Why are mouldings so offensive? Queen’s Sculptor challenges ‘mandarin classes’

Chambers Dictionary defines a Pastiche as: a jumble; a potpourri; a composition (in literature, music or painting) made up of bits of other works or imitations of another’s style.

But artist Sandy Stoddart said: “I was really beginning to think that the mandarin classes were getting the message, and increasingly laying off the artists and designers. It seems we have some reverse in this process in Edinburgh.

“We thought people had at last grown up; I must say I’ve not encountered the pastiche p-word much lately – although there are still those who require me to be “a little more contemporary”, and have been demanding this of me for the last 30 years.

“Why it is that mouldings are so offensive to the modernist spirit? Modernists don’t mind openings, or walls, or vents or even masses – but the moulding is terribly suspect.

“Simply, all parts of architecture that husband and cultivate shadows are to be discriminated against mercilessly; everything is to be bright, beaming, floodlit, optimistic, unscrupulous and panoptical.

“There is to be no region where shades house a questionable nuance; no turn off any hall where acts of sedition might in the planning, or deeds of pity, love, worship or art committed.”

Stoddart is the Queen’s Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland.

He is best known for his civic monuments, including 10ft bronze statues of David Hume and Adam Smith, philosophers during the Scottish Enlightenment, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, and others of James Clerk Maxwell and John Witherspoon.

London mayor Boris Johnson recently attacked the “pastiche architecture” of one of Prince Charles’ favourite architects. “If you’re going to classicise, then do it with conviction. Do it with the proper order. I can’t stand pastiche classicism. I don’t like the half-heartedness of it all. ”