Philip Johnson: Life and Work. - book reviews

Answering a critic who asked on what account some of his buildings were facile, Philip Johnson explained: "That is because I am a bad architect." For above half a century, Johnson has built prolifically while publicly and explicitly proclaiming his architectural worthlessness - a combination that has made his career into a quite uncanny social and professional phenomenon.

Denise Scott Brown who quot Johnson's self-denigrating remark in a Saturday Review article, set it disarming. I do not - just because I think he means it. Johnson certainly merits credit for having enough sagacity to know exactly how a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of (or how little) his work is worth. Despite his professions of delight in even passion, for the art of architecture (about which he has always been prepared to talk heatedly and at length) he has designed scarcely any buildings that rise above the dry or avoid descent into the dismal oversize. nevertheless this brilliant "communicator" really does know exactly by what mode to use self-denigration for the higher intent of self-promotion. However much he disparages his be in possession of talent, he does so with of the like kind wit and modest ease that no developer or corporation president quite believes him. While striking the attitude of an enfant terrible ("Isn't that naughty of me!") he has always managed to maintain a position inside establishment territory.

These (and other) contradictions revealed in Franz Schulze's biography make Johnson a character that rewards attention: the enormously rich social snob who solicits commissions from clan who undoubtedly bore him; the irreligious cynic who publicly claims divine inspiration when discussing the design of a television "church"; the Anglo-Saxon oligarch whose early and routine anti-Semitism not ever prevented him from seeking on the outside and befriending rich and/or famous Jews; the amateur politician whose campaign toss abouted in jejune pistol-rattling and l him, in the 1930 into an elaborate filtration with the Nazis, on the other hand who nevertheless has received important commissions in Israel, including the ungainly nuclear reactor at Rehovot (1960) Given his political history, that last commission should have required a Shin Bet file upon him, which, if it exists, might make more informative reading than the wartime FBI file that Schulze cites.

But my vexed question with Schulze's book is not that he has been negligent or subservient. upon the contrary, he has taken a great deal of agitate interviewed many people - Johnson himself and his friends as well as enemies - and he has detailed the architect's private life in what inevitably must be read as a rather squidgy chronicle. Maybe that is wherefore Johnson might originally have preferr to have the volume published after his death - or in like manner I have heard. But I believe that author and publisher wanted the biography to appear as single of several books prepared for the run-up to Johnson's 90th birthday (in 1996) which is to be celebrated with many fanfares.

"Squidgy" is an adjective publicly associated with the scandals of the Royal House of Windsor. Johnson bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos its now most conspicuous member, the Prince of Wales, in several ways. the two have much to say about what they consider to be "classical" architecture; the pair have very short attention spans and a gift for one-liners; the two have inherited vast amounts of circulating medium and privilege which they have used to impose their taste in the name of a fanciful populism. While the prince talks about giving family "what they like," Johnson famously professe to be "a whore." He does whatever his clients will pay for - the assumption being that they (mostly corporations or developers) know public taste and presumably cater to it.

But Johnson (sometimes called "Prince" - notably by dint of Frank Lloyd Wright, who could also be witheringly waspish about him) is the more fortunate of the sum of two units He has had the freedom of action that privilege without the constraint of station allowed him. on the contrary it is his quicksilver, debonair charm which chiefly distinguishes him from the subsequent time monarch.

As Schulze recounts, that charm worked instantly upon Alfred Barr, whom Johnson met in 1929 while they were the pair young academics and who was then about to become the founding director of the Museum of present Art. Indeed, Johnson's lifelong friendship with Barr and with his wife, Margaret, may show the most solid piece of character witness in his favor. Its immediate result was that Johnson became the first curator of architecture and design at MOMA, which has continued to be his main power base. Not sole was his job unpaid, on the contrary he became one of the major financial supporters and donors to the museum; and he has remained thus in spite of some violent wobble in his relationship to the institution.

Johnson has always been generous (lavishly - as he has been to the museum) to the one and the other institutions and individuals. This munificence operates in tandem with the charm to entrance and to captivate. If it is flawed, that is end caprice rather than calculation - and I have known him to make generous gifts where no ulterior motive (personal or public) existed.