Philip Johnson was a terrible, hateful human being. And he wasn't just some casual Nazi sympathizer whispering, "maybe Hitler has some good ideas" in shadowy bars, either. He actively campaigned for Nazi causes in the U.S. and around the world.
Johnson visited Germany in the 1930s at the invitation of the government's Propaganda Ministry. He wrote numerous articles for far right publications. He started a fascist organization called the Gray Shirts in the United States...
— paleofuture.gizmodo.com
40 Comments
Oh yeah, p.j. was so horrible and hateful right until the end. I mean, just look at what he did to frank gehry, Jeff kipnis, and other Jews working in the architectural field! Disgraceful!!!
he said he was 'unbelievably stupid' supporting nazis in the 30's but did he ever apologize? No because he was terrible and filled with hate!
please write more stories telling the Truth like this k thks bye
http://www.mefeedia.com/tv/13678466
bush's family financially backed hitler as did many american bankers and industrialists, who benefited greatly and who never apologized. and many of them happened to be jewish. i'm sure their very rich grand kids mustered a few tears during Schindler's List. i wonder which is more evil, a stupid belief that is its human capital or the complete lack of belief (so-called materialist pragmatism) that is its financial capital.
aside, had hitler won, and had there not been this culture of theologizing the holocaust (and the world has know many holocausts - i have yet to see musuems and centers dedicated to the holocausts committed against africans and native peoples in the new world in every city in the new world...which apparently prefers to be oblivious of its own holocausts and, instead, is held captive by the abuse of one particular holocaust that happened elsewhere), i wonder how many of you here would be regurgitating typical antisemitism unabashedly. Just as many of you still do apropos the native people of the americas. French canadians included!
One of the great farces of the western world's (principally the US and lackeys) conception of human rights is its cynical utility as a political tool in forging and manipulating its population's mindset.Indeed, what the clear cut definition of genocide apropos human rights leaves out is that it needs to be adopted by the hegemonic power as a genocide in order to be a genocide. Ask the poor armenians. Heck, ask the turks. On the other hand, US politicians seems so eager to pronounce anything Syrian as a genocide without going into detail about how they, congress and all, support Al Qaeda loonie bins in Syria who have a penchant for eating raw human organs and a decapitation hobby.
By comparison, a transparent hater is refreshingly traditional and bizarrely innocent in this day and age. In this case, pursuant to that article, I say kudos to P Johnson for allowing us to define him as a transparent, honest racist.
you seem to exclude, or forgive, the egyptians, spanish, portugese, italians, british, dutch, belgians, french, russians, chinese, or australians - well, at least the aussies apologized for their shit...or is america responsible for their indiscretions too? as an american, i don't take offense, i readily accept the shame that comes with our hypocrisy, but americans, are responsible for a portion of world history, not all of world history; unless of course, you take into account, americans are responsible in the abstract, given we're made up of all those other indigenous population destroyers, and exporters of worldwide aggression. it's okay though, you can take comfort in the simple fact that americans don't give two shits what you think, i know, i checked.
firstly, you will note i said the new world, that covers more than you lot (and indeed covers the spanish, the portuguese, the french, the anglosaxonic and so on).
secondly, telling me you belong to a sordid group of histories does not alleviate your having a sordid history your country is responsible for. you are relevant here, not others. your country and your people have this current hobby of talking human rights all the time...lets see your grand record.
thirdly, there is a context here in the topic and my point is made within the context (do not attack me for your ineptitude in reading my post against the topic).
fourthly, i view the US as a unique and cumulative ongoing experiment in colonization. therefore, it is not merely that I see the US as having a colonial past...but rather that it also has a colonial present, it even colonizes x-colonizers (the US European lackies). As long as this is the case, the US...seeing itself as the supreme arbiter of human rights...and yet acting nothing less than an immoral empire , is a supreme and unprecedented instance of hypocrisy. Yes, there have always been colonial empires but never one that is so immoral by its own standards.
fifthly, defending your very recent and continuing history of repressing, killing and oppressing others (whether in the US or in yemen) by citing debaucheries by others is pathetic and further renders your national psyche sociopathic.
finally, actually, you do care. you have quite the number of think tanks dedicated to studying why anti-americanism is rife around the world. gosh, like it needs think tanks.
another american idiocy, you create problems, then you set up think tanks to solve it. or maybe thats a very clever (encore, sociopathic) thing to do...after all, think tanks are profitable and a good front to have.
you chaps are obviously missing whats so fascinating about this whole thing:
TMZ has a design page! OMG!
^now that, is worth digging in to, the pablum above your comment, not so much.
yeah, american think tanks = oxymoron.
even more than idiotic than american think tanks, foreigners talking shit, without recognizing their complicity.
I am disappointed in the low traffic of such a post by archinect. I did expect Tammuz to show up here though, racism attracts those filled with hate. Tammuz, I was wondering, was the Church of Nativity built on top of your temple or did your culture invade the groves of the Church of Nativity? Which version do you believe? (This is a real question with a massive social analogy, I am sure you can handle it intellectually.)
tammuz, kudos to you for being equally transparent...
"aside, had hitler won, and had there not been this culture of theologizing the holocaust, I wonder how many of you here would be regurgitating typical antisemitism unabashedly."
Had Hitler won, there wouldn't be any Jews, or for that matter any of the people Hitler considered sub-human, so I'm not sure how people would be saying anti-semetic things when there would be no more jews. Again, thanks for clarifying your thinking, but enough about you,
Philip Johnson was a dilettante who loved attention. After the war, a lot of modenrism's ideological appeal was that it was banished by Hitler so by extension must be good, yet it's biggest proponent before the war (in the US) was a Nazi. Who knows?
But of course someone will stoop low enough to play the antisemitic card irrespective of what I think of all these religions that in my opinion are all the same. Im saying had hitler won antisemitism might well be the thing nowadays. Which is a way of saying that Im not convinced that concern for human rights - without being backed by human might that favours one tragedy over the other- is not the concern of the core of your empire...one whose greatness is built on its own genocides against native americans and others. Read my post as I wrote it; twisting it exposes how filthy you are willing to be. Nothing else.
tammuz, no offense, but I thought the way you went from 'what if hitler won' to there would be no 'theologizing the holocaust' was a tad strange, as if remembering (or over remembering if you prefer) the holocaust were that much of a pain in the ass. If you don't want to walk into a holocaust museum, don't, but if Hitler won, evil would have won, and no amount of demonizing America can compare to that outcome.
What you don't seem to understand is that we are all humans, and therefore all capable of evil as you rightly point out. And your constant bashing of America's government has some justification as many have noted, but it's when you veer into bashing American people, who happen to be a gumbo of the world's left overs, that's when it starts to stink. BTW, what's your favorite Philip Johnson building?
weren't homosexuals considered to be undesirables by the nazis?
The TMZ link was much more interesting than this thread. I even forgot how I got there.
This thread takes a weird turn away from digging into whether or not it's worth discussing Johnson's association with the Nazis.
Or maybe touching on other modernists and the Nazis, like Mies!
http://www.amazon.com/Architects-Fortune-Mies-Third-Reich/dp/0880641215
I'd be down to argue about why we have holocaust museums in every US city but don't care about how the US treated Native Americans - but it's not the point of this post.
His buildings suck ass anyways, who cares about that hateful prissy prick anymore?
The only reason we're talking about Johnson is he was a well connected rich kid. Historically, that could have described many an architect, but in this case, it's doubly deserved. I agree with sameolddoctor, his work sucks and his constant jumping around ideologically shows how deep his convictions lay. (allthough I'm suspect of anyone who harbored sympathies with Hitler, at any level, at any time) Like Prince Edward VIII, Philip J was a Johnson.
I don't think we have enough land on earth to build a museum for every atrocity.
Quondam,
I think your right. He was born into privelage, which I assumed gave him the connections to be influential, but seems his relationship with Alfred Barr, who had just been appointed as the head of the Museum of Modern Art gave him his position of authority.. My only point was that he wasn't very talanted, and like George Bush, he would have been a nobody had it not been for his connections.
Here's an interesting history on Johnson. One tid bit that caught my eye, apropos of how he managed being modernism's champion before becoming enamored with the Nazis...
'Even the Bauhaus, which Johnson had acclaimed four years earlier as a new architectural ideal, he now condemned for bearing “irretrievably the stamp of Communism and Marxism.”'
As for what wealth and privelage can do for a young architect...
"On his return to Harvard, Johnson, at age thirty-three, was no ordinary student. He was older, richer, and more knowledgeable than other students. Moreover, in the decade since he had received his undergraduate degree, the university—or its Graduate School of Design, anyway—had abandoned its traditional curriculum to embrace the modernism which Johnson had championed in the early 1930′s. The book which Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock had published in 1932, The International Style, was now a required text. This gave him an immense advantage, to say the least. And so did his wealth, which enabled him to design and build for himself a Miesian house in Cambridge while he was still enrolled as a student. "
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/philip-johnsons-brilliant-career/
Must have been a slow news day or something. Henry Ford actively aided Nazis and so did Walt Disney, and so did Johnson. In the profession of architecture which is one that for the most part caters to wealthy elites and even in this "modern age" of equality is 99.9% white male its just not as uncommon as we would all like to believe.
How is this news? Joan Ockman has written about this extensively.
Quondam I would still like to believe Johnson's talent for curating Architecture as you describe it further pushed an already more or less socially separated profession into artistic and theoretical oblivion, one requiring the learning of Las Vegas and post modernism. The latter 2, too late to reconcile the clear disconnect best described through architects like tschumi, lebbeus, and koolhaas in texts and buildings. Lets imagine architecture in this country without a wealthy Johnson, one who could endow his position at MoMa. Who would of took his place?
He basically wrote the history then? Nothing like disconnecting through deconstruction.
Haaaaaaaaa!
I meant reconnecting by deconstruction, the inverse actually, damn cell phones. I'm connecting Tschumi to Lefebvre and the obvious disconnect between drawings and architecture. Connecting Lebbeus Woods to politics and social action in architecture. Connecting Koolhaas to the observation of architecture as a delirious game played by a market outside the architect.
In short - architecture as a livable social market driven experience, not something that ends up in museums on exhibit in CT back yards. A profession driven by anything but Architecture for the sake of Architecture. Sure the game is fun as an art, but sooner or later practical integration is a necessity of survival. Not a rich kids hobby.
Curating architects like he curated exhibits. It was clearly a game he could sponsor himself to be a key player in. If you curate architects you curate architecture that eventually takes a key place in the history in the design of a city and ultimately the writing of social history.
I'd be more interested in his IRS records and charitable contributions than the FBI files, or his recommendations of architects to clients - golf game networking.
All I'm asking, is how much bullshit outlived its shelf life thanks to Johnson?
One (hu)man's bull shit is another architect's fertile fertilizer from which the beautiful flowers of today spring forth!
i think he was just interested in engaging you on a different topic?
OBO "architecture as a livable social market driven experience"?
eh? well, a generic mall might suffice for that.
what kind of social, what quality and degree, does the architecture bear or bare any associations that correlate to this social? again what social do you have in mind? can it only be realized by the architecture (and what would that be like, its parameters?) that you mentally associate to that social? if not, why can't it be realized by way of any of those other architects even if also on the side they offer up an aspect of 'architecture for architecture'...its not necessary that its an either/or scenario.
i ask these questions because I suspect you might well have as mythical a basis as any of those 'architecture for the sake of architecture' architect. you generalize and simplify without saying anything. Koolhaas provides very interesting social spaces. Even libeskind does...and here, I wish to go against the usual tradition of bashing libeskind after seeing his musuem in toronto (but only from the outside)...i love how his building provides a sort of porch by virtue of its form, its actually the only building to provide such a space for a long stretch of that street (i think its Bloor street). I dislike the connection to the neighbouring heritage buildings...soulless and casual detailing and conception...but well, we can precise whats good and whats bad. In any case, its not true that these architects, and others, are not able to afford a functioning social space and their ideas to boot. Oh, and speaking of tschumi, i really enjoyed his athens musuem. detailing wise, i remember having a feeling of not liking somethings (spray-on fireproofing perhaps, i can't remember, been a long time now)..but the space, the flow, the visual permeability, its sleek eccentric modernism within the context of an eccentric stony archaism...it left me with a good feeling.
Its quite surprising what an actual visit to a building will tell you.
As for johnson, i think he occupied/ied a strange role. he reminds me of strong architects working for one of those companies like HOK or RMJM. They work with tried and tested trickled-down concepts, forms and so on. Like highstreet fashion in relation to haute coutoure. But what is interesting is that Johnson posits himself (or is de facto thus posited) as a sort of an auteur, an iconic architect. Perhaps we can construe from this that Johnson occupies an iconic role that opens up the surmised paradigm to the commercialized syntagmatic of HOK, RMJM and the like. In which case, it would be a completely opposite view from that taken by OBO above. Johnson was a bridge, commercial, cultural, functional, to the dissemination and popularization of architectural ideas within the profession and not as a removed guardian of a solipsistic museum/exhibition of architectural ideas.
so, when Johnson is called a "whore", it is not just because he sleeps with any architectural style for some kind of payback (be it intellectual, reputational, whateveral), but also because in a way he could well have functioned as a vital hinge in commercializing and popularizing elite architecture (as understood within the american context). he whored architecture out, not just in.
Is it possible to make great things (just for arguments sake lets assume he did great things) for bad reasons? I would probably say only in hindsight. We can appreciate the greatness of the coliseum for instance, but had we been there watching tigers tear slaves to sheds...it seems like any horror can be forgiven in due time and even celebrated as heritage/history. So say Johnson were to build for Hitler as he said "he would have been tempted to." Would his buildings be automatically bad even if they were formally good? Eventually, say in 500 years, would they then be considered good? To me it seems that formalism is the last judgement for all architecture. There is a small window of time where we judge architecture based upon the character, intent, and moral compass of the architect and patron but eventually if a building can last long enough all its sins are forgiven. All buildings go to heaven. Thinking out loud.
"Curating architects like he curated exhibits. It was clearly a game he could sponsor himself to be a key player in. If you curate architects you curate architecture that eventually takes a key place in the history in the design of a city and ultimately the writing of social history."
I love the way you put this OBO. I don't know if this phenomenon can be charted with any scientific clarity, but it reminds me of George Orwell's saying... "those who control the past, control the future". In retrospect, it's easy to see why a middling intellect like Johnson could be so easily swept up in the Nazi ideology while threatening his power base at the Moma and equally easy to see how he patched up that episode a couple of years later. This guy was a survivor.
Quondom I asked as I figured if anyone could understand the game johnson played so well you would.......................if I had the time I would thoroughly dismantle the propogating self destructing myths of johnsons and eisenmans architectures (paper and real)..................jla-x brings up a good point and as Thayer-d may be suggesting by qouting George Orwell, I know this qoute from the band Rage Against the Machine haha, Johnson has written not his role but the role of architecture during his lifetime, which as tammuz is suggesting was a major conduit for the communication of elite Architecture to society. ..........in a field where selling out to anything besides practically religious doctrines that tend to be anti reality or the society that is of course johnson came across as whore; more of a high class escort really, a pluralist, a man with a shifting moral compass, but he was s pimp as well. Before the internet it was much harder to be heard and to control the media of ideas........lastly to bring my key argument which addresses tammuz point about experiencing architecture. I say its all architecture, even the crap stripping mall. Only disney world and vegas crap has impressed. Note bucky fullers dome ended up in epcot disney world. The fake is done amazingly well......tschumis Athens building made me laugh in a good way from atop the hill, a small twist of the upper box in contrast to the urban plan around it. But the tree at the end of the stair in parc la villette (paris) that was hilarious and I am certain it made the average joe notice architecture. Libeskinds berlin Jewish museum still to this day is the only building where I think the architects habit of making a museum that does not function as a museum was right, the museum was a much more intense experience empty than filled with regard to its theme. All of OMA buildings from Holland to France to Berlin I have scene have been poorly detailed but the more I understand koolhaas the more I think its mockery of capital driven projects. Against my own point I offer richard meier, although as mentioned in one of those selling new york shows- the meier factor is now a commercial term decelopers xan use, every meier project has been an intense experience that actually related directly to theory. The getty was an overdose and moved on.........johnsons now sony center I think is no differenct than the commercial architecture of the time, what was he saying then?.....written on cell phone and enter doesnt translate hence......
Afterthought: very few architects are afforded the opportunity to make architecture that talks about architecture, this is what the idealogical camp Architecture with a capital A tend to call Architecture. I would suggest Johnson achieved this opportunity mainly through financial means or in Contemporary terms - "capital" making him a commercial architect or Art as commerce. Unintentionally or was ge taking notes on Salvador Dali?
I see him as more of a nihilist. He was influenced early on by nietzsche so it makes sense. Are all nihilists whores?
...sigh
As Nietzsche described nihilism as a disease of the modern era and exposed its prevalence in western society, I could see how some readers would look within and identify their own void then look outward for a fix in an almost desperate way. As a blank slate there is not much to judge morality upon making one susceptible to really evil ideals.
What I'm getting at is that.... Like many architects past and present he was a sort of shape shifter...a chameleon. Since architecture is abstract and since we are human we feel the need to apply meaning and to post rationalize the true deep desire of most architects- to achieve historical and artistic significance and to live on into the future. Since architectures lasting significance is embodied in its formal manifestation, architects are often faced with a dillema to justify present actions to accomplish the formal manifestations that live on into the future. Most architects IMO design for the future. They design for the history books. We don't judge architecture of the past based upon its justness at its time of conception. We judge past architecture by its existence only and it's ability to persist through time. I would say that many architects see the present as nothing more than a stepping stone to the future. We never hear anyone say "fuck that temple and its architect...you know how many Aztecs lost their heads on that alter." I would say that post rationalization and architectural isms are mostly used to justify the narcissistic desire to achieve immortality through architecture. IMO most star architects are designing for your great great great grandchildrens acknowledgement.
In addition to the linguistic inconsistency of the work of Johnson's regrettably long and profligate career, there are, I think at least two aspects one can pretty consistently discern from building to building; a proportional sensibility almost willfully inelegant and visually displeasing, and a seemingly utter lack of concern for the detail.
I find most of his work elegant and visually pleasing. Your argument is thus nul.
Ok but he was a Nazi.
Non has his beer goggles on.
always, the world is nicer that way.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.