articles did not appear to be fake news, so I Classicism followed a digital trail to the document itself, finding itsPDF version embedded in a by Decree piece by the Chicago Sun-Times. I quote the opening section, “Findings” in full:

Section 1. Findings. The Founding Fathers Julia Friedman attached great importance to Federal architecture. President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson consciously modeled the most important buildings in Washington, D.C. on the classical architecture of democratic Athens and republican Rome. They wanted t is no secret that the Trump America’s public buildings to physically administration doesn’t subscribe to the symbolize our then-new nation’s self- idea of federal funding for arts and governing ideals. Washington and Jefferson, Ihumanities. Its 2019 proposed “Budget for both amateur architects, personally oversaw the competitions to design the America’s Future,” once again, placed the Capitol Building and the . National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the For more than a century and a half America’s Humanities (NEH) in a section on “wasteful Federal architecture produced beautiful and and unnecessary funding.” But just as the arts beloved buildings. Typically, though not and humanities are declared inessential, the exclusively, classical in design, buildings such White House made it a public priority to turn as the White House, the Capitol Building, the Supreme court, the Eisenhower Executive the architectural clock back, drafting an Office Building, the Treasury Department, executive order titled “Making Federal and the Lincoln Memorial have become Buildings Beautiful Again.” For an international symbols of democratic self- administration well versed in the optics of government. These universally cherished success, such manifested awareness of landmarks, built to endure for centuries, have architecture’s symbolic and ideological become an important part of our civic life. significance to any long-term political project In the 1950s the Federal government largely makes perfect sense. Their 2019 Independence abandoned traditional, classical designs, and Day extravaganza in Washington, D.C. began adopting mid-century modernism, (repeated, albeit on a slightly reduced scale including Brutalism, for Federal buildings. against the background of the Covid-19 This trend accelerated after the Ad Hoc pandemic in 2020) was just one recent example Committee on Federal Office Space issued of splurging on pageantry, and their timing what has become known as the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture in 1962. of the executive order in the run-up to the The Guiding Principles implicitly discouraged 2020 elections indicates the sociopolitical classical and other designs known for their urgency of the outlined changes. beauty, and declared that design must flow I first learned about the executive order from the architectural profession’s reigning from architecture-themed publications on orthodoxy to the Federal government. my social media feed in early February— both Dwell and Architectural Record ran The Federal architecture that ensued, overseen by the General Services articles about the pending order that would Administration (GSA), ranged from the mandate a “classical architectural style” for undistinguished to designs that public widely all federal buildings. Given the sources, the considered uninspiring, inconsistent with

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Athenaeum Review_Issue 5_FINAL_11.04.2020.indd 148 11/6/20 1:24 PM their surroundings and the architectural experimentation with new, alternative styles. heritage of the region, and even just plain However, care must be taken to fully ensure ugly. Structures such as the Hubert H. that such alternative designs command Humphrey Department of Health and respect by the public for their beauty and Human Services Building, the Frances Perkins visual embodiment of America’s ideals. Department of Labor Building, and the Robert C. Weaver Department of Housing In response to the draft of the executive and Urban Development Building inspired order, the GSA’s Chief Architect and public derision instead of admiration. In 1994, Director of the Design Excellence Program, having recognized the aesthetic failures, David Insinga, resigned, and the American including ugliness, of the buildings it was Institute of Architects ( Aia) posted a commissioning, the GSA established the statement, condemning the overhaul of Design Excellence Program in order to adhere to the Guiding Principles’ mandate that the 1962 Guiding Principles, with its Federal architecture “must provide visual top-bottom direction of architectural styles, testimony to the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and warning that the mandated changes and stability of the American Government.” could jeopardize fundamental democratic principles: Unfortunately, the Design Excellence Program has not reintegrated our national The AIA strongly opposes uniform style values into Federal buildings, which under mandates for federal architecture. the Program have often been works of, or Architecture should be designed for the have been influenced by, Brutalism and specific communities that it serves, . For example, the new reflecting our rich nation’s diverse places, San Francisco Federal Building, Austin U.S. thought, culture and climates. Architects , and the Wilkie D. Ferguson, are committed to honoring our past as Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Miami have little well as reflecting our future progress, aesthetic appeal. With a limited number of protecting the freedom of thought and exceptions, such as the Tuscaloosa Federal expression that are essential to democracy. Building and U.S. Courthouse, the Federal government has largely stopped building To understand the reasons for AIA’s concern, beautiful buildings that the American people one only has to visit the U .S. General Services want to look at or work in. Surveys show that the public prefers buildings that predate Administration (GSA) website. It introduces the Guiding Principles to those built under the 1962 Guiding Principles for Federal them. [Footnote with three citations for Architecture with a two-fold requirement the same AIA Favorite Architecture list.] of practicality and symbolism in all federal buildings as “efficient and economical After 57 years it is time to update the Guiding facilities for use of Government agencies,” Principles to Make Federal buildings beautiful that “must provide visual testimony to the again. Federal architecture should once again inspire respect instead of bewilderment or dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the repugnance. New Federal building designs American Government.” The first section of should, like America’s beloved landmark the three-point architectural policy that buildings, inspire the public for their follows, is mostly concerned with the quality aesthetics, make Americans feel proud of our and economy of construction, but it also public buildings, and, where appropriate, states that “major emphasis should be placed respect the architectural heritage of the region. Classical and traditional on the choice of designs that embody the architectural styles have proven their finest contemporary American architectural ability to inspire such respect for our system thought.” (Presumably “contemporary” is of self-government. Their use should be what the executive order refers to when it encouraged. This preference does not exclude says that the original Guiding Principles

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Athenaeum Review_Issue 5_FINAL_11.04.2020.indd 149 11/6/20 1:24 PM “implicitly discouraged classical and other through the fallacy of equating “classical designs known for their beauty.”) The second architectural style” with beauty, then section is even more unequivocal in regard to rhetorically topples this straw opponent, to the dangers of government mandated arrive at a staggeringly disingenuous and aesthetics: “The development of an official unfounded claim of acting on the part of the style must be avoided. Design must flow from American people who are sick and tired of the architectural profession to the looking at, and working in, modernist and Government. [sic] and not vice versa.” post-modernist federal buildings. The order’s Instead of mandating or even favoring a central assertion—that modernist and single architectural style, GSA defined the post-modernist architecture “ranged from the parameters to maximize innovation while undistinguished to designs the public widely guaranteeing quality and longevity of considered uninspiring, inconsistent with construction. The notion of originality was their surroundings and the architectural key to the Guiding Principles. Its preface even heritage of the region, and even just plain quotes President Kennedy’s January 9, 1961 ugly”—is supported by informal polls address to the Massachusetts legislature in conducted by The American Institute of which he evoked Pericles’ words to the Architects (AIA) and Harris Interactive. Athenians: “We do not imitate—for we are a (That is the same AIA that promptly put out model to others,” establishing the goal of not a statement condemning the drafted only maintaining the canon, but adding to it. executive order on the grounds that “freedom In the “Design Excellence Overview” of thought and expression […] are essential section of the site, the GSA specifically to democracy.”) These informal polls are mentions “rigorous assessment processes to footnoted in the Findings section with three ensure enduring value in that work” with the separate references, one of which is a link to aim of creating “holistic environments that “America’s Favorite Architecture” Wikipedia add contemporary form and meaning to page (!). The “Criticisms” section of the America’s rich legacy of public architecture.” Wikipedia page cites the AIA president R.K. The process includes advisory boards Stewart acknowledging “that the rankings consisting of “national peers, distinguished did not represent architects’ professional private-sector design professionals appointed judgments, but instead reflected people’s by the Commissioner of the Public Buildings ‘emotional connections’ to buildings.” Yet, Service to advise procurement and to critique despite that, and the fact that the 150 concept designs under development,” in order “Favorite Buildings” list includes “a few” to allow for flexibility in the multi-step modernist and post-modernist buildings, it procedures that include charrettes (“studies is nevertheless used to assert the superiority of a design issue by a team of design of classical architecture. professionals within a limited time frame”) If the AIA, whose survey is cited as a and competitions. The GSA puts additional predicate for the order, is not at all on board emphasis on green design and construction with the pending changes, for whose sake is as well as on sustainability. this drastic statute being proposed? The At least in its present form, the draft of the obvious answer is—the current “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” administration. The “Making Federal executive order is a peculiar example of either Buildings Beautiful Again” executive order self-conscious denial or willful ignorance of will bring federally funded architecture under the GSA Guiding Principles it intends to the umbrella of MA AG executive legislation, supplant. It sets up a straw opponent outlining the program meant to revive a

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Athenaeum Review_Issue 5_FINAL_11.04.2020.indd 150 11/6/20 1:24 PM Figure 1 Nevada Supreme Court and Nevada Court of Appeals building, 408 E. Clark Ave., Las Vegas, Nevada. Yohan Lowie, EHB Companies, 2017. Photo: Julia Friedman.

nostalgic utopia, which in architectural The members of the committee that put in terms is equated to classical, pre-modernist place the original Guiding Principles were architectural styles. But while it might be understandably reluctant to dictate a single based on “emotional connections,” the approved style, since they witnessed, overhaul by executive order will be anything first-hand, contemporaneous examples of but symbolic. The mandated changes are mandated aesthetics in Russia, Germany, top-down and will be implemented almost and Italy. In each of those countries, the immediately. Once the decree is signed by official architectural style was classical, President Trump, the Committee that expressly anti-modernist, and, supposedly oversees its implementation will have 60 exemplified “beautiful architecture” in the days to present a plan reversing the current mind of the demos in whose name it was U.S. General Services Administration imposed and enforced. Guiding Principles that specifically reject The assertion that totalitarian regimes “the development of an official style.” Gore favor classicism over modernism has been Vidal’s infamous moniker “the well-documented by historians. In his 2004 of amnesia” fits this unfolding situation monograph The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany well. In 1962, when President Kennedy and Stalin’s Russia, R. J. Overy reviews the signed the Guiding Principles into law, the record of architectural construction led by notion of a mandated official style seemed Hitler and Stalin, concluding that “both antithetical to democracy, because it had understood symbolic significance of clear associations with totalitarian regimes. architecture for the ideological project” and

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Athenaeum Review_Issue 5_FINAL_11.04.2020.indd 151 11/6/20 1:24 PM that both vehemently rejected modernist reconstruction came to be known as “Stalin architecture.1 What’s more, the two dictators plan.” After the war, in the late 1940s, acted proactively against modernist Stalin’s building program culminated in the architecture, with Stalin championing the ‘tall buildings’ erected based on a sketch Central Committee’s 1930 resolutions against made by the leader himself. experimental styles approved, and the 1931 Totalitarianism’s assault on modernism was resolution against “architectural formalism”— not limited to architecture. By declaratively essentially, Bauhaus modernism. Hitler was walking out of the opera house during a a driving force behind the 1933 shutdown of performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s the Bauhaus, the hotbed of modernist avant-garde opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in architecture. His own preference was for January 1936, Stalin reset the course of classical models “designed to reflect the contemporary Soviet music, ensuring that imposing grandeur and historical permanence modernism would not remain in its creative of the German empire.” vocabulary. Two days after the ill-fated performance, Pravda, the Communist Party’s “The alternative to official paper, published an editorial entitled “Muddle Instead of Music,” where it accused Picasso is not the young composer of “petit-bourgeois formalism.” The argument put forth by the Michelangelo, but kitsch,” reviewer, was based on the premise that the writes Greenberg. Soviet people have a preconceived aversion to modernism: “The composer apparently never considered the problem of what the Soviet Both Hitler and Stalin made their building audience looks for and expects in music.”2 plans a crucial ideological focus of their These words echo Hitler’s rants “in the name larger political programs. Both were very of the German people” about “a so-called much hands-on: Hitler “saw himself as the modern art” during his inaugural speech of German people’s ‘master-builder,’ building the “Great Exhibition of German Art” in the the German ‘New Order’ in a very literal Haus der Deutschen Kunst.3 Totalitarian sense,” and personally supervising every dictators demagogically accused composers, minute detail of the Haus der Deutschen artists, writers and architects—cultural Kunst (“House of German Art”) elites—of creating useless cultural products construction. The museum was built in that the public rightly despises. Munich to contain Germany’s finest An axiomatic notion, embedded in the (classically inspired) art in the celebration of psyche of the Soviet regime, stipulated that the triumph of the Third Reich. The Haus the workers “have a more concrete form of der Deutschen Kunst opened with great thinking… than bourgeois intellectuals,” fanfare in mid-July of 1937, concurrently pitting experts and professionals against the with the infamous display of “Degenerate,” monolithic mass of “the people,” and modernist, art across the street. Likewise, Stalin personally reviewed and approved all building designs for the reconstruction of 2 Victor Seroff, Dimitri Shostakovich: The Life and Background of a Soviet Composer (New York: Alfred A. Moscow. In fact, the blueprint for the Knopf, 1943), pp. 204-7. 3 “Speech Inaugurating the ‘Great Exhibition of German Art,’” translation by Ilse Falk, published in H.B. Chipp 1 All Overy citations here are from Chapter 6, (ed.), Theories of Modern Art, Berkeley, CA, and London, “Constructing Utopia,” pp. 221–239. 1968, pp. 474–483.

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Athenaeum Review_Issue 5_FINAL_11.04.2020.indd 152 11/6/20 1:24 PM presenting the experts as saboteurs and that’s academic is kitsch” because “the wreckers. All the more remarkable, then, is academic as such no longer has an the part (d) of the second, “Policy” section of independent existence.” Kitsch tends to be “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” the default mode of cultures in which “the from which we learn that the experts are to verities involved by religion, authority, be expressly excluded from the open comment tradition, style, are thrown into question.” period when everyone else is invited to The critic gives Soviet Russia as an example, share their opinions on new designs: with kitsch as the official culture of the state which opposes modernist, avant-garde art, With respect to the public panels, favoring, instead, the “academicized participants shall not include artists, simulacra.” As Greenberg notes, the architects, engineers, art or architecture dichotomy between “merely the old and critics, members of the building industry or any other members of the public merely the new” is false, and the choice is that are affiliated with any interest actually “between the bad, up-to-date old group or organization involved with and the genuinely new.” “The alternative to the design, construction, or otherwise Picasso is not Michelangelo, but kitsch,” directly affected by the construction writes Greenberg, tracing the route of or remodeling of the building. preference for kitsch over genuine modern art to “a reactionary dissatisfaction which Since the only difference between the expresses itself in revivalism and puritanism, general public and the experts is the experts’ and latest of all, in fascism.” His conclusion excessive and inconvenient knowledge of the is that decreeing kitsch as an official cultural discipline, were these experts excluded for policy is just pandering to the masses: their likely bias against classicism mandated from above in the name of the masses below? Where today a political regime establishes an official cultural policy, it is for the sake of I believe they most certainly were. demagogy. If kitsch is the official tendency Architects, art historians, architectural of culture in Germany, Italy and Russia, it historians are attuned to the 20th-century is not because their respective governments uses of classicism for political purposes are controlled by philistines, but because thanks to the writings of the art critic kitsch is the culture of the masses in Clement Greenberg, especially Greenberg’s these countries, as it is everywhere else. The encouragement of kitsch is merely discussions of the top-down academicism in another of the inexpensive ways in which Russia, Germany and Italy. His seminal essay totalitarian regimes seek to ingratiate “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” was published in themselves with their subjects. Since these 1939 as a contribution to the debate about the regimes cannot raise the cultural level of political role of art in the Trotskyist the masses—even if they wanted to—by anything short of a surrender to international journal Partisan Review, has since become a socialism, they will flatter the masses by 4 staple of North American arts education. bringing all culture down to their level. In it, Greenberg recounts the development and the current function of “kitsch,” which he Of course, Greenberg can be justly accused defines as “academicized simulacra of genuine of dated elitism, and the masses, to whom he culture,” and as “vicarious experience and referred so disparagingly, should have their faked sensations.” According to Greenberg, say. Besides, as history teaches us, their vote “all kitsch is academic; and conversely, all will not necessarily be for the status quo and against innovation. In 1401, the citizens of 4 Partisan Review, New York, VI, no.5, Fall 1939, pp. 34–49. Florence decided that their baptistry

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Athenaeum Review_Issue 5_FINAL_11.04.2020.indd 153 11/6/20 1:24 PM (Battistero di San Giovanni) needed a traditional architectural style,” along with spectacular new doors. They did not mandate “a description of the traditional or classical a specific style to a chosen artist, instead designs seriously considered for such project.” holding an open competition. Among the This would make anything but the mandated seven semifinalists, the jurors chose two styles practically impossible. finalists: a temperamental architect and Another problem is that Hellenic classicism, designer Filippo Brunelleschi, and a young originally developed in Mediterranean sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti. While Brunelleschi antiquity, cannot possibly meet the current worked in secret on his design, Ghiberti criteria for sustainability. Those criteria are kept an open studio to allow the public view based on the steep technological advances of and comment on the designs. The visitors the past few decades, which made architectural came from different strata of the society, Modernism possible. Buildings are more than making Ghiberti’s inclusion of their feedback façades, and the GSA is not supposed to raise truly democratic. The resulting design was Potemkin villages. It is telling, that the San much more innovative in the treatment of Francisco Federal Building by Morphosis space than the “classical” version proposed Architects, named in the executive order as an by Brunelleschi. In the end, Ghiberti got the example of construction Americans regard contract, and the doors, known as the with “bewilderment or repugnance,” is known “Gates of Paradise,” became a key for establishing a benchmark in sustainable Renaissance landmark. design. Large Federal buildings are complex So, why is classicism by decree such a bad engineering mechanisms and, by turning idea? One obvious problem with officially- back the aesthetic clock, the Executive mandated style is that variety will be order will simultaneously turn back the compromised. Although the order makes technological clock. exceptions to the “Classical style” in principle, A final problem is that classical buildings further sections indicate the improbability require appropriately dated and therefore of anything innovative being approved. Part costly materials and outdated methods of (b) of Section 6, “Agency Actions,” stipulates: production. This would make it very difficult to match their quality to the … in the event the Administrator proposes to models they are intended to emulate—the approve a design for a new applicable Federal White House, the U.S. Supreme Court, the public building that is not in a preferred architectural style (or, in the National Capital U.S. Capitol building. It also virtually Region or for a Federal courthouse, not in the guarantees that many of these new classical style) the Administrator shall notify buildings will be contenders for inclusion the President of this fact not less than 30 into Kate Wagner’s McMansion Hell Hall of days before the gsa could reject such design Fame. An example of such a building is without incurring substantive expenditures. Nevada’s Supreme Court of Appeals, constructed in the record period of The Administrator is then obliged to fourteen months by the independent provide “a detailed explanation […] of why the developers/builders EHB Companies Administrator believes selecting such a design (Figure 1 ). The building is an unfortunate is justified, with particular focus on whether riff on Neoclassical style that ineptly such design is a beautiful and reflective of combines elements of the current and the dignity, enterprise, vigor and the stability original U.S. Supreme Court buildings. of the American system of self-government Sixteen Corinthian columns that support as alternative designs of comparable cost in the west entrance pediment of the U.S.

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Athenaeum Review_Issue 5_FINAL_11.04.2020.indd 154 11/6/20 1:24 PM Supreme Court were substituted with four Clement Greenberg was right when he square-shaped half columns. These are out said that “the alternative to Picasso is not of scale and are pathetically weighted down Michelangelo, but kitsch.” As described in by a portico and architrave that are too large “Definitions” section 3 of the executive for them (and appear even larger because of order, “Classical architectural style” is the stylistically incoherent bas-relief derived from the forms and principles of inscription on the architrave, in what looks classical Greek and Roman architecture, as like the Arial Rounded Bold font, designed later employed by such Renaissance in 1982). The functional columns that architects as Michelangelo and Palladio…” support the frieze along the façade are After its initial antique phase, classical vaguely Roman Tuscan and seem made of architecture in the West has already been different stone than the remainder of the reincarnated twice: during the Renaissance building, which is done in white marble. and then again during the Neoclassical The massive brass doors at the front are no period of the 18th and early 19th century. doubt meant to reference the monumental Any classical style of the 21st century is bronze doors of the U.S. Supreme Court, inevitably kitsch, because it is formulaic except that the pediments are out of scale: and academized, not to mention expensive the central door’s pointed pediment is and environmentally unsustainable. adjusted to the height of the doors on either Imposing classicism by decree goes against side, making the central door look smaller. not only the letter but also the spirit of the Because of its miniscule size, the bronze 1962 Guiding Principles. It rejects the dome that tops the building looks more like notions of progress and evolution in a functional base for the statue of Blind American architecture. In the process, it Justice that it supports. The building is transforms the GSA from a guardian of surrounded with fluted rectangular planters excellence in design to a prison warden, and one-ton stone balls, and an illogical whose sole job is to keep architecture single Neoclassical gate pillar on the permanently confined in an ersatz- northeast corner provides the coup de grace. Palladian cell.

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