Rather elegant," intoned the white-haired figure at the podium. He was speaking of Adolf Hitler's Reich Chancellery, designed in 1938 by Albert Speer. Up next on the screen was the Nuremberg Party Rally Grounds where brown-shirted Nazis paraded en masse. "I think it is really great architecture," said the lecturer. "You take off the swastikas, and you can admire it without feeling guilty." — Wall Street Journal
As you might expect, "Audience members shifted awkwardly in their seats, and a few walked out to protest the remarks by Léon Krier, opening a conference on Berlin at the Yale School of Architecture in February." Anyone manage to actually be there for this, or have any follow-up?
58 Comments
wow, i didn't need another reason to dislike krier, but this one certainly seems more than enough to set aside any other complaint about the guy and never revisit them. its amazing that someone could hate modernism so much that even hitler's vision for the world seems palatable to him. nasty.
Mr. Krier’s comment, at least in this context, is not a rejection of modernism as stated in the first comment; it is a simply stated observation that Mr. Krier finds this building a great piece of architecture. Frankly, it is a very average piece of late Beaux Arts design, rusticated base, a tripartite division of space, the appropriate scale for the order, all very formulaic. Just because it has a swastika on it doesn’t make it bad architecture. Just as the post-constructivist stripped down classical buildings of Stalinist Russia aren’t bad because they were built under Stalin...or the Pope buildings in DC are good because they were built under Roosevelt....they are bad or good because they are bad or good architecture. Associating them with a political movement and judging them is incredibly knee jerk and short sited. Walking out of a lecture because of that statement is incredibly naive and sophomoric. Walking out because you don’t like Mr. Krier is something else entirely.
I don't think neoclassical architecture is fascist any more than Mohawks are anarchist. But a fascist regime is likely to produce neoclassical architecture.
The fascist part of the architecture is not the classical vocabulary but the overwhelming scale that diminishes the individual to the size of a dot.
It's really no different discussion than what has already been made about Leni Riefenstahl films, I think.
"You take off the swastikas, and you can admire it without feeling guilty."
For me this is problem, you can't separate the two, and to suggest you can, only proves Krier a fucking hump.
Phillip Johnson was an outspoken admirer of Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930's
"Can a war criminal be a great artist?" asks Mr. Krier. "My answer is undeniably yes." ,
then why doees Kreir defend what Speer knew and didn't know? As minister of Armaments, Speer would have been all to familiar with the Nazi Regimes labor practices. He's a war criminal, period, yet he employed the same style(s) as many other more talanted contemporaries "among them Edwin Lutyens, John Russell Pope and Paul Cret". From Stalin's criminal communism to England's colonialism, from FDR's New Deal, to Mussolini's casa degli Fasci, classicism was one of the more popular international styles at the time.
Classicism has been around in one form or another since the Italian Rennaisance, and representative of various values throughout history, politicians have always used the arts and even sciences for self promotion, but the WSJ author seems to confuse the artist with the style he employed. While agreeing with Kreir that "there is no clear congruence between architectural form and ideological meaning." he goes on to question "whether it is permissible to find beauty in an art that served to legitimize an abhorrent regime." How ever meddling his clients might have been, I just don't think Speer was a very good architect, a crappy Nazi architect!
:
These are some of the most disgusting old farts in architecture today.
faux-old is as faux-old does.
I dont get why Krier's appreciation of Speer. The work is overated. IMO just dull hyperbole. Big deal third rate Classicism at it's worst. And the urban plan for Berlin is awful. It takes the original expressionist crystal Stadekrone (city crown) concept and turns that upside down and into a stone giant dome - a temple for the state. I am not a fan of hugeness. i dont see anything 'aesthetic' in Speers architecture, only the power of the state identified thru the architecture. Just awful.
I like what Alexander Kluge did with it.
i agree eric. its pretty brutal stuff. i do think his appreciation is reactionary. krier will apparently allow anything into the fold as long as it has a colonnade and some classical bits bunged into it.
the swastika doesn't come off. that entire idea is repulsive. what is the guy thinking? he's like those people who think a bit of blackface is cool cuz the days of race discrimination is over, yessah massah sah. its not about being politically incorrect its just common sense.
that philip johnson was a youthful supporter of fascism does not make krier's comments any less bad. at least johnson had the decency to admit to his stupidity, even if only in public.
Kreir may be over compensating for an oppressive post WWII intellectual culture that insisted modernism was the only acceptable position architecturally and in many other aspects of the arts. Enough time has passed where Kreir's intentionally provocative stance seems un-necessary. Like many Germans I've met over time who are still conflicted about their country's past, being held back by a history for which you hold no responsability is an ironically very un-modern proposition. But tarring someone for any association strikes me also as very un-modern. Is the Greek revival an architecture of slavery? Is modernism an architecture of corporate greed? Is classicism the architecture of enlightenment? Only a fool who's covering for a lack of talent would use these McCarthyite accusations to falsly elevate or degenerate someone elses work. Talent has no political affiliation.
Thayer-D, well said.
Yes. Kluge's 'Brutality in Stone' is an excellent short doc that all architects should watch.
Thinking more on this I rember my friend Alan Wald taking philosophy class from Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse had two required readings: Sartre's 'Anti Semite and Jew' and the propaganda section from Mein Kampf. Yes.
DOA. The reason why Speer's work is monumental and yet so dull is because it functions as propaganda. No 'artistic hand', no individuality, expressionless; no soul as metaphyicists say.
Maybe Krier's attraction to Speerism is the propaganda aspect. Maybe that's why his work is also so dull.
"being held back by a history for which you hold no responsability is an ironically very un-modern proposition."
no, it's not, while it may not be in keeping with the Bible, it is however a reality and a modern one at that. i don't even need to travel back 600 years of american history to cite this as evidence, all i need to do is go to the Boston Bombers, and Adam Lanza to prove my point.
However, i do wonder if an opportunity is being lost, with concentration camp survivors and the german people to reconcile, and for the germans to be forgiven - not the Nazis per se, but for those connected by birthright.
i still think Krier is trying to provide cover for those designing for regimes, that history will ultimately judge quite harshly.
""being held back by a history for which you hold no responsability is... un-modern."
no, it's not, while it may not be in keeping with the Bible, it is however a reality and a modern one at that." - I dont know what it has to do with the Bible , being an athiest, but by that logic, any reality one can impose on others becomes a reality. True to a degree, like a bully making your life a living hell, but at the same time it relinquishes all power to the agressor, and I'm not ready to sign up for whatever someone wants to impose.
As to Krier trying to "provide cover for those designing for regimes" or his attraction to the "propaganda aspect", I'm not sure we are in a position to make these statements any more than declaring LeCorbusier a hater of civilization for his incessant need to propose the demolition of cities through out the world. But the need to assign a larger narrative to an architect known more for theory than aesthetic output says more about Krier's critics than his architecture.
Maybe Krier's attraction to Speerism is the propaganda aspect. Maybe that's why his work is also so dull.
I'd rather see the swastika redeemed for its original associations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika) than see any redemption of Speer's work. It's not that the style(s) from which he borrowed were bad so much as his intentional bombastic over-scaling of everything. These buildings were meant to communicate oppressive power and they succeeded.
Other variations often associated with fascism - especially the more abstracted classicism of the late-30s/early-40s - can actually be much better, more sensitive and appropriately scaled. I wouldn't discount all of the buildings that carry these associations, but Speer's weren't so good.
If Krier wants to build a case for the *style* for which he's arguing, he needs to be more discerning. I expect, though, that this is more about provocation.
"i do think his appreciation is reactionary. krier will apparently allow anything into the fold as long as it has a colonnade and some classical bits bunged into it."
"he's like those people who think a bit of blackface is cool cuz the days of race discrimination is over, yessah massah sah. its not about being politically incorrect its just common sense."
Respectfully, Will, but I think this is just nonsense. If you had any real understanding about Mr. Krier and what he is about, you'd know it's nonsense. I have read most of his important work, seen and heard many lectures by him. I assure you that what you are saying couldn't be further from the truth.
Krier couldn't be further from a Nazi apologist. I know that he despises Nazism in particular and any totalitarianism in general. I've heard him say it, many times and at length. The real power of his book on Speer is the tension between Speer's art and his politics and worldview.
I believe that Krier is genuinely an admirer of Speer's architecture as architecture, and I think that he is fascinated by the story of Speer, and the question of how art and the politics of totalitarianism were intertwined in Nazi Germany.
I am unashamed to tell you that In my opinion Speer was a horrible human being, a very good architect, and a bombastic and uninspired city planner. I just returned from Berlin, where I saw what I was told were the only two surviving Speer buildings in the city, two small classical guardhouse pavilions flanking a broad boulevard. I thought they were severe and beautiful. But thank goodness that he was stopped from imposing his grandiose vision on Berlin.
Everybody loves Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. Soft arched Fascism light?
"Can a war criminal be a great artist?"
no. a war criminal, a fascist, a corporate slob, etc. cannot produce great art because great art is always a product of individual inner consciousness. If ones inner consciousness is polluted or dominated by an external idea, whether positive or negative, the art will not be genuine. It will offer nothing. Not to say that an artist must be completely objective, its completely the opposite actually, but to be molded or influenced by the external and then to filter the information with a free mind is much different than to be a cog for that idea.... If the outer voice does not match ones inner voice then the art is a lie.
art produced by a vile person, or in the name of a vile idea, is often just propaganda. It is toned down, masked with a familiar façade or style..... it uses these preexisting styles to convey inaccurate ideas about a regime, corporation, etc...A sterile face to present a contaminated ideology....Its goal is not to express, but rather to conceal.
good art, bad people
"art produced by a vile person, or in the name of a vile idea, is often just propaganda. It is toned down, masked with a familiar façade or style..... it uses these preexisting styles to convey inaccurate ideas about a regime, corporation, etc...A sterile face to present a contaminated ideology....Its goal is not to express, but rather to conceal."
jia-x-
This is EXACTLY the crux Krier's thesis. He is arguing that Speer's classicism was employed as a propaganda tool to clothe the lies of the Nazi state in a comforting and inspiring guise, with which the populace was well acquainted.
"...in total contrast to what we have wished to believe since 1945, Classical architecture was not one of the means by which the daily propaganda maintained its reign of terror over the masses. On the contrary it was the civilized face, the aesthetic and cultured façade of this empire of lies, and was used by the regime to implant its totalitarian rule in the captivated soul of the masses. Classical architecture is quite simply incapable of imposing terror by the force of its internal laws. As a part of the totalitarian system, it was chosen only as an efficient form of lie and deceptive promise." - Leon Krier
Thanks eke.
I appreciate your points but won't accept that Krier is simply more objective than everyone else so its alright to start rethinking the nazis as city builders and architects and that Speer and his art were victims not perpetrators. Just on the face if it, and after reading the same books as you, I guess what he admires is the power, not the architecture. He wants Napoleon III by his side and if he can't have that sort of power will make do with prince Charles. But boy howdy wouldn't it be something if hitler were still around eh..then architecture could be set back on track no mistake there.
Funny about the similar words Quondam. Reenactment indeed.
Soft fascism also pretty tepid. Hitlers neocon has special place though. Trying to revamp its image just ain't right. If the blackface was too American and oldy-timey, well how about appreciating the efficiency of the slaughterhouses that Speer set up and wish away the deaths that went on there in the process so we can make a coffee table book about it as art ? It ain't on is it.
Will, what you have described is a complete mischaracterization of Krier's thesis. Krier has never offered any apology for Nazism or totalitarianism. On the contrary. If you would read anything he has written on the subject you would know that.
Quondam +1. There's a reason ideological modernists discredit the whole notion of 'style'. The same reason they like to play up the Nazi = classicism connection. They are afraid to take life as it's actually lived, that is that all styles are valid. Not in every context, or every function, or even every typology, but intellectually, they are all valid, as they are in music, literature and every other art form. The reason modernist ideologues want to discredit classicism is the same reason ideological classicists want to discredit modernism. Rather than stand on their own feet, it's easier to bash the other. It's an age old strategy that as much as the ideologues want to insist on it, one dosen't have to buy into it. It's a good think Hitler disliked beer. Didn't Osama Bin Laden grow weed, drink coke and watch porn? Agggh! I'm sooo confused!
These talks always end the same. Complete re-hash of the 70's.
It's almost as annoying as the school threads. They slow down architecture to a dumbifying point.... gigantic waste of time.
He (Krier) wants Napoleon III by his side and if he can't have that sort of power will make do with prince Charles. But boy howdy wouldn't it be something if hitler were still around eh..then architecture could be set back on track no mistake there.
Oh yes, Even his own friends at Yale joke about how he is a fascist.
His own books worship the idea of architecture and city planning as being controlled by few individuals in an aristocratic fashion. There is no other way for anyone to impose the stone age.
There's a reason ideological modernists discredit the whole notion of 'style'.
Makes no sense, cave-dweller.
:eyeroll:
Pious and speechless, oh my.
OK, Speer is fairly tepid and too ickily controversial to bother trying to redeem, but what about Schinkel? Does anyone agree with me that the Altes Museum is freaking amazing?!
*was
The most incompetent aspect of Krier and his ilk, is their lack of creativity/imagination.
Their books and words are eager to stifle "impure" thoughts.
Are we forgetting that the Nazi's sense of style— invented by Hugo Boss— perpetrates all of our wardrobes? And that the style and designs from characters like Hugo Boss, and their Italian counterparts of Gucci, Prada and Maxmara, were born out of corporatism and fascism?
Contemporary fashion is the face of Nazism.
Think about that the next time you slide on a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck.
For whatever it's worth; "KATARXIS Moment: Peter Eisenman and Leon Krier, on dishwashing..."
I don't know jack about speer.
as objects, I like the buildings, even if I'd prefer a little schinkel, the same way I'd prefer a little tickle.
too bad they'll always be associated with fascism and murdered jews though.
kinda makes them hard to enjoy. but isn't that part of the ugliness of it all?
interesting that fascists and murderers sought out this type of form.
anyway,
time for robot dancing.
That version of Kluge's stolen film is a dumb and thoughtless piece of shit for stupid people.
I agree Donna. I love that museum. Like I eluded to, deeming all neo classical architecture as fascist is like saying all modernism is corporate because banks and McDonald's exploit the language as some marketing tool.
"...but what about Schinkel? Does anyone agree with me that the Altes Museum is freaking amazing?!"
Donna, your stock just went up :)
I'm a big admirer of Schinkel. I saw many of his building in Berlin and Potsdam when I was there last month. So beautiful, so nuanced, so precise and beautifully proportioned. And HIGHLY creative. :)
Also need to remember that Roman, Mayan, Ming, egyptian etc. architecture was also built under less than perfect regimes. I guess we don't care much about those headless Mayans and tiger mauled Romans because it was so long ago.
FYI Alexander Kluge is/was an important European filmmaker. He was the father of the New German CInema which included Wenders, Fassbinder and Herzog. He was also a writer as the well as an attorney. The legal definition that director is considered the artistic creator of the film come from him. October devoted an issue on him.He has a twin sister, Alexandria.
Brutality in Stone played at the Getty conference in Los Angeles on Architecture and Film. If Adorno is intellectual entertainment to you than you might like Kluge. Otherwise his films are an acquired taste.
"...too bad they'll always be associated with fascism and murdered jews though.
kinda makes them hard to enjoy. but isn't that part of the ugliness of it all?
interesting that fascists and murderers sought out this type of form."
I certainly understand why people find Speer to be tainted beyond redemption, but what on earth do you imagine that Schinkel had to do with fascism and murdered Jews? He died in the 1840's.
Its not surprising that the Nazis employed the language of classicism for their buildings. They used it because it was a familiar and beloved language of architecture. What better to cloak your evil in than something that people already revered? This is precisely Leon Krier's point, if anyone out there is actually interested in anything other than ad hominem.
re: schinkel: uh, I didn't make any such connection. was just referring to ol' Albert and the Natzzis. sorry to raise your dander.
No worries. I misread your post. :)
that's cool baby, I still love you.
but . . .
I think we should see other people.
I, well,
I just don't think I can be with someone who likes Krier that much.
I just know we're gonna be really good friends though.
There's a reason ideological modernists discredit the whole notion of 'style'.
Makes no sense, cave-dweller.
It dosen't make sense until you read what you said about style earlier...
"Without using such a device, I'll attempt to explain to you (again), why contemporary architecture doesn't fall into the faux-old definition of "Modernism" "modernist" "Modern" etc.....or .....their archaic classification system of "style."
"Style" is used in faux-old stone age parables to lump the post-1910 together, and then use such a doomed logic as an incentive for backwardness."
Le Corbusier, "The styles are a lie." Vers une architecture (1923)
"interesting that fascists and murderers sought out this type of form." Classicism=murder therefore meat it classicist and modernists are vegans. Jefferson is a murderer.
Thanks EKE! glad you're in agreement!
Also good point jla-x re: Mayans.
So Schinkel isn't/wasn't a Nazi, but so much of his work was about glorifying the German culture and the hard work required to attain understanding and appreciation of it. So he was nationalist and elitist. But my god, the proportions, the sanity, the rigorous calmness of it all.....
Donna, I dont think Schinkel's architecture was glorifying German culture. It was Greek architecture. Ancient Greece was aquated with democracy. Schinkel, like many ell-read Germans, was influenced by the writings Goethe, Hegel, Schelling etc
'There's a reason ideological modernists discredit the whole notion of 'style'.'
Makes no sense, cave-dweller.
It dosen't make sense until you read what you said about style earlier...
It doesn't because:
"Style" is used in faux-old stone age parables to lump the post-1910 together, and then use such a doomed logic as an incentive for backwardness."
Le Corbusier, "The styles are a lie." Vers une architecture (1923)...
The bold text answers your confusion. Style classifications are post-rationalizations. Rejecting style is not an 'ideological modernist thing' it's something else.
There are very rare exceptions where acknowledging style produces (A)rchitecture.
Faux-oldism not being one of them.
A couple of beautiful Schinkel buildings within walking distance of my hotel in Berlin-
The Neue Wache:
The Konzerthaus in Gendarmenmarkt square:
And in Sansouci Park in Potsdam, we visited this beautiful, small palace, the Charlottenhof:
At what point does an imported style (for whatever reason) become a native style? In Schinkle's case, he employed Greek Classicism so masterfully that now his version is inectricably tied to Germany, the nation he sought to celebrate with his great buildings. One example of many where by the quality of the work overpowers any question of provenance.
Quondam, thank you, I had confused von Klenze's Walhalla as being by Schinkel. My mistake. The beautiful name LEE-o-von-KLEN-zah had somehow escaped my memory!
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