the Russian version of Domus, where, accompanied by jazz and body art, guests could personally communicate with Aaron Betsky and discuss the topic that touched upon everyone.
