Kazys Varnelis' "We Cannot Not Know History:" Philip Johnson's Politics and Cynical Survival (here + pdf) | On the shelves: the latest issue of Future Anterior has a fatefully timed article by Leslie Klein about Johnson's testament and his will to control the interpretations of the Glass House. (If your school or local library doesn't carry this title yet, I highly recommend asking for a subscription.) | 'Philip Johnson left hundreds of designs for his own tomb - he couldn't decide on which style to choose!'
4 Comments
Damn, that Kazys knows what he is doing.
The suggestion that Johnson got the idea for the freestanding brick cylinder in the glass house from the burned-out homes of displaced Polish Jews is infuriating. I've heard that Mondrian's painting were inspired by bombed buildings -- but this is something else entirely.
Johnson voluntarily kept the knowledge of the German massacre of the Jews in Poland from his American audience -- to pursue what were ENTIRELY political ends.
The idea that he then LIVED in an abstraction of this horror seems somehow fitting.
Bastard.
Thanks, Javier, for bringing this to our attention. I'll never think of this "masterpiece" in the same way again.
If you look at the Mies's water color of his orginal design for the Farnsworth House, you can see where he took that from. There's a cylinder in Mies' design.
I think what Johnson said is just a stupid boast and I don't think he designed that way. He took the cylinder from Mies.
IMHO Johnson was never very good at developing an idea beyond formally replicating and tweaking it.
Johnson liked to say a lot of provocative things. Few people took him to task on them. It'll be interesting to see what happens to his legacy.
Interesting, makeA, I haven't seen those watercolors.
To me, the way that Johnson's brick cylinder breaks through the plane of the roof structure suggests "ruin" more than Miesian purity. As does the fact that nothing else exists inside the house.
Does the watercolor show a similar detail? I'll go down to the bookstore and check it out.
I don't know what's worse,
Johnson inspired by the burnt out wooden village
or
Johnson inspired by the Mies cylinder but then saying that it's source is the ruins of the burnt out wooden village to give his building depth and make himself look smarter.
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