Pablo Bronstein Unveils Two Fantastical Solomon’s Temples That Satirize Architecture and Identity

31 July 2025

A detail of a winged sphinx from Pablo Bronstein’s ‘vaudeville beaux arts’ version of the Temple of Solomon on display at Waddesdon Manor. Photograph: Jack Elliot Edwards/Pablo Bronstein. Courtesy of the artist and Herald St, London

At Waddesdon Manor, artist Pablo Bronstein presents The Temple of Solomon and its Contents, a bold exhibition of two rival Solomon’s Temple reconstructions drawn as though by 19th‑century Prix de Rome competitors, packed with architectural mash‑ups, mythic symbolism and cheeky satire. In meticulous ink and acrylic across detailed elevations, cross‑sections and aerial plans, Bronstein channels Neo‑classical columns next to Assyrian reliefs, blue‑bearded royal heads, ram’s‑horn capitals and even Mason lodge references, weaving together a pastiche of historical fantasy and Orientalist clichés to dissect how myth, power and identity have been constructed and projected over centuries.

The exhibition’s setting Waddesdon Manor a French château built in the 1880s by the Rothschild family and steeped in Jewish patronage and Zionist history, adds a rich layer of resonance. Bronstein, an atheist Jew, frames his work as a critique of 19th‑century architectural fantasies tied to cultural nationalism and religious identity.

The two temple designs on display conjure dueling visions: one, a gaudy “vaudeville beaux arts” temple with spiralling Bernini‑style columns and domes reminiscent of Turin’s Mole Antonelliana; the other, a more restrained, synagogue‑like design drawn from Golders Green sensibilities, featuring wooden panel interior, lapis lazuli hues and grotesque crowned heads of Moses, David and Solomon.

Twenty‑first century in spirit yet rooted in historical form, Bronstein’s drawings offer theatrical architecture rather than archaeological faithfulness. One version glimmers like a 19th century casino, the other quietly evokes communal religiosity both equally artificial and performative. The works are suffused with irony, suggesting that fantasies of national or religious belonging rely not on reality but elaborate image‑making. It’s an artistic intervention aimed at the ways ideology and heritage are imagined through built form.

Bronstein’s tribute to architectural fantasy is as playful as it is critical. Symbols drawn from Blake, Michelangelo and Babylonian myth appear tucked into friezes. The ark of the covenant is rendered as a golden reliquary; the menorah becomes a rococo‑styled candelabrum rising from a chinoiserie grotto. In an aerial plan details like the rim design echo disposable Greek‑coffee motifs from mid‑century New York, reminding viewers how pastiche and everyday iconography collide in modern imagining.

The juxtaposition of this imaginary architecture alongside the Rothschilds’ architectural legacy in the same venue grounds the exhibition in geopolitical subtext. The Rothschild archive in an adjacent room highlights the family’s role in early Zionist settlement and Israeli national institutions. Bronstein’s fantastical alternatives thus serve as a counterpoint: constructed, fictional, and deliberately exaggerated. He calls the myth of a “genetic, cosmic link” to the Holy Land a 19th‑century invention his work destabilizes that myth by exposing how architecture can be mobilized as ideology.

Exhibition reviewers praise Bronstein’s technical precision and visual ambition. One writes that his drawings are simultaneously erudite and immersive, offering a richly coloured spectacle anchored in deep scholarly knowledge. The interplay of color, line and imagery rewards slow looking, promising that viewers who linger will find layer upon layer of detail to unpack. His combination of academic drawing language and baroque theatricality makes for “scholarly confections” that charm and provoke in equal measure.

Bronstein himself has described the project as rooted in his fascination with identity construction. Inspired by the interplay between Waddesdon’s Jewish history and Solomon’s architectural myth, he positions the Temple as a vessel for projection where national, religious and aesthetic fantasies converge. Two thousand years of architectural obsession are distilled into these drawings, framed not as templates for reconstruction but as allegories of delusion and desire.

The exhibition runs through November and its impact extends beyond Waddesdon’s elegant galleries. It invites reflection on how architecture and myth-making remain entwined with national narratives. In a moment where cultural identity and political myth persistently collide, Bronstein’s temple drawings offer a visual manifesto that challenges viewers to question the structures both literal and conceptual that define belonging.

Ultimately The Temple of Solomon and its Contents is architecture as theater: detailed, deliberate, and deeply skeptical. It asks us to reconsider the terms of architectural faith, reminding us that every edifice is also an echo of collective imagination and historical reinvention.