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Humanist Art Review ~ Article

HEDGEHOGS AND FOXES AMONG THE RUINS
David Mayernik

26 March 2003

[W]hat one is supposed to have here are the types of two psychological orientations and temperaments, the one, the hedgehog, concerned with the primacy of the single idea and the other, the fox, preoccupied with multiplicity of stimulus;... and, as we turn to architecture, the answers are almost entirely predictable. Palladio is a hedgehog, Giulio Romano a fox; Hawksmoor, Soane, Philip Webb are probably hedgehogs, Wren, Nash, Norman Shaw almost certainly foxes....{W]e have noticed a relative absence of foxes at the present day.
–Colin Rowe, COLLAGE CITY, MIT Press, pp.91-93

Colin Rowe’s cunning distinction between hedgehogs and foxes was, in his inimitable way, a plea for a more “foxy” approach to issues of history, urban continuity, and formal “bricolage” than modernism seemed to allow. It may be useful too, perhaps, for pinning down the humanist mind at work among the ruins of ancient Rome. While Leon Battista Alberti’s advocacy of greater rigor in measuring and analyzing antique remains seems to stand for what is assumed to be the normative classical mind (the deliberate hedgehog), Alberti’s polyvalent interests certainly suggest the nimble intellect of a fox at work, and his penchant for composing his texts out of literary spoils (his Ten Books are unthinkable without Vitruvius’, and are liberally peppered with found quotes from ancient authors) makes one think more of the bricolage habit rather than a proto-scientific method. Maybe more obviously, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a proud fox’s manifesto, stealthily hunting through a forest of associations for the thread of a romantic/architectural narrative; the story is “found” among shards of previous “stories,” the sad remains of lost architectural grandeur informing the passionate melancholy of a fictional “lover of many.” The neo-classical distaste for the ambiguities and contaminations that thrived among the mists of the Tiber sent many a hedgehog to Greece in search of clarity. We at the Humanist Art Review not surprisingly ally ourselves with the Roman foxes, and will feature in this space a series of suggestive essays on an associative approach to fragments from the past. We invite your comments and contributions.