Bauhaus factory

[porphyry]

See almost immediately below for my earlier comments on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s architecture critic David Bonetti’s review of the new construction on the campus of Washing University.

He followed it last Sunday with praise for the new Art buildings designed by Fumihiko Maki, as I thought he would. I have not seen them, but my wife described them as Bauhaus horrors.

Here is enough of Bonetti’s review to understand it all:

“Walker Hall [fine arts] could be a Bauhaus-era factory. And why not? It is a place of artistic production.”

So he sees no difference between the products of industrial production and art. Who is hawking kitsch now?

In one sense, it is now literally true that there is no difference between industrial products and art. Exposing this was the whole misunderstood point of Warhol’s career. But to see this as an ideal rather than part of the greatest tragedy in human history, is evil.

Comments

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Too bad. I thought Washington University had outgrown all that Obata-style "Machines for Learning." The "new classicism" didn't last long, did it?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

The 'Art' faculty must have insisted...