Yale University, School of Architecture

Fame as the Avatar of History Author(s): Peter Eisenman Reviewed work(s): Source: Perspecta, Vol. 37, Famous (2005), pp. 164-171 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Perspecta. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40482252 . Accessed: 28/08/2012 17:10

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http://www.jstor.org ASTHE AVATAR OFHISTORY

Peter Eisenmail Lithographicillustrations to Goethe'sFaust by Eugène Delacroix, 1828

"NEITHER MALLARMÉ NOR CÉZANNE MAKES US DREAM OF THE ARTIST AS AN INDIVIDUAL MORE IMPORTANT OR MORE VISIBLE THAN OTHERS. THEY DO NOT LOOK FOR FAME, THAT BURNING AND SHINING VOID, WITH WHICH AN ARTIST'S HEAD HAD ALWAYS, SINCE THE RENAISSANCE, WISHED TO WREATHE ITSELF. THEY ARE BOTH MODEST, TURNED NOT TOWARD THEM- SELVES BUT TOWARD AN OBSCURE QUEST, TOWARD AN ESSENTIAL CONCERN WHOSE IMPORTANCE IS NOT LINKED TO THE AFFIRMATION OF THEIR PER- SONS OR TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF MODERN MAN, BUT IS INCOMPREHEN- SIBLE TO ALMOST EVERYONE, AND YET THEY CLING TO IT WITH A STUB- BORNNESS AND A METHODICAL FORCE OF WHICH THEIR MODESTY IS ONLY THE HIDDEN EXPRESSION." - MAURICE BLANCHOT, THE BOOK TO COME Mephistopheles : I Like to meet the Chief from time to time; On pleasant terms I take good care to stay. PETEREISENMAN

partone of JohannGoethe's complex moral tale Faust, God and thedevil, Mephistopheles, have an argumentover whetherGod will allow the devil to seduce the moral and schol- arlyDr. Faust away from his intellectual pursuits and into "the realitiesof life." God knowsFaust to be a moralman but is not certainthat Faust knows why. Therefore, God givesthe devil theopportunity totempt Faust, believing that Faust will even- tuallysee the truepath between abstract learning and real experience.While it is somewhatironic today to see thecontrast betweenabstraction and realityportrayed in the nineteenth centuryas a differencebetween good and evil,the devil's argu- mentis notmerely constituted by a comingto termswith real- ity,but more specifically engages those aspects of reality, such as fameand fortune,that are consideredthe devil'sdomain. Whenthe devil first meets Faust, he tempts him with power and wealth.But Faust wants youth; he sayshe willdo anythingfor an hourof youthful pleasure. Under these conditions, he enters intoa pactwith the devil. The devil'stemptations seemingly operate dialectically, as inthe case ofyouth and old age. While one can haveboth youth and old age, theycannot occur at the same time.The other tempationscontain more nuanced relationships, like power and control,fame and fortune.Power and controlare often thoughtto be the same thing,but they are in anothersense diametricallyopposed: One can have eitherpower or control butrarely both. Forexample, it is oftensaid that Bernini was themost pow- erfularchitect who ever lived because of his relationshipwith popesPaul V, Urban VIII, andAlexander VII in Romeand with KingLouis XIV in Paris.Compared to Borromini,his contem- porary,Bernini had realpower. But Borromini had something thatBernini did nothave: control of his owndestiny, even to thepoint of taking his own life. Unlike Bernini and most other architectswho have made history, Borromini had fewcommis- sionsand built only a handfulof buildings. Yet despite his lack ofpower, his work manifested an architectureof control, of cre- atingin his buildings, among other things, the idea of a continu- ous surfacebetween the discontinuous elements of column and wall.This expressionhad littleto do withexternal power but ratherwith a conditionthat is internalto architecture.Unlike Bernini'swork, which catered - likeurban perspectivai stage sets- to a subjectivejudgment, Borromini's work concerned a disciplinaryautonomy. It is thisautonomy that makes it pos- sibletoday to teach design students Borromini, to examine his workcritically in a waythat is notpossible with Bernini. Fameand fortune are another story. Because rock stars and moviestars have shownthat it is possibleto haveboth, most peopleassume that fame and fortuneare one and the same thing.But whilefortune may bring fame, the reverseis not necessarilytrue. The questionis howto define fame; is itsome- thingfleeting - Faust'sone hourof happiness - or is it some- thingother that has nothingto do with time present? A.O. Scott,in his NewYork Times article "Marshalling His Talentto BattleHis Fame,"written just afterMarlon Brando's death,argues that "being a greatactor can makeyou a movie star,but becoming a moviestar can be the unmakingof an actor'sgreatness." Brando, he says,understood this and repeat- edlysent his talent into battle against his fame.This may also be truefor architects, for while talent may or maynot lead to PERSPECTA37: FAMOUS 166-167

fameand thewinning of many prizes and commissions,fame in architectureis todaywhat brings work. But this fame also hasother consequences. Clients will begin to push the architect to producebuildings of the same styleor look as thosewhich broughtthe architect recognition. An earlyexample of this conundrum is FrankLloyd Wright. In 1910,Wasmuth Monatshefte, a respected German journal of artand architecture, issued a specialnumber on Wright, the first lavishmonograph on hiswork. It is mycontention that Wright, dazzledby the internationalinterest and notunderstanding whatthe suddenattention was reallyabout, began after that dateto copy himself. He developeda signaturestyle that would condemnhis work, save for a fewextraordinary late projects, to be a seriesof uncritical repetitions. While the signature began as a markof authenticity, the demand for it today produces the oppositeeffect: a simulacrum of the authentic, a frenetic rush to bothmimic oneself and be newat the same time. A secondand moresinister aspect to fameis the role of mediain bothcreating and thrivingon fame.The rootof the wordfame is fama,which means "to report."Without report- ing,without media, there is littlechance of fame. The clients for architecture,who are hungry consumers of the media and have, in a way,a desireto be consumedby the media, hire star archi- tectsnot only because they have a stylebut also because certain stylesproduce recognizable imagery that will get published. In thisnever-ending chicken-and-egg cycle, the more something is published,the more recognizable it becomes, which leads to itbeing published again. But does being recognizable necessar- ilymake it goodarchitecture? The media'ssearch for fantas- ticimagery, as wellas precedentset by the "Bilbao effect," per- petuatean ever-increasingneed for the spectacular. And since themedia also demandthe continual staging of the new, the "famous"are forcedinto creating ever-more spectacular and outrageousimages - signaturesof their success - lestthey be consumedand tossed aside like yesterday's news. Giventhis context, what does it mean when a supposedlycrit- ical and culturallyrelevant journal such as Perspectachooses to devotean entireissue to thesubject of fame? Is itbecause fameis a subjectof the currently fashionable "easy"? Or is fame a newcategory of the so-called postcritical cool and thetopic ofgossip and cocktail-partychatter? Faced withthe elusive subjectof fame and confronted with the creeping presence of a theoryon the"easy," it is necessaryto stepback for a moment and ask whyfame is importantat thisprecise moment. Is it in some way part of the not-so-subtleerosion of the criti- cal? If one couldimagine a serioustreatise on fame,could it be treatedcritically? Could it be framedas somethingother thana legacyof postmodern irony? Would a centralthematic addressthe problemthat the media poses forarchitecture today?Would such a workoutline the evolution of the media and itscomplicity with cultural institutions? Would it chronicle the changesin sensibility from the so-called serious architecture of thepast - foundin world expositions, for example - totoday's pop-cultureicons fortheme parks and stage sets forenter- tainmentand gaming?In short,would it attempt to articulate thesubtle shifts in architectureculture, one where the "easy" and itscorollary, the spectacular, provide a whiffof anti-intel- lectualismin whichfame is onlya residualby-product rather thana generator? Mephistopheles: Away! Else both of you are Lost! Away! Such useless chatter! Talk, talk and delay! Myhorses are shivering and shaking! Dawn is breaking! PETEREISENMAN

Does fameallow one the freedom to work independently or, alternatively,does it obligateone to do thework necessary to maintainone's fame? Does onegain access to teaching at presti- giousacademies on the basis of one's fame? Or can a morecriti- cal questionbe posed?Is therea relationshipbetween fame and theongoing evolution of the discipline of architecture as a criti- cal instrument,and morespecifically, its history? Is famecom- plicitwith history? Albertiwrote in 1485that every artistic discipline needed a storia,a history:a baselineagainst which to recordthe move- mentof the discipline, its consciousness and progress, and also toprovide some basis for judgment. This idea of history created theconditions for the acknowledgment ofthe human subject andthus the possibility of the "famous artist." At the same time itcreated an opposingcondition, the need for such a historyto manifesta consciousness, which was then seen as criticalof the previoustranscendental metaphysic. Beforethe Renaissance, all artwas in someway believed to be mediatedthrough God the creator and was thusregarded as an absolutephenomenon. However, during the Renaissance, the ideaof history replaced art as an absoluteregister. With this his- torycame the idea of a subjectin relationshipto a work,an indi- vidualartist as a "creator,"with a name,a signature,and ulti- matelythe potential for fame. In histime, Alberti could not have been awareof this eventuality; for him, history merely meant someunderstanding of the orders, proportion, and essentially aestheticissues. Yet with De reaediftcatoria, he was thefirst to articulatethe terms for a criticalaesthetic, for essentially his bookwas a critiqueof Vitruvius's De ArchitecturaLibri Decem. AlthoughAlberti also wrote in the form of a categoricaltreatise, whichwould become de rigeurfor architecture until the twenti- ethcentury, he neverthelesswas respondingto Vitruvius's idea offirmitas. Architecture did not necessarily need to be literally structural,Alberti said, but merely had to looklike it was struc- tural.This introduced the ideas of both representation and sign to architectureas wellas theidea ofthe critical, which would become,in the Kantiansense, the possibilityof knowledge withinknowledge. Thus, the ideas ofrepresentation and the criticalwere introduced into the presence of architecture simul- taneouslywith the possibility of the "famous" artist. Fromthe fifteenthto the twentiethcentury, the central mediumin architecturewas the historyof an evolvingand immanentmetaphysics presented through various treatises. Clearly,what we knowas theconventions of this history could be discernednot only from a studyof the built artifacts but also fromwhat was writtenabout these works. For example, Palla- dio'sfamous I QuattroLibri is nota recordof his works as they werebuilt but as he intendedthem to be built.Thus, for Palla- dio,the written record was as importantas thebuilt work, both criticallyand in terms of a receivedhistory. But today, what was oncea criticalwork has becomea formof publicity. Who would havegone to see Palladio'svillas were it not for his books? Like- wise,who would have gone to see thework of Le Corbusierif it had notbeen for his publication of Vers Une Architecture orthe barrageof his OeuvreComplète books? Many other architects weredoing little white houses in pre-war France, yet they never crossthe pages of our history books. What may have begun as a treatiseis todayalso a formof media promotion. The relation- shipof architecture to the mediais notlike it was even fifty PERSPECTA37:FAMOUS 168-169

Faust: Those are indeed the eyes of the dead No Loving hand did close! That is the breast which Gretchen yielded me, That the young formI loved so passsionately! PETEREISENMAN

Siebel: Help! Help! Fire! Help! Hell's on fire!...... It's witchcraft! Strike! The fellow's an outlaw! Hit as you like! PERSPECTA37:FAMOUS 170-171

yearsago. By thetime Aldo Rossi's book, A ScientificAutobi- cality.The postcritical,the cool, and the"easy" are conflated ography,was publishedin 1982,history and famehad become bythe critics Robert Somol and SarahWhiting, who basically entangledin an all-pervasivemedia. Perhaps it was fame,and argueagainst indexicality and process.They somehow infer notthe books or thebuildings, that caused the Pritzker-win- thatto be criticalis tobe negative,while to be projectiveis tobe ningRossi to say nearthe end ofhis career,"Sono stanco di positiveas wellas influential.Why, they ask, is itnecessary to gloria[I amtired of glory]." demonstratehow difficult architecture is? Whynot make what As formsof media, what is thedifference between the treatise is inreality not easy - thedifficult - look easy? orpolemical text of the past and what is seenmore commonly in Myconcern with this position is twofold.First, it is perhaps thenewspapers, journals, and coffee-table books of today? While nottruly postcritical, but merelythe criticalrepackaged for thetreatise may have led to a certainmodicum of fame or notori- popularconsumption. Second, it is too easy to elide and per- ety,it more importantly created an evolvingdisciplinary history, haps confusethe truly easy (Calatrava,for example) with the a historythat had only a tangentialrelationship to fame. theoreticalposition of a Somolor a Whiting.In whateverform The self-consciousnessofthe subject and the idea of the crit- the"easy" is manifest,it cannotavoid the smell of pandering. ical thatemerged during the Renaissance constituted the first WhenDave Hickeysays thathe prefersthe real faketo the linkbetween the idea offame and history.But when fame and fakereal, is hejust offering an updatedidea ofkitsch? If some- historyare elidedtoday in themedia's need forthe newand thingis trulydifficult, why do we needto sugarcoat it, if not for immediate,the critical function of history becomes irrelevant. someform of populist pragmatism? Instead of enfolding the Rather,history becomes a definitionof the future present. This difficultwithin the "easy," why not question a problemunique maybe onereason for the continuous attack on theidea ofthe to architecture,such as the metaphysicsof presence?Ulti- critical,an attackthat may ultimately signal the subtle complic- mately,to theorizethe "easy" is to espousean anti-theory,as ityof theorists and the media. opposedto a theoreticalposition of the negative. But "negative In an attemptto confronta loss ofthe critical in thenine- thinking,"as theorizedby Benjamin, Adorno, and others,has teenthcentury, Romanticism introduced the idea of a disciplin- oftenproduced positive results. And this is theultimate irony. aryautonomy to overcomeboth the absolute nature of history The verymedia that undermines the critical project has been and theidea thatart was reifiedonly in theindividual artist. joinedby the proponents of the "easy." Once eschewed by that Accordingto MauriceBlanchot, this disciplinaryautonomy same media,they are nowseemingly complicit in cateringto "enclosesitself in the affirmation ofan innersovereignty which a popularvoice. acceptsno law and repudiatesall power."With the contamina- In whathas alwaysseemed to be an ironicconclusion of tionof fame and historyand theidentification of thecritical Goethe'sstory, Dr. Faust supposedly sees theerror of his ways witha falteringmetaphysics, this autonomy refuses all judg- forhis "one hourof pleasure" and is redeemedby God. The mentsother than its own. objectof his passing affection, however, distraught after being Today,the differencesbetween fame and historyhave abandonedby Dr. Faust, murders her mother, drowns her own becomemuddied. First, fame seems to have little to do with the baby,and is ledaway to her execution. critical.Where previously fame was perhapsa resultof a his- Allof us, Andy Warhol famously said, have the possibility of tory- thehistory of a careerof work - todayhistory is a result fifteenminutes of fame, which we may read as thetemptation of offame and is thusa mediatedhistory detached from the actual theMephistophelian media. But what happens to our amor, the work.Also, fame today is no longerlinked to thefuture of his- disciplineof architecture? Does architecturesuffer the same torybut to the present of the media. The media has becomethe fateas Dr.Faust's lover? metaphysicsof the present. While history may no longerbe an Whenone rolls the dice with the devil for fame, fortune, and absolutereference, neither is art.The medianot only reports power,the devil always wins. But the one thingthat the devil and observes,it creates.This is becauseto survive,the media cannottake awayis a criticalhistory linked to theautonomy mustconstantly replenish itself - thatis its nature.It must ofthe discipline.This is notgranted by anyoneor anything createnewness, which in itselfbecomes a strangeperpetual externalto architecturebut ratheris producedby an inter- historyof a tomorrow,not of the present. But what kind of his- nal disciplineand a controlof one's own destiny. It is thepos- toryis mediawriting? Is ita historyof fame, of instant heroes? sibilityof such a historythat stands today in the faceof the Manyyears ago, ColinRowe said to me,"Once you have easytemptations of fame. seen one Gothiccathedral, you have seen themall." Whathe meantby this broadgeneralization was thatthere were no ideasin cathedralsthat could not be gleanedfrom a quicklook atany single cathedral. If there was anyidea, it was inthe spec- tacularimagery, in the aestheticpiling up ofever-more slen- derstructural elements. This accountsfor the "easy" popular- ityof Gothic architecture and its contemporary manifestations inthe work of Santiago Calatrava; once you have seen one, you have seen themall. Buttoday there is anothercontext where the "easy"may be found.The "easy"seems to have become a self-servingposition, with a generationof critics and archi- tectsattempting to pit their theories of a "projective"postcriti- cal positionagainst what they see as an outdatednotion of criti-