346 SAHANZ Name Thema One of the most striking features of the Charles Jencks and George Baird edited Meaning in Architecture, 1969, is the inclusion of comments written in the margins of the pages.1 In the published artefact, each author’s text is accompanied by annotations written by other authors.
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CharlesJencksPostmodernand Late Modern:The Essential Definitions The ProtestantInquisitionto its morning In October announced readers, under 1981, Le Monde that a headed the section of its newspaper 'Decadence,' ominously was of What the Postmodernism.1 specter specter haunting Europe, is Frenchmen made of this warning as they bit into their croissants as came it with the familiar Marxist anybody's guess, especially image of a ghost looming over their civilization (and coffee). But they proba bly soon forgot the phantom and looked forward to next morning's 'Decadence' column, for in our culture one ghost grows boring and must be quickly replaced by the next. The problem, however, has been that critics will not let this one dissolve, especially hostile Modernist critics. They keep attacking the phantom with ever-increasing hysteria until it grows into quite a substantial force, upsetting not only le petit on the dejeuner but international conferences and the price quotations If they are not careful, there will be a panic international art market. And crash at the Museum of Modern Art as certain reputations dis solve like dead stock.
As the theorist of American Clement Greenberg, long acknowledged in 1979 as the antithesis of all he defined Postmodernism Modernism, loved: that is, as the lowering of aesthetic standards caused by 'the of culture under industrialism.' 2 democratization Like our 'Deca dence' columnist, he saw the danger as a lack of hierarchy in artistic in calling it judgment although he did not go so far as the Frenchman art critic, Walter Darby Bannard, writing simply 'nihilism'. Another in the same prestigious magazine five years later, continued Green the heathens and restated the same (non-) berg's crusade against 'Postmodernism is definitions, except with more brutal elaboration: aimless, anarchic, amorphous, inclusive, horizontally self-indulgent, 31structured, and aims for the popular.' 3 Why does he leave out 'ruth that the less kitsch' or the standard comparison with Nazi populism to list critic Ken Frampton adds the of horrors?
Architectural always Ever since Clement Greenberg made his famous opposition?' Avant a 1939 article, certain puritanical Garde and Kitsch'?in intellectuals have been arguing that it has to be one thing or the other, and it is they classify Postmodernism, although of course if it is structured' and it cannot be at the 'democratic,' really 'horizontally same time neo-Nazi and authoritarian.
But consistency has never been a virtue of those out to malign a movement. (RIBA) has Quite recently, the Royal Institute of British Architects that are noteworthy for been hosting a series of revivalist meetings Aldo Van Eyck, the Dutch their vicious attacks on Postmodernism. Clear wherein 1981, titled 'Rats, Posts the annual discourse architect, delivered how hard he and Pests,' and one can guess from this appellation to of He advised his be fair-minded. Cheering audience attempted a I in 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Modernists, harangue capital-lettered LET FOXES DOWN AND THE THEM GO' HOUND beg you, not unlike the Nazi tactics he was deploring, although the hounds and twist.4 If Van Eyck advised foxes give this pogrom an Oscar Wilde the older Modern architect letting the dogs loose on Postmodernists, limited himself, while he received his gold medal at Berthold Lubetkin the institute, to classing them with homosexuals, Hitler, and Stalin: in and Chippendale 'This is a transvestite architecture, Heppelwhite with Nazi kitsch drag.'
5 And he continued to compare Postmodernism in subsequent revivalist soirees in Paris and at the RIBA, even equat One ing Prince Charles with Stalin for his attack on Modernism.6 in America, Ger could quote similar abuse from old-hat Modernists indeed, in most of the world. For instance, the many, Italy, France, as a 'pastiche' noted Italian critic Bruno Zevi sees Postmodernism and is 'repressive' like fascism.7 that is 'trying to copy Classicism' like a negative We can see in all these howls of protest something in a paranoic definition made by Modernists definition emerging, retreat trying to hold the High Church together, issuing daily edicts numbers. Denouncing heresy, keeping the faith among ever-dwindling sit on most of the It is true they still control most of the academies, artists and aesthetic review boards, and repress as many Postmodern have fled architects as they can, but the mass of young professionals and are themselves bored and fed from the old Protestant orthodoxy In any international competition up with the taboos and suppressions. And that general now, more than half the entries will be Postmodern, as to archi as exhibitions much to sculpture and painting ity applies tecture. The door is wide open, as it was in the twenties when Modern ism had knocked down the previous academic barriers; the irony is 32are determined to be just as para that today's old-time Modernists s persecutors were as their Beaux-Art and noic, reactionary, repressive before them. Indeed, the slurs against Postmodernists occasionally and sound like the Nazi and academic vitriol poured on Le Corbusier in the twenties. Is history repeating itself in reverse?
I Walter Gropius am not sure, but I do believe that these characterizations have not were to?stem done what do Post the tide of they supposed modernism?but, rather, helped blow it up into a media event. My will be nice and civil.
Is that suddenly the reactionaries nightmare but particularly the press, loves an abusive argument car Everyone, and the otherwise it is always enter ried on by professors intelligent: it has hidden taining, even if it obscures as much as it explains. What aretherootcausesPostmodernismofthe movement.Definedlike Modernism, varies for each art both in its Postmodernism, and time frame, and I will here just define it in the field with motives which I am most involved, architecture. The responsibility for coining this sinful term goes to Joseph Hudnut who, at Harvard with Walter Gropius, may have wished to give this pioneer of the Modern Move ment a few sleepless nights. At any rate, he used the term in the title of an article published in 1945 called 'The post-modern house' (all lower it in the body of the case, like Bauhaus practice), but did not mention text or define it polemically. Except for an occasional slip here and itwas not used until my there, by Philip Johnson or Nikolaus Pevsner, own writing on the subject, which started in 1975.8 In that first year of in Europe and America, I used it as a lecturing and polemicizing to describe where we had left rather label, as a definition temporizing thanwhereweweregoing.Theobservablefactwasthatasarchitectsas Ralph Erskine, Robert Venturi, Lucien Kroll, the Krier and Team Ten had all from set off Modernism and brothers, departed in different directions that kept a trace of their common departure. To as I did in 1978 as doubly this day I would define Postmodernismvariousand one-half something else (usually tradi coded, one-half Modern in its attempt to communicate tional building) with the public and a concerned minority, usually other architects.
The point of this double was itself double. Modern architecture had failed to remain coding credible partly because it did not communicate with its effectively ultimate users?the main argument of my book, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture? And partly because it did not make effec tive links with the city and history. Thus the solution I perceived and 33an architecture defined as Postmodern: that was professionally based and popular as well as one that was based on new techniques and old and patterns. Double coding to simplify means both elite/popular reasons for these opposite pairings. New/old and there are compelling and are architects were trained by Modernists, Today's Post-Modern as as to using contemporary committed well technology facing current are enough to distinguish social reality. These committments them a point worth stressing since it cre from revivalists or traditionalists, ates their hybrid language, the style of Postmodern The architecture.
Same is not completely true of Postmodern artists and writers who in a may use traditional techniques of narrative and representation more straightforward creators who Yet all the could called be way. Some intention Postmodern keep something of a modern sensibility, that distinguishes this is irony, their work from revivalists, whether or realism, any num eclecticism, parody, displacement, complexity, at the onset, ber of contemporary tactics and goals. As I mentioned of the continuation Postmodernism has the essential double meaning: Modernism and its transcendence. The The main motive is obviously for Postmodern architecture 'death' announced social failure of modern architecture, its mythical In 1968, an English tower block of housing, by critics such as myself. Ronan Point, suffered what was called 'cumulative collapse' as its In 1972, many slab blocks of gave way after an explosion. At were in St.
By the blown up Pruitt-Igoe intentionally housing were becoming a quite these explosions mid-seventies, frequent of dealing with the failures of Modernist method building methods: 'defensible' lack of personal space, and the cheap pr?fabrication, and its alienating housing estate. The 'death' of modern architecture to social problems, techical solutions ideology of progress, offering was seen by everyone in a vivid way. The destruction of the central city and and historical fabric was almost equally apparent to the populace, we should stress these popular, social motives because they are again not quite the same in painting, film, dance, or literature. There is no floorsin these fields, nor perhaps the similar, vivid 'death of Modernism' same social motivation architecture. But that one finds in Postmodern even in Post-Modern for using past literature there is a social motive this irony or Eco has described forms in an ironic way. Umberto as that of a man attitude double coding: 'I think of the postmodern woman cannot a knows he and who loves say to her, T very cultivated knows that she he because knows love you madly,' (and that she been words have written by that these he knows that already knows) can a He 'As Barbara solution.
There is Barbara Cartland. Say, Still, At I this love would put it, Cartland you madly.' Point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possi 34have said what he wanted ble to speak innocently, he will nevertheless to say to the woman: that he loves her, but he loves her in an age of If the woman lost innocence.
Goes along with this, she will have received a declaration of love all the same. Neither of the two speakers will feel innocent, both will have accepted the challenge of the past, of both will consciously the already said, which cannot be eliminated, and with pleasure play the game of irony. But both will have succeeded once again, in speaking of love.' 9 double coding Thus Eco underlines the lover's use of Postmodern and he extends it, of course, to the novelist and poets' social use of a minimalism of previous forms.
Faced with a restrictive modernism, means and ends, writers such as John Barth have felt just as restricted as architects forced to build in the International Style, or using only glass and steel. The most notable, and perhaps the in architecture is James Stirling's double coding in Stuttgart (fig. Here one can find Staatsgalerie and extended in amusing and city previous museumbest, use of this to the addition the fabric of theironic ways. The is of old echoed and form the gallery placed on a u-shaped palazzo or But this above the traffic. Classical base holds high plinth acropolis, a very real and necessary parking garage, one that is ironically indi like ruins, to the ground.
The cated by stones that have 'fallen,' which is resultant holes in the 'acropolis' show the real construction, a steel frame holding stone cladding, not the thick marble blocks of and they allow the air ventilation the real Acropolis, required by law. One can sit on these false ruins and ponder the truth of our lost innocence: that we live in an age that can build with beautiful, expres as long as we make it skin deep and hang it on a steel sive masonry of course, deny himself and us this skeleton. A Modernist would, pleasure for a number of reasons: 'truth to materials,' 'logical consis the values and rhetor 'simplicity'?all tency,' 'straightforwardness,' as Le Corbusier and Mies ical tropes celebrated by such Modernists van der Rohe. Stirling, by contrast, and like the lovers of Umberto Eco, wants to more and different values. To signify the permanent communicate nature of the museum, he has used traditional rustication and classical forms including an Egyptian and seg cornice, an open-air Pantheon, in an understated mentai arches.
These are beautiful and conventional or way, but they are not revivalist either because of small distortions, because of the use of a Modern material, such as reinforced concrete. Or Pantheon, like the Acropolis but we are They say 'we are beautiful also based on concrete technology and deceit.' The extreme form of this double coding is visible at the entry points: a steel temple outline the taxi drop-off point, and the Modernist that announces steel cano pies that tell the public where to walk in. These forms and colors are 35mTmui?mm? Jjyr1 James Stirling Michael Wilford and Associates, Neue Staatsgalerie, Fig Stuttgart, in the Garden,' 1977-84. 'Ruins in an classical blocks which have fallen about a steel frame reveal the reality of Postmodern construction: manner, eighteenth-century holds up the slabs of masonry, and there is no cement between the blocks, but rather air. Are ironic vents to the parking in the walls, which These holes the dramatize garage, to assert continuity difference between truth and illusion, and allow Stirling the with fabric while also showing the differences.
And double Paradox existing classical coding an articulation exist throughout this scheme, which is more of urban tissue than a conventionalbuilding.(Photo:C.Jencks)Modern reminscent of De Stijl, that quintessential^ language, but are onto Thus the Modernism traditional background. They collaged to such an extent that both Modernists and Clas confronts Classicism if not offended. There is not the simple sicists would be surprised, It is as if of either language or worldview. Harmony and consistency Stirling were saying through his hybrid language and uneasy confron tations: 'We live in a complex world where we cannot deny either the past and conventional beauty, nor the present and current technical and social reality.' Caught between this past and present, unwilling to our situation, the most 'real' Stirling has produced oversimplify to of Postmodern architecture date.
Beauty As much of this reality has to do with taste as it does with technol failed as mass housing and city building ogy. Modernism partly with its inhabitants and users. They because it failed to communicate might not like the style, might not understand what itmeant, or even the essential definition how to use it. Hence, the double coding, of was as a on of used various Postmodernism, strategy communicating levels at once.
Virtually every Postmodern architect? Robert Venturi, Charles Moore, Hans Hollein, Robert Stern, Michael Graves, Arata Isozaki are the notable examples?use popular?ta?c.elitist signs in their work to achieve quite different ends, and their styles are essentially at To hybrid. Stuttgart, blue and red handrails and vibrant simplify, in with the youth that uses the museum?it fit polychromy literally resembles their dayglo hair and anoraks? While the Classicism appeals more to the lovers of Schinkel. This is a very popular building with young and old, and when I interviewed people there?a group of plein air painters, school children, and businessmen?I found their differ ent perceptions and tastes were accommodated and stretched.
The so on to that is often called Postmodernism is here a pluralism justify tangible reality. This is not the place to recount the history of Postmodern architec and social intentions that ture, but I want to stress the ideological in the bitter underlie this history because they are so often overlooked Even traditionalists debate with Modernists.10 often reduce the debate to matters of style, and thus the symbolic intentions and morality are If one reads the writings of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott overlooked. Or myself, one will find the con Brown, Christian Norberg-Schultz, stant notion of pluralism, the idea that the architect must design for different 'taste cultures' (in the words of the sociologist Herbert Gans) and for differing views of the good life. In any complex build there will be varying ing, in any large city building such as an office, tastes and functions that have to be articulated, and these will inevita bly lead, if the architect follows these hints, towards an eclectic style. He may pull this heterogeneity together under a Free-Style Classicism, 37D.C., 1985, aerial perspective.
Of Washington, Fig. Leon Krier, The Completion L'Enfant's is finally filled out and given the fabric which Baroque plan of Washington so desperately need. Four large towns, based on a traditional the monuments typology to urban of small blocks, and measure life which Modernist schemes give the density at first and then one realizes have lost. It looks nostalgic that the relation between an opti and infill, courtyard and street, living and work areas-is parts-monument mum achieved in few periods; with the Roman castrum and occasionally in the Renais sance and eighteenth-century the present France. Krier's use of the past to challenge as pertinent D.C.-is that isWashington, the suburban, present especially agoraphobic as his notion of the 'Masterplan notion of the 'Plan as Dictator.' As Constitution.'
And it's far better of Leon Krier) (Courtesythan Le Corbusier'sas do many Postmodernists today, but a trace of the pluralism will and should remain. I would even argue that 'the true and proper style' is but some form of eclecticism because only not, as they said, Gothic, this can adequately the pluralism that is our social and encompass reality. Metaphysical Many people would disagree with this last point, and some of them, like the great visionary and draftsman Leon Krier, are almost Post I bring him up as a borderline case and because he shows how modern. Traditions may influence each other in a positive way.
Krier different worked for James Stirling in the early seventies, and since then he has evolved his own form of vernacular classicism (fig. In his schemes for the reconstruction of cities such as Berlin and Washington, D.C., shows how the destroyed repaired and how a traditional to these cores. The motivationshe38fabric of the historic city could be set of well-scaled spaces could be added are urbanistic and Utopian in the sense? Also traditional and idealistic in that they are unlikely to be realized manner is not.
The way of that Postmodernism the straightforward but the plans would entail and monistic: life implied is paternalistic not the totalitarianism that his critics aver when they compare him and with Adolf Speer, but an integrated culture led by a determined that sensitive elite. In this sense, Krier has not 'lost his innocence' believe is gone for good, but has Eco and the Postmodernists to a preindustrial golden age where singular visions could be critics will say he has kept his inno imagined for everyone. Again, cence precisely because he has not built and faced the irreduciblyUmbertoreturnedplural reality. This may be true, and yet Krier as on others, because modernists, current planning and architecture fragments as the centers of Siena is of of the French Revolution, because it shows what a modern streets,lakes,arcades,andeffect on Post has had a beneficent his ideal models act as a critique of in the same way as do such surviving like that and Venice.
His nostalgia, the very positive and creative kind city might be if built with traditionalsquares.andMoreover,thisdoesmakehim a Postmodernist, his drawing manner derived equally from Le is based on practical urban and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Corbusier He is not simply a Mannerist, sprinkling biplanes and knowledge. 1920s technology through the sky, but someone who thinks through fabric before he draws. His all the public buildings and private comments on the desirabil biplanes are, of course, ironic Postmodern ity of technical regression. There are, inevitably, many more strands of Postmodern architec ture than the major two that the work of Stirling and Krier represent, andI havetriedtoshowtheaspluralityconsistingofsixbasictraditions, or 'species' (fig. There is some overlap between these identi tree of my diagram, and archi fiable 'species' within the evolutionary tects,unlikeanimals,canjumpfromonecategorytooranother,occupy several strands at once. The diagram shows two fundamental that have to be added to our former definition of Post aspects it is a movement that starts roughly in I960 as a set of modernism: and Pluralism, both philosophical plural departures from Modernism.
A or a to and critical relation dialectical stylistic, preexisting ideology are both key definers. There's not one Postmodern style, although there is a dominating classicism, just as there was not one Modern was a there International mode, although Style. Dominating if one is going to classify anything as complex as an Furthermore, one has to use many architectural definers: Anthony movement, shows the necessity for Blunt, in a key text on Baroque and Rococo, Postmodernism from Mod using ten definers, and, in distinguishing ern and Late Modern I have used thirty.11 Most of these architecture, 8. In any major move Tree of Postmodern Architecture, Fig. Evolutionary ment there are various have to be distinguished which strands running concurrently of Postmodernism show their because of differing values. Here the six main traditions common the fact that since the late 1970s Post and illustrate and differences ground modern Classicism have been unifying forces.
And urbanismover symbolism, ornament, humor, tech concern differences the of architect to existing and past cultures. And relation the nology, tend to emphasize technical and eco Modernists and Late Modernists tend to empha nomic solutions to problems, whereas Postmodernists to their inventions.
Size contextual and cultural additions art. It also Many of these points could be made about Postmodern starts roughly a succession in 1960 with of departures from Modernism? Notably Pop Art, Hyperrealism, Photo Realism, Alle gorical and Political Realism, Pattern Painting, New Image painting, La Transavanguardia, and a host of other more neo-Expressionism, or less fabricated movements. To pro from the art market Pressure definersduce new labels and synthetic schools has, no doubt, increased the tempo and heat of this change. And the influence of the international so emphasized as a defining aspect of the postindustrial soci media, cross national these movements Post boundaries. Ety, has made modern art, like architecture, is influenced by the 'world village' and the sensibility that comes with this: an ironic cosmopolitanism. If one Carlo Maria Mariani, Sandro looks at three Italian Postmodernists, one sees their 'Italianess' always in quo Chia and Mimmo Paladino, tation marks, an ironic fabrication of their roots made as much for the New York they occasionally inhabit as from inner necessity.
Whereas a mythology was given to the artist in the past by tradition and the world, patron, in the Postmodern in the mid-seventies, Mariani,it is chosen and invented. Created his fictional of academy?
So on and peers?Goethe, Winkelmann, Mengs, some missing canvasses to fill out a mythic history.eighteenth-century and then painted In the early eighties, andpaintedanallegoryhe transferred ofPostmodernthis mythology Parnassusto the present withhisfriendsday andenemies, critics and dealers collected around himself in the center?a version of Raphael's and Meng's versions of the tradi modern-day tional subject (fig. Like the structure of myth, we see here a series of texts layed one on top of another as an enigmatic commentary. Is it ironic allegory?
Serious, or parody, or more likely the combination The facial expressions and detail would suggest this double reading. Solemn both and supercilious, sits below Ganymede Mariani, being abducted to heaven by Zeus: Ganymede is not only the beautiful boy of Greek mythology being captured in the erotic embrace of the eagle a but artist Luigi Ontani, hence the Zeus, portrait of the performance and To the right, Francesco Clemente stick. Gazes past a canvas hoop held by Sandro Chia; Mario Merz isHercules in an understated bath New York dealer waddles to the water personified tub; a well-known as a turtle; critics write and admire their own profiles. All this is carried out in the mock heroic style of the late eighteenth century, the has made his own. No one style of La Pittura Col ta, which Mariani 41del Leone Costellazioni 1980-1, oil (La Scuola di Roma), Fig.
Carlo Maria Mariani, on canvas, 133V8 x 1779/16 in. An elaborate School allegory on the current Postmodern one part critical satire. (Courtesy of Rome?one of part eighteenth-century pastiche, New York) Gallery, Sperone Westwatergives this 'cultured painting' an extended analysis would call it or straight critics many revivalist, century, although eighteenth as to the work branded have Postmodernism again unsympathetic had been dismissed by Modern 'fascist.' These pictorial conventions ists as taboo, as frigid academic art. Then so do many Post IfMariani adapts and invents his mythology, who are involved in allegory and narrative. This concern modernists to the archi is in a sense comparable for content and subject matter whotects' renewed concern for symbolism and meaning.
Whereas Modern on the autonomy concentrated ism and particularly Late Modernism and expression of the individual art form?the aesthetic dimension? Is focus on the semantic aspect. This generalization Postmodernists true of such different artists as David Hockney, Malcolm Morley, Eric some of whom have and Paul Georges, Fischl, Lennart Anderson, sex others who have painted political, painted enigmatic allegories, ual, and classical narratives.
The so-called Return to Painting of the it 1980s is also a return to a traditional concern with content, although art. From Premodern is content with a difference had a Modern First, because these Postmodernists training, they are inevitably 42concernedwithabstractionand the basicreality of modern60 x 60 in. The most serious 1975-6, oil on canvas, Kitaj, If Not, Not, as a departure themes and characters painter often uses Modernist point for his fractured allegories. These sustain a mood of catastrophe and mystery which is alleviated of hope and a haunting of Scottish by small emblems beauty. (Courtesy of Modern National Art) Gallery Fig. Ron Postmodernlife,thatis, a secular,massculturedominatedbyeconomicandpragmatic motives.
This gives their work the same complexity, mannerism, and double coding that Postmodern architects have, and also an eclec tic or hybrid style. For instance, Ron Kitaj, who is the most concerned with literary and cultural subject matter, combines Modernist tech with Renaissance niques of collage and a flat, graphic composition traditions. His enigmatic allegory If Not, Not is a visual counterpart of T. Eliot's The Waste Land, on which it is partly based (fig. Survivors of war crawl through the desert towards an oasis; survivors of civilization (Eliot himself) are engaged in quizzical acts, some with representativesofexoticculture.Lamb,crow,palmtree,turquoiselake, and a Tuscan landscape, consciously adapted from the Classical resonate with common overtures.
Tradition, They point toward a Western and Christian overlaid by Modernism, the cult background at the top, of primitivism and disaster. The Classical barn/monument so reminiscent of Aldo Rossi and Postmodern also face buildings, 43it represents. Indeed, the burning suggests the death camps, which inferno of the sky, the corpse and broken pier, the black and truncated trees?all suggest life after the Second World War: plural, confused, but containing islands of peace (and a and tortured on the whole, The title, with its double negative?
If Not, search for wholeness). Not?was taken from an ancient political oath that meant roughly: if the you King do not uphold our liberties and laws, then we do not of broken promises and frag the consequence you. Thus, culture are the content of this gripping drama, one given a classical gravitas and dignity. Nar of this type of hidden moralistic could be multiplied Examples Ian Hamil David Salle, Hans Haacke, rative: Robert Rauschenberg, ton Finlay, Stephen McKenna?all make use of the classical tradition in portraying our current, cultural situation.
Their political and ethi but their intention to revive the tradition cal views are often opposed, art is shared, and since they all do this conscious of of moralistic will double find the Modernism and secularization, you irony, coding, uphold mentedarchitecture. That is present in Postmodern Thus, the that I have given above holds true for of Postmodernism such literary figures as Umberto artists and, I believe, Eco, David Luis and John Barthes, Borges, among many others. It Jorge Lodge, so not of hold true, however, does many artists lumped or thrown a Postmodern label for whom there are much better together under and mannerismdefinitionappellations.Modernand Late ModernDefineda as I have suggested, was, in architecture, The Modern Movement, faith in the liberating aspects of Protestant Reformation putting and mass democracy. Le Corbusier pursued his 'cru industrialization sade,' as he called it, for a 'a new spirit,' as he also called it, and his reformed religion was meant to change the public's attitude towards mass production. So convinced was this prophet of the beneficent? That he ended his bible environment effects of a well-designed 'Architec the ringing exortation: Towards a New Architecture?with can be avoided.' Walter Gropius, Revolution ture or Revolution.
Founded the Bau saint of the Design Reformation, another militant haus as a 'cathedral of the future' and declared in 1923 the standard:A New Unity.' Ludwig Mies van der doctrine: 'Art and Technology Rohe made any number of plans to the Spirit of the Age, that it could and proclaimed of the new industrialization, problems,44even'social,economicandartistic'ones.12the Zeitgeist solve all ourIn short, the three leading Modern architects did not just practice a common, Protestant style but believed that if their faith were to gov ern industrialization, then it could really change the world physically and spiritually for the better. This religion of Modernism triumphed the globe as itwas disseminated by the saints and proselyt throughout izers: Sir Nikolaus and the Bible accord Pevsner, Sir James Richards, to and Time Architecture. Modern acad Giedion, ing Siegfried Space, emies were formed at the major universities, and such as Cambridge and from there were dispersed the purist doctrines of John Harvard, Calvin Corbusier, Martin Luther Gropius, and John Knox van der Rohe.
Their white cathedrals were soon built in every land, the black and white boxes of the International Style, and for a while, the people and professors kept the faith. Ornament, polychromy, metaphor, were put on the index, and all and convention humor, symbolism, forms of decoration and historical reference were declared taboo. We are all well acquainted with the results?as Colin Rowe termed them, 'the architecture of good intentions'?and there are a lot of pleasant to prove that the white housing estates or machine-aesthetic hospitals intentions were not all misguided. The reigning religion of architectural Modernism could be called that is, the belief that by 'doing more with pragmatic amelioration, Fuller said, social problems would slowly disap less,' as Buckminster seems to in limited spheres such as medicine, pear. Technical progress, one of Late Modernists. Bear out this ideology, still a dominant as the universal, architecture inter Thus, we might define Modern the facts of new constructional means, style stemming from new a as to industrial and trans its the society, adequate goal having But there is formation of society, both in its taste and social makeup. An anomaly in this Modernism that is both overwhelming and missed on the subject.
It is directly opposite the more wide by commentators in the other arts and philosophy; for these are not spread Modernism at all. Think of Nietzsche, G?del, Heisen optimistic and progressivist are closer to nihilism and Sartre?who than to the berg, Heidegger, of Fuller?or Yeats, T. Eliot, and de Joyce, Pound, positivism and Grosz: hardly liberal, not very social Chirico, Picasso, Duchamp not and in architecture ist, certainly optimistic. Whereas Modernism has furthered the ideology of industrialization and progress, Modern ism in most other fields has either fought these trends or lamented nationalIn two key areas, however, the various Modernisms agree, and that is over the value of abstraction and the primary role of aesthetics, or the perfection of the expressive medium. Modernism, as Clement has defined has this irreducible goal: to focus on it, always Greenberg the essence of each art language. By doing this, he argues, standards are kept high in an age of secularization, where there are few shared them.45values and little left of a common symbolic system. All one can do in an agnostic age of consumer pluralism is sharpen the tools of one's of the and T.
Eliot the trade, 'purify tribe,' as Mallarm? Language defined the poet's role. This idea relates closely to the nineteenth century's notion of the on the myth of a of is and Modernism course, based, avant-garde, romantic advance guard setting out before the rest of society to con and social order. The quer new territory, new states of consciousness as a artistic military was of and the political metaphor avant-garde, formulated in the 1820s, and although there were very few artists who were politically active, like Gustav Courbet, and even fewer that were the effective politically myth of social activism sus (like Marinetti?), a patronless class.
Tained an elevated role for what was becoming were of at and the often like mercy architects, Artists, underemployed a heartless, or at least uninterested, economic system. Where before a a to had defined social patron, the state, church, or relationship they to a now that was competitive related individual, they marketplace andagnostic.as the first great ideological can thus see Modernism response to this social crisis and the breakdown of a shared religion. The intel lectuals and creative elite, faced with a post-Christian society, formu lated a new role for themselves, inevitably a priestly one. In their most exalted role, they would heal society's rifts; in 'purifying the language of the tribe,' they could purify the sensibility and provide an aesthetic moral base?if not a political one. From this post-Christian role, two between them that has positions developed as well as a contradiction I will resort, as this confusion, caused much confusion.
To overcome and Robert Stern have done, to two others such as Frank Kermode technical terms, because the word 'modern' hides at least two differ Oneent meanings.13the 'split between role of the artist, to overcome located in and Giedion T. Eliot that S. Siegfried thinking to I 'Heroic would call what this leads the nineteenth century, and of the role and romantic Then there is the subversive Modernism.'
Art to differ new make artist to conquer territory, 'to make it new,' and critical: what I will call 'Agonistic self-referential ent, difficult, Thereis the healing and feeling'Modernism.' TionalversusThese schismatictwo meanings Modernism,'relate to what humanismStern versuslabels 'tradi agonism,continuity versus 'the Shock of the New,' optimism versus nihilism, and the second of so on.
For Stern, and other writers such as lhab Hassan,? Itself or?has Modernism Resistant schismatic these traditions 'Post writes: Thus Hassan into schismatic Postmodernism. Mutated in form and subversive on the other hand, is essentially modernism in art even of its lack faith It dramatizes in cultural its anarchic spirit. 46as it produces new works artistic dissolution.' 14 As Hassan examples,of art intendedto hastenbothculturalandmentions the literature of Genet and Beckett?also what George Steiner calls the 'literature of silence'?
Art of Tinguely and Robert Morris, the self-abolishing the mechanistic and repetitive art of Andy Warhol, the nonstructural music of John Fuller.15 All of this Cage and the technical architecture of Buckminster to an takes Early Modernism and its notion of radical discontinuity to the hermeticism of the sixties and seventies. Extreme, leading Because the later tradition was obviously different from the Heroic Modernism of the twenties, quite a few critics loosely applied the and prefix 'post.'
For instance, the popular critics Paul Goldberger to dis Douglas Davis used it in the New York Times and Newsweek cuss the ultra-Modern work of Hardy Holzman and Pfeiffer, Cesar Pelli and Kevin Roche, all of which exaggerate the high-tech work of Mies and Le Corbusier.16 The art critic Edward Lucie Smith, like Center.17 In others, even applied it to Rogers and Piano's Pompidou meant that was different from High short, Postmodern everything and usually, this meant Modernism, skyscrapers with funny shapes, brash colors, and exposed technology. That such architects actually as I was defining it, was beside these critics' despised Postmodernism, a current phrase for discontinuity and point.
They just adopted lumped every departure under it. In artistic theory and criticism, the same permissive categorization was practiced, were held on the subject, and so, when conferences as to whether artists were confused the post they were supporting or were against it.18 In fact, a whole modern, book, The Anti Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern to this con Culture, was dedicated fusion.19 Here, the editor Hal Foster uses it to mean a cultural and to the critical use political resistance to the status quo; Craig Owens, of postindustrial in art (computers and photography) and techniques the 'loss of master narratives' in this). (he follows J. Lyotard FredericJamesonusesit asanumbrellatermto coveralltoreactionsthe High Modernism (again, John Cage and William Burroughs), of distinctions between high and mass culture, and two of its leveling features': pastiche and schizophrenia. Jean Baudrillard 'significant refers to it as epitomizing our era and its 'death of the subject,' caused basically by television and the information revolution ('We live in the ecstasy of communication. And this ecstasy is obscene').20 And most of the remaining authors use it in different ways, some of which may have a relation to resistance, or 'deconstructing' the com mon assumptions of our culture.
In short, itmeans almost everything and,thus,BeforenearlyI discussnothing.this 'NothingPostmodernism,'wherevery little is 47one of its causes: the view that the at stake, I would like to mention to mean any rupture with High Modernism. Word can be appropriated Rosalind Krauss's essay 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field,' printed in this and another anthology on Postmodern art, shows this appropria tion.21 Her elegant and quite witty essay seeks to define all departures from sculpture that appear to break down the category of Modernist sculpture?let us say Brancusi's Endless Column?ana expand them to include such things as Christo's Running Fence and wrapped build in 1972, and vari constructed ings, Robert Smithson's use of Aycock ous earthworks and 'marked sites' such as a sunken framed hole in the ground by Mary Miss, 1978. Field of Krauss uses a structuralist diagram to draw this expanded not that are not architecture, landscape, objects sculpture?the in making the diagram indeed, not sculpture, and her wit consists itself expand to include a lot of combined 'nots.'
The strategy is not to Modernist dissimilar practice of defining things by what they are notand essentiality, but she in order to maximize their differences 'One after presents their expansion as a 'rupture' with Modernism: Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Richard another Robert Morris, Robert de Maria, Irwin, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman Serra, Walter (between 1968 and 1970) had entered a situation the logical conditions In her diagram of which can no longer be described as Modernist.' 22 matical, logical terms, this is quite true, but then she goes on to make a false inference. 'In order to name this historical rupture and the of the cultural field that characterizes structural transformation it, one must have recourse to another term. The one already in use in There seems no reason not other areas of criticism is postmodernism.
Use the not way of not definition, to use it.' Oh, yes, there is not, to one it is that you cannot define for if things thing is not obscure are not. All the things in this room that are not usefully by what they men are not necessarily women, but they are a near infinity of other are and not sculptures she mentions of And those artists classes things. Like not Postmodernists, but really Late Modernists. Because or and take Modernist ultra-Modernists neo-, they disjunction to an extreme. Essentially, their practice goes against the abstraction those I have mentioned?all of Postmodernism thirty or so definers historical memory, metaphor, semantics, convention, for existing cultures.
Their work is much symbolism and the respect? To closer except ismore extreme, exaggerated Agonistic Modernism,connectedin short,with'Late.'
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