The Myth Of Sign, Aesthetical Critique On Charles Jencks's Views On Architecture

Charles Jencks is a firm advocator of post-modern architecuture and culture since 1960s, and his influence is still lasting and widespread. Nomatter being criticised or approved, this academic and social significance which is sort of compulsory for contemporary schoolars has relationship with his omnibearing and long time efforts, especially with his good starting point of political aesthetics, that is, to formulate architecture as a public art, which is different from other purer forms, such as painting or music.Being Confronted with the plight of modern architecture gradually degrading into monotony, baldness and lacking of communication, by adopting semiotics, Jencks insists that design should come back to emphasizing the conventional meaning of architecture to rescure architecture from esoteric discourses of a minority of elite and make ordinary people could participate in the communicational process of architecture. Nevertheless, Jencks neither realizes the shallowness of architectural lexics, nor builds a convictive enough architectural phonology. So the slippery theoretical foundation can't withstand subsequent attacks to the "myth of sign" of this kind from professional architectural theorists.From Le Corbusier to Christian Norberg-Schulz, Jencks treats historical writings of these historians of modern architecture as "myths" shaped according to diverse value orientations. But this can't prevent himself from constructing a myth of the history of modern architecture based on pluralistic and flowing outlook. While adoring heroism, Jencks falls into the fancy of consumer democracy and hedonism as well. Whether or not one's political caliber is qualified is one of his central standards for elvaluating modern architects. Along with emphasizing inspection of the moral elements of contemporary Anglo-American popular culture, this testifies Jencks's true nature of public intellectual. However, it turns out that the anticipation of Jencks for the liberating potentials of virtual space is another fancy.Inheriting the theoretical character of his tutor Reyner Banham's "instant history" and the aesthetic tendency of Pop architectural groups's "moment village" or "instant city", Jencks is good at capturing phenomenons then forming conclusions. It is a pity that this leads to that his grasp of substantive characteristics of late-modern, post-modern and neo-modern architecture is not so exact, although his differentiation of these three is highly instructive. This kind of being anxious for success is also expressed in the simple translation of his political ideas of the republican tendency to design area in order to argue for a adhocism design method. Heavy with political overtones, it drives itself away from the orbit of art at last. The training experience of english literature in early years not only guarantees Jencks's externally fluent style of writing, but also leads to that he has difficulty in going deep into original intentions of those movements above.With a cultural study method, Jencks attempts to examine meanings of Chinese gardens in modern attitude. But he fails in breaking through inherent thoughts of Chinese aesthetics and in criticizing inner problems of hermit culture. In the advocacy for Rem Koolhass's plan for CCTV, Jencks shows a good, not evil, rent-seeking activity of critic. However, he can't go deep into the internal relationship between the anonymity of metropolis and the constructing of modern subjectivity. Science of complexity is both Jencks's theoretical materials of reinterpreting neo-modern architecture and the foundation of arguing for his Scottish garden and sculpture design works. Whereas, Jencks not only misunderstands science of complexity, but also falls into a new determinism of pursuiting the new scientific hypothesis.The Utopian political passion from 1960s leads to a significant paradox in Jencks's architectural research:he hopes to realize the immediate revolution by means of indirect signs which substitute architecture itself. Therefore, it is necessary to come back to architecture itself represented by the built environment, emphasize the gradual cultivation of people's public and democratic awareness from architecture, and realize the indirect revolution by way of immediate architecture.