The Devil and Philip Johnson a “Star-Chitect” As P.T
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MONTAGE The Devil and Philip Johnson A “star-chitect” as P.T. Barnum by spencer lee lenfield The Man in the Glass House: 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 Seagram Building, the AT&T keting that repeatedly saved him from his natural causes at Building (now 550 Madison Avenue), 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 architecture 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 Huey Long, 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- Broadway.” 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. Japan 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 list of architects 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, Andy Warhol, John Cage, Merce Cun- rallies. He ran unsuccessfully for the Ohio youthful errors, and his gestures of contri- ningham, Jasper Johns, Denise Scott Brown legislature on the ticket of his own political tion in later years—designing synagogues and Robert Venturi, Ada Louise Huxtable, 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 Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libes- Bundists, Klansmen, and members of the similarly split in two. Depending on whom kind, Zaha Hadid, and Frank Gehry, 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 United States.”) 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 Modern Art’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.