The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas

Stane JeršičBarbara Jakše Jeršič

The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas

LJUBLJANA

To Aleks with love.


Bast

LJUBLJANAThe Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas

CONTENTS

14 REGARDING MASTERFUL, SPATIAL DESIGN Acad. Prof. Dr. Jože Trontelj

16 ABOUT LJUBLJANA, PLEČNIK AND PHOTOGRAPHY Dr. Mojca Puncer

20 IMAGO PERENNITATIS Prof. Dr. Fedja Košir

22 THE DEPTH OF THE SURFACE OF A MOMENT Barbara Jakše Jeršič

24 SPACE AND TIME Stane Jeršič

26 THE CHURCH OF MY CHILDHOOD Dr. Katarina Marinčič

32 PLEČNIK AND I Boštjan Vuga

34 THE PAST AND FUTURE WORLD OF PLEČNIK’S LJUBLJANA Marko Košan

42 A VIEW REVEALED Prof. Dr. Jure Mikuž

45 PHOTOGRAPHY

110 INTERVIEW WITH STANE JERŠIČ AND BARBARA JAKŠE JERŠIČ Jože Osterman

114 AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

116 CHRONOLOGY

118 LOCATIONS AND DATES OF IMAGES

10

If music with its abstraction and

time sequence is on one side of the

scale, then photography, with its

seemingly strict reality and frozen

time frame is on the other.

11

If music is caught in a moment, it

doesn’t exist, the same as a photograph

doesn’t exist if it abandons itself to a

time fl ow.

14

Space is a special commodity. It seems almost inexhaustible. Nevertheless, this impres-sion is wrong. With the growth of the global population and also the world economy, space is being used up and is shrinking at a very fast rate, while those areas, which haven’t been used by hu-mans, are becoming more and more devalued due to careless human interventions. Managers and guardians of space often don’t recognise its pre-cious value enough. Great architectural masters have always known how to place human work in a natural or urbanised space and how to harmo-niously and aesthetically arrange this individual part from the interior to the exterior. If we want to learn their respectful attitude towards space, we have to follow in their steps.

Humans have evolved and distinguished themselves from other living beings by introduc-ing two completely new phenomena in their lives: by paying homage to their dead and by erecting temples. Since that time forth, man has been in-vesting huge amounts of energy and effort in this pursuit. Now it is almost impossible to imagine the humongous efforts that were invested in the creation of Stonehenge, carving Egyptian tem-

ples into rocks, the construction of the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids, erecting huge sculptures on Easter Island or centuries long building of magnifi cent medieval cathedrals.

The ingenious architects of Egyptian and Mayan pyramids or the builders of Stonehenge knew the importance of choosing, designing and consecrated a place and how to realise their ideas. They still had the luxury to freely use the chosen part of a vast and untouched space. They could orientate their buildings and their interiors by the celestial signs: by the Sun’s yearly movements or the paths of the constellations. The architects of secular medieval castles were choosing hilltops with strategic position and also with an eye to-ward the aesthetics of vistas. The artistic design-ers of sacral buildings – from medieval cathedrals to modern churches and mosques – erected apart from others or within cities, weren’t only masters of beautiful exteriors. Even after all these centu-ries, they still evoke a feeling of a special gran-deur of a sacral and carefully designed space.

An artist directs his sacral creation into a supernatural timelessness, eternity: towards God. And there he also directs a person who achieves

REGARDING MASTERFUL, SPATIAL DESIGNAcad. Prof. Dr. Jože Trontelj

15

his creation: his or her feelings and thoughts. Similarly in respect to sacral music, this is one of the highest, if not even the highest pinnacle of artistic creation.

The artist rises above and distances him-self from everyday life, which we mostly spend in the shallows, on the surface or epidermis. At the same time, he raises a visitor who opens his or her mind to a work of art above everything that is perceived as mundane.

A temple is a place which quietens and covers the triviality of everyday life by its dig-nity and poise. A place, which by itself, with its genius loci, summons the visitors: sursum corda.

A place, which by its power of expres-sion, imposed upon it by an artist from his inner wealth, communicates that it is sacral.

Every era had its own chosen ones who were able to breathe within this invitation to spirituality toward the sacral space. Thousands of ingenious architects and visual artists have done this throughout the history of sacral art. They achieved their goal through different ways, as every epoch has its own method, artistic lan-guage and style.

The best of the best knew and were able to use the most exquisite means of expression avail-able to them: they made them nobler and assem-bled them in eternal and mysterious creations, which touches, overwhelms and makes speechless even those who are less perceptive. This certainly can be said about the maestro Jože Plečnik. In the best spirit of the tradition of his trade, he didn’t turn only to God with his creations; he turned toward man and even the mundane world around his monumental structures. With them, Plečnik still generously shares his noble works of art and his highly spiritual message with humanity. With his works of art, Plečnik enriched the environ-ment also: nature and work of humans.

Art is one of the basic human needs! In some higher spiritual level it is closely connected with all our values, which are the foundation of morals and ethics. Today, we often ask ourselves the following question: how to raise our children in order to become good colleagues, friends, par-ents and citizens? We can use three forms of ad-vice. The fi rst one is to tell the child what’s right, good and beautiful. The second one is to give him/her the example through our own behaviour

and actions. And the third advice is to introduce him/her to the world of art. Good art evokes good: even the best in both young, middle aged and old people. With his monumental buildings, Plečnik affects even the passers-by, who are often unaware of what it is they are passing across. But to a much greater degree, he affects those who accept his invitation, enter his space and open their hearts and minds to the power of his art.

16

Upon entering. Ljubljana is becoming an increasingly attractive tourist city. Plečnik’s ar-chitecture gives the city its own unique identity, which is based on the high European culture of Modernism. In the photographs from this cata-logue, we can only sense the wave of faces and colourful attires and also the river of human fi g-ures and voices, which washes away the even-tual fi rst impression of coldness, raised by the monumental architecture. The city embodies complex spatial proportions, while the efforts of the two photographers add an emotional and poetic dimension to the symbolic value of the space itself, while at the same time blurring nu-merous links: amongst them the link with the social structures of power. Individual structures and spaces create a string of symbolic mean-ings and with them, the city’s “identity”. Nev-ertheless, the photographers don’t celebrate the colourful central city bazaar. Instead, they offer an ascetic dimension of Plečnik’s market. Is this an emblem of the city, a monument, a symbol of Modernism, a fragment of a creative idea to make Ljubljana the Athens of Slovenia with a “museum effect”, or a unique and meaningful de-

tail which opens different views onto the city-scape?

The style and symbolism of a public urban space. The spatial style can be (with regard to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard) viewed in the context of the psychological, existential and phenomenological refl ections of space, which infl uenced more contemporary studies of archi-tectural and spatial styles. The fundamental shift with important consequences for our perceptions of space happened in the middle of the 1980’s. This was the shift from the phenomenological interest of the past decades to modern identi-ties and cultural policies. The latter have forced cultural history to face evolutionary discontinui-ties, gaps and deviations (here we could mention the fi rst confrontations of the profession with Plečnik’s architecture). When dealing with the style and symbolism of a space, our thinking can rest mainly on the imagination: claiming that a space, permeated with imagination, can’t stay in-different and left only to a rational calculation. It’s experienced, not only in its reality, but with all bias that the imagination can thrust upon an individual or group.

The modern urban space is a plethora of images of imaginative consecrated, chaotic parts and rational, controlled areas. Numerous criti-cal thinkers point out that a transparent, pure and neutral space is simply an illusion. A space doesn’t have a social existence independently from visualisation, as architectural photography ingeniously and subtle keeps in mind. The photo-graphs of the city in this catalogue tackle various subjects: spatial practices, architecture, urban planning, environment, representation, ideology, etc. At the same time, they focus upon myth, si-lence, solitude, peacefulness and even beauty.

Architectural photography: photographs of Plečnik’s architecture. In this kind of photog-raphy, the space talks but doesn’t say everything. The documental value of photographic images is tightly connected with expressive, interpretative and poetical views of the photographers them-selves. These photographs of Plečnik’s architec-ture in Ljubljana subtly reveal the span of the architect’s projects, actions and visions for the future with a hint of the past. While in the an-cient world, which inspired Plečnik immensely, the aesthetic function of an “art” (architectural)

ABOUT LJUBLJANA, PLEČNIK AND PHOTOGRAPHYDr. Mojca Puncer

17

object was inseparably connected with religious and public functions, in the course of history the individual functions prevailed. This tendency reduced the organic and symbiotic side of a city community as an existential and political collec-tive. In the ancient world, public life of a munici-pal community was signifi cantly defi ned by the architectural image of the city with its agora (popular political assembly), emporium (mar-ketplace), theatre (public stage for municipal events) and necropolis (cemetery). With Plečnik, Modernism in Slovenia completed the process of creating formal oppositions between the “clas-sic” and the “modern”. Plečnik achieved this by inventing a new form of reviving and merging different functions. He thus embodied numerous spans of history in his architecture, especially in his urban and design planning for the Slovene capital. Plečnik’s inventiveness is shown in the melodic linking of visual elements which invoke pleasure in the urban dweller.

Photographic documentation, the “read-ing” of a space unpretentiously follows the ambi-tious production of the city space and Plečnik’s creative impetus. It reveals the structure of the

architect’s creations and also his architectural style. Its function hovers above the scene as that of a phantom, a harbinger of an elated, lumi-nous, even transcendental world. The front yard of Križanke, a popular open space theatre, rep-resents a colourful diptych, while the black and white panoramic views are typical for the detail of a pillar in the market building with its antique qualities in the winter months, a view on the snowy promenade from Tivoli Castle, the walk-ing path by the funeral parlours of Ljubljana ne-cropolis Žale, which emanate a sense of serenity and stillness...

This unique photographic diary embraces the fragile relationship between the architectural stability and the ephemeral natural transforma-tions, where the natural space retracts to give room for the social, labelled one.

The architectural photography of Barba-ra Jakše-Jeršič and Stane Jeršič is an articulated artistic statement regarding the image of the city of Ljubljana. The photographers used a modern panoramic technique to effi ciently realise the concept of perceiving the city space in a broader defi nition. They didn’t focus on the functionality

of the photographed urban areas, where Plečnik’s architecture left an indelible mark. His architec-ture is a unique amalgam of the classical and the modern and thus locally participates in the uni-versal sphere. This style is now increasingly more recognisable and appreciated on the internation-al scene. The photographs refl ect the spatial con-texts surrounding the captured architectural cre-ations. The photographic images follow Plečnik’s architecture in approaching the dimension of art, which reaches far beyond the time frame of its or-igin. The architectural photography is always an interpretation of the intrinsically designed space, which is a result of rich personal and social expe-riences. The photographers took on a demanding task to capture the fl uidity of space against the impressive architectural frame and make it more familiar to the observer. These photographs are dedicated to the openness of different gazes. The creative expression opens our eyes and subtly implicates the dimension of the observer.

20

A photograph is (both as a technical prod-uct and as an art form) according to a simple, if not even a populist defi nition; a refl ection of a moment. Nevertheless, since it can refl ect entire strings of moments and thus reveal not only dy-namic but also static elements or scenes, we can concur with the paradoxical antithesis that a pho-tograph can also embrace that almost incompre-hensible duration we call eternity. Since Plečnik’s architecture is in a way “eternal” or “perennial”, we can call its images, captured through the lens of a camera, “imago perennitatis”.

A camera is a tool which enables us to refl ect reality. Since I don’t have experiences as a critic of photographic services and creations, I can only comment on what stirs my emotions upon observing these photographs (which cer-tainly aren’t services, they are creations). I might even see or imagine more than their authors wanted to display or say. This task is far from simple, because a comment of elemental things requires at least the same amount of imagination as was invested into their photographs, which are excellent both by their quality of content and their unconventional form.

Plečnik’s work has recently been docu-mented on an enormous scale. These fi les can be in principle classifi ed into two groups: one literary and the other one as visual. Written points of view can be very diverse, while the visual ones are as a rule similar and thus are almost stereotyped. The latter ones can of course always focus only on built structures. As a rule, they are photographed from the same points and angles, in the time of the year when capturing images with a camera is the sim-plest and in many cases at the same hour when the shadows provide the proper contrasts. We have such feeling about all things created in the last de-cades of the 20th century. What is architecture? A magnifi cent interplay of volumes assembled under light, as Le Courbusier put it.

Allow me to digress a tad. In regard with Plečnik’s work – at least for a handful of erudite – is more interesting to study those structures that weren’t built and exist only as sketches or blueprints. Nevertheless, the majority of observ-ers quite happily form their evaluation and lavish praise upon the basis of plethora of created arte-facts of all dimensions and sizes: from chalices and chairs to portals and cityscapes. This is the sphere

where photographers, who are in the fi rst case completely powerless, can enjoy all their mastery of composition expressed more or less in a person-al manner. But what is composition? Something completely coincidental or an idea, premeditated to the last detail? Probably both! But!

The same visual motif can be executed in many ways: from pure realism, completely faith-ful to nature, to pure and sometimes chaotic ab-stractness, as a drawing or a colourful sfumato or even in with stark contrasts. The same melody, performed with a harp or fl ute can sound differ-ently but in both cases harmonious, and with an attention to every detail. Can we then be sur-prised by the fact that the combination of both musical instruments is even more effi cient (be-cause it widens the fi eld of perception)? Never-theless, inventiveness doesn’t suffi ce if we want to step outside the sacrosanct frame of estab-lished approaches. We need a good measure of healthy courage as well.

The panoramic format of the photographs is the most obvious but not the only audacity we notice immediately and which sets them apart from the standard formulas. Am I exaggerating

IMAGO PERENNITATISProf. Dr. Fedja Košir

21

when saying that these longitudinal gazes into space are for me familiar to those sections and fa-çades published in the books Napori and Architec-tura Perennis? Architect’s drawings, seemingly so very technical, are in reality so extensive that our gaze has to travel from one detail to another before we comprehend them as an entirety of rhythmic parts that follow each other in a closed sequence, where the intensifi ed monotony (which could be even seen as boring) becomes the main attraction, the same as with the panoramic format.

The second thought which springs to mind and cannot be stifl ed by any means is the comparison to Picasso’s Guernica. The unusual dimensions of the painting are one of the reasons for its magnifi cent compositional framework where the zigzagging breaking line – a determi-nant of a classical triptych – crosses the edges of the image only to return to the frame again and thus maximally heightens the orderliness and dramatic feeling of the design. The fusion of the traditional topic and original variation is surpris-ing, but not completely unexpected. This is the way of the majority of good artists. And with this thesis I return straight back to Plečnik again.

The similarities mentioned above with regard to the composition of photographs are in both cases probably coincidental but neverthe-less obvious. The differences are equally impor-tant. Where Picasso fi lls his vision of the Apoca-lypse with a multitude of fi gures, in Plečnik’s world-class architecture we notice his deliberate idiosyncrasy or even whims for the absence or even redundancy of human beings. Nevertheless, when we think about the bizarre advice of John Ruskin to architects to design all their buildings by bearing in mind how they would look like in ruins, we realise that a man might not be the only measure of all things (the existing and non-exist-ing things which are and which are not, if I fi nish the quotation of this ancient wisdom).

It’s true: photographs capture reality. But the reality can have more than one meaning (or even no meaning at all). That what seems to us in a normal format for the undoubtedly recognis-able, becomes through this method unusual, mys-terious and almost unrecognisable. Which proba-bly proves that we perceive our environment and the people in it like clichés, based on innate or imparted patterns, probably even on prejudices.

In the present case it is especially important to shake them off completely. Only then a magical world of the suggestive, direct or discreet and of-ten paradoxically sharpened non-verbal addresses suddenly opens up in front of us.

There is a multitude of examples: in less provoking dimensions of sections, the composition technique redirects itself into a deliberate contrast, achieved by the combination of built structure and lush vegetation and as a rule in the fi rst plane. The crystal-like exactness of solid matter is hiding behind the curtain of coincidentally branched-off treetops. We can avoid human beings but can’t es-cape from objects. This is what the photographs are telling us. In a way, they are binomes, depic-tions of the same space in two separate moments. In the fi rst one, the architecture lives next to itself as an autonomous ensemble of walls, roofs and col-onnades. In the second one, it becomes a container, fi lled with an enormous pile of things.

In this way, the fourth dimension, time, steals into these images. Thus they deliberately integrate into time with such sovereignty that they will always stay precious documents of architecture.

22

There are boundaries between the percep-tion and feeling of the world. Some are simple and obvious, others are invisible. The world is made of images, described through an abstract-ness of the word and projected in the knowledge of that what is seen within us. I discovered the mystery and magic of uncovering the layers of images through reading “holiday” books which I took on my summer holidays this year.

Old Goirot by Honoré de Balzac, On Pho-tography by Susan Sontag and Man and His Sym-bols by Carl Jung. I read Old Goirot very quickly. I still haven’t fi nished On Photography, while I had to put Man and His Symbols back on my book-shelf in order to read it later. What do these books have in common? They are connected by a simple coincidence, in the same way as coincidences unite us in life and as we choose images by pure chance. We see the tenants in Madame Vaquer’s boarding house as beings made from fl esh and blood, liv-ing their own lives. We see images that weave the story in a seemingly familiar place and time. We can smell the mutton, dressed with butter, a room permeated with the stink of burnt milk and a sul-try reception room. We can hear the soft move-ments of the landlady’s cat and the heavy feet of a certain dubious Mr. Vautrin; the stomp of horse

hooves on the cobbled Parisian roads. We admire the beauty of Goirot’s daughters and cry because of the suffering father... We feel.

Words are of course wrapped in a multi-layered veil of mystery and the images are cov-ered with the blanket of a seemingly naïve charm. They surround us with the aim to seduce us. The beauty is in the innocence of the communication and the purity of forms; in order and with re-spect to the relationship with the outside world. Beauty is in a simple embrace of love: towards the world, ourselves and others.

To try and get a sense of the spirit of his-torical masters through their work is a very en-chanting challenge. You ascend the mountain top as a climber across the rocks. Rung upon rung, step by step, you uncover the contents of the spirit of the past. The taste of the past, captured in the photographic framework is charmingly empty. If the moment of a decisive action – as an inimitable gesture or expression – is captured on one side, is the moment, which becomes that only by pressing the camera button, on the other. One long moment that records space. Panoramically! This isn’t about the movement of the lens on the perimeter of a circle, or the capturing and fi xing of perspectives in a 360 degrees angle: it’s simply

about the panorama. It is about the view from a distance, from the other side.

It would be easy to say from the other side of the road, window, plane or elevator... It’s about a gaze “somewhere”, about the discovery of a moment which is eternal, extended into in-fi nity in the same way the panoramic format is thrust unto the relationship to the usual format of single-lens refl ex cameras. That moment rep-resents a narrow, short slice of time, which is sup-posed to capture its signifi cance by the fact that it is eternalised by a photograph and exposed to the observer. But it can also represent a mirrored timelessness, where it projects itself on its screen to eternity so we can see it in the reality of the present time.

How important is this moment to record the spirit of master Plečnik, which has embodied itself in Plečnik’s works and in the urban archi-tectural harmonies he has created? How decisive is this moment for the heritage and the message of history, which funnels into our present where we now live, exist and (co) create? Hugely? Not much? We become aware of the signifi cance of a moment, when we slip on an icy road: its value is explained to us by the consequences brought upon us by this incident. The importance of the

THE DEPTH OF THE SURFACE OF A MOMENTBarbara Jakše Jeršič

23

fragments of time is appreciated, when life slowly assembles into days, years, decades...

The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Pan-oramas is a book of photographs and words; it is a book about Ljubljana and for Ljubljana. The Mu-sic of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas is a book of images, of images of Ljubljana and a book of refl ections regarding Ljubljana. It is a book about the architectural value bestowed to us. It is a book about the importance of the treasures which we intimately notice as current strollers upon the stage of life in the city of Ljubljana.

A photograph, an image of the world through the viewfi nder of a camera, printed on a thin sheet of paper, refl ects time. Time, which remains somewhere else and creates a new place in a photographic image held by the observer! It produces new, subjective narratives in the lan-guage of images. The magic and the mysterious!

How does a photographer perceive and see a certain space, how does he/she defi nes an appro-priate image? Each moment has at least two sides: a moment when everything happens and a moment when nothing happens at all. A moment, which changes life! A moment, which takes life slowly but persistently! A timeless moment becomes the pan-orama of our gaze, directed into infi nity.

Ljubljana, The Music of Plečnik’s Archi-tecture Panoramas, is a book of images, a book of words, a book of a city, a book of architecture. A book of music?

The music plays to the heart, even though this statement feels simple and familiar. The im-ages play under the baton of a creator of the vis-ible and invisible: they play the music of harmo-nies, immanent to the eyes. The inaudible music of deliberate visual rhythms, sequences of light, shadows, lines and colours. The coincidence of sounds creates noise; the coincidence of images chaos; the coincidence of words nonsense.

Photographs record. “Cameras began du-plicating the world at that moment when the hu-man landscape started to undergo a vertiginous rate of change: while an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time, a device is available to record what is disappearing. The moody, intricately tex-tured Paris of Atget and Brassaï is mostly gone,” says Susan Sontag in her collection of essays On Photography (1977).

Plečnik’s Ljubljana exists and persists. Plečnik’s Ljubljana is a city for all who feel, trust and believe.

The essence of a message is wrapped in

mystery. “You are mortal, only your works are your memory,” reads the sign carved into a stone in Plečnik’s Križanke and cover the uncovered secret. Moment by moment we abandon our-selves to eternity and leave behind us objects, thin sheets of paper, stones, sand, ashes...

The depth of the surface of a moment is lost in eternity. The depth of the surface is visibly invisible. It is a timeless beauty that enchants us. It is love for life; a respect for the past and a be-lief into the future. The depth of the surface of a moment is a photograph. It is a moment, in which the photographer’s hand pressed the trigger and captured a transient existence. The depth of the surface of the moment is The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas. The inaudible music of harmonies, played to our hearts by these images. The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas is a mysterious anthology of images of Plečnik’s Ljubljana.

24

SPACE AND TIMEStane Jeršič

25

I’m constantly returning to the same spac-es. Spring is the youngest of all the seasons. Win-ter directs me towards the past, when Plečnik’s ambiences become fi lled with subtle intimacy.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter… and spring. Different seasons – something else, then?

Gazes transparently and mysteriously recognise the spaces. In a large ambience created by Plečnik, the voice sounds differently than in a small one: in an open space it has a completely different tone than in a closed space.

The infi nite number of perfect composi-tions uncovering various cultures and time!

2000 years ago, in his great masterpiece of Latin literature, a narrative poem based on the Greek mythology Metamorphoses, Ovid wrote: “All things change, nothing is extinguished. […] Everything fl ows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature…”

Life goes on to reveal to us certain secrets, which come to light when the past invites us to revive memories. I set out to take photographs in order to understand in which way to express what I’ve seen and experienced through the poet-ics of photographic images. Photography allows

me to freeze in time the transience and passing moments of life, which enrich our lives. It allows me to create images that interface with each oth-er in their own way, sensibly complementing each other and also to create a rhythm, which brings positive emotions to the surface. Only then can I begin to take pictures and connect moments (photographs) refl ecting space and time into con-text and thus enable the viewer to perceive the emotion, which symbolises the meaning of our existence.

Then I come upon »l’instant décisif« (The Decisive Moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson). When does this decisive moment happen for me? When I’m choosing the image to be taken and press the shutter release button or when I sit in front of my computer and decide which one of numerous photographs shall I choose and which might be-come lost forever?

I wish that the photographic story in The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas would give the impression that all photographs were taken in the same moment, despite the fact that some of them were taken in the rain, others in the snow, mist, sun, wind, in the evening… An

illusion which may display Plečnik in all his di-mensions: masterful, serious, thoughtful, elated, noble and humble.

26

We always used the side entrance. During my childhood in Šiška (part of Ljubljana) I felt as if the church didn’t have any other entrance at all. You push the narrow, unpretentious-look-ing and weather-beaten door and then you fi nd yourself in a big solemn space. I don’t know if I ever thought as a child how illogical the ratio really is between this humble little door and the monumental interior. There were too many other things which seemed strange to a child: in rela-tion to churches as a whole and particularly in relation to this church.

Thirty years ago, when my grandparents lived in Šiška, the roads were still paved gravel and they poured a brown liquid with the smell of chicory to prevent the dust from rising up-wards. Street lamps that reminded of coffee pots dangled from frayed wires as if some squalid tight rope walkers put them on. But not much has really changed since then. The atmosphere has remained the same: it’s not completely ur-ban and not completely rural. The gravel roads are gone but when the air pressure is low you can still smell the aroma of mealy food. And fi nally, we still humbly enter the church through the

side door, although they now have a windbreak which emanates a certain desire for luxury. The front façade, which I saw only a few times as a child and which fi lled me with awe every single time, doesn’t look any less surprising after 30 years. What are those solemn grey and white col-umns doing in the backwater next to the railway, amongst the vegetable gardens, clothes lines, out-houses, extensions, porches and sheds? Plečnik’s church in Šiška isn’t one of those marvels which open up to us in medieval towns; it is not grown into the world which surrounds it. The look on its façade – not in my childhood, now, thirty years later, when I check the accuracy of my memories – makes me think that the building looks like a foreign object due to its uncompromising hones-ty. It expresses its immodesty through the mod-est materials from which it is built: this contra-diction doesn’t give an expression of homeliness but of anger, at least to me.

As a child I was of course convinced that this anger was directed towards me. My grand-parents used to send me and my sister to the church in Šiška during the holidays, especially at Easter for the food blessing ceremony. Our grand-

THE CHURCH OF MY CHILDHOODDr. Katarina Marinčič

27

mother combed our hair and braided fi rm plaits on us, while our grandfather gave us ten grand to put them into the collection plate (the holiday zealousness of a not too regular an attendant of church ceremonies). Their neighbour accompa-nied us and telling us on our way on how to draw back the cloth to allow the blessing to reach the Easter eggs. “Now!” she whispered sharply, after sitting in the pew which seemed like infi nity. It seemed to me as everyone was watching us. Even more: that everyone was watching me and that they all noticed how I get up and sat back down with a certain time lag, because (oh, how embar-rassing) I don’t know when and why you stood up and sat down in church.

When I walked around the empty interior of Plečnik’s church a few days ago, I felt that the soul of my childhood back then would be easier to reconcile itself with superstition and fraud if we took our food to be blessed to some other, dif-ferent building. In a building which would look less like an antique temple (or a very beautiful gymnasium) and more akin to those things which were expected from Christian temples by later generations, closer to us. The French Romantic

writer, Chateaubriand had for example associat-ed the grandeur of the Catholic religion with the architecture of Gothic cathedrals. The antique temples are beautiful as palm groves, he wrote, but our cathedrals are as ancient Gallic woods. According to this, a church is not only a meet-ing place and a temple, but also and above all a sanctuary, a hiding place, a labyrinth with dark corners and caverns.

I try to extend Chateaubriand’s metaphor on a sunny June afternoon to Plečnik’s church of St. Francis of Assisi. In this building, I say to myself, you can’t become lost nor can you hide in it: even a small child can’t do that. But to be honest: palm groves are distant too, and so is the blossoming land of the fi rst Christians, so poeti-cally described by another French Romantic and biographer of Jesus, Ernest Renan. The afternoon sun seeps through the smooth windows; the light bounces off the brick columns and light wood. It’s strange that an orange light feels so fi rm. If I had to compare, I’d say that the interior of this specifi c church of Plečnik reminds me of a wheat fi eld.

The book for which I write this short text tells the story of the panoramas in the language

of images. In a way, Plečnik’s church in Šiška is connected with my discovery of the meaning of the word “panorama”. I was eight years old when my parents took me to see our new apartment on the ninth fl oor of the apartment building on the northern edge of Ljubljana. All windows looked towards the south: I could see immensely far away, above the fl ood of houses straight to the Ljubljana Castle and the faint outline of moun-tain Krim behind it. On the right side of the view were a few fi elds, a railway track, a strangely threatening gasworks and a blue building of a medical drugs’ factory. And there, at the right side of the panorama, the rocket-like tower of Plečnik’s church suddenly sprang forth in front of my eyes. I recognised it, but at the same time felt as if I saw it for the fi rst time.

30

Plečnik’s work and details are no different from other ingenious works of architecture:

31

as a rule, they enable a multitude of gazes and interpretations and it is up to the observer to notice and appreciate them or not.

32

A narrow white ramp is ascending in a spiral fashion within a white rectangular verti-cal space of the church tower. The light comes through two large circular windows at the top of the tower. The glass itself is divided by a mesh-like structure. The hour hands are fi tted on the outside section of the glass and encompass the rim of the circle. While ascending this white space, you hear the echo of the hour hands in mo-tion. From the inside and through the clock you gaze at the two parts of the city, at two images. In the vertiginous white space of the Holy Heart of Jesus church tower in Prague, you’re listening to time. The feeling is both surreal and basic at the same time: the sound of moving hour hands, the static of the cityscape and the dizzy white-ness of this non-tectonic space. The experience we would expect more from one of Hitchcock’s fi lms rather than a work of Plečnik. It is more akin to a sequence from the black and white fi lm The 39 Steps than from any church interior from Plečnik.

From the outside, the tower and the church itself are clad into a brick-wall, which lean out-wards near the top. Stone squares protrude from

the façade and look like drops sliding down the top part of the sloping façade. The composition and the material wealth of the church are not connected with its interior at all. If the square ground plan of the nave is of unusual design for a Christian church, the technologically utilitar-ian tower with its ramp represents somewhat of a “glitch” in Plečnik’s architectural work. It is too fat, insuffi ciently decorated; we notice a lack of classical architectural elements on the one side, and too many Modernistic elements on the other. It simply doesn’t emanate enough of Plečnik’s spirit.

I have never completely understood Plečnik. I have never refl ected upon his work in a way a person can learn from the work of his contemporaries or the great architects of the 20th Century. Plečnik isn’t Le Courbusier or Mies or Gropius or Asplund. You can’t learn him, he isn’t didactic. Whenever I thought I fi nally grasped the essence of his work and I was able to fol-low it so far to take some of Plečnik’s principles and use them in my own projects, I discovered they were elusive and fl uid. Playing with clas-sical rules, that is to say with everything I was

taught in school, the dismissal of the typological hierarchy of spaces, the non-rigorous and eclec-tic use of materials, the egocentric and at the same time creative approach toward renovation, completion, upgrading or removal of the existing building structures in Plečnik’s work actually in-stigate a form of alienation between the object and us, subjects, observers or users of a certain object in the same manner as the identifi cation of audiences towards actors in the plays of Brecht become alienated.

I don’t even try to understand Plečnik. What attracts me the most in his works is ex-actly that what seems to be the most “wrong” and the least familiar: an experiment, something which we can’t see anywhere else. I’m drawn by spatial sequences outside the cannons of classical and modern architecture. Besides in the tower of Plečnik’s church in Prague, I discover these al-most Daliesque and lobotomy-like sequences in a unifi ed grid of light, which cover different outer walls of the Devil’s Courtyard of the Križanke complex in Ljubljana; in the wooden transept in the upper fl oor of the church of the Archangel Michael on the Marsh; or in the strange cross-

PLEČNIK AND IBoštjan Vuga

33

section of the new and existing naves in the white church in Bogojina.

With regard to Plečnik’s work, I’m the most attracted by those things I don’t under-stand: in the things that are the least didactic and the most diffi cult to explain. The associative fl ow in my brain is stimulated by these spatial se-quences, in which I seek links outside the archi-tectural matter itself. I try to discover the wild-ness of these sequences, the reason why they have such a profound effect on me, and what are their basic elements. This is always a digression from the familiar, the already seen. These experiences are always tests, experiments, searches, which are sometimes more, sometimes less interesting.

Let’s move to a bigger scale: from spatial sequences to the city scale. Plečnik’s Ljubljana as a Slovenian Athens, his formula to establish a metropolis within the scale of a provincial city, as Ljubljana was in the fi rst half of the 20th Centu-ry. A city without suffi cient historical substance or critical mass, which needed a hand and a vision and which gradually started to weave the urban fabric and actually transformed Ljubljana into a metropolis. Pure ego trip, pure altruism or a mix-

ture of both? Plečnik demolishes everything not valuable enough by his standards and builds his own formula of the new Ljubljana.

What is Ljubljana today, after 85 years from the beginnings of its transformation with Plečnik’s architectural works? Is its substance of a metropolis established or does it need a new helping hand to develop it further?

No, it doesn’t! Today, Ljubljana is a Euro-pean metropolis which should enable a pluralism of spatial concepts, a city where everyone seeks for his/her own space and is able to fi nd it. This is exactly the driving force which enriches the image of the city and encourages its dynamic de-velopment. This is the formula “New Ljubljana”, a dynamic city at the beginning of the 21st Cen-tury.

I’m very attracted by the church of the Holy Heart of Jesus in Prague. It is a mental icon of the entire city district, a centre of identity. When you suddenly see its ornamental building mass and reach the end of the street leading to it; when you notice its axial placement in space and on the top where it even makes it more horizon-tal, almost fl attened out and immense in size, the

shock of the white vertical tower space is even greater.

Pure cinematography: interplay between perception and movement. This is close to my heart.

34

Jože Plečnik wrote his architectural tes-tament to Ljubljana. The cosmopolitan Vienna and the golden Prague might have inspired some of his best and the most original works, but it was his hometown – the emerging capital of a young European nation, who were at the time only a few steps away from achieving their cen-turies long aspiration for an independent state – where Plečnik has created a monumental pic-ture of European dimensions in which he weaved the architectural ideas of the past and a future world into a fantastic urban fabric with subtle threads of a unique creative pattern. Although Plečnik couldn’t realise all his ideas the way he intended, he nevertheless pleated a noble wreath of panoramic views upon the provincial sleeping beauty. In the middle of the 20th century, he gave the city its identity, which distinctively contin-ues to underline the sentiment of its popula-tion in the 21st century as well. He was subtle enough to recognise the genius-loci of this old-world city, measured in the shy proportions of the mentality of a nation devoid of their own princes and kings. Plečnik gave Ljubljana an urban skyline and focused upon picturesque de-

tails. The city silhouette gradually spreads from the Ljubljanica riverbanks to nearby and more distant neighbourhoods, where the medieval enclave of Ljubljana, hugged against the castle hill, fl irts with its mirror image, built upon the sunken network of the Roman insulae. The only visible remnant of the ancient town of Emona is now its southern wall. The wall itself was preserved and subtly transformed by the great master himself, who passed it on his daily walks from his spiritual home and workshop in Trnovo to the bustling city centre. That part of the city echoes the ideas and spiritual power of the an-cient world. Nowadays, when a modern traveller follows Plečnik’s steps into the city centre, he/she imprints those ideas in the intricately placed cobblestones found on streets and squares. He/She then crosses the river on one of the monu-mental three bridges and continues his/her way under the colonnade of the city market, where the hustle and bustle of life is caught in the echo of the heavy columns and lintels of the new-age agora. The route continues its way up to the loggia of the slim triangular structure of Peglezn, which is raised above the noisy traffi c,

THE PAST AND FUTURE WORLD OF PLEČNIK’S LJUBLJANAMarko Košan

35

and further on alongside the Ljubljanica River to the Ambrož Square where the river is crossed by fl oodgates with their intricately designed an-tique elements.

The panoramic aerial views of the camera are very convincing and silently beautiful. They capture the subtle urban carpet, woven for Lju-bljana by Plečnik, who was always aware of the transience of reality itself, but nevertheless used the eternal glow of higher ideals, embraced in the idea of the “architectura perennis”. This force, driven by the invisible Creator and tailored by the imponderable logic of absolute harmony and proportions is symbolised by the fi erce gesture of Moses, the Messenger of God. This sculptural masterpiece by Dolinar adorns the façade of the National and University Library, which is prob-ably the most eminent palace built by Plečnik for his hometown. With its picturesque red brick fa-çade and a structure using renaissance tectonics and proportions, Plečnik achieved the fi nal and the most refi ned stage in his attentive design of façades, always entangled in the infi nitive inter-play of the classicistic style and at the same time modern elements, where pilasters and vertical

bands, arcade arches and wreaths intertwine into a magnifi cent whole.

Equally suggestive are the frozen gazes of the photographer’s eye – motionless and re-fi ned refl ections of loquacious details, which reveal to the attentive observer of ambiences expected and more often unexpected master’s stamp, captured in numerous views that call for a dialogue. Although they have been completed in a self-evident material and spiritual face of the city panorama, they never congest in an unrec-ognisable, crammed and non-defi nable heap of moments at the intersection of historical periods. Plečnik’s interventions into space always retain an aloof sense of independence; they dominate the environment in a stylised manner and demand attention. Only a careful reading of their multi-layered message reveals the wit of the architect’s spiritual charge.

Plečnik’s architecture merges both the past and the present: it enables the past world to enter the time we live in now and stirs the noble sediments of the past into the blossoming pres-ent. Plečnik cloaked modern forms with a clas-sical severity and covered them with an out of

reach historical membrane. He imprinted pat-terns of the past in an eternal form, which always pays attention to the consciousness of the pres-ent and keeps as much of the past as is possible to feel in the present. As the Romantic philosopher Friedrich Shlegel would say, Plečnik’s work seems to be permeated with “inverse prophesy”; it con-tains an equal measure of dedicated seriousness and humorous wit which can be observed both in monumental projects in the symbolic centre of Ljubljana and in the seemingly less important projects outside the city edges: a beautiful ex-ample of the latter is St. Michael church in Črna vas, which emerges from the sticky mists of the moist laden Ljubljana marshes like a mirage, and is with its simple interior a lyrical homage to the tradition of folk architecture and design. A hom-age to a set of values which don’t die with Plečnik and which begin anew, an almost eternal life by passing under a commemorative arc of triumph: they persevere for much longer than a fabulous photograph, which after awhile inevitably turns into a yellowed image on a decayed sheet of pa-per inside a book cover.

40

Only then a magical world of the suggestive

41

non-verbal addresses suddenly opens up in front of us.

42

A VIEW REVEALEDProf. Dr. Jure Mikuž

43

For a long time, the style of Plečnik’s work was diffi cult to defi ne: its qualities were most transparently described by Post-modern theo-rists. They pointed out two things. The fi rst one was Plečnik’s interest in detail, which he was tak-ing from various and diverse architectural styles and from his own inexhaustible imagination. As we can often see, this master of architecture finalised and placed a personally very important fragment only at the very end of a project and thus vested his own, very personal mark upon it. In other words, Plečnik chose the place for some architectural elements only in situ, where the possible views of them became actual and fi nal. Therefore we could name the second, an even more elusive quality a different or other perspec-tive. Plečnik’s work and details are no different from other ingenious works of architecture: as a rule, they enable a multitude of gazes and inter-pretations and it is up to the observer to notice and appreciate them or not. But some are really special, excellent and exciting. The photographic tandem, Barbara Jakše-Jeršič and Stane Jeršič used a Post-modern photographic concept to reveal and enrich the above mentioned qualities of Plečnik’s

work. With their visual sensitivity, they uncover selected details and less common views, which aren’t known even to the admirers or connois-seurs of Plečnik’s work. Their photographs re-veal to us what is seems to be the artist’s secret itself: the secret of the architect, who created these seemingly hidden and guarded details and views; and the secret of the two photographers who froze them in time. Architecture and photo-graphy are two very different visual art forms, where both can truly and fruitfully meet only at the crossroads of their difference, impressiveness and idiosyncrasy. Then we realise that numerous qualities of architecture can be perceived only through an artistic photography.

110

Jože Osterman: What stimulated you to become professionally involved in photography?

Stane Jeršič: I became involved in pho-tography more seriously when I was awarded a Yashica camera and a few fi lm rolls in a photo-graphic competition. I had to think very carefully before I took a shot, since the fi lm rolls had only 12 exposures each. It was intense and full of ex-pectations. I developed the fi lms in my own home dark room, made contact sheets and enlarged the photographs. In that moment, I became a pho-tographer.

Barbara Jakše-Jeršič: When I was 21 and I held the book entitled Iluzija besed (Illusion of Words) in my hands, I also had an individu-al photographic exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana and a group exhibition of photographs in Amsterdam, I knew that the photography is the fi eld I wanted to work in pro-fessionally.

Jože Osterman: What about the motif, the fi eld of your interest? Was that clear from the beginning?

Stane Jeršič: I’ve always tried to say some things, to express feelings and views with my

work, to explore… That’s how I discovered pho-tography. The camera became the instrument of my expression and photography became my pas-sion, regardless of any motif.

Barbara Jakše-Jeršič: Life is a beautiful stage of photographic recordings.

Jože Osterman: How does modern digital technology have an infl uence upon photogra-phy?

Stane Jeršič: When I started taking pho-tographs, we didn’t think: let’s press the button – something useful will surely come up, if we take enough shots. This idea has become dominant now, when photography is now available and af-fordable to each and every one of us. There is a huge fl ow of photographs: they fl ood us and are lost in time. But I can’t say that the quantity of good photographs has truly increased.

Barbara Jakše–Jeršič: Digital and ana-logue technologies are part of the learning pro-cess regarding photography. Both technologies have their strong and weak points. The advan-tage of analogue technology is the actual process itself and the sense of anticipation, connected with it. The work has to be planned and delib-

erately performed. It takes longer to get the fi -nal product, but the process brings experiences in the form of exciting and unexpected surprises. Your contemplation is connected with the dis-covery of images, hidden on fi lm. This is excel-lently depicted in the fi lm Blow-Up by Michelan-gelo Antonioni (1966). While digital technology on the other hand enables you to an immediate review of all the material and editing, since the photographs aren’t thin sheets of paper anymore: they become recorded moments in the form of an almost unlimited number of fi les. Digital technol-ogy demands a very disciplined and professional attitude. Such experiences enrich me and bestow upon me surprising discoveries.

Jože Osterman: What about photographic technology, cameras and lenses? Are they really so important as the manufacturers try to convince us that they are?

Stane Jeršič: The most important thing for me is an idea or a concept that develops through the creative process. Nevertheless, the control over perspective is of key importance when deal-ing with the so-called “urban photography”. The use of lenses, which allows for perspective correc-

INTERVIEWStane Jeršič in Barbara Jakše Jeršič

111

tions invites you to search for a unique new view, which is from the physical point of view closer to the gaze of our eyes. Therefore the knowledge of the classic Sinar-Linhof technique is often help-ful to me.

Jože Osterman: Your artistic career is surprising in many respects. Your early work, es-pecially the photographs from your monograph Slike iz življenja (1991) is very much based on the studio environment. Every detail is premedi-tated, and the photographs are so full that they are almost Baroque. After 2000 you shifted your interest to the milieu, which tells you its stories in real time: for example Congress Square in Lju-bljana, upon joining Slovenia to the EU in 2004. Your third phase is devoted to panoramas, cre-ated by space (as we could see at the exhibition “Sky above Ljubljana”) and now onto Plečnik’s panoramas. Your artistic development is un-doubtedly very interesting. What was the logic behind it?

Stane Jeršič: At the beginning, I invested my interest and efforts in ecology and later to portraits. This was followed by a period of studio photography. Now, I’m returning to the so-called

“urban photography”. Even they don’t lack the presence of people completely. Nevertheless, I try to show human presence even when there are no people in the shot or they are completely in the background. Portraying ambiences for me is very close to portraying a person.

Barbara Jakše-Jeršič: Developing fi lms by hand, working in a dark-room, the organisa-tion of photographic productions, arranging set-designs and shots are all typical for the period of studio photography. I continued with docu-mentary photography of urban spaces. Identiteta prostora (Identity of Space) project or Congress Square deals with the panoramic recording of space and continues through portraits of the central fi gure of a girl. Panorama is attractive also due to the elongated format which evokes a feeling of peace, which is a link to the next proj-ect, entitled The Discreet Charm of Peace, where analogue and digital, black and white and colour, uniform and composed, panoramic and standard format photography is confronted. The project “The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panora-mas” began in 2004 and was presented for the fi rst time in Jakopič Avenue in Ljubljana as a

part of the European Days of Cultural Heritage in 2007. Plečnik’s architecture calls for observa-tion and the attention of a camera. The projects Sky above Ljubljana and The History of Future (Zgodovina prihodnosti) are the anthologies of photographs which show a microcosm within a macrocosm: fragments sought by an eye and a camera within the integrity of a chosen space.

Jože Osterman: Is the thought, written at your exhibition “If music with its abstraction and time sequence is on one side of the scale, then photography with its seemingly strict reality and frozen moment is on the other” a sort of a motto of your present project? In music, we assume harmony as a key ingredient, which weaves the fabric of music. How can a person do this in your fi eld of work, in photography? Have you looked for it and found it?

Stane Jeršič: Music, the same as fi lms, needs a longer time period, while a photograph is a moment, a place in time. With connecting photographic moments, we create a story, which can be told in a language typical to a book of photographs. We can always fi nd moments (pho-tographs), which are refl ections of our world,

113

but the value of these moments (photographs) depends of their placement and their contextual positioning.

Barbara Jakše-Jeršič: Music is a sequence of optimally placed sounds which together cre-ate a completely new sound image and some form of musical body, while Plečnik’s architecture can, through photography – through a multitude of images, represented by individual photographs and positioned in a right or optimal sequence – become a unique and a completely individual artistic story about architecture and space.

Jože Osterman: You say that portraying ambiences for you is very similar to portraying people. Your photographic opus is essentially a pure intertwine of space, of ambiences and peo-ple. It seems that you reached a new intensity with your increased focus on architecture.

Stane Jeršič: Architecture is undoubtedly one of the most complex forms of art. It must provoke emotional reactions, but at the same time we have to feel pleasant in those rooms and spaces. The habitat has to work for the good of the people. These are the criteria where Plečnik’s work achieves the highest standards. His ambi-

ences have strong inner logic: nothing is coin-cidental; everything is based on a concept. And photography reveals this too.

Jože Osterman: You often use views which are unusual, even for the connoisseurs of Plečnik. Through the decades we have become used to the same observational points and angles...

Stane Jeršič: Plečnik worked in a time which was quite different from the present. Un-like the majority of modern architects, he used models, which means that he perfected his cre-ations from all sides and angles and together with them created a new urban space. Now, many architects and investors don’t pay much attention to the details which won’t be viewed or observed too often. Plečnik was different. This is the reason why some of the photographs are taken from the ground, others from the top of the buildings, from an airplane, elevator or a balcony. Some photographs are black and white, since they express my own personal experience of certain spaces.

For me it is important to preserve a real-istic look even when I explore the spaces from another perspective. This is the reason why the

photographing of Plečnik’s panoramas is a con-stant discovery of unknown details – details which may be affi rmed only through photogra-phy.

Jože Osterman: Does your attachment to Plečnik end with this fi nd or discovery? Can this subject still reveal some more? Where will your creative path take you now?

Stane Jeršič: A photograph is a snapshot, while I’m interested in space as a habitat, as a sociological concept which represents a living environment, a home. Everything changes in time, this is a fact. Is it possible that something that doesn’t exist anymore come into existence one more time? Life constantly demands new relationships and this is where I see the power and the opportunity of photography, also in the relation to Plečnik.

Barbara Jakše-Jeršič: Maybe I’m returning to the original depiction of The Illusion of Words project. A fl ood of images, unlimited opportunities of technologies, communication and creative challenges beckon me to start the project, The Illusion of Images in the light of present time.

Ljubljana, July, 2010

114

Mojca Puncer (1972) was awarded her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) with her thesis on aesthetical strategies of visual art in Slovenia after 1990 (2008). She is an Assistant for Aesthet-ics, the Philosophy of Art and Culture at the University of Maribor (Slovenia) (2004–). Puncer works as an independent theorist, critic and curator in the fi eld of the contemporary arts, as a teacher of culture and writer (self-employed cultural worker, 2008–). Mojca Puncer is a mem-ber of Publicistično društvo ZAK (2002–), Maska magazine editorial board (2007–2009), Slovensko društvo za estetiko (2001–), International Associa-tion for Aestethics (2001–) and Društvo Asociacija (2009–). She has been published in nu-merous publications at home and abroad. Mojca Puncer lives and works in Ljubljana.

Katarina Marinčič (1968) is the author of three novels (Ter-eza, Rožni vrt (Rose Garden), Prikrita harmonija (Sublimi-nal Harmony) and a collection of short stories O treh (About Three). For her novel Prikrita harmonija, she was awarded the Delo’s Kresnik Award in 2002 and the Dnevnik’s Fabula Award in 2006 for her collec-tion O treh. Katarina Marinčič was awarded her PhD through studying the works of Honoré de Balzac. For the past 15 years, she has been a lecturer of 18th and 19th Century French Liter-ature at the Ljubljana Faculty of Arts.

Barbara Jakše–Jeršič (1967) has been a professional photogra-pher since 1989. Together with Stane Jeršič, she entered the Eu-ropean scene in 1990 and since then have had both individual and group exhibitions in numer-ous important museums and art galleries in Slovenia and abroad. Barbara Jakše-Jeršič’s photo-graphs have been presented in many books and magazines and are part of important public and private collections, includ-ing the photography collection in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Barbara Jakše-Jeršič has been running a non-profi t organisation ArtKontakt since 2009. Together with her hus-band Stane and their son Aleks she lives and works in Ljubljana.

Boštjan Vuga (1966) graduated at the Ljubljana Faculty of Ar-chitecture in 1992 and contin-ued his studies between 1993 and 1995 at the AA School of Architecture in London, where he was awarded with a master’s degree. Together with Jurij Sadar, Vuga founded an archi-tectural studio Sadar Vuga Ar-hitekti (SVA) in Ljubljana. In less than 10 years, the SVA has become one of the most promi-nent European architectural studios with its production and communication based on open, integral and innovative con-cepts. Boštjan Vuga is a writer of numerous articles on modern architecture and urban plan-ning for both domestic and in-ternational publications.

Marko Košan (1961) studied the history of art at the University of Ljubljana. Since 1987 he has collaborated as a curator with many galleries and museum in Slovenia and abroad. A member of the Slovene Association of Art Critics and the AICA. He also works as publicist, essayist, columnist and writes reviews for many Slovenian and interna-tional newspapers and art mag-azines. From 2008 he was ap-pointed as the Director of Fine Art Gallery Slovenj Gradec.

AUTHORS BIOGRAPHIES

115

Stane Jeršič (1957) entered the professional fi eld of pho-tography in 1989. Besides por-trait and eco-photography, with which he became one of the top photographers in the former Yugoslavia, Stane Jeršič con-centrated mainly on the studio photography at the beginning. Together with Barbara Jakše-Jeršič, he entered the European scene in 1990 and since then has had both individual and group exhibitions in numerous impor-tant museums and art galleries in Slovenia and abroad. Stane Jeršič’s photographs have been presented in many books and magazines and are part of im-portant public and private collections, including the pho-tography collection in the Bib-liothèque nationale de France.

Jože Osterman (1947) is the Secretary of the Government Communication Offi ce and the editor of the Sinfo magazine, which is published in English.

Jure Mikuž (1949) has held the positions of curator and later di-rector of the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana for many years. He is now a fulltime professor at the Institutum studiorum humanitatis and the Faculty for postgraduate humanities, and head of the Historical Anthro-pology Programme. Mikuž is also a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Lju-bljana. His bibliography consists of approximately 800 publica-tions, 15 of these are books.

Fedja Košir (1940) graduated in the fi eld of architecture in 1964 and was awarded his PhD in 1982. As an architect, he was awarded with more than sixty awards and buy-ins for his projects at Slovene and Yugoslav tenders. Since 1985, Košir works as a lecturer at FAUL (the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Ljubljana, Slove-nia). He was awarded the Prešeren Award in 1978 (for his numerous suggestions regarding urban plan-ning). Košir published the monog-raphies Zamisel mesta (1993), Edvard Ravnikar kot arhitekturni teoretik (2006), K arhitekturi I / III (2006 and 2007) and the trans-lation with comments of the fi rst tractate on architecture by the Roman architect Vitruvius en-titled O arhitekturi & O antičnem inženirstvu (2009). Since 2009, Fedja Košir is a consultant of ar-chitecture and urban-planning at the Slovenian Academy of Sci-ences and Arts.

Jože Trontelj (1939) is a medi-cal doctor and a full professor for neurology at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ljubljana. Internationally, Jože Trontelj is known mainly for his research in the fi eld of neu-romuscular transmission disease diagnostics. In recent years, Trontelj has dedicated his time on biomedical ethics as well. He is a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and its chairman since 2008.

116

BOOKS AND CATALOGUES FOR EXHIBITIONS SELECTION

2010 Glasba panoram Plečnikove arhitekture (Publisher: ArtKontakt, Bast)

2009 Zgodovina prihodnosti (Publisher: Center urbane kulture Kino Šiška)

2005 Diskretni šarm miru (Publisher: Koroški pokrajinski muzej)

2004 Identiteta prostora – Slovenija Nova Zvezda Evrope (Publisher: ArtKontakt)

1995 Fotografi ja (Publisher: Galerija likovnih umetnosti Slovenj Gradec)

1991 Glasovi (Publisher: Fotogalerie Wien)1991 Slike iz življenja (Publisher: Barbara

Jakše Jeršič in Stane Jeršič)1990 Iluzija besed (Publisher: Papirografi ka)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS SELECTION

2009 Cankarjev dom, Ljubljana (Slovenia)2006 Łódź Art Center – International Festival

of Photography, Łódź (Poland)2005 Koroški pokrajinski muzej, Slovenj

Gradec (Slovenia)2004 Umetnostna galerija Maribor, Maribor

(Slovenia)

2004 Muzej in galerije mesta Ljubljana, Ljubljana (Slovenia)

1997 Muzej in galerije mesta Ljubljana, Evropski mesec kulture (Slovenia)

1997 Mincovna Statniho Hradu a zamka, Češki Krumlov (Czech Republic)

1995 Galerija likovnih umetnosti, Slovenj Gradec (Slovenia)

1993 Prinz Gallery, Kyoto (Japan)1992 Museo Ken Damy – Gallery Milano

(Italy)1991 Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna (Austria)1990 Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (Slovenia)1989 Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam –

Rotterdam (The Netherlands)1989 Galerie K61, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS SELECTION

2006 Galerie Tresor, Kunstforum Wien (Austria)2006 Crossover, Kunstverein Karnten

(Austria)2006 Images Against War, Galerie Lichtblick

Köln, Peace Museum Chicago (Illinois, USA)

CHRONOLOGYStane Jeršič and Barbara Jakše Jeršič

117

2004 Blossomstreet Gallery, FotoFest, Houston (Texas, USA)

2004 The Centre for Fine Art Photography, Ft. Collins (Colorado, USA)

2002 Die Sammlung, Melkweg, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

2001 Eulogy to Beauty, Photofusion Photography Centre, London (England)

2001 Akt na Slovenskem, Jakopičeva galerija, Ljubljana (Slovenia)

1997 Maestri Contemporanei, Museo Ken Damy, Brescia (Italy)

1997 Angels, Melkweg, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

1994 Melkweg Collection, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

1990 Recontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles (France)

PRESENTATIONS IN BOOKS AND MAGAZINES SELECTION

Anthology nude, Asahi Press, Tokyo (Japan)Camera Austria, Graz (Austria)Fotopratica, Milan (Italy)

Foto, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)Fotomagazin, Frankfurt (Germany)Graphis Annual, Zürich (Switzerland)Il Fotografo Professionalista, Milan (Italy)Likovne besede, Ljubljana (Slovenia)Mʼars, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (Slovenia)Progresso Fotografi co, Milan (Italy)Vis A Vis International, Paris (France)Shukan Shincho, Tokyo (Japan)Slovenska kronika XX. stoletja, Ljubljana (Slovenia)

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS SELECTION

Artotheek Holland, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (France)Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna (Austria)Galerija likovnih umetnosti, Slovenj Gradec (Slovenia)Galerie Lichtblick, Köln (Germany)GIP, Goro International Press, Tokyo (Japan)Łódź Art Center, Łódź (Poland)

Melkweeg Gallery, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (Slovenia)Muzej in galerije mesta Ljubljana (Slovenia)Muzej za arhitekturo in oblikovanje, Ljubljana (Slovenia)Museo Ken Damy, Brescia (Italy)Prinz, Kyoto (Japan)Stedelijk museum Schiedam, Schiedam (The Netherlands) Stedelijk museum Amsterdam, Bert Hartkamp collection (The Netherlands)Umetnostna galerija Maribor (Slovenia)

118

2 Križanke Summer Theatre in Ljubljana, 2007

9 Faculty of Architecture, 2010

12 Zois Street in Ljubljana, Faculty of Architecture, 2006

18 Šentjakob Square, now Levstik Square in Ljubljana, 2004

28 Church of St. Francis of Assisi, Šiška, Ljubljana, 2008

36 Market Halls in Ljubljana, 2004

38 Cobblers Bridge in Ljubljana, 2004

45 The National and University Library in Ljubljana, 2009

46 The National and University Library in Ljubljana, the sculpture of Moses by Lojze Dolinar, 2010

47 The National and University Library in Ljubljana, Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts, 2010

48 The National and University Library in Ljubljana, 2004

50 Market Halls in Ljubljana and the Three Bridges, 2004

53 Tivoli Municipal Park in Ljubljana, 2010

54 Tivoli Municipal Park in Ljubljana, 2005

56 The Ursuline Gymnasium, now Jože Plečnik High School in Ljubljana, 2010

57 The Ursuline Gymnasium, now Jože Plečnik High School in Ljubljana, 2010

59 St. Bartholomew’s Church in Ljubljana, 2010

61 Zois Pyramid in Ljubljana, 2009

63 French Revolution Square and the monument to the Napoleon’s Illyrian Provinces in Ljubljana, 2010

64 Business and Residential Building Peglezen (the Flatiron) on Poljanska Street in Ljubljana, 2010

65 Business and Residential Building Peglezen (the Flatiron) on Poljanska Street in Ljubljana, 2009

66 Church of the Archangel Michael on the Marsh in Črna vas near Ljubljana, 2010

LOCATIONS AND DATES OF IMAGESLjubljana 2003 - 2010

119

68 Church of the Archangel Michael on the Marsh in Črna vas near Ljubljana, 2008

71 Chamber of Commerce, Works and Industry, now the Constitutional Court in Ljubljana, 2006

73 Vegova Street in Ljubljana, 2010

75 News-Stands and Market Pavilion in Ljubljana, 2010

76 Market Halls in Ljubljana, the new Butcher’s bridge and the Three Bridges, 2010

78 The Ljubljanica River Embankment at the mouth of the Gradaščica River in Ljubljana, 2005

81 The Floodgate at the Ljubljanica River in Ljubljana, 2006

82 The Floodgate at the Ljubljanica River and the capital with a statuary by Božo Pengov, 2006

84 Vzajemna Insurance Company, now the Triglav Insurance Company, 2010

85 Vzajemna Insurance Company, now the Triglav Insurance Company, 2010

86 Bežigrad Stadion in Ljubljana, 2007

89 The protective ditch at the Ljubljana Castle, 2009

91 The Navje Cemetery in Ljubljana, 2006

93 The Roman Wall in Ljubljana, 2010

94 Funeral Parlours at Žale Cemetery in Ljubljana, 2009

95 Funeral Parlours at Žale Cemetary in Ljubljana, 2006

96 St. Andrew’s Chapel at Funeral Parlours at Žale Cemetary in Ljubljana, 2003


100 Križanke in Ljubljana, The Devil’s Courtyard, 2007


105 Trnovo Bridge in Ljubljana, 2009

106 Plečnik’s House, Trnovo, Ljubljana, 2010

109 Plečnik’s House, Trnovo, Ljubljana, 2007

112 Funeral Parlours at Žale Cemetary in Ljubljana, 2007

Cover image: Cobblers Bridge in Ljubljana, 2010

This book was published within the project Ljubljana: World Book Capital 2010

PHOTOGRAPHY:Stane JeršičBarbara Jakše–Jeršič

TEXTS:Acad. Prof. Dr. Jože Trontelj, Prof. Dr. Fedja Košir, Marko Košan,Prof. Dr. Jure Mikuž, Jože Osterman, Stane Jeršič, Boštjan Vuga,Barbara Jakše Jeršič, Dr. Katarina Marinčič, Dr. Mojca Puncer

DESIGN:Barbara Jakše-Jeršič

ENGLISH TRANSLATION:Polona Mertelj

PRINTED BY:Tiskarna Hren

NUMBER OF COPIES:200 copies

DTP:Camera

Photography © ArtKontakt, BastCopyright © 2010; all rights reserved

PUBLISHERS: ArtKontaktViška cesta 251000 LjubljanaSlovenijatel. +386 (0) 5 994 71 10, gsm: +386 (0) 41 334 [email protected], www.artkontakt.si

Bast Visual Art Management, Stane Jeršič s.p.gsm: + 386 (0) 41 627 123 , [email protected],http://stane-jersic.si/

www.facebook.com/plecnik.siwww.plecnik.com/

Ljubljana, 2010

CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikacijiNarodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana

72(497.4):929Plečnik J.(084.12)77.041(497.4)

The MUSIC of Plečnik’s architecture panoramas : Ljubljana / [texts Jože Trontelj ... et al.] ; [photography] Stane Jeršič, Barbara Jakše Jeršič ; [English translation Polona Mertelj]. - Ljubljana : ArtKontakt : Bast Visual Art Management, 2010

ISBN 978-961-269-288-91. Trontelj, Jože252257792

ISBN 978-961-269-288-9

25 Eur

The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas

Documents

Transcript of The Music of Plečnik’s Architecture Panoramas