Reserve
Preface by Vittorio Gregotti
This original volume presents 129 postcards sent by Jacques Gubler to Myriam Tosoni (the excellent secretary of the editorial office of "Casabella") between 1982 and 1996: fragments of rare perspicacity, accompanied by subtle irony on the relationship between society and culture, comments which accompanied "Casabella" during the editorship of Vittorio Gregotti.
As Gregotti himself explains: "The first postcards are devoted to La Chaux-de-Fonds and indirectly to the environment that formed Charles-Édouard Jeanneret: it provides an introduction to his interest in finding a modern viewpoint from the existence of technical and handicraft tools; these are engineers and the “literary” contribution, we could say, which put forward disquieting questions, often without realising it. What emerges is a catalogue of contributors who were unknown to modern technique, inventors, craftsmen, builders, carpenters (as in postcard number 99 when he speaks of Léon Jamin’s Saint Simon-like utopia), cementers; all builders of a new picturesque... On the theme of invention in restoration (and on the restoration of modern buildings) there are many considerations, even the temporary reconstruction of the profile of the bell tower of the Church of San Francesco in Aosta (with ideas that are not wholly “innocent” such as the tubes that frame it). In some case several postcards are linked to each other being part of the same story, such as the four postcards that summarise the history of Newark starting from 1666, or those that describe Geneva at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In many postcards the issues dealt with are transformed into riddles revealing a fatal duplicity in the behaviour of architects and institutions.
Naturally all this is possible because Jacques Gubler was an almost unbeatable historian philologically speaking, specialised in the last two centuries (though he did not shy away from the renaissance), with a knowledge of the documents that conveyed the research methods used by historians of ancient art in the archive to the formation of the modern world. "Archive, criticise and exhibit", was the comment he wrote regarding a fine drawing of interiors dated 1923 by Louis H. De Koninck, a Belgian architect of the modern movement (also inventor of the prefabricated cement roof tile) but this principle could also be applied to the images of the second Crystal Palace built by Paxton at Sydenham three years after the celebrated original.
From the postcards we can also understand something of Jacques Gubler’s wanderings from the United States to England and Germany: from each one of these places he send authentic travellers postcards. From Argentina he sent two different postcards on Borges, on the bridge house at Amancio Williams and on the work of the rationalist architect Wladimir Acosta. From Paris there are postcards on Tzara’s house designed by Loos and on the “cubic strength” of the home of Pierre Boudriot dated 1926, or his considerations on the value of the photographic negative: moreover on the interpretative value of photography Gubler makes many observations.
Gubler’s passion for Viollet-le-Duc surfaces often, this is evident when he writes on the drawings of the "Massif du Mont Blanc" and the paradoxical but meaningful proposal to restore them. He also recommends the reader to pay attention to the painting of Joseph Stella from the early twenties, the design of a fireplace by Victor Hugo from 1860, the subject of mural paintings between Kiesler and Arshile Gorky (murals without walls), the drawing "Eine Treppe" by the poet Kurt Tucholsky, or the presence of the portrait of Rousseau on the frontispiece of the "Plan géométrique de la ville de Bienne"; finally he mentions, regarding the shadow of the Zeppelin over Switzerland 1929, the motto of Baudelaire "Dive into the crowd and keep you gaze aloof" and writes of a " cryptic voyeurism ", a consequence of the invention of x-rays by Röntgen.
The postcard on the change of ownership of the magazine "Archithese" – where Gubler commented, "the archi stays afloat and says farewell to the thesis", could be a metaphor for the end of his and my collaboration with "Casabella".
Finally, regarding his salutations to signora Tosoni, found at the end of each postcard and continuously varied, an entire essay could be written: it will be enough to quote "I beg you to accept my aviating sentiments of a safe landing, closing ones eyes".
The volume is available at the bookstore in via Torino 61, Milan and from Feb 22 2006 in all Italian bookshops.
