James Marston Fitch, Emeritus Professor at Columbia's
School of Architecture, has permitted us to publish his
paper "Murder at the Modern":
"This paper deals with a strange and isolated series of
events at New york's Museum of Modern Art between
1966 and 1977, orchestrated by the Director of the
Department of Architecture, the late Arhtur Drexler.
The events, which consisted of a series of books,
exhibitions and catalogues, were all aimed at
discrediting the Museum's own International Style
and replacing it with Drexel's own special brand of
eclectic post-modernism."
Fitch eloquently critiques Drexler, Philip Johnson, Vincent Scully,
Robert Venturi, Robert Stern and MoMA for the superficial
polemics of "reactionary traditionalists" whose "ambitions and
capabilities have found perfect expression in EuroDisney" by
willful neglect of the environmental requirements and functional
exigences of genuine architecture.
He claims that Drexler was a graphic designer, like the other
post-modernists whom he (and Scully) boosted with MoMA, and
aimed only to recreate scenes of superficial grandeur copied from
the Beaux-Arts to escape the burden of present responsibilities of
modern architecture and planning.
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http://jya.com/jmf/matm.htm (text 51 K, with 14 images)
School of Architecture, has permitted us to publish his
paper "Murder at the Modern":
"This paper deals with a strange and isolated series of
events at New york's Museum of Modern Art between
1966 and 1977, orchestrated by the Director of the
Department of Architecture, the late Arhtur Drexler.
The events, which consisted of a series of books,
exhibitions and catalogues, were all aimed at
discrediting the Museum's own International Style
and replacing it with Drexel's own special brand of
eclectic post-modernism."
Fitch eloquently critiques Drexler, Philip Johnson, Vincent Scully,
Robert Venturi, Robert Stern and MoMA for the superficial
polemics of "reactionary traditionalists" whose "ambitions and
capabilities have found perfect expression in EuroDisney" by
willful neglect of the environmental requirements and functional
exigences of genuine architecture.
He claims that Drexler was a graphic designer, like the other
post-modernists whom he (and Scully) boosted with MoMA, and
aimed only to recreate scenes of superficial grandeur copied from
the Beaux-Arts to escape the burden of present responsibilities of
modern architecture and planning.
-----
http://jya.com/jmf/matm.htm (text 51 K, with 14 images)