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Following the Napoleonic wars, and before l815 even, ecstasy returned
to good cheer. In Regency England, it was the chandelier that ‘dazzled
and puzzled’. Circa 1812, at Carlton House, the residence of
the Prince Regent, such chandeliers formed the grand climax visually
to the circular drawing room, as Sacheverell Sitwell enthused:
‘… the cut glass chandelier, of immense length, representing
the jet d’eau of a fountain and playing from the centre of
the room up into the painted sky, reflected in the four pier glasses
opposite, which repeat each other, and the lesser chandeliers
in endless repetition. The chandelier, we may remark, was an article
of furniture dear to the Prince Regent, and characteristic of
him’.
(British Architects and Craftsmen, 1945, p176)
Or, at the Brighton Pavilion, as recorded in meticulous drawings
by the elder Pugin, who found the chandeliers ‘beyond comprehension’.
Webster’s Dictionary, (1815) then described Ecstasy as, ‘Any
passion by which the thoughts are absorbed, and in which the mind
is for a time lost; excessive joy, rapture, enthusiasm, excessive
elevation of the mind; madness, distraction’.
This was of course, the age of Nash, and the end of Soane, and
with peace came dislocation, national exhaustion, as well as regeneration,
a new elegance and stylism. A year ‘without summer’ followed
during which crops were ruined, Frankenstein was invented, and a
frantic search for new stimuli was on.
Similarly in the momentous decade since 1990, with the ending of
the Cold War, the Gulf War, and lesser Civil Wars, the way has become
clear to focus on currency wars, drug wars, style wars, and terrorist
wars. Truly, ecstatic spaces are on offer to relieve us from the
pall of terrorist war.
Nicholas Grimshaw’s recent proposals for the world famous
spa at Bath have something of the quality of a vast Regency Chandelier;
here glass, light, steam and water are brilliantly correlated in
a last ditch attempt to revitalise the ancient baths. Future spa
fans will be enthralled by a dramatic wall of steam drawing them
towards the new treatment zones, Jacuzzis and swimming pools.
Alsop and Stormers’ recently completed Erotic Museum, in Hamburg’s
notorious Reeperbahn is another example of the workings of ecstasy,
with the architect as sorcerer. Here again a somewhat seedy environment
in decline is regenerated by an infusion of wit and colour, with
all the skill a building can display to contrive that ultimate moment
of ecstatic relief. The Stirling Prize-winning Peckham Library (2000)
likewise infuses purpose with an architecture of pleasure. And now
he proposes to add glitter and glitz to our hospitals.
David Hockney’s 1960s masterpiece, A Bigger Splash, is curiously
echoed in Hudson Feathersone’s Swimming Pool constructed in
North Devon (1997). The light ripples across the pool, behind a
tamarisk hedge, protected by a flesh-pink coloured end wall that
supports a chandelier-suggestive fountain amidst light Corbusian
detailing that contains an ironic whiff of parody.
In contrast, Damien Hirst’s 1991 installation In and Out of
Love, demonstrated where ecstasy or horror ends, and the sublime
begins. The happily wafted butterflies in the upper room were in
stark contrast in the upstairs, in-love space, to the downstairs
‘out-of-love’ space that emphasised haphazard, accidentally
or deliberately dead insects. So ecstasy, by contrast, is an experiential
climacteric in space, expanding to grasp this ill-founded millennium,
sensual, physical, and sexually anticipated through the senses.
Ducking the demands of the soul, claiming the relief of these appetites,
disconnecting the cerebral all the way… until the next cataclysm
to follow, wherever, after 11 September … or have we again
touched the ground this time?
So, ecstasy combines the relief of survival from the last explosive
device with the thrilling anticipation of new delights, Ecstasy
is worldly-wise, without innocence, and fuelled by high-octane charisma
and the star-struck response… until the next kamikaze. The
question is, where can innocence survive? Is it not now confined
only to the mental sanatorium?
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