Publication

When the North meets the "key to everything". From Ragnar Östberg to Erik Gunnar Asplund

Chiara Monterumisi
2017
Poster talk
Abstract

«Beyond the city there was a wide plain, which sloped gently towards the sea and it was dominated by a semicircle of mountains. The soil of such plain was shimmering red, the sea looked blue enamel, the mountain slopes were brilliant yellow. It was a country completely influenced by Eastern culture in the spirit and splendour of colours. But it was more than this. Old temples laid scattered across the valley». The Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf ["Antikrists mirakler", 1897] illustrates the impressive peculiarities of Agrigento monuments immersed in the magnificent Sicilian landscape, but Sicily is more than classical masterpieces. As a matter of fact, the southern island of Italy was the scene of subsequent dominations which established different cultural atmospheres, resulting in a dynamic melting pot, also on the architectural side. The present paper aims to demonstrate it through the travelling experiences conducted by two Swedish architects at the turn of the 20th century: Ragnar Östberg (1866-1945) and Erik Gunnar Asplund (1885-1940). Even though Swedish academies stressed the mere and distant re-drawing of classical examples, they were fascinated by the aura emanated from this extraneous world. Nonetheless, they were also capable of exploring other architectural treasures of Sicily, including Saracen and Norman ones. After receiving a three-year Royal Academy travel scholarship, Östberg departed from Marseilles’ harbour for the South of Italy in January 1897. He spent approximately two months travelling around Sicily. By contrast, at the end of 1913, Asplund left Stockholm for a short journey on the proceeds of his own work. In February 1914, he departed for Palermo by way of Naples. Compared to Östberg’s itinerary, the promising pupil added some pioneering and unconventional cities which broadened his interests. It is likely that the largely spread Baedecker suggested some of them; in fact, the same Östberg stressed the considerable utility of those travel guides. The time gap of seventeen years between their respective journeys reveals a development in the art of ‘contemplating’, literally far from the traditional 18th century aristocratic Grand Tour. Something that owed so much to the master’s input yet became manifest in what Asplund would go on to make of it. The timespan between the two generation is also evident in the way that the older preferred charcoal sketches, while Asplund employed many disparate sketching styles as well as photographs. Their sketchbooks captured the attention of later generations. On the Östberg’s 75th birthday the Academy students, a group of Swedish architects and the Association of Swedish architects re-printed a selection of his sketches about Italy and Greece, while the Asplund’s travel notes and drawings were partially published ten years after his death by the Swedish historian Hakon Ahlberg. But, even now, they remain an enduring benchmark for understanding the multifaceted nature of the Sicilian landscape and architecture.

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Related concepts (32)
Travel document
A travel document is an identity document issued by a government or international entity pursuant to international agreements to enable individuals to clear border control measures. Travel documents usually assure other governments that the bearer may return to the issuing country, and are often issued in booklet form to allow other governments to place visas as well as entry and exit stamps into them. The most common travel document is a passport, which usually gives the bearer more privileges like visa-free access to certain countries.
Sicilian Mafia
The Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra (ˈkɔːza ˈnɔstra, ˈkɔːsa -, ˈkɔːsa ˈnɔʂː(ɽ)a; "our thing"), also referred to as simply Mafia, is a criminal society operating on the island of Sicily since the 19th century. It is an association of gangs which sell their protection and arbitration services under a common brand. The Mafia's core activities are protection racketeering, the arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organizing and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions.
Travel literature
The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period, James Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786) helped shape travel memoir as a genre.
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