History becoming Theory: George Kubler and Portuguese Plain

Abstract

American art historian George Kubler travelled and lived in Portugal between the mid-1950s and the late 1960s to research his book Portuguese Plain Architecture: Between Spices and Diamonds 1521–1706 (1972). The premise of the book was to analyze the architectural production of Portugal during a period of political and economic crisis between 1500 and 1700, a period that Kubler called “between Spices and Diamonds.” This paper suggests that the notions in Portuguese Plain, far from being an objective study of Portuguese architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, blended with the social, political, and economic situation of the country at the time of the book’s writing. Kubler was likely also influenced by the apparent remoteness of the land, which might itself have suggested the appropriateness of a poor and austere architecture. Kubler’s notions became a standard trope, and from the 1990s onwards the idea of a national austere architecture has become part of the dominant architectural discourse in Portugal.