Three myths about eclecticism

Abstract

This article explores the concept of modern eclecticism in art and architecture through three accounts of it by influential scholars Rudolf Wittkower, César Daly, and Charles Jencks. Writing from different contexts, each of these thinkers respectively presents the origins and contents of eclecticism as: a product of modern historical consciousness; a reciprocal crisis of historical progress; and a pluralistic discourse in Postmodernism. Through these differing, but interrelated, retellings or myths, one can observe eclecticism’s critical malleability as a concept which may be applied equally to design methodology, historical analysis, or even as a social model. A close reading of eclecticism in instances of its most serious invocations challenges the common perception of the term as one of disparaging ambiguity predicated upon an aimless condition of historical borrowing. Arguing against this position, I show that the discourse of eclecticism contains important and lasting tropes of architecture in modernity; chief among them is the tenuous relationship between form and social expression, as well as the utopic notions of progress and historical transformation.