Semper’s wall: figuring ground

The book chapter looks at implications of the 19th century architectural historian, Gottfried Semper’s concept of ‘surface dressing’ for the structure/surface relationship in architecture and figure/ground relationships between art and architecture today; it is further used to reconsider contemporary understandings of the relationship between architecture and painting in terms of the question of ‘figure’ and ‘ground’ – architecture conventionally understood as a background to art as ‘figure’. Semper’s ideas challenge this structure. This conceptualization of surface is brought to bear on an analysis of works by Blinky Palermo, Gerwald Rokenschaub and Jorge Pardo.