Mirror Mirror on the Wall — Mieke Bal, Danto, and Reflections on Architectural Mirrors
In line with the two Snow White revamps in cinemas this summer (“Mirror, Mirror” with Julia Roberts, and “Snow White & the Huntsman” starring Charlize Theron as the evil queen) I thought I’d post a bit about the extensive discussions on the mirror image in art theory and see if I can find some parallels to architecture.
Is a mirror-image a great work of art?
In his seminal text “The Artworld”, Arthur C. Danto describes how the definition of a work of art moved away from the imitation theory to the reality theory:
“Hamlet and Socrates, though in praise and deprecation respectively, spoke of art as a mirror held up to nature.”
Consequently, if good art is an imitation of nature then mirror-images are great art. Danto points out that this is in fact a counter-intuitive statement because it would logically follow from this, that if something is an imitation of something it would be a work of art. However, imitations and copies are generally not seen as cultural masterpieces.
Do mirror-images really depict the true nature?
Referring to Lacan, Mieke Bal discussed the multiple fictions embedded into a mirror’s reflections at a lecture on the Baroque at the Norwegian Institute in Rome as follows:
When you look into the mirror the image is fictional because it is:
1. Reversed — You see yourself always the other way around, mirrored in reverse to how others perceive you
2. Distant — Your mirror-self is not connected to the sensations of yourself
3. Exterior — You can only see your outside, the sense of self becomes disconnected from the sense of the body’s inside
4. And finally, the autonomous self depicted in the mirror is a fiction, because the frame is always touching the rest of the world: When a baby looks into the mirror the father or mother holding it up become part of the image of the self.
What can art learn from the mirror’s fictions?
Both Bal and Danto agree that great art in fact should be a mirror: Art is a mirror in so far as it allows you to see something of yourself within the art work. By doing so it reveal us to ourselves — and this is the power of art.
Art doesn’t imitate nature. It’s purpose is not to create an illusion but to create new realities, as Danto writes:
Logically, this would be roughly like painting “Not Legal Tender” across a brilliantly counterfeit dollar bill, the resulting object (counterfeit cum inscription) rendered incapable of deceiving anyone. It is not an illusory dollar bill, but then, just because it is non-illusory it does not automatically become a real dollar bill either. It rather occupies a freshly opened area between real objects and real facsimiles of real objects: it is a non-facsimile, if one requires a word, and a new contribution to the world.
And architecture?
Good examples of mirrors in architecture are rare. I can think of the Palais Garnier in Paris as a building that successfully integrated mirrors into its interior sequencing. Then there is the curtain wall facade, that mirrors it’s surroundings and the sky into the building, establishing an contextualism of illusion. The Haas House in Vienna by Hans Hollein has flat glass panels allowing for an un-distorted reflection of Vienna’s historic city center but it also juxtaposes these with curved glass panels which reflect the Gothic church opposite to it in an elongated and distorted manner.
Shopping windows are an interesting spacial mirror effect; on the one hand they generously present the products on sale, but they also slightly reflect the viewer creating the illusion of one being already with the products.
If according to the imitation theory art was about imitating nature, architecture would then have a hard time to qualify as a good art form. Following the reality theory, however, architecture has a more interesting role to play. As a phenomenal mirror of power structures and hierarchies in cities, as a tool for new forms of living, and new aesthetic expressions, it can create new realities and relationships to our Umwelt.
