PUBLIC CLASSICISM AND PRIVATE PICTURESQUE THE WHIGS CLASSICISM, A LESSON FOR THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE

The XVIII century in England was neither the first nor the last occasion for the classic architecture’s style to be used in an ideological way. There was a previous use during the Renaissance age, and then there were some other classicisms: Palladianism, neo-classicism and historicism, and again the use of classical style during totalitarian regimes, such as the late fascist era, the Speer’s architecture for the Nazis, until the soviet classicism so loved by Stalin, often adopted pretending to evoke an image of misconceived and mythological democracy. What is new in the England’s Georgian era is the attitude to distinguish between architectural lemmas as a stylistic grammar and composition of spaces as a process. Once decided that the chosen language is the classical one, then –mostly in the interiors- there is full freedom to use the lemmas to write in prose or in poetry. This is the lesson of Picturesque in com-posing spaces different and etherogeneous, and was the main legacy to the XX century. Mies and LeCorbusier, in fact, used the same lemmas: concrete pillars, flat ceilings, glass walls, but the final design and the way to shape the spaces were totally different. The Picturesque Classicism prepared the way to the International Style: the XX c. new democratic utopia. The georgian architecture was the image the Whigs invented for themselves: a classical exterior image whit unexpected gorgeous interiors and surprising spatial sequences. The more ideologically strict is the language of the outside, to be clearly understood by everyone, the more sophisticated are the interiors, strictly codified for social mise en scène, to be enjoined by selected users