{"id":48352,"date":"2019-05-15T03:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T07:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=48352"},"modified":"2023-06-14T10:49:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T14:49:46","slug":"modern-architecture-as-a-generations-long-art-crime-spree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/05\/15\/modern-architecture-as-a-generations-long-art-crime-spree\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern architecture as a generations-long art crime spree"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/article\/2019\/06\/crimes-in-concrete\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Theodore Dalrymple<\/a> is clearly quite a fan of <em>Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism<\/em> by James Stevens Curl, as this is at least the third review of the book I&#8217;ve seen by him (and you can probably tell I agree with much of his viewpoint that I&#8217;m blogging it yet again&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Making-Dystopia-cover-James-Stevens-Curl.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Making-Dystopia-cover-James-Stevens-Curl.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"453\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-46964\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Making-Dystopia-cover-James-Stevens-Curl.jpg 300w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Making-Dystopia-cover-James-Stevens-Curl-99x150.jpg 99w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prospectmagazine.co.uk\/magazine\/the-duel-has-modern-architecture-ruined-britain\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">debate<\/a> in <em>Prospect<\/em> magazine on the question of whether modern architecture has ruined British towns and cities, Professor James Stevens Curl, one of Britain\u2019s most \u00addistinguished architectural historians, wrote as his opening salvo:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Visitors to these islands who have eyes to see will observe that there is hardly a town or city that has not had its streets \u2014 and skyline \u2014 wrecked by insensitive, crude, post-1945 additions which ignore established geometries, \u00adurban grain, scale, materials, and \u00ademphases. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is so self-evidently true that I find it hard to understand how anyone could deny it, but modern architects and hangers-on such as architectural journalists do deny it, like war criminals who, for \u00adobvious reasons, continue to deny their crimes in the face of overwhelming evidence. <\/p>\n<p>This is true not only of Britain but of many, perhaps most, other countries that have or had any towns or cities to ruin. Anyone who rides into the center of Paris from Charles de Gaulle Airport, for example, will be appalled at the modernist visual hell that scours his eyes as he goes. <\/p>\n<p>Nor is this visual hell the consequence of the need to build cheaply. Where money is no object, contemporary architects, like the sleep of reason in Goya\u2019s etching, bring forth monsters. The Tour Montparnasse (said to be the most hated building in Paris), the Centre Pompidou, the Op\u00e9ra Bastille, the Mus\u00e9e du quai Branly, the new Philharmonie, do not owe their preternatural ugliness to lack of funds, but rather to the incapacity, one might say the ferocious unwillingness, of architects to build anything beautiful, and to their determination to leave their mark on the city as a dog leaves its mark on a tree. <\/p>\n<p>Professor Curl\u2019s magnum opus is both scholarly and polemical. He has been observing the onward march of modernism and its effects for sixty years and is justifiably outraged by it. British architects have managed to reverse the terms of the anarchist Bakunin\u2019s dictum that the urge to destroy is also a creative urge: Their urge to create is also a destructive urge. I could give many concrete examples (no pun intended).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_45332\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Philharmonie-de-Paris-Wikimedia-Commons.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-45332\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Philharmonie-de-Paris-Wikimedia-Commons.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"472\" class=\"size-full wp-image-45332\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Philharmonie-de-Paris-Wikimedia-Commons.jpg 800w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Philharmonie-de-Paris-Wikimedia-Commons-150x89.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Philharmonie-de-Paris-Wikimedia-Commons-480x283.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Philharmonie-de-Paris-Wikimedia-Commons-768x453.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-45332\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Philharmonie<\/em> at the <em>Parc de la Villette<\/em>, Paris.<br \/>Photo by Zairon via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>Curl knows that he is arguing not against an aesthetic, but against an ironclad ideology. The architectural Leninists have been determined so to indoctrinate the public that they hope and expect a generation will grow up knowing nothing but modernism, and therefore will be unable to judge it. (All judgment is comparative, as Doctor Johnson said.) In Paris recently, I saw an advertisement on the <em>M\u00e9tro<\/em> (a few days before the fire in <em>Notre-Dame<\/em>) to the effect that Paris would not be Paris without the <em>Centre Pompidou<\/em> \u2014 which, of course, has a good claim to be the ugliest building in the world. In the face of such an advertisement promoted by the cultural elite, what ordinary person would dare demur? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_48365\" style=\"width: 863px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Centre-Pompidou-Paris-2017-Wikimedia-Commons.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-48365\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Centre-Pompidou-Paris-2017-Wikimedia-Commons-853x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"853\" height=\"450\" class=\"size-large wp-image-48365\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Centre-Pompidou-Paris-2017-Wikimedia-Commons-853x450.jpg 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Centre-Pompidou-Paris-2017-Wikimedia-Commons-150x79.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Centre-Pompidou-Paris-2017-Wikimedia-Commons-480x254.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Centre-Pompidou-Paris-2017-Wikimedia-Commons-768x406.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Centre-Pompidou-Paris-2017-Wikimedia-Commons.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-48365\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Centre Georges-Pompidou<\/em> (no, this isn&#8217;t an under construction image &#8230; it&#8217;s from 2017 and the construction was technically complete in 1977)<br \/>Gerd Eichmann photo via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>Could anyone imagine a worldwide outpouring of genuine and heartfelt grief, such as that which greeted the burning of <em>Notre-Dame de Paris<\/em>, if any building of the last seventy years burnt down? Indeed, the destruction of many would be a cause almost for rejoicing. Modernist buildings will never age as <em>Notre-Dame<\/em> aged; they will merely deteriorate, and usually do deteriorate even before completion. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Theodore Dalrymple is clearly quite a fan of Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism by James Stevens Curl, as this is at least the third review of the book I&#8217;ve seen by him (and you can probably tell I agree with much of his viewpoint that I&#8217;m blogging it yet again&#8230;) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[356,4,62,1117,7],"tags":[1408,86,140,156,1515,1289],"class_list":["post-48352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-britain","category-europe","category-france","category-history","tag-brutalism","tag-criticism","tag-design","tag-fail","tag-modernism","tag-theodoredalrymple"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-czS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48352"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48366,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48352\/revisions\/48366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}