Annette Haug (editor) - Materiality in Roman Art and Architecture: Aesthetics, Semantics and Function

Phenomena exist in the material world.

Material makes thoughts tangible.

Materials manifest the world.

The materiality of things has always received special attention in Classical archaeology. During the last two decades, however, this aspect of things, combined with a new interest in media, has become a focal point in all of the humanities, captured by the catchphrase the material turn.

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Considerations of material aesthetics lie in the realm of general reflections on aesthetics, since such reflections have always paid attention to the (material) appearance of things. The early theories of aesthetics from the 18th century were particularly interested in the relationship between aesthetics and knowledge. For Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1750), scholarly thought aimed for a clear and comprehensible knowledge, while sensory knowledge was a kind of cognitio confusa. However, Immanuel .

However, these general considerations can be specified with regard to two aspects. First, materials do not possess a single aesthetic quality, but rather a variety of aesthetic potentials. In this sense, one might speak of a polyaesthetic cloud. This leads to the second important aspect: it is only through the artistic treatment of a material that certain aesthetic qualities are visually privileged or made visible. In the case of alloys or ceramics, this applies to the production of the artificial material per se, but in a large number of cases the aesthetic effects are created by a specific surface treatment of the material, such as polishing or coating. As a consequence, when materials are used for the production of artefacts (including architecture), this necessarily includes an artistic treatment of the material which affects heavily its aesthetic appearance.

Material culture is understood in more recent scholarship as both a medium for discourse and a carrier of meanings. With this tendency towards mediality, a particular focus upon the materiality of communication.

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Heidegger, in his definition of thing quality, identifies two determined aspects of things: (1) they serve particular purposes and (2) in being used, they prove themselves reliable.

Under the catchphrase truth to material. Only the material itself, with its aesthetic and functional qualities, was to be made visible.

A somewhat different view of truth to material is represented by Horatio Greenough (1852), Louis Sullivan (1896) and Gottfried Semper (1860). Greenough and Sullivan formulated the maxim form (ever) follows function.

Both interpretations of truth to material persist to the present day. The aim of construction-material science is to develop functional and appropriate materials for specific purposes and .

However, truth to material, which is dazzling in itself and anchored in the 19th century context of its creation, is actually based on two problematic and interrelated notions. First, it assumes that a material is suitable for a specific use, that it is monofunctional, so to speak. In a second step, it elevates this functional use to an ideological maxim. Consequently truth to material is not suitable as a hermeneutic description of a materials function in relation to architecture and objects. Rather, materials can be used in various ways and with various aims. Thus, we may not only speak of polyaesthetics and polysemantics, but also of a polyfunctionality. The actual use of a material may rely upon specific physical qualities, but may also counteract other properties in a more or less intentional manner.

Up to this point, material has been viewed as a category in its own right. Nonetheless, the long-standing primacy of form. This focus has only been taken initially, in order to analyse the potential of materials as clearly as possible.

In any case, material only exists in concrete forms. The aesthetics, semantics and functions of a given material therefore only reveal themselves in relation to a specific object. This is of course the case for things that have not been culturally appropriated or transformed, but applies specifically to designed artefacts, the topic under discussion here. Materials and objects can not only mutually enhance their aesthetics, semantics and functions (in the sense of a materiality that is appropriate to the object), but can also contradict and question one another.

The aesthetics of materials can emphasise the objects form, meaning and function in the most optimal way: colour gradients, patterns or surface textures, for instance, are all particularly effective in accentuating and highlighting formal qualities. The round form of a table top made from the cross-section of a tree trunk is supported by the concentric age-circles appearing in the timber. In contrast, a visually prominent material will dominate the form and confuse its line. Pavonazzetto and other heavily veined types of stone make it difficult for the viewer to observe and appreciate the play of finer forms in a sculpture. A particularly strong tension arises between material and form when the objects surface and its core structure are produced in different materials: for example, when architecture is plastered or panelled, or when objects are coated in gold or silver. In this case, there is a differentiation between the form-determining material and the aesthetically effective material applied to the objects surface.