History Appropriating Contemporary Concerns: Leonhard Lapin's Architectural History and Mythical Thinking
History Appropriating Contemporary Concerns: Leonhard Lapin's Architectural History and Mythical Thinking

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the possibility of reading the textual practice of Leonhard Lapin, an energetic leader of the Estonian artistic avant-garde during the 1970s and 1980s, as an indication of the emergence of history as a critical category in the historiography of Estonian modern architecture. Architectural history is often narrowly interpreted in terms of the domination and ideological commitment of spatial theories, including perceptions of the 1970s avant-garde in relation to resistance to the Soviet regime. However, Lapin's concept of living history and his ideas about the mythical content of architecture, lead to the reframing of architectural history through a range of critical-analytic models that is more diverse. Lapin's attempt to re-work the history of early twentieth-century architecture in Estonia was part of his subjective strategy: he sustained his own avant-garde and critical practices in contemporary art by pursuing the (hi)story of the avant-garde. This multi-faceted engagement with issues concerning historical continuity (or discontinuity) with the early twentieth-century avant-garde also raises the possibility that Lapin's history writing is relevant to the debate concerning the position of the Western neo-avant-garde after World War II.

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