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Montage The Devil and A “star-chitect” as P.T. Barnum by spencer lee lenfield The Man in the : Philip Johnson, Architect of hilip Johnson ’27 (’30), B.Arch.’43— legal counsel for Alcoa) and blessed with a German money. the Modern Century, by the celebrated architect of the former handsome face, he had connections to high Nevertheless, John- Mark Lamster (Little, Four Seasons restaurant in Manhat- society and a gift for charismatic self-mar- son died in bed of Brown, $35) P tan’s Building, the AT&T keting that repeatedly saved him from his natural causes at Building (now 550 ), and own worst transgressions. age 98 in 2005, a revered if controversial his own Glass House residence—grew ob- The most serious of these, sympathizing member of a profession he had helped trans- sessed as an undergraduate by Nietzsche’s with the Nazis and working to bring about mute into high art: proof that money and vision of super-men who could transcend a kind of American fascism throughout the charm can conceal all manner of sins, and morality to live life as art. His own life, as 1930s, would dog Johnson throughout his perhaps buy more than one’s fair share of written in Dallas-based critic life, even as his powerful friends did their happiness as well. Mark Lamster’s new biography, The Man in the best to keep such rumors in abeyance. Lam- Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern ster is unequivocal about these charges: the There are two schools of thought on John- Century, reads like an Ayn Rand plot rewrit- full evidence shows Philip Johnson was “an son’s dalliances with the Nazis, the popu- ten by Henry James. Not only was Johnson unpaid agent of the Nazi state”—unpaid list Louisiana politician , and the born into wealth (his father was the first only because he was so rich he didn’t need anti-Semitic Roman Catholic priest Father

cinct life, at his cente- ers’ decision to leave acclaimed The Piano Tuner, is a richly re- nary, of the acclaimed voting rights and regula- searched and imagined story, in some- choreographer—who tions to the states’ dis- times brutal detail, of a young medical “may well have been the cretion. In an era when student who enlists for battlefield surgi- most hated man on the franchise has be- cal duty during World War I. It memora- .” come newly politicized, bly invokes a Europe “dark and hungry the history is revealing, and tired of war.” Tall Building Collec- and often not to the na- tion, by Scott Johnson, tion’s credit. in the American Century, by M.Arch. ’75 (Balcony Kenneth B. Pyle ’58 (Harvard, $35). The Press, $150). Nearly a Life in Culture: Se- Jackson professor emeritus of history and decade ago, Johnson lected Letters of Li- international studies at the University of documented the pro­ onel Trilling, edited Washington recalls a crucial trans-Pacific liferation of very tall by Adam Kirsch ’97 relationship, from before World War II to structures (“Skyscrap- (Farrar, Straus and Gir- the present, at a time when the new er as Symbol,” May- oux, $35). Kirsch, a American administration has posed chal- June 2010, page 21). critic and poet (and lenges ranging from the terms of econom- Now, he has updated Harvard Magazine con- ic trade to the status of the Koreas and the that original work and tributing editor), brings big-power status of China. Powerful per-

accompanied it with a EDMUND SUMNER/VIEW/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO forward more of Trill- spective on how former adversaries can volume of essays on Standing tall: Mikimoto Ginza 2, in ing, one of the towering ally, after differences far more extensive more recent tall build- Tokyo, Japan: one of the new critics of the twentieth than those being brought into play now. generation of striking highrises ings, built and imag- century (The Middle of ined, and essays on the art and form. A fat the Journey, The Liberal Imagination)—and a Howard Hiatt, by Mark Rosenberg ’67, collection, in three visually astonishing wonderful stylist. For example, to Norman M.D. ’71, M.P.P. ’72 (MIT, $30). A biography volumes. Podhoretz, in 1951: “The pleasure of your of a public-health leader (Hiatt, class of ’46, letter made me gladder than ever for that M.D. ’48, was dean of Harvard’s school The Embattled Vote in America: day 20 years ago when I picked the basket from 1972 to 1984) and pioneer in defining From the Founding to the Present, by off the doorstep and found you inside….” global health equity (affectionately subti- Allan J. Lichtman, Ph.D. ’73 (Harvard, tled, “How this extraordinary mentor $27.95). The Distinguished Professor of his- The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason transformed health with science and com- tory at American University explains the ’98 (Little, Brown, $28). The third novel passion”). Foreword by Michelle A. Wil- troubles that have ensued from the found- by Mason, a psychiatrist and author of the liams, the current public-health dean.

Harvard Magazine 73

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage Coughlin in the 1930s. One holds that these tions allowed him to play kingmaker in the Huey Long to offer his marketing services, mistakes pollute everything he ever did or field: a partial and artists and was refused mainly because of his own touched, and that Johnson never fully re- appearing in Johnson’s circle through the bumbling; later, he designed a Nazi-rem- pented; the other, that his merits as design- decades includes I.M. Pei, M.Arch. ’46, Ar.D. iniscent dais for one of Father Coughlin’s er and architect can be separated from his ’95, , , Merce Cun- rallies. He ran unsuccessfully for the Ohio youthful errors, and his gestures of contri- ningham, , legislature on the ticket of his own political tion in later years—designing synagogues and , , party, which was “composed of hard-core without fee, mentoring Jewish protégés— professor in practice of architecture and reactionaries, pro-Nazi German-American were sincere. Opinions on Johnson’s work urban design , Daniel Libes- Bundists, Klansmen, and members of the similarly split in two. Depending on whom kind, , and , Ds ’57, Black Legion.” (Johnson’s secretary later you ask, he was either a canny innovator Ar.D. ’00. told the FBI that he had delusions of be- who helped push American architecture Influence acknowledged, the further coming “the Hitler in the .”) out of provincialism to the global fore, or question is whether that influence on ar- He traveled to Germany in 1937 and 1938; on an unoriginal windbag and hyperbolist who chitecture was for good or for ill— the second trip, he enthu- Philip Johnson at his inflicted two blights on his field: postmod- and whether the history of John- iconic modernist Glass siastically attended one of ernism and “star-chitecture.” son’s political beliefs affects that House in New Canaan, the Nuremberg rallies. Af- Why is it worth arguing about Johnson? question. Lamster (who teaches Connecticut, 1949 ter his return, he continued to contact Nazi agents un- til 1940. Johnson was gay in about as public a manner as was possible at the time, but seems not to have no- ticed how the Nazis treat- ed homosexuals. This was no youthful error: Johnson was in his early thirties. He returned to Harvard (where, as an undergradu- ate of means at loose ends, he had taken seven years to finish his degree) to en- roll at the Graduate School of Design in 1940, out of a dawning sense that fas- cism was excluding him from polite company and he had no future in politics. Before this, Johnson’s only If we accept that Johnson was an enthusiastic fascist in practical design work had been as an interior decora- the 1930s, how should we look at his buildings? tor; his main credentials for admission were his years at Both his detractors and his devotees agree at the University of Texas at Arlington and MoMA and his social pedigree. His fortune that his influence was vast. As a young man was a Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of compensated for his lack of technical skills who lucked into a job after college as the Design in 2016-17) unequivocally condemns (he financed the building of an entire house Museum of ’s first architec- Johnson not just for sympathizing with the in Cambridge to fulfill his “practical experi- tural curator (largely through society con- Nazis, but actively providing them with ma- ence” requirement), and he entered the pro- nections), he defined and popularized the terial support in the 1930s. He left the cura- fession after taking his degree, with enough International Style—the potpourri of Euro- torial job at MoMA that had made him an of the fascist stain laundered to become pre- pean modern architectural approaches that art-world darling in late 1934 to become a sentable again. He even briefly enlisted in molded the look of the mid-century United populist rabble-rouser. the army (which, aware of his activities, kept States. Having built that god, he smashed Some previous biographers and scholars, him away from any real responsibilities). It is it and set up a new one: a “postmodern” following Johnson’s own lead, have tried to unclear whether he came to realize the Nazis architecture that threw together stylized brush off these years as misguided dalli- were evil, or whether he abandoned them gestures toward the non-functional fea- ances, or the common anti-Semitism of the from a sense of self-preservation. tures (like a “Chippendale” pediment atop times. They will have a hard time ignoring a skyscraper) that canonical es- Lamster’s eye-popping, well-footnoted cat- If we accept that Johnson was an enthu- chewed. Moreover, his wealth and connec- alog of Johnson’s activities. He approached siastic fascist in the 1930s, how should we

74 November - December 2018 Photograph by Arnold Newman/Liaison Agency/Getty Images

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage look at his buildings? Lamster treats this A lack of allegiances does not necessar- biographical problem in a nuanced way. ily make a bad artist, but it might explain No one thinks a former Nazi sympathiz- some of the unevenness in Johnson’s work as C hapter er’s building morally corrupts all who an architect and designer. Lamster sketch- gaze upon it or pass through it. No one es roughly four phases in Johnson’s career: & Verse seriously thinks we should tear down the early years as a devotee of Mies (the Glass Correspondence on landmark Johnson built House, the Seagram Building), then an apo- not-so-famous lost words in the 1950s with Mies van der Rohe, or statical turn toward a kind of neoclassicism demolish the Glass House. Lamster, how- (the Brick House, the pa- ever, pays careful attention to how aspects vilion) that eventually became his notori- Jacob Adler asks: “In Nishmat H. ayyim of buildings throughout Johnson’s career ous “” (the AT&T Building, (“The Breath of Life,” 1651), the Dutch start to look disturbing in light of what he One International Place), and a final period rabbi Menasseh ben Israel writes of once believed: the “authoritarian pomp” of of decline, “churning out boring corporate strange phenomena that supposedly oc- the New York State Theater, the bunker- towers.” The good buildings are very good, cur in Asia: people making clothing from like art gallery on the Glass House estate, but there are many more bad ones. It is as stone in China; families in Cochin, India, a possible citation of enjoyable and infor- with right thighs swollen like elephants’;­ a pogrom-ruined vil- mative to read Lam- and people in Negapatam and Mylapore lage as the inspira- ster’s descriptions of who can eat with their eyes, whether tion for that house’s the buildings he loves cucumbers and watermelons or the in- central chimney. He as it is of those he nards of enemies. Does anyone know of voices unease with hates. Of the Lincoln a source for these ideas?” Johnson’s fawning Center pavilion: “One attention to rich and of the most pleasing Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter powerful clients, and public spaces in the and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware lack of apparent in- city, with spokes and Street, Cambridge 02138, or via email to terest in broader so- concentric circles of [email protected]. cial responsibilities. travertine emanating Moreover, he ob- from a dancing cen- serves that Johnson tral .” But he had a nasty habit of discarding people as used a kind of de- of NYU: “Washing- soon as they were no longer useful to him; based aestheticism to ton Square managed he was convinced he was a world-histori- avoid having to talk to survive Johnson’s cal figure. He became a famous architect about values in ar- architecture and re- through an ability to sell his vision of him- chitecture. In trans- main a vibrant place.” self as a great architect to others—and his lating European mod- Candid judgments of ability to bankroll his own projects. Lam-

ernism to America, TED THAI/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGESany kind are a useful ster repeatedly compares Johnson to two Johnson deliberately Johnson poses with a model of his highly improvement on the famous non-architects. One is P.T. Barnum. emphasized a style controversial, postmodernist, Chippen- only previous biogra- The other, Johnson’s final major client, was dale-topped AT&T Building, May 1978. unmoored from any phy, Franz Schulze’s also born into money, which insulated him original goals of improving the lot of oth- Philip Johnson: Life and Work, which was com- from failures that would have ended others’ ers. As he moved from tastemaker to prac- pleted during the architect’s lifetime (albe- careers. His sense of personal grandeur and titioner, Johnson sowed those tendencies it without direct supervision), and avoids charisma, as Lamster notes, have also carried in the heart of dozens of major American being too critical of any him through accusations cities. Lamster sees a literal and figurative single building. of a racist past into great hollowness at the center of many of John- Johnson is a mad- success. His opponents son’s works: his characteristic move, wheth- dening protagonist: his and supporters alike ac- er in the Four Seasons, Lincoln Center, or comeuppance never knowledge his influence. the Glass House, was to highlight large neg- quite came. He had few Philip Johnson ended his ative spaces. Lamster finds those spaces a original ideas, freely ac- career building for Don- metaphor for the hollowness in Johnson knowledging that he lib- ald Trump. himself. When a colleague questioned the erally borrowed others’; design principles behind Johnson’s odd plan Contributing editor Spencer Groundbreaking for the for One International Place in Boston, he Trump International Lee Lenfield ’12, currently a shot back, “I do not believe in principles, Hotel and Tower, 1995: doctoral student in compar- in case you haven’t noticed.” Pressed by a the eponymous ative literature at Yale, pro- different critic around the same time, he dealmaker, center, filed literature scholar Deidre flanked by Mayor Rudy declared, “I am a whore, and I am paid very Giuliani, left, and Lynch in the January-Febru- well for building high-rise buildings.” Johnson, right FRANCIS SPECKER/ NEW YORK POST IMAGES NYP/GETTY ARCHIVES/© ary 2017 issue.

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746