Reflections 05 – Architecture (Art), an act of Conscience and Sublimation

Art (Architecture) emerges with the confluence of: 1. conscious engagement with the world and 2. sublimation.

The Conscience reveals itself by the fact that the artist knows that he or she knows.

Sublimation is an unconscious process. The conscience does not control it (it can’t).

The conscious and unconscious are always present, albeit if different proportions, in works of art. When we observe art, therefore, we could do it from both the social and psychological realities that surround it.

When designing the Piazza San Pietro, Bernini consciously responds with total coherence to the Papal absolutist authority. His monumental ellipse, defined by the gigantic columns, pilasters and statues, contains the ‘popolo piccolo’ with the promise of protection but the intent of its subordination.

In contrast, Borromini, with his church San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane questions the legacy of history as a dogma while recognising it as a source of experience. His composition is tension, architectural symbol of existential conflict. nbsp;His is an enormous transgression, he doesn’t destroy the rules, he subordinates them dialectically, demonstrating by doing so that there is no power that can hold absolute truth, no power that can guarantee the eternal validity of an experience.

Borromini makes explicit the need to reject omnipotence.

Both Bernini and Borromini consciously engage with the world that surrounds them, but their responses are diametrically opposed: one accepts/forms part of the orthodoxy, and the other questions it.

The theory of psychoanalysis is an invaluable tool to access the mechanisms to interpret sublimation. Borromini started his career working under the direction of Bernini, who was his contemporary and part of the establishment.

One wonders what internal pulses motivated Borromini to differentiate himself from his senior, in order to establish his unique take of Roman Baroque architecture.