Adulterous Austrians
Aug. 13th, 2006 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyryThis appeared in the local paper today:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/visitstlouis/story/0A2C3EE0A3B476ED862571C700322983?OpenDocument
The reviewer, who is known to me for his political correctness and doctrinaire aping of post-modern rhetoric, laments that tearing down Prince hall was a tragic mistake (I only hope that the wonderful little theater attached to it has been preserved, I’ll have to look the next time I am on campus).
But it is impossible for me to understand why he should think so, except that it gives him an excuse to attack the University administration in all fronts—the canard that is they are wrong in one thing they must wrong in all things.
After this:
“All {the architects of the original campus] were practitioners of Beaux-Arts historicism. They might use steel framing but, stylistically, they all looked to the past: the Italian Renaissance; French or English Gothic; Roman classicism.
The university could have invited the protomodernist Louis Sullivan, but didn't. He had designed the Wainwright Building in downtown St. Louis. Sullivan, however, looked to the future.”
he ought to have been calling for the destruction of all the original buildings on campus, that being the natural conclusion of his rhetoric.
But this non-sequitur is really the crux of his argument, neatly tucked away at the end of his piece:
“Let's hope that the latest copy is better than some recent architectural fiascoes: for instance, the Laboratory Science Building. Designed in the most debased Collegiate Gothic style by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, once the premier modernist firm in America, it screams "copy" from across the quad. From that distance, one questions whether it is made of plastic, but it is stone veneer.
Anyone who buys such an architectural travesty as representing the campus ideal truly needs an education.
The absurdity is that the phony Gothic building, built in 2002, houses modern science labs. So much for truth in packaging.”
He makes the assumption that because modernity is ugly, it must be housed in ugly buildings that are purposely detached from all tradition and instead slavishly follow the dictates of an adulterous Austrian, a crazed Frog and a mad Dutchman. He assumes, in short, the dogma of his tradition, still unexamined despite its clear connections to discredited communist ideology and even a naive Stalinism. To his mind—I extend the generosity of that term to his ideological indoctrination—tradition failed in the First War and result in the ugliness of modernity, and so all that is created since then must either be ugly as a monument to exposing the terrifying stupidity of that mistake or else stand accused of being kitsch (he uses ‘fake’ instead of their usual buzzword out disrespect for the intelligence of his readership).
But it is insane to say that because there was once terrible ugliness in the world, we can never have anything else. When the wounds were fresh in the 1920s, one can almost see why such ideas developed. But isn’t the cure for ugliness Beauty? We should not despair of the possibility of a cure coming from a new use of tradition.
I will admit that the new buildings in a Gothic Revival style are not very successful, that their architects are uninspired and insipid. But that is because schools of architecture refuse to admit anyone who is not prepared to parrot their Stalinist dogma, beat out of them any hint of originality, and leave them in abysmal ignorance of the tradition they are meant to hate. So naturally they don’t know how to design traditional buildings.
He mentions the main objection to his modernist darlings in his own article—the administration at the University don’t use it anymore because they used it in the 1960s and 1970s and people hate it. I don’t know how he was able to keep himself from writing in all caps and bold, ‘Philistines!’ Curious things about Philistines. They were hated by their churlish Jewish subjects because they possessed a much higher level of civilization—Philistines were probably a type of Greek, after all—so it was a clear case of jealousy. If we accept as valid the observations of Freud, this must be the favorite accusation of the Modernists because they are unconsciously aware of the falsity of their own position.
He fails to mention that in fact the most recent new building on campus are not his Gothic Revival boogey men, but two new Bauhaus horrors, insisted upon by the art history department, no doubt, which they now house. Probably he considers it unwise to call attention to these monstrosities. But see my wife’s LF for them:
http://empousa.livejournal.com/6904.html
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/visitstlouis/story/0A2C3EE0A3B476ED862571C700322983?OpenDocument
The reviewer, who is known to me for his political correctness and doctrinaire aping of post-modern rhetoric, laments that tearing down Prince hall was a tragic mistake (I only hope that the wonderful little theater attached to it has been preserved, I’ll have to look the next time I am on campus).
But it is impossible for me to understand why he should think so, except that it gives him an excuse to attack the University administration in all fronts—the canard that is they are wrong in one thing they must wrong in all things.
After this:
“All {the architects of the original campus] were practitioners of Beaux-Arts historicism. They might use steel framing but, stylistically, they all looked to the past: the Italian Renaissance; French or English Gothic; Roman classicism.
The university could have invited the protomodernist Louis Sullivan, but didn't. He had designed the Wainwright Building in downtown St. Louis. Sullivan, however, looked to the future.”
he ought to have been calling for the destruction of all the original buildings on campus, that being the natural conclusion of his rhetoric.
But this non-sequitur is really the crux of his argument, neatly tucked away at the end of his piece:
“Let's hope that the latest copy is better than some recent architectural fiascoes: for instance, the Laboratory Science Building. Designed in the most debased Collegiate Gothic style by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, once the premier modernist firm in America, it screams "copy" from across the quad. From that distance, one questions whether it is made of plastic, but it is stone veneer.
Anyone who buys such an architectural travesty as representing the campus ideal truly needs an education.
The absurdity is that the phony Gothic building, built in 2002, houses modern science labs. So much for truth in packaging.”
He makes the assumption that because modernity is ugly, it must be housed in ugly buildings that are purposely detached from all tradition and instead slavishly follow the dictates of an adulterous Austrian, a crazed Frog and a mad Dutchman. He assumes, in short, the dogma of his tradition, still unexamined despite its clear connections to discredited communist ideology and even a naive Stalinism. To his mind—I extend the generosity of that term to his ideological indoctrination—tradition failed in the First War and result in the ugliness of modernity, and so all that is created since then must either be ugly as a monument to exposing the terrifying stupidity of that mistake or else stand accused of being kitsch (he uses ‘fake’ instead of their usual buzzword out disrespect for the intelligence of his readership).
But it is insane to say that because there was once terrible ugliness in the world, we can never have anything else. When the wounds were fresh in the 1920s, one can almost see why such ideas developed. But isn’t the cure for ugliness Beauty? We should not despair of the possibility of a cure coming from a new use of tradition.
I will admit that the new buildings in a Gothic Revival style are not very successful, that their architects are uninspired and insipid. But that is because schools of architecture refuse to admit anyone who is not prepared to parrot their Stalinist dogma, beat out of them any hint of originality, and leave them in abysmal ignorance of the tradition they are meant to hate. So naturally they don’t know how to design traditional buildings.
He mentions the main objection to his modernist darlings in his own article—the administration at the University don’t use it anymore because they used it in the 1960s and 1970s and people hate it. I don’t know how he was able to keep himself from writing in all caps and bold, ‘Philistines!’ Curious things about Philistines. They were hated by their churlish Jewish subjects because they possessed a much higher level of civilization—Philistines were probably a type of Greek, after all—so it was a clear case of jealousy. If we accept as valid the observations of Freud, this must be the favorite accusation of the Modernists because they are unconsciously aware of the falsity of their own position.
He fails to mention that in fact the most recent new building on campus are not his Gothic Revival boogey men, but two new Bauhaus horrors, insisted upon by the art history department, no doubt, which they now house. Probably he considers it unwise to call attention to these monstrosities. But see my wife’s LF for them:
http://empousa.livejournal.com/6904.html
