Posted on 02/01/2005 7:33:28 AM PST by Pharmboy
THE death last week of Philip Johnson, the nonagenarian enfant terrible, brought 20th-century architecture to a symbolic close. Even Mr. Johnson's friends sometimes doubted that he was an architect of the first rank, but friend and foe alike agreed that he was an emblematic figure of his time.
But emblematic of what? In death, his role in American culture will come into sharper focus, and it's a darker picture than many have thought.
Traditionally, Mr. Johnson is presented as the great champion of modern architecture - organizer of the landmark 1932 Museum of Modern Art show on the International Style, and architect of the Glass House on his Connecticut estate, which quickly came to symbolize American modernism. He is equally celebrated for abandoning classical modernism in the late 50's and adopting in the decades that followed a succession of styles that mirrored the changing taste of the time.
It hardly mattered that many of his skyscrapers were corporate schmaltz; he was an enlivening, generous figure, a man who charmingly described himself as a "whore" as he picked the corporate pocket. Always ready to challenge the earnest, Mr. Johnson, who understood Warhol as well as Mies, became both an icon and an iconoclast.
Only one aspect marred this picture: His embrace of fascism during the 1930's, which was mentioned only in passing in most obituaries. He later called his ideological infatuation "stupidity" and apologized whenever pressed on the matter; as a form of atonement, he designed a synagogue for no fee. With a few exceptions, critics typically had little interest in the details, granting Mr. Johnson a pass for a youthful indiscretion.
Then, in 1994, Franz Schulze's biography presented this period of Mr. Johnson's life in some depth. Mr. Schulze's account was as sympathetic as possible - and many reviews of the book still played down the importance of Mr. Johnson's politics - but it was clear that views of Mr. Johnson's import for American culture would change significantly.
Philip Johnson did not just flirt with fascism. He spent several years in his late 20's and early 30's - years when an artist's imagination usually begins to jell - consumed by fascist ideology. He tried to start a fascist party in the United States. He worked for Huey Long and Father Coughlin, writing essays on their behalf. He tried to buy the magazine American Mercury, then complained in a letter, "The Jews bought the magazine and are ruining it, naturally." He traveled several times to Germany. He thrilled to the Nuremberg rally of 1938 and, after the invasion of Poland, he visited the front at the invitation of the Nazis.
He approved of what he saw. "The German green uniforms made the place look gay and happy," he wrote in a letter. "There were not many Jews to be seen. We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed. It was a stirring spectacle." As late as 1940, Mr. Johnson was defending Hitler to the American public. It seems that only an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation - and, presumably, the prospect of being labeled a traitor if America entered the war - led him to withdraw completely from politics.
Today, any debate over an important figure with a fascist or Communist background easily becomes an occasion for blame games between right and left. Mr. Johnson is no exception. Morally serious people can have different views of his personal culpability.
But what's essential is to let the shadow fall - to acknowledge that fascism touched something important in his sensibility. Throughout his life, he was an ardent admirer of Nietzsche. His understanding of the great philosopher was surely deeper than that of the Nazis, but he was overly enchanted by the idea of "a superior being," "the will to power" and Nietzsche's view of art. And he loved the monumental.
In an interview published in 1973, long after he renounced fascism, Mr. Johnson said: "The only thing I really regret about dictatorships isn't the dictatorship, because I recognize that in Julius's time and in Justinian's time and Caesar's time they had to have dictators. I mean I'm not interested in politics at all. I don't see any sense to it. About Hitler - if he'd only been a good architect!" In discussing Rome, he contrasted the poor artistic achievements of the democratically elected Republic with those of earlier regimes. "So let's not be so fancy-pants about who runs the country," he concluded. "Let's talk about whether it's good or not."
Mr. Johnson's observation was refreshingly hard-nosed about art's relation to politics: good politics is not now and never will be a prerequisite for good art. But his emphasis on the aesthetic as the only important value in art was remarkably cold-blooded. His main regret seems to be that contemporary republics have failed to create monuments that ravish the senses.
He never became a fascist architect. But he was probably one of those artists - among them many Communists - whose philosophical sensibilities were gutted by the experience of the 30's and World War II. Afterward, he lived more than ever for the stylish surface, appearing uncomfortable with large-minded ideas even when his buildings reached for the sky.
Perhaps as a consequence, his imagination developed no particular center. Nothing was intractable or non-negotiable. He was remarkably free. He could toy, sometimes beautifully, with history. He liked a splash. He was a playful cynic, cultivating success even as he winked at its vulgarity. If someone should complain, well, the problem lay not in the artist but in the fallen world.
Philip Johnson now seems like an emblematic figure partly because he appears to have been happily, marvelously, provocatively, disturbingly hollow. It is an underlying fear of Western culture, one that has lasted since World War II, that there is no larger or ennobling content to mine. Mr. Johnson's main flaws as an artist - his tastes for razzle-dazzle and overweening scale - are equally the weaknesses of American secular culture. His main strengths - his openness to change, playfulness and urbane rejection of the Miss Grundys of the world - are equally it strengths.
The beautiful Glass House will remain Mr. Johnson's signature work. It is the transparent heart of a collection of eclectic buildings in New Canaan, Conn. It's a dream house, a stylish stage set. It floats upon the land, eliding boundaries between inside and outside. It seems full of emptiness. It's not really a place to live, but was still Mr. Johnson's essential home. That uneasy stylishness deserves emphasis. Philip Johnson lived in a glass house. He threw stones, too.
Mark Stevens is the art critic of New York magazine and the co-author of "De Kooning: An American Master."
BTT for later.
Was this guy a friend of Joe Kennedy's?
To his credit, he renounced his fascist beliefs, unlike the communists from the same era (Whitaker Chambers is the exception).
Good question...he likely knew him and Lindbergh also.
People who live in Glass Houses....
If the politics are bad enough, no one should care about the art.
I wonder if the NYT bothered to note Sontag's soft spot for Stalin in her obit.
True, but he sure took it real serious and spent a lot of time with them. And I detest Lillian Hellman also...(perhaps more, actually).
LOL!
"Don't be stupid, be a smahty. Come and join the Nazi Pahty."
Philip Johnson was a fine architect, although he had some personal "issues."
Hey...they also had great uniforms.
A little full of ourselves, aren't we?
"Paging Mr. Howard Roark -- Mr. Roark, please pick up the white phone...."
I don't get very excited about frescoes. Massive piles of corpses disturb me, though. Works of art are inconsequential next to mass homicide. Art lasts for centuries, and totalitarianism's victims have no names, which is, I think, why people have the sort of reaction you do. But the world will remember the totality of the totalitarianisms of the 20th century for every bit as long as they will remember the artistic output of the Renaissance, and the glee with which some artists facilitated the former is far more important than their artistic production. Those absolutist politics are what I had in mind, and thus your Michelangelo analogy is IMHO misplaced.
The enthusiasm of intellectuals of all types, including artists, for mass-produced wickedness is every bit as important as the enthusiam of businessmen or politicians for same. I just can't get excited about the work of artists who labored to strengthen a Hitler, or a Stalin, or a Mao, or whatever, any more than I can get excited about German firms who ran slave-labor camps even while they were making a lot of high-quality products for very reasonable prices. If this description is accurate (and I didn't know much about him), Philip Johnson is of a piece with Paul De Man IMHO - perhaps a genius, but fatally tainted.
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