Paul Thek Untitled (Tower of Babel) 1975/92

etching on handmade Twinrocker paper
10 x 7 3/4 in / 25.5 x 20 cm

Trouble in paradise

Epic slaughters, the fate of the planet, the closeness of calamity - Anselm Kiefer's desolate landscapes address the most crucial issues of our times. Contemporary art doesn't get much better than this, argues Simon Schama.

...Kiefer's painting, then, is not a representation of some feature of creation so much as a re-enactment of it. And if this sounds a mite up itself, well indeed it is, and none the worse for it. Even if you care not a toss for the esoterica, the richness of classical allusion (such as the catastrophic landscape of the fall of Troy, scarred with explosions of carbon and cobalt, and transmitted via a telephonic connection from Greek peak to peak in mimicry of Agamemnon's beacon signals to faithless Clytemnestra), you can still happily envelop yourself in the blanket of colour and line that fill every centimetre of Kiefer's pictures.


More.

Peter Eisenman on "The End of the Classical"

What can be the model for architecture when the essence of what was effective in the classical model -- the presumed rational value of structures, representations, methodologies of origin and ends and deductive processes -- have been shown to be delusory?

What is being proposed is an expansion beyond the limitation presented by the classical model to the realization of architecture as an independent discourse, free from external values -- classical or any other; that is, the intersection of the meaning- free, the arbitrary, and the timeless in the artificial.

Peter Eisenman, "The End of the Classical"
Perspecta 21, (1984):166

Tower of Babel (ancient Bablylon)

"AND the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel..."

Genesis XI

Inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar on Tower of Babel (Borsippa).

I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold, other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir and pine.

The first which is the house of the earth’s base,

the most ancient monument of Babylon;

I built and finished it.

I have highly exalted its head with bricks covered with copper.

We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the seven lights of the earth, the most ancient monument of Borsippa.

A former king built it, (they reckon 42 ages) but he did not

complete its head.

Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without

order expressing their words.

Since that time the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed

the sun-dried clay.

The bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this building.

I did not change the site nor did I take away the foundation.

In a fortunate month, in an auspicious day,

I undertook to build porticoes around the crude brick masses,

and the casing of burnt bricks.

I adapted the circuits, I put the inscription of my name in the Kitir of the portico.

I set my hand to finish it. And to exalt its head.

As it had been in ancient days, so I exalted its summit.

Inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar on Tower of Babel (Borsippa). Cited in "The Signature of God/The Handwriting of God" by Grant R. Jeffrey (p.40)

A reconstruction of the Etemenanki

Etemenanki (The Tower of Babel)

Etemenanki: name of the large temple tower in Babylon, also known as the Tower of Babel. Its Sumerian name E-temen-an-ki means "House of the foundation of heaven on earth".

The story of the Tower of Babel, found in the Biblical book of Genesis, is one of the most famous and beloved legends of mankind.

The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Šin'âr, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built. And the Lord said, "Behold, the people are one and they have all one language, and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be withheld from them which they have imagined to do. Come, let Us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off building the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Bâbel (that is "Confusion") because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
[Genesis 11.1-9; tr. King James 21st Century]

More.

The Tower of Babel (according to Herodotus)

The temple of Bêl, the Babylonian Zeus [...] was still in existence in my time. It has a solid central tower, one stadium square, with a second erected on top of it and then a third, and so on up to eight. All eight towers can be climbed by a spiral way running round the outside, and about half way up there are seats for those who make the ascent to rest on. On the summit of the topmost tower stands a great temple with a fine large couch in it, richly covered, and a golden table beside it. The shrine contains no image, and no one spends the night there except (if we may believe that Chaldaeans who are the priests of Bêl) one Babylonian woman, all alone, whoever it may be that the god has chosen. The Chaldaeans also say -though I do not believe them- that the god enters the temple in person and takes his rest upon the bed.

[Herodotus, Histories 1.181-2; tr. Aubrey de Sélincourt]