The unbending axis of architectural apologetics made for Speer is a double one...This defense, of course, is exculpatory only if it fails to make any distinction within the field of this expression or to consider any integral relationship between form and function. The more outré defense of Speer insists that he is not simply tarred with modernism’s anti-classical brush but that he was an excellent architect, full stop. — The Nation
In the June 10-17, 2013 edition of The Nation, Michael Sorkin asks Why is Léon Krier defending anew the work of the Third Reich’s master builder?
14 Comments
What is it with Leon? He's done a great job helping revive the pedestrian city, but he was never much of an architect with his whole "I'm to pure to build with modern construction methods" routine. A lot of Speer's work is work-a-day stripped classicism, no harm there but the dome on the book cover shows just how mediocre an architect he was. Blowing up a dome to gargantuan proportions just make the individual feel like an ant, which was his master's purpose anyway. Plus he sold his soul to the devil.
Leon schmeeon has never designed a single city, let alone revived one.
These kinds of articles should retire already, along with him.
Better said in twitter chatter:
"Michael Sorkin destroys Albert Speer & his main apologist, Leon Krier"
finally, we have a reason to discuss Hitler and Nazis on the internet!
thanks Leon!
I also dont get the Krier adulation of Speer. The architecture Krier seems to enjoy is second or third rate neo- classicism. It must be psychological not architecture that attracts Krier to Speer Maybe the attraction is the fantasy of absolute power. Krier's apolgetics are almost cult-like in admiration. Speers defenders rate him as a great architect of the 20thC. I dont. Just second or third rate. Big doesnt mean better
I seen this before. With Leni Riefenstahl. Ever meet a Nazi? I mean a famous Nazi? I have and it was Reifenstahl. It was at a film convention book signing event. The buzz was here was one of the greatest filmakers of the 20thC. She wasnt close but that is how it was presented. Nazi Apologetics again.
The fascination, as Sontag says, with fascism and Nazi art in general is the perceived power, domination. I could go on but I think Kriers fascination is less academic and more along the lines of fetish.
"I also don't get the Krier adulation of Speer."..."Maybe the attraction is the fantasy of absolute power" Sounds like you do know why Krier likes Speer. I wonder if the absolute power required to re-build not just one capital city, but many, is why people love LeCorbusier.
Reading Sorkin's peice in The Nation magazine reminds me of this kind of logic. No doubt Speer was a foul human being and a mediocre architect, but apparently, it's still irrisistable to pin classicism/traditionalism to fascism. "Hitler, ever the traditionalist...the insistence on the correctness of historical forms...rather than the liberating insubordination of the avant-guard". Got it. Except does that liberalism allow for traditional forms?
Sorkin complains that Krier's book consults " virtually no serious theoretical or historical works for his spirited and deeply dopey gloss..." Spirited dopeyness, my favorite kind. Could it be that Sorkin's own analysis of Krier has the intellectual gravitas he so craves? "Krier's drawings are succinct and his architecture perfectly harmless, even charming..." Hmmm. "Krier has also been the longtime court architect of Prince Charles, for whom he continues to work on a Marie Antoinette-ish new town named Poundbury. Talk about tragedy lapsing into farce". Never mind all the environmental and social aspirations of Poundbury, it's really a play thing for royalty. Okey dokey!
"Krier uses Speer, whom he does seem to genuinely revere, to continue to battle against an imaginary enemy, a long gone modernist cabal that he thinks will be galled by his argument." The argument that "the work marches in the great defile of design that includes Friedrich Gilly, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Otto Wagner, Carl Asplund, Paul Cret and John Russell Pope" In this case Sorkin couldn't be more correct. Speer's sense of proportion is god awful, but what is this "long gone modernist cabal" he refers to and when did it go extinct? "If there was a war on classicism, how did the Altes-Museum survive? Or the castles on the Rhine?" Is this a real question?
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Sometimes it's just bullshit.
Why do we collect Piranesi prints, study Boulee's drawings but hate Speer's architecture? It's the politics. Why do adore the monumental Eiffel Tower yet shiver to think that Talin's equally large Monument could of been built in Moscow? Its the Politics. I dont think it is classicism vrs abstract moderism.
quondam, how do you use the words sinister and ominous to frame your analysis of Speer's architecture?
sinister would suggest that you see something architecturally, presently and perpetually inherent signifying it as such.
ominous would suggest that you see a premonitory siginification of bad things to happen.
but don't you think that it is very difficult for us now to accurately assess something that happened from the position of something that will happen? how can you attach indications of a future to something that already happened? do you mean the architecture was (should have been?) ominous before the 2nd world war/ 'holocaust'/etc?
i wonder if they're building sinister and ominous architecture in Hungary now
personally, i agree with using the word elegant when referencing albert speer's architecture. you can see very refined proportions. quite beautiful actually. very stagelike, nothing is just there to be there; it is there to be seen, to build up its own world. he builds up an immensely powerful rythm like no one else. actually, loius kahn's architecture reminds me of albert speer's. the scale, the repetition of elements, the staging, the world it builds up exclusively from itself...if that is fascistic, then the Salk institute plaza is one of the most fascistic spaces ever. mute architectural objects, grandiose open space/stage, all consuming horizontality...
of course not that i believe it is fascistic. but if you were to use that word, then...
rather more in the vein of the philosophical term 'clearing'. like an architectural moses parting the red sea of everyday life to leave behind a minimal but grandiose space of human idealism. its not neo-classical per se then, its proto classical.
quondam, so that i know i understand you can you please describe or define what you mean by this lack of delight or actually where do you locate this lack. you are using delight in a specific manner...after all, you're not saying speer's architecture is not architecture owing to the lack of delight, are you? would you imagine Vitruvius having such a subjective interpretation of venustas? i would imagine quite the opposite as his concern there is with ideal proportionality. and speer's architecture is elegant because of his use (or even abuse if we talk about extremism) of proportions ...therefore beautiful therefore subject to venustas.
here is an idea: do you think it is precisely because it is an extreme case of venustas, of extreme aestheticization, that one senses something anomalous and sinister? which goes back to this idea of building up one's own ideal 'superior' world that has no place for anything that is not conceived as being part of this world. the lack might not in the venustas, therefore...?
I'm sure glad Speer's work was appropriatly ominous. Imagine if he had done some false medieval work a la disney or worse or if he had gotten into a slick modernist groove. How incongruous would that have been!
When a caveman raises a club, he's already lost.
Krier does that for a living.
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