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Anarchitecture: The Political Philosophy of Building Imported from Chile

Splitting (1974)

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The Individual Identity of Art Gordon Matta-Clarke brought many of his personal artistic ideals to Anarchitecture, perhaps most famous of which is his disdain for practicality. Federal Modernism was largely defined by the form of buildings matching their function, with little in the way of artistic flourish or identity. Matta-Clark, living in New York during the 1970s, saw firsthand the uniformity of The City's skyscrapers, endless seas of glass and rebar, and a major reason for the rise of Anarchitecture was a retaliation to this uniformity.

In Matta Clark's early and arguably most famous work, "Splitting (1974)," he tackles what he saw as the primary culprit for dull architecture: an emphasis of a building's efficiency and practicality over its uniqueness.

In this piece, Matta-Clark transformed a condemned house in residential new York into a state-wide attraction by removing all the furniture inside and simply bisecting the entire building. A simple transformation, of taking one full house and unchanging it besides splitting it into halves, nevertheless had a massive impact and, until the house was finally demolished, many citizens of New York came to marvel at the exhibition. The act of bisecting a house was not a random choice; by cutting a house in half, cutting through insulation and electrical wires and plumbing, Matta-Clark removed all functionality from the house and made it uninhabitable. Yet, in doing so, he also made this house, and the neighborhood it contained, wildly famous. "Splitting (1974)" is largely considered Matta-Clark's career defining work precisely because of what it represents, the core of Anarchitecture and the antithesis to Federal Modernism: that architecture doesn't have to be functional in order to have worth, and that, in fact, some buildings' worth comes from their lack of functionality.

Literally and metaphorically, "Splitting (1974)" represents a change in architectural perspective. A residential house represents the most simplistic of buildings that everyone has firsthand experience with, and the last thing that the average viewer would find interesting. In the above photograph that Matta-Clark displayed at exhibitions, there are no secret passages or aspects of a house revealed that the average resident wouldn't be able to see on their own, but the novelty comes from the angle that the viewer gets to see all the mundanity.

This variety of artistic deconstruction is likely the architectural adaptation of Surrealism, a global movement pioneered by the likes of Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Gordon Matta-Clark's own father, Roberto Matta. While Surrealism as a whole is often associated with Western Europe, there were also strong Cubist and Post-Impressionist scenes in Chile thanks to The Montparnasse Group, an association of artists founded in 1922 that learned European styles of art in France and brought them back to their home. While Roberto Matta was not a member of The Montparnasse group himself, his own journey was inspired by theirs, in that he left Universidad Católica in 1933 for France, where he joined the European Surrealists.

Roberto Matta's Surrealist paintings, as will be increasingly demonstrated through the course of this analysis, laid the foundation for many of Gordon Matta-Clark's principles of Anarchitecture. "Le Pianiste (1956)" demonstrates Roberto Matta's peak in non-abstract surrealism, and shares many of the minimalist features present in "Splitting (1974)." The "piano" being played is reduced to simply floating keys, the most critical part of a piano's visual identity (but not it's function), the floating eye is missing its pupil, and The Pianist itself has large chunks of itself missing and an excess of fingers for playing. All of these demonstrate an emphasis on the aesthetic rather than the functional, just as Anarchitecture lauds.