A COPY OF A ROMANESQUE MOTIF here re-interpreted as a bris-de-soleil (sunscreen) set in front of a south facing glass wall yields familiarity and gravitas while also appealing to our less formal contemporary tastes. (Preliminary study, The Cambridge School Campus Master Plan, 2022)
Originally, artists and architects esteemed imitation. Historians know this from a variety of Greek and Roman sources such as, for example, the writings of the Roman educator Quintilian (b. AD 35) who in his Institutio Oratoria (Education of an Orator) states: “there can be no doubt that in art, no small portion of our task lies in imitation, since, although invention came first and is all-important, it is expedient to imitate whatever has been invented with success, and it is a universal rule of life that we should wish to copy what we approve in others.”
THE BENEFITS OF IMITATION for purposes of training, education and life-long practice in the arts were until two centuries ago acknowledged throughout the western tradition (Marcus Fabius Quintilian, Roman Orator b. 35 AD)
In our time--the “art world” having since around 1910 widely rejected the principle and practice of imitation in art on the basis that it can only ever engender derivation (“derivative” perhaps being the most soul crushing word ever uttered in modern art criticism)--we witness not artists but scientists, specifically computer scientists who after having experienced some success in the development of artificial intelligences have now met up with some roadblocks and to overcome them have with some sense of urgency (if not panic) renewed an interest in learning how humans learn through—of all things-- imitation.
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT of the 19th century emerged in response to what were seen as threats to artistry and authenticity brought on by the industrial revolution and it was this movement that first introduced the fiction of spontaneous originality free of social influence, tradition, or culture. (William Blake, English Poet, b. 1757)
BY THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY imitation had fallen out of favor and into disrepute regarding anything associated with what might be considered authentic artistic practice or “greatness” (Oscar Wilde, English Playwright, b. 1854)
THE ORIGINALITY MYTH IN POPULAR CULTURE in America has thoroughly permeated every area of our lives (Steve Jobs, American Computer Entrepreneur, b 1955)
AI developers have acknowledged that what we have thought of as artificial intelligence until now is not so much intelligence as it is an illusion of it. Computers can mimic (even seemingly originate) speech and imagery based on techniques of pattern recognition enabled by algorithms fueled by massive amounts of data (techniques theorized in the 1980s and manifested only in the last decade or two with the advent of the internet). Under the right circumstances (chess, translation) it makes for great theater, but machines have yet to master even the seemingly simplest tasks of which human 2-year-olds are capable.
THE WARBURG SCHOOL of art history invested a century’s worth of study and research into the mechanics of cultural and artistic production in which it has been demonstrated that none of it evolved without imitation as a fundamental component of artistic practice (Ernst Gombrich, Art Historian and former Director of the Warburg Institute, London, England, b. 1909)
SCIENTISTS NOW KNOW THAT HUMAN IMITATION of other humans is fundamental to how we learn, so much so that AI developers have turned to child psychologists looking for guidance on how machine learning might advance beyond its reliance on big data (Alison Gopnik, Child Psychologist and Professor at UC Berkeley, CA b.1955)
The rigidity and fragility of the brute-force pattern recognition approach to AI has become so evident (even a minor glitch in the data or change of algorithmic goal can discombobulate the machine) that scientists and engineers now want to understand how it is that humans learn to then attempt to reverse engineer it with the hope that this will generate more flexible and resilient machine learning capability. They have turned to child psychologists, those who have studied the youngest of us-- infants and toddlers-- for whom, besides curiosity and exploration, imitation (of first the mother, then later others) is central to how we learn. “A crucial factor that sets children apart from AI”, says child psychologist and UC Berkeley professor Alison Gopnik “is that they learn socially, from other people. Culture is our nature, and it makes learning particularly powerful. Each new generation of children can take advantage of everything that earlier generations have discovered.”
THE KUOROI TRADITION of early Greek sculpture clearly had its origins in the monumental sculpture of Ancient Egypt from which it so obviously copied (Ptolemy III, Neues Museum, Germany, left; Youth, Attic, Archaic Greek, right)
THE STORIES ARE DIFFERENT BUT THE MOTIFS ARE SIMILAR in this adaptation by an 18th century Italian sculpture of an ancient Roman sculpture (itself a copy of a Greek original) (Laocoon and His Sons, Rome ca 27-68 AD above; Theseus Defeats the Centaur, Antonio Canova, 1875, below )
COPYING WITHIN OR ACROSS TRADITIONS is equally valid within any legitimately creative artistic process (Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, Bernini, 1652, above left and Recumbent Magdalene, Canova, 1822 above right; African mask, date unknown above left and bust by modern sculptor Brancusi ca 1910 below right)
The evidence is apparently incontrovertible, and scientists of the mind generally agree that it is more efficient to extend the bandwidth of our thinking by taking advantage of how others think-- grafting their thinking onto ours, bootstrapping ours onto theirs. The external scaffolding of what others know and can do enables efficient and effective learning, and it is this that interests the developers of machine learning (although Gopnik is skeptical that machines will ever master anything resembling real human learning except in specifically programmed task targeted ways). Whether our current art mythologies choose to recognize this or not the evidence in the history of art is also incontrovertible. There would be no Thelonius Monk without Claude Debussy, nor Rolling Stones without Muddy Waters.
THE MOST COPIED ARCHITECT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD is probably the 16th century Italian architect Andrea Palladio who most famously in America was copied by Thomas Jefferson in his design for the University of Virginia two hundred and fifty years later and 4,500 miles away. (Villa Emo Fanzolo, Treviso, Italy, Palladio, ca 1560 above; University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1819)
CLEVER MODERN ARCHITECTS COPIED ACROSS GENRES such as Le Corbusier at the Palace of Assembly Building at the capital complex in Chandigarh India where he gave shape to the “dome” over the convention hall by copying the hyperboloid geometry of a nuclear reactor cooling tower the image of which had become common place on the earth’s horizon with the advent of the nuclear age. (Calder Hall Nuclear Power Station, Whitehave, England, 1956 above; Palace of Assembly, Chandigarh, India, LeCorbusier, ca 1962)
DESPITE A CAREER DENYING IT Peter Eisenman really cannot deny that in conceiving especially some of his earliest work he copied drawing and composition techniques of others such as the Dutch modernist Gerrit Rietveld. (Schroeder House, Utrecht, Holland, Gerrit Rietveld, 1924; House III, Lakeville CT, Peter Eisenman, 1971)
The cult of originality into which we have been kidnapped has had deleterious consequences for both the practice and the education of the architect ranging from celebrity fetishization to how our schools are set up. Architecture schools are mostly situated within universities though they are both descendants of and would be strangers to the guilds and academies from which they emerged. The first academies were established to formalize apprenticeship, learning through training (imitation) whereas our schools are founded on the fiction of spontaneous inspiration (originality). We believe that somehow students are with little to no training supposed to come up with creations on their own. Instead, the so called “design studio” and the “jury” in architecture schools yield little more than students adept at performance art—the kind of mimicry pretending to be originality that AIs perform.
MASTERS COPYING MASTERS is how we get good painting. (Van Gogh, above; David Hockney, below)
AND SO ON (David Hockney, left; Laura Owens, right)
UNRESOLVING SUCCESSIONS OF DISSONANT CHORDS is a central feature of the American jazz repertoire that masters such as Thelonius Monk must have first heard, we are told, in the earlier music of Parisian Claude Debussy.
THAT ENGLISH ROCK COPIED AMERICAN BLUES in the creation of what was supposed to have been an unheard of and revolutionary new sound in popular music is a well told story
This kind of theater cannot develop the flexibility and resilience required for the lifelong learning experience that is the practice of architecture. It yields instead incompetence and alienation—artificial intelligence-- schools now secreting “graduates” uninterested in architecture because they know so little about it and disillusioned by the impotence of a “profession” (not to mention faculties) occupied by so many who know so little about it. If we were to relax our obsession with what are by now discredited creation myths in art, we might set ourselves up for less anxiety as students (and teachers) and eventually more fulfillment and creativity (and success) as practitioners.
COPYING THE WORK OF OUR PEERS whether past or present is inevitable in the mastering of any art (South façade preliminary study for The Cambridge School, San Diego, CA above)
EVERYTHING’S GAME in what we choose to copy, when and where, success emerging only if we are smart about it. (East façade preliminary study for The Cambridge School, San Diego, CA above)
THE MODEL OF EDUCATION in which imitation as a technique is held in high regard is sometimes referred to as the “Classical Model of Education” the return of which after a two century hiatus seems to be gaining traction across the US (Master Plan for The Cambridge School, San Diego, CA 2022)