Quote:
Originally Posted by
Andre Yew 
However, he says that the International style (which later become known as Modernism) was the opposite of exuberance --- it was dour, strict, and humorless. There was also no color, except when the architect weaseled some in, like the bronze i-beams: bronze was not an artifice of surface decoration that didn't express the structure of the building, but was instead a natural color of the material so it was allowed. Of course, the hypocrisy is that American fire codes forbade exposed i-beams, so the architect stuck some on the outside of the Seagram building to express the internal structure. Hmm, sounds like surface decoration. He also mentions function being subservient to form: a stadium obeying Bauhaus concepts of flat roofs and sheer walls collapsed under snow. The Seagram building's window shades had only three settings: open, half-open, closed to maintain the outside look of the building, and that was considered a compromise. Office workers either had little light or would broil in the sun.
I don't know if he mentioned this or not, but most of those buildings had (abstract) artworks commissioned for them which sometimes were very colorful. Imagine what Wolfe would have said when France decided to replace the Garnier Opera's original ceiling with the Chagall in 1964. Flamboyant "exuberance" is plenty found in Modernism: '50s Danish design; Gio Ponti; Fornasetti; Saarinen; Brazilian Modernism. Form follows function otherwise we would have a lot of ungainly tools with folksy decorations tacked onto them. Kind of an ironic--and no doubt, hypocritical--sentiment coming from a man who wears and commissions excessively stiff-collared shirts and claims that sometimes "one must suffer for style".
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He makes a case that Bauhaus came from an anti-bourgeois sentiment, and therefore classical sensibilities and aethetics were verboten, because the bourgeoisie were taken with classical architecture. The buildings also all had a sameness that came from the desire to build "worker housing." They look like factories, and building material was pretty narrow: steel, beige bricks, and glass. A later evolution would have people in all-wihte buildings. In Wolfe's world, "glass box" was a perjorative. You should read the book --- I can't do justice to his reasoning. --Andre
I hardly think that coming from an anti-bourgeois sentiment would negate any classical sensibilities. Did only the bourgeois conform to classical standards? It's also ironic that what would be considered classical and bourgeois at one time was rather nonconformist in its earlier form--Schinkel in his reaction to the ornate Rococo stylings of the earlier period, though whether Rococo was strictly bourgeois is contentious. Did avant-garde artists ignore classical conventions in their foundation training? Photography--commonly ignored by the 'establishment' during its early days--borrows and uses much of classical perspective in its own especial way. It seems tantamount to hubris with Wolfe presuming that classical esthetics were taboo to the Modernists. In fact, it sounds like he doesn't know what he is talking about since Modern Architecture as it evolved had some of its origins in the Haussmannization of Paris, with an empowerment of the individual in architecture rather than the stewardship of an aristocratic tastemaker; also, the Flaneur and Dandy came about in these periods as well--both important elements of the Modernist movement. Having not read the book, I'm having an hard time deducing whether Wolfe has a problem with the Origin--the Bauhaus--or the Effect--disciples who have perpetuated the look. If it were up to Wolfe, I imagine, America would have a bunch of disjointed, gargantuan Detroit-Kitsch like edifices in all their mis-guided nationalistic "exuberance"; maybe he would like Stalinist architecture. I get the impression that Wolfe is reacting to the mid-century convention of Critic As God, but with him writing these books lambasting Modernism, he has now assumed the mantle, however suspect the cut of that mantle.
No doubt, the text is amusingly and adeptly written, but when one writes on style, it does nobody any favors if the writer has none. Also, for all purposes, it appears Wolfe is writing yet another one of his social satire pieces rather than any sort of serious and regulated esthetic critique.
