Spolia

Definition

Spolia — the Latin for "spoils" — names the ancient practice of taking building elements (columns, capitals, reliefs, marble blocks) from earlier monuments and re-erecting them in new structures. It is the historical archetype of reuse and appropriation, and the field through which the modern appropriation debate acquired its sharpest vocabulary. The concept enters this wiki through Dale Kinney's Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture From Constantine to Sherrie Levine (ed. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, Ashgate, 2011), quoted in Brooker's chapter: "There is always violence implied in appropriation; and the violence of the cut is always accompanied by the aggravated wound of separation" (p. 9) — the cut that detaches the element from its host is the violence every appropriation repeats. And the charge of the act is political: "particular acts or practices of appropriation can acquire positive or negative charge according to circumstances. Often the charge is political and in contemporary discourse it is frequently determined by the direction of the appropriation in relation to perceived distributions of power" (p. 8). Kinney's closing formula makes spolia the model of the non-systematic: "Reuse is noticeably nonconformist, exceptional, and ideological, rather than systematic and neutral" (p. 3).

The subtitle's arc — from Constantine to Sherrie Levine — states the concept's full range: from the ancient re-erection of columns to the postmodern appropriation of images, the same structure (detachment, transport, re-erection, re-signification) repeats across media. In Brooker's chapter, this lineage grounds interior architecture's practice in one of the built environment's oldest procedures. See appropriation, dialectics-of-appropriation, the-antique.

Key Thinkers

• Dale Kinney (named in the source, not yet paged — see log) — Reuse Value (2011, with Richard Brilliant): the violence thesis ("always violence implied in appropriation"), the political charge ("determined by the direction of the appropriation in relation to perceived distributions of power"), and the nonconformist thesis ("noticeably nonconformist, exceptional, and ideological, rather than systematic and neutral").
• Graeme Brooker — the disciplinary carrier (2018): spolia's field installed as the lineage of interior architecture's processes — with the interior architect cast as the one who "direct[s] and manipulate[s] this distribution of forces, maneuvering the power or the resonances of appropriation."
• Richard Brilliant (named in the source, not yet paged — see log) — co-editor of Reuse Value, the volume in which the spolia-to-appropriation arc is drawn.
• Markus Berger — the adjacent ancient register: reuse of building materials "as of spoils after a war, is as old as the built environment. These ancient appropriations did not simply recreate something 'authentic,' but rather mobilized a set of references to shape public memories and display power" (2018) — spolia as ancient power-display, the political pole Kinney theorizes.

Related Concepts

• Appropriation — the general process of which spolia is the ancient form; the violence-of-the-cut as appropriation's constant.
• Dialectics of Appropriation — the spoliated column re-erected against new fabric is the old/new counterpoint's original built form: the first "amalgamation of things that were never intended to be put together."
• The Antique — the classical fragment as design resource: the spoliated antiquity's afterlife in the decorated interior's value system.
• Adaptive Reuse — the modern practice continuing the structure at building scale; spolia is its element-scale ancestor.
• Power — the political charge: appropriation's valence "determined by the direction of the appropriation in relation to perceived distributions of power" — spoils after a war "mobilized a set of references… to display power."
• Authorship — the detached element names its former monument (Constantine) while anonymizing its re-user: spolia's composite buildings are the ancient form of multiple authorship.
• Readymade — the artistic displacement's ancestor: Duchamp's urinal and Sherrie Levine's rephotographs re-stage the spoliation of ordinary (or authored) things — the subtitle's modern terminus.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The dialectics of appropriation (Brooker 2018) — the concept's wiki introduction: Kinney's Reuse Value quoted three times (the violence of the cut, p. 9; the political charge, p. 8; the nonconformist thesis, p. 3); the reuse-can-destroy corollary (Hegewald and Mitra: some elements "get deprived and emptied of meaning or even destroyed"); and the interior architect's role in "direct[ing] and manipulat[ing] this distribution of forces."

Open Questions

• Kinney's charge is directional — who appropriates whom. When the interior architect "manipulates this distribution of forces," is the discipline inheriting spolia's imperial structure (the victor re-erecting the vanquished's columns) or subverting it? What would a non-imperial spolia look like?
• The spoliated column usually continues to work (bearing load) while changing meaning; the readymade usually stops working as an object to become representation. Does the old/new counterpoint require the old element to remain functional, or is the nonfunctional fragment (the ruin fragment in the lobby) a second spolia type?
• Spolia's re-erection was often a display of conquest — is reuse's contemporary virtue discourse (sustainability, memory) a masking of the same power structure, or has the direction of the charge genuinely reversed?
• Constantine to Sherrie Levine spans material loot and image theft — where does the interior sit on this arc, and is the salvaged-fit-out (the reused door, the kept floor) the missing middle case?