Porch
(pronounced pawrch or pohrch)
(1) In
architecture, an exterior appendage to a building, forming an approach to a
doorway, now usually with a roof which may be separate or an extension of that
of the main structure; if walls are included, a porch is said to be
“vestibule-like”.
(2) An
exterior roofed gallery, often partly enclosed; a veranda.
(3) As “the
Porch”, the portico or stoa in the agora of ancient Athens, where the Stoic
philosopher Zeno of Citium and his followers met.
(4) Applied
loosely (often in commerce, especially the real estate business), similar
structures such as porticos, balconies, decks, verandas and such.
(5) In
aerospace engineering, the platform outside the external hatch of a spacecraft.
1250–1300:
From the Middle English porche (covered
entrance; roofed structure, usually open on the front and sides, before an
entrance to a building), from the Old French porche (porch, vestibule), from the Latin porticus (covered gallery, covered walk between columns, arcade,
portico, porch), from porta (city
gate, gate; door, entrance), from the primitive Indo European root per- (to lead, pass over). In the Old English the Latin form was
borrowed as portic. By the late fourteenth century, a porche was understood as a “covered walk
or colonnade on the front or side of a building”; by the early 1830s it was
used in the US for the structures described in the UK as verandas. Porch and porchful are nouns, porchless,
porchlike & porched are adjectives; the noun plural is porches.
Porch swingers.Vice-Admiral William Raborn (1905-1990; Director of Central Intelligence, 1965-1966, left) and Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; POTUS 1963-1969, right), sitting on porch swing on the porch of LBJ's boyhood home near Stonewall, Texas, 1965. Admiral Raborn was a gallant sailor with a fine record but wholly was unsuited handling the politics demanded in the role of heading the CIA and served as the nation's chief spy for little more than a year. If LBJ appears happy, it's likely because recently he'd been elected POTUS in one of the largest landslides recorded and the troubles caused by the war in Vietnam have yet to consume his presidency.
Some
variants of porch are obvious: A “back porch” is a porch at the back of a
structure (typically a house) while a “front porch” is at the front; any
building with a porch may be described as “porched” (used usually as a
modifier). In architecture there are
also what might be called “side porches” but the term is not in general
use. A structure is “porchless” if
designed or built without a porch while an “outporch” is a now archaic term
meaning “an exterior porch”; it’s of minor interest to historians of
architecture because it suggests there was a time free-standing structures also
were thought of as porches. A “porchful”
is “the quantity of stuff said to “fill a porch”, those items typically being
“porch chairs” or “porch swing” (a seat with armrests and a back, built usually
for two, and suspended from the ceiling with hooked chains (or cables) enabling
it to rock back & forth.
Collectively such items could be styled “porch furniture” although
“patio furniture”, “deck furniture” & “outdoor furniture are now in more
common use. All these pieces might be
illuminated by a “porch light” (also as “porch-light” & “porch lamp”, a wall or ceiling-mounted light, often fitted
with a protective grill). Once such
accessories have been placed, that constitutes one’s “porchscape” and although
tables are not uncommon on larger porches, the term “porch table” seems not to
be a thing.
A house with “wrap-around porch”, part of which (left) has been converted to a “sunporch” by the addition of glass panes.
The term “porchway”
did not (as the name might suggest) describe an “extended or elongated porch”
but was simply a synonym of porch; use is now thought archaic. A “snow porch” was an enclosed but un-heated
structure which was a feature in arctic areas or other places with very cold
climates. Snow porches were accessible
from within a dwelling and typically used as storage for firewood and such, the
advantage compared with an outside shed being those within didn’t have to walk
outside in the cold to fetch a load. Unlike
a “sunroom” (a windowed room optimized for receiving natural light), a “sunporch”
was a conventional porch to which windows (sometimes able to be opened) had
been added. In nautical use, a
“wetporch” (also called a “moon pool”) was a feature in the hull of a vessel used
for lowering equipment into the sea below.
Although used in a number of sub-surface environments and underwater
habitats, the structures are most associated with off-shore mining and oil
extraction, frequently seen on marine drilling platforms.
117 South
Hervey Street, Hope, Hempstead County, Arkansas.
This is the house in which Bill Clinton (b 1946;
POTUS 1993-2001) spent the first four years of his life. In June 1997, it was opened to the public as
President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site
which was a little opportunistic, his actual birth happening at Hope's
now-demolished Julia Chester Hospital, the site now occupied by a funeral home.
The house's porch would be called a “front porch” and although when
young Mr Clinton doubtless spent much time “on the porch”, later in life he didn't
always “stay on the porch”.
A variant
style was the stoop (raised open platform before the entrance of a house,
approached by steps and thus neither a veranda nor a porch) and elements of the
concept can be seen even in the dwellings uncovered in archaeological digs of
prehistoric settlements but stoops seem first to have been so named in the mid
eighteenth century to describe the feature in wooden houses in North America
(including Canada which shared many of the building styles of the north-eastern
US). Stoop was from the Dutch stoep (flight of steps, doorstep,
threshold), from the Middle Dutch, from Proto-Germanic stap- (step). The Dutch form
evolved in South African English as stoep,
first recorded in 1797 although oral use may pre-date this. Stoep
was an element of the slur “stoep-sitter”
which described a “habitually idle person
who spends all day lounging on his stoep”.
Despite being a South African coining, it seems not to have been
directly exclusively towards the non-white population, unlike the equivalent
form from the US: “porch monkey” (a
lazy black person characterized as idling away the hours sitting on a porch). A modern coining was “porch pirate” (a
criminal who practices “porch piracy”, stealing from porches packages delivered
by a courier). Although not a new class
of crime, instances have soared with the increasing popularity of on-line
shopping and the pattern seems mostly to be opportunistic; porch pirates
driving around high-income neighborhoods and stealing whatever cartons are
observed, a risky approach in the age of ubiquitous domestic CCTV systems. However, law enforcement agencies have
revealed their analysis indicates some porch piracy may be facilitated by
“inside information” with porch pirates “tipped off” (by those somewhere in the
supply chain) about desirable or high-value deliveries.
What used to be Standard Christian church architecture. A narthex is a particular type of porch, many churches having a narthex and one or more porches.
In church
architecture, although Christian churches often had one or more porches, a special
case was the narthex, an enclosed passage at the west end of a basilica or
church, usually at right angles to the nave and located between the main
entrance and the nave. Theologically
(and historically, thus socially), the significance of the narthex in many early
Christian and Byzantine basilicas & churches was as well as being a
conventional “lobby area”, it was place penitents were required to remain. Although the archaeological record suggests
there may have been some early churches with annexes or even small separate
structures located nearby which fulfilled the latter function, narthexes seem
quickly to have been integrated. That
means that structurally and architecturally, a narthex was part of the building
but theologically was not, its purpose being to permit those not entitled to
admission as part of the congregation (mostly catechumens and penitents)
nevertheless to hear the service and (hopefully) be encouraged to reform their
ways and pursue communion. For
ceremonies other than services, the narthex was otherwise a functional space,
the church’s baptismal font often mounted there and in some traditions (both
Eastern & Western) worshipers would sometimes anoint themselves and their
children with a daub of holy water before stepping foot in the nave; some
branches of the Orthodox Church use the narthex for funeral ceremonies. There were also architectural variations in
the early churches which persisted in larger building and cathedrals, the
narthex divided in two, (1) an esonarthex (inner narthex) between the west wall
and the body of the church proper, separated from the nave and aisles by a
wall, trellis or some other means and (2) an external closed space, the
exonarthex (outer narthex), a court in front of the church façade with a perimeter
defined by on all sides by colonnades.
In the
Western Church, reforms removed the requirement to exclude from services those
who were not full members of the congregation which of course meant the narthex technically was rendered redundant.
However, the shape churches had assumed with a narthex included had
become part of Church tradition so architects continued to include the space,
both as part of the nave structure and something semi-separated. They attracted a number of names, borrowed
mostly from secular buildings including vestibule, porch, foyer, hallway,
antechamber, anteroom, entrance, entry, entryway, gateway, hall, lobby, portal
& portico, the choice dictated sometimes by local tradition, sometimes by
the nature of construction and sometimes the choice seems to have been arbitrary.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the
esonarthex and exonarthex retained distinct liturgical functions, some rituals
terminating in the exonarthex while services still exclusively penitential
services are usually chanted in the esonarthex.
In dialectal northern English, the casual term for the penitents forced
to remain in the narthex was “the narts”.
A example of a
portico:
1500 San Ysidro Drive, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles.
Lindsay Lohan livered here for a while during
“troubled starlet” phase.
Because there are so many ways porchlike structures
can be described, word nerds with a fondness for architecture do like to
correct the linguistically sloppy. In a
diary note of 28 June, 1954, documenting an evening in the British Embassy in
Washington DC, Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945
& 1951-1955) doctor (Lord Moran (Charles Wilson, 1882-1977; president of
the Royal College of Physicians 1941-1949, personal physician to Winston
Churchill 1940-1965) recorded telling his patient: “I hope you did not get cold sitting on the
balcony in the chill night air.” “Portico, not balcony, Charles.” he was
corrected with a “mischievous smile”.
Porte-cochère
of the Jing An Shangri-La Hotel, Shanghai, PRC. This porte-cochère features what may be the
ultimate porch light. Such lighting structures have been made possible by LED (light emitting diode) technology; before LED's such a thing would have been too maintenance-intensive because of the limited life of bulbs or tubes. If a portico sits above a space where vehicles draw up for passengers to alight it becomes a porte-cochère, something now most associated with hotels or the forecourts of commercial buildings. If a walkway is of any length with a roof supported by rows of pillars, that is a colonnade. The car is a Mercedes-Benz
S-Class (W221, 2005-2013, specifically, a “facelift” version (2009-2013)). A special version of the W221 (S 300 L) was
produced for markets in the Far East which combined the LWB (long wheelbase)
platform with the 3.0 litre (183 cubic inch) V6; it was essentially a LWB
version of the S 280 (which also, despite the name used the 3.0 V6) sold in many
other markets. The S300 L was produced
for the hotel trade and other operators of limousines who didn't want either thirsty V8s or V12s or the less refined diesels.
Lindsay Lohan on a balcony. Although in general use the terms for such structures are applied loosely, in architecture, a balcony is accessible structure extending from a building and without roof. Even if a balcony party is covered by a small eave, it is still not a porch.
A
portico is best described as an “architectural porch leading to the entrance of
a building” so not exactly a “big porch” although most tend to be large
scale. A noted feature of the buildings
of Antiquity, a portico is defined by having a roof structure atop a walkway
and although many architecture guides insist this must be supported by supported
or enclosed within walls, a roof protruding from a building with no such
ground-based anchorage (a favourite trick of architects in the mid-twentieth
century) can be thought a portico if there’s some sort of walkway beneath. The essential feature is the provision of shelter
from the elements. Those seeking a bit
of visual grandeur (not only the McMansion crew) sometimes will add a pediment
(a triangular upper part) atop but architects caution this can look absurd or
pretentious on smaller structures because the sense of proportion works best at
scale.
The colloquial phrase “hard dog to keep on the porch” is a lament used (perhaps often resignedly) by women of their husband’s or boyfriend’s chronic infidelity, describing men who are unfaithful and generally “difficult to keep an eye on.” Although long in idiomatic use in the Southern US, in 1999 it came to wider attention when used by crooked Hillary Clinton of her husband, serial philander Bill Clinton. Crooked Hillary must have picked up the expression while living in Arkansas; she began her ascent of the political and financial ladder by marrying Bill Clinton and with every election of him there as attorney-general (1977-1979) or governor (1979-1981 & 1983-1992), voters received a free copy of crooked Hillary. When he became POTUS, she remained part of the package as FLOTUS 1993-2001, the consensus among political scientists that “he’d never have made it without her and vice-versa”. Wives often of course do sometimes leave husbands who refuse to “stay on the porch” but crooked Hillary stayed and that was a defensible decision because, like many transactional relationships, the choice of “stay or go” is a thing of cost-benefit analysis; in a marriage, like most of life, for everything you do there’s a price to be paid.
Problem-solver crooked Hillary finds a solution.
Crooked
Hillary Clinton (b 1947; FLOTUS 1993-2001, far left), Chelsea Clinton (b 1980;
FDOTUS 1993-2001, centre left), Bill Clinton, centre
right) and Buddy (1997-2002; FD2OTUS 1997-2001, far right),
strolling over the White House lawn, prior to a two-week vacation at Martha's
Vineyard, Massachusetts, 18 August 1998.
Unfortunately, crooked Hillary's expectation she'd found a companion loyal enough to “stay on the porch” wasn't realized, Buddy killed in a road accident outside the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, New York after running off to chase a car (though the vehicle wasn't one of the rare Monica 560s). Whether to this day crooked Hillary blames her husband for “giving Buddy ideas” isn't known but certainly, he set the dog a bad example.
What Can I Say (1983), original vinyl pressing by
Gail Davies.
Record store staff weren’t
always fastidious when applying the
adhesive promotional
stickers.
South of the
Mason-Dixon Line, the expression must also have had some currency in the form “hard dog to keep
under the porch” which indicates, at least in some cases or places,
the particular significance of the architectural space was roof rather than floor. The C&W (Country
& Western) song You're a Hard Dog (To
Keep Under the Porch) was co-written by Susanna Clark (1939–2012) and the
extraordinarily prolific (credited with over 4000 C&W songs) Harlan Howard
(1927-2002); it was first recorded by Gail Davies (b 1948) and released on What Can I Say (1983), her fifth studio
album (a question mark not used in the album’s title).
Porch
joke
An
unemployed man went door-to-door, seeking jobs. Impressed by the work-ethic, after agreeing an
hourly rate, one resident handed him a brush and two large cans of green house-paint,
telling him: “You
can go and paint the porch out back.” Three hours later the man returned and said: “I done finished the painting mister and I
done a good job but I swear to you sir, that ain’t no Porsh, it be a Ferrari.” In the original German, Porsche is pronounced
with two syllables (Paw-shuh), not
the sometimes heard, single syllable Porsh. In German, the final “e” is pronounced as a
short uh.
Some paint
required: 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial, as sold (top left) and on-track in period
(top right), a fire-damaged 1972 Dino 246 GT, by Ferrari (bottom left) and a 1972 Dino 246 GT in
Medium Green Metallizzato over Nero leather (bottom right).
It's believed the factory finished only 21 of the 2,295 246 GTs coupés or
1,274 246 GTS spyders (targas) in Medium Green Metallizzato but another shade of
green, Verde Medio Nijinsky, was rarer still, only three of those leaving the
line. The fire-damaged Dino was advertised for sale
at US$129,500 and was sold although the price paid was not disclosed. The wrecked 500 Mondial (the second built and one of 13 examples with Pininfarina spider coachwork) at auction in August
2023 realized US$1.875 million. It has yet to
resurface, restored or otherwise.
A classic Queenslander with the porches the locals tend to call verandas. Many Queenslanders were built on stilts: (1) to encourage
natural cooling, (2) as a form of flood mitigation, (3) to facilitate easier pest
and termite control and (4) to make hilly sites adaptable to house
construction.
The term “vernacular
architecture” entered the jargon of the profession in 1964 after being coined
by Austrian-born US architect Bernard Rudofsky (1905–1988). It describes indigenous designs or methods of
construction that evolved organically to suit local climates, available
construction materials, social traditions and specific human needs. In Queensland, Australia, the signature “vernacular
architecture” was and remains the “Queenslander” although they’re less common
than in their heyday. In its classic
form, a Queenslander can be imagined as a “house with a wrap-around porch” although the
local term has long been “veranda”. At
scale, the style seems to have emerged in the 1840s as the optimal way, for a
given footprint, to maximize air-flow and reduce internal temperatures, things
of consequence in the sub-tropics and, in the age before electricity (let alone
air-conditioning) much appreciated by British & European migrants from more
temperate, less humid regions. Much of
Queensland also was subject to hard rain and the verandas provided expansive
living, eating and even sleeping spaces which could be used rain, hail or
shine. Snow and ice rarely was an issue.
The Erechtheion and the Caryatid Porch
The Erechtheion on the Acropolis, Athens, Greece.
One of the
world’s most famous porches is the most striking feature of the Erechtheion
(from the Ancient Greek Ἐρέχθειον (Erékhtheion)), an Ancient Greek Ionic temple-telesterion on the
north side of the Acropolis, dedicated to the goddess Athena. Built late in the fifth century BC, the Erechtheion
was one of the first major projects following the devastation of the
Greco-Persian Wars, the re-building of the Acropolis thus vested with all the symbolic
ambition of a “civilization
reborn”. Given that, while
the mathematically precise lines of the Parthenon impart a projection of order,
rationality, and imperial confidence, the Erechtheion seems architecturally anarchic but it too was a piece of messaging, preserving ancient, sacred traditions within
the new Classical architectural. Unlike so
many of the neat, consistent, often symmetrical structures which have survived
from Antiquity, the Erechtheion is an architectural outlier because the design
needed simultaneously to solve several political, religious and topographical problems. Even today, it would be a challenge on the
site to fulfil the demands while achieving the symmetrical perfection normally
associated with Classical Greek temples.
For those reasons, anyone undertaking a tour of Roman and Greek ruins
would, on first sight, find the Erechtheion startling, the look fragmented and
seemingly so improvised many might assume additions have over the years been
“tacked-on”. The irregularity was
deliberate, the location not being dedicated to a single deity; as well as
honoring King Erechtheus, the architects were compelled to incorporate several
ancient cult sites and sacred objects associated with Athena, Poseidon, and a
grab-bag of local heroes and ancestral cults.
From the right angle, on the right day the Erechtheion can make a memorable photograph.
Mostly
though, despite the name, the myth most celebrated was the legend of the site
being the place where Athena and Poseidon competed for patronage of Athens,
dedicated cultists holding the soil contained physical remnants of the epic contest
including a sacred salt-water spring, Poseidon’s trident mark etched in the
rock and Athena’s olive tree. Because
these relics of the past were in architecturally inconvenient places, the
structure of the Erechtheion had to be “built around them”, thus precluding the
simple rectangular floor plan and associated motifs which are such a marker of
the temples from Antiquity. The
topography was also significant, the Acropolis rock beneath sloping sharply,
meaning the surface was uneven. As a
piece of civil engineering this could of course have been levelled (if one had
enough time and slaves, mountains could be moved) but that would have disturbed
the relics so the work proceeded on what was a most irregular surface. That made construction more of a challenge
but did result in one of Antiquity’s most striking temples, the east and west
sides at different heights, the interior chambers located on floors and varied
levels and porches are placed asymmetrically, one consequence being it emerging
as a complex of interconnected sanctuaries rather than the more familiar,
single unified hall.
Within are several
shrines, the eastern section dedicated to Athena Polias (Athena of the City),
while the western portions were associated with Poseidon-Erechtheus and hero
cults (best thought of as “best supporting actors” in Academy Award (Oscar)
terms) meaning the entrances and their associated porches and portici served
different ritual functions. Although the
layout and form were dictated by circumstances, in many ways, what was done proved
a harbinger for much of public architecture in the centuries to come as the
shape of “multi-function” buildings began increasingly to include physical
segregation between spaces in both the horizontal and vertical with separate
provisions for ingress and egress. So
while not “geometrically pure” in the Greek way, there’s an organic charm to
the Erechtheion although Athenian citizens upon a first sight must have thought
it peculiar or even weird architecture; the “shock of the new” is not unique
to modernity.
The
Caryatid Porch, the Porch of the Maidens.
The structure’s most
famous and oft-photographed feature is the south porch, supported by a half
dozen sculpted female figures: the Caryatids.
Caryatids was from the Middle French cariatide,
from the Latin caryatides, from the Ancient
Greek Καρυάτιδες (Karuátides), the
noun plural of Καρυᾶτις (Karuâtis) (a priestess of Artemis, female figures used as
bearing-shafts), from καρυατίζω (karuatízō)
(dance the Karyatid festival dance)
from Καρύαι (Karúai) (a town in
Laconia with a temple of Artemis and the site of festivals in her honor). The orthodox etymology is disputed by some
scholars but the literal translation of karyatides is “maidens of Karyai” (an
ancient Peloponnese settlement) and the young ladies from there were legendarily
beautiful & healthy (and thus ideal “breeding stock”, good genes then as
sought in mothers as they were in livestock).
In the language of architecture, caryatids were sculpted female figures
used as supports in the manner of a column or pillar. By necessity of physics, most caryatids supported
the entablature (all of that part of a classical temple above the capitals of the columns; includes the architrave, frieze, and cornice but not the roof) on the head rather than the raised arms often seen in
free-standing statutes, this done for reasons of structural integrity rather
than aesthetics although it was a nod also to the notion of the girls of Karyai
often being depicted as a canephora (basket-bearer),
carrying to feasts of the goddesses Athena and Artemis fruits, nuts or sacred
objects in woven cane baskets they placed on their heads.
The Parthenon on the Acropolis, Athens, Greece.
The Parthenon is the classic example of the Greek temple and more representative of the type than the Erechtheion. It was
proto-second wave feminist comrade Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong 1893–1976; chairman
of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) 1949-1976) who reminded Chinese men “Women hold up
half the sky” although he made the famous remark in 1968 at the
height of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) which makes for an amusing
historical juxtaposition. Still, it does
suggest that even if contemporary Athenians might have thought the Erechtheion
a bit weird, the sight of a half-dozen young ladies holding up a roof built by
a culture which was patriarchal (as was then the way) would have pleased the
comrade Chairman who’d have felt assured the architects were good Maoists, the
PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) first constitution (1954) implying gender
equality in Article 85 (Citizens of the People's Republic of China are equal
before the law) and made explicit in Article 86 (Citizens of the
People's Republic of China are equal before the law) & Article
96 (Women in
the People's Republic of China enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of
political, economic, cultural, social and domestic life). Reading the PRC’s 1954 constitution, it clear
the place was as much as a paradise for citizens as the Soviet Union must have
been based on comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) 1936
constitution although in Article 86 of the PRC’s document it was mentioned rights
could be denied to those the state declared “insane”, a clause which proved
handy over the years, as did a similar provision in the USSR.
The Parthenon, Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee.
Designed by architect William Crawford Smith (1837–1899), the Parthenon which stands in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee, was built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. A full-scale reproduction of the original, it's now an art museum and in the Treasury Room are displayed plaster replicas of the Parthenon Marbles, cast from the original sculptures. In the nineteenth century, Nashville was one of a number of cities around the world often styled "the Athens of the South" and this doubtless had some influence on the choice of the building as the exposition's centrepiece but while some of the other structures erected for the event were in the style of buildings from antiquity, the Parthenon was the only one to use exact dimensions. The 1897 structure was intended to last only for the duration of the exposition and was thus built with plaster, wood & brick but such was the local support for its retention it was left standing, soon beginning to deteriorate. By 1920 however it was a noted tourist attraction and had become accepted as a feature of the city so, on the same foundations, it was rebuilt in concrete, the project completed in 1931. Concrete however doesn't possess the same qualities of durability as granite and marble so for the replica to maintain its appearance and structural integrity, progressive replacements of components will be required, engineers noting the essentially modular nature of the construction means it may never need wholly to be re-built. If it endures long enough, it may end up as something of a Ship of Theseus.
The
new headquarters of the state media’s China Daily during construction.
When finished if looked less confronting but
one can see why the President Xi knew there had to be a good, hard crackdown on
“weird architecture” being erected.Much in the
PRC has of course changed since comrade Chairman Mao’s time although gender
equality remains constitutionally entrenched and that no women ever have made
it to the Politburo’s ruling Central Committee may simply reflect them not
trying hard enough, after all, during all those decades the One-Child Policy (1980-2016)
was in effect, it’s not as if they could complain about the demands on their
time made by raising a large family. Still,
the spirit of “Women
hold up half the sky” must remain current thought in Beijing but
whether President Xi Jinping (b 1953; General Secretary of the CCP &
paramount leader of the PRC since 2012) would have approved of either the maidens of the Caryatid
Porch "holding up all the roof" or the Erechtheion’s many other architectural idiosyncrasies may be
doubtful. As early as 2014, not best
pleased by the stylistic exuberance seen in China's recent skyscrapers, Mr Xi called
for an end to what he called “weird architecture”, telling planners buildings
should be “suitable,
economic, green and pleasing to the eye” rather than “oversized,
xenocentric & weird”. It
might be concluded that while he’d have admired the elegant simplicity of the
lines of the Parthenon, Mr Xi would have used of the Erechtheion the same critique he may (in words echoing an earlier critic of aesthetics) have levelled at what he was seeing on the Beijing skyline: “muddle, chaotic,
dissonant, confused and intentionally ugly”. China’s architects he may have accused of
building stuff that was “weird” but, well-skilled at reading between the
CCP's lines, they’d have understood they’d just been labeled “formalists”. Carefully, they took note.
Now replicas but, thousands of years on, still doing the job.
Although at
the time the caryatids were a highly unconventional addition to a major temple,
as an architectural motif, they were not unique as replacements for columns or
pillars, the later male versions being the telamon or atlas; unlike the
caryatids, the male analogues sometimes were carved on a vast scale. Nor was the structural technique only
anthropomorphic, roofs sometimes supported by renderings in the shape of swords,
serpents, fish or other wildlife although what some Instagrammers may not
realize is the figures today dutifully holding up the roof of the Erechtheion’s
Caryatid Porch are immaculately rendered reproductions, the originals safely
preserved as displays in the Acropolis Museum except for one which sits in the
British Museum. That one was “obtained”
by Lord Elgin (1766–1841) during his expeditions to Greece between 1800-1803
when he “purchased”
(disputed by the government of Greece which suggests something like “plundered”)
what came to be known as the “Elgin Marbles”.
