Sir Nikolaus Pevsner

Gavin Stamp

It was a considerable tribute to Sir Nikolaus Pevsner that, although he was born in Leipzig in 1902, long before he died in Hampstead last month he was widely regarded as an English institution. No native Englishman had ever done quite so much to catalogue and to promote the art and architecture of Pevsner's adopted country, even if the Times did choose to devote rather less space to his obituary than it did to that of the late Anthony Blunt. The trouble with institutions is that they are often treated as above criticism. In the case of Pevsner this is unfortunate. The re- cent obituaries scarcely suggest that, from Ins arrival in England in 1934 until his dea, th , he was in many respects a controver- al figure and one whose name has inspired very contrary passions. To regard Pevsner inlY as an historian is an injustice to him as or most of his life he was also a polemicist and the fervent apostle of one type of

modern architecture — a modern architec- ture

which has not met with universal ap- proval.

Pevsner's first published works in Britain ;were Polemics arguing for modern architec- 're and design. He preached the austere i„al,,,nes of the Bauhaus, by then suppressed Nazi Germany. The principal book was ,"e immensely influential Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to [falter Gropius, first published in 1936. This, which argued that the modern in- dustrial style of architecture created by Gropius in Imperial architecture created by Gropius in Imperial Germany before 1914 derived from English ideas, contained the tionishing conclusion that `this new style

i

the twentieth century ... because it is a genuine style as opposed to a passing fashion is totalitarian.' With minor revi-

sions, this 1930s tract is still in print and tasserts to new generations today that `it is

we creative energy of this world in which

rias live and work and which we want to , a world of science and technology, speed and danger, of hard struggles and Gropius' Personal security, that is glorified in foPius's architecture, and as long as this is me world and these are its ambitions and Problems, the sty

le of Gropius and the other pioneers will be valid.'

homechanged since 1914 — even if for the worse and that some flexibility iof choice of tstyle might be permitted, but Pevsner cn- nued to believe in the absolute authoriot

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the 'Modern Movement' and he was very oircessful at promoting it both in the pages the Architectural Review and by his Powerful influence within such bodies as the Royal Fine Arts Commission. It was no wonder that he provoked bitter opposition,

especially from those who liked more tradi- tional styles of architecture. Some argue that he mellowed with age, but as late as 1961 he published an article condemning `The Return of Historicism'. By this he did not mean using columns or pediments but merely a harmless modern mannerism in which architects were influenced by other early modern styles, such as l'art nouveau.

By 'historicism' Pevsner meant revival- ism, but he was himself in fact an historicist in Popper's sense, that is one who believes that human beings are entirely controlled by irresistible historical forces: the zeitgeist. Not only did Pevsner believe that earlier centuries exhibit a clear `spirit of the age' in their art — a perfectly reasonable point of view — but also that an artist had a moral • duty to conform to what has been revealed as the spirit of the age in the present. He was not content to let the zeitgeist emerge, he did his best to encourage it.

Pevsner had no doubt at all about the true style of the 20th century and he con- demned any deviation from it. It was this astonishing determinism in Pevsner's thought which was at last publicly attacked by David Watkin in 1977 in his Morality and Architecture. This book provoked bit- ter controversy and in his last, sad years Pevsner was unwittingly used as a symbol of purity and progress by those who feared the revisionist, eclectic or `Post-Modern' ideas emerging from younger architects and historians. Those who dared attack dear old Nikolaus were obviously fascists, or worse. The tragedy for Watkin as well as for Pevsner was that the latter Was struck down with illness in the year the book was published and he remained unable to answer or to write during his last six years.

But it was not only a younger generation who hated the consequences of Pevsner's architectural determinism. Readers of Bet- jeman'S First and Last Loves can be in no doubt as to the origin of the 'Herr Pro- fessor Doktors' he speaks of with such dis- dain. Many of Betjeman's contemporaries were irritated by the sudden advent of a foreign modernist who began to analyse with Teutonic academic efficiency English subjects with which they were not wholly unacquainted themselves. In part, this was the reaction of English amateurism to Ger- man throughness. Both have their virtues, but it is a pity that the praise of Pevsner's Buildings of England series has tended to eclipse the virtues of the Shell Guides which, in the 1930s under Betjeman's editorship, began a survey of English ar- chitecture and landscape. But the Shell Guides were personal and idiosyncratic, rather than comprehensive and academic.

Cornwall, published in 1951 at 3/6d., was the first of the Buildings of England series, the greatest of the publishing ven- tures undertaken with Allen Lane at Penguin (the others being King Penguins and the Pelican History of Art), in which Pevsner did for England what Dehio had earlier done for Germany. The resulting 47 volumes, the product of Pevsner's immense knowledge and selfless industry, are in- dispensable — not least to his critics. But they can also be maddening, as much for the interpretations as for the occasional sur- prising omissions. Up to 1900 all is straight- forward, but buildings erected after that date are subjected to Pevsner's moralising determinism. The works of those who chose not to be modern, like Late Lutyens or post-war traditionalists, are either castigated or deliberately omitted. This polemical attitude to 20th century architec- ture was also maintained by Pevsner's col- laborators such as Ian Nairn, who helped with Surrey and Sussex (and who died the day before Pevsner, at a sadly younger age).

It was Pevsner's obsession with what ought to have been built at a particular moment rather than with the beauty of what was built which exasperated many of his English contemporaries whose response to architecture was artistic rather than academic. Betjeman is, perhaps, chief among these. They were also irritated when Pevsner treated the Modern Movement with urgent seriousness rather than regar- ding it as an entertaining fashion, in an amused English way. Perhaps they also felt threatened by Pevsner's almost inhuman capacity for work. It is recorded that on his expeditions for the Buildings of England he preferred spaghetti for lunch as it is a food which can be consumed most easily and quickly.

But whatever the criticisms, Great Britain will remain in Pevsner's debt. The volumes of the Buildings of England — and now Scotland, Wales and Ireland as well — will be written by, revised and expanded by others, but they will always be known as 'Pevsners'. They are his memorial.