The Journals of Ayn Rand Page 21

  (Near enough, but how far! If I understand him, this is not at all what Wright preached and wanted and meant.)

  H. H. Sullivan says that two great ideas confront each other in the world: the idea of tyranny, appealing to man’s fear, and the idea of freedom, appealing to man’s courage. [He says] we now have mental slavery, even though physical slavery is gone. But the idea of freedom is awakening, freedom of each individual’s own expression. (All this is fine, but what is this freedom and who threatens it? I wouldn’t call it democracy, as Sullivan always called it. Didn’t he really mean individualism?)

  Sullivan is opposed to all abstract philosophy (Platonism, Neo-Platonism, German Transcendentalism) as sterilizing life. (Wonder if he means what I would mean by this?)

  December 6, 1937

  Raymond Hood states that “architecture is the business of manufacturing adequate shelter for human activities” and asserts that this conception imposes only one restriction: “That the product must be adequately practical as a shelter for human activities.”

  Hood is a second-hander trying to be strictly “modem” in his terminology—which he stole from Le Corbusier, incidentally. Did he come to this “principle” himself? Did he fight for it? Or didn’t he just appropriate it when the battle had been won by others, by the suffering of others, and then parade it as his own great wisdom and gain prestige as a “foremost architect” thereby?

  John Cushman Fistere, “Poets in Steel,” Vanity Fair, December, 1931.

  Here’s Toohey in full colors. Listing America’s ten greatest architects, he starts off by being sarcastic about people naming Frank Lloyd Wright as first.

  Nevertheless there are many who believe that Mr. Wright is more genius than architect, and who justify their opinion by pointing to his characteristic idiosyncrasies, and to the still more significant fact that he has designed comparatively few buildings to support his manifold theories. Even his most zealous disciples have difficulty in listing his actual achievements: the Larkin factory, “that hotel in Japan,” and the glass and steel apartment house for New York that has never been built. As an architectural theorist, Mr. Wright has no superior; but as an architect he has little to contribute for comparison.

  May I be forgiven for copying this! This is Toohey par excellence—god damn him!

  Further from same:Number two on nearly everyone’s list of the ten great skyscraper architects would be Raymond Hood, seemingly less of a genius than Mr. Wright, but perhaps more of an architect. Unfortunately for the purposes of promoting him, Hood has no theories to advocate, is anathema to the intellectuals because he opposed the appointment of Wright to the World’s Fair Architectural Commission, and is happier sticking to [architecture] than he is in making speeches and giving interviews. Hood already has three buildings to his credit to support the claims of his friends that he, and not Wright, is the first architect of the country.

  (Nice friends, ain’t they?)

  Hood’s most promising trait is his inconsistency.... “I would never build the same building twice”—that is the explanation of Hood.

  (“I would also build anything, because I have nothing to say” can be his explanation as well.)

  This Hood interests me. I may be wrong, but there’s something sinister about the man. He was broke and ready to give up architecture, when he won the Chicago Tribune competition by going in “partnership” on the design with a prominent architect who had been “invited” to participate in the contest. Hood did the design, and shared the glory with the other man, who got $40,000 out of the $50,000 award. The building was eclectic, Gothic, and none too good. This was after Sullivan, after Wright, when Mr. Hood could have discovered modernism if he had wished to listen, let alone “invent” it. But he goes Gothic “because embroidery was in vogue.”

  He prospers on the reputation gained by this contest. He gets big buildings to do. Modem architecture is gaining. The shrewd gentleman realizes it—I imagine he was a very good businessman. He switches to modernism with a bang—the Daily News Building. He is successful and sensational. He likes it. It is now safe to be sensational. He speedily appropriates the language of the modernists—Le Corbusier, Sullivan and all. He is admired for it. He is “the foremost modern architect of America.” He is a prophet—neatly and nicely, with someone else’s prophecy and genius, and with someone else’s struggles and suffering having paved the way for his victory.

  It is now embarrassing to know that the words are stolen. He would like to believe himself that he is what he has managed to make himself appear. So he hates the men he has robbed. He fights them. He keeps Wright from the Chicago Fair. He hates Wright for being actually what he, Hood, only appears to be. And—an interesting parallel: Wright refused to participate in the Fair, unless he could have complete say over it; Wright did it because he had an idea of what he wanted done with the Fair and he wished no interference with the idea; he had a truly beautiful and important thing to create. (“Terrible and megalomaniacal,” comments Kahn.) Hood, on the other hand, made no such demand; but, according to Kahn, Hood was the ruler of the exposition. And an ugly mess resulted; Mr. Hood compromised or was incapable of anything better; he had no idea and nothing to create; he merely wanted the honor of bossing other people and being the “ruler” in their eyes, even if he had nothing for which to rule. And, of course, he had to keep Wright out of it; Wright was the only danger to this kind of phony, second-hand supremacy and the one who could steal the thunder from and the spotlight off Mr. Hood. Isn’t that typical and significant? Isn’t that “second-handedness”? (I think I’ve analyzed it correctly. Check up.)

  From the “Symposium on Architecture” at the Decorators’ Club:

  Kahn mentions that the plans for the Rockefeller Center were originally to be Gothic, because of Mr. Rockefeller’s love for the Gothic [style]. Plans had even been drawn in Gothic. But practical necessity, such as windows and lighting, led to the adoption of a modern design. When I asked him about this personally, Kahn hastily denied that Gothic plans had been drawn. (?) Hood was the guiding hand among the eight or ten architects of Rockefeller Center. (Any wonder he got in? Would Wright draw up Gothic plans and then “talk” Rockefeller out of it? Where is the great integrity and “modern” convictions of Mr. Hood? And Rockefeller Center is a mess, compared to what it could have been. As to its sculpture—I wonder if Hood had a hand in the giving out of that commission?)

  As to the whole meeting: a lot of insufferable drivel. A bunch of wealthy idlers in evening clothes listening smugly to a re-hash of things they could read in any book in ten minutes. Two dotards pattering smugly about Classic and Gothic architecture. Kahn—the only one to say a little of something and to say it with conviction. The others—drooling about a “house in Pompeii,” which we are invited to inspect “from a magic carpet,” and about the long nave of a Gothic cathedral symbolizing “the long way of a sinner to redemption” (sic!). The well-fed morons listening contentedly, certain that they are acquiring “culture.” Tickets at $2.20 a head. And Wright could not raise the money to publish his magazine!

  December 7, 1937

  Samples of phony architectural language (from Kurt Jonas, in the South African Architectural Record): Here we find, indeed, a four-dimensional composition of space enclosed by solids. Especially the north and north-west aspect of the house shows a dynamic balance of forms, such as it would be hard to surpass. At the same time, it is not lacking in that interpenetration of spaces which brings out the hollow character, full of fluctuating life, which is the expression of architecture as compared with sculpture....

  The sphere of architecture is space. We must define space. But we cannot. For space is defined by movement. And movement presupposes time. Therefore we should speak more correctly of spacetime.... Architecture is a four-dimensional art....

  [T]his is a contradiction not due to the [average] man’s poor logic, but to the higher logic, the dialectics of all life and art. To emphasize this I started that essay, Towards a Philosophy of Architecture, with the statement: “Modern Architecture is the realization of a contradiction in itself.”

  That not all things are so simple as some people believe, that there are inherent contradictions in life and in art, is no fault of mine. It is the task of the writer to show and to express this dialectic state, not to cover it with a torn fig leaf of simplifying logical construction, all for the sake of a mentally lazy layman.

  Here is a typical one of Toohey: muddle the issue, appear deep by being unclear, down with logic in the name of a “higher logic”; this is the spirit of Gertrude Stein and others, again denying superiority by denying reason—the sole danger to mediocrity. Remove reason—and what ground is there for greatness or smallness? Aren’t all equal when the scales have been destroyed? [AR made use of the above “phony language”—see Gordon Prescott’s testimony at the Stoddard trial.]

  “Modernist” architects build their own homes in the most conventional, old-fashioned way. The exception—Frank Lloyd Wright.

  A silly New York Times article (1931) gloats over this, emphasizing that even so-called “modernists” (such as Hood) do not live in “modernistic boxes,” that their homes are as old and eclectic as the homes of the conservative architects; [the article] stresses the fact that the [modernists‘] homes are ancient, reconditioned, part old barns, etc., and goes mushy over ancient cherry-trees, lawns, flowers and birdies and the like. One of the “modernists,” when asked about his home, got sheepish, then admitted that he didn’t build it for himself, but for a client: his wife, who “didn’t like modernism.” Could Wright have done this—wife or no wife? Could he stand living in a house he hated? Could any man with sincere and profound convictions about his art, the art that is his life, live in a house that denies all his idea
ls? Could I, for the sake of a husband or for Jesus Christ, read nothing but Kathleen Norris? [Kathleen Norris, a novelist, wrote Mother (1911), Saturday’s Child (1914), Sisters (1919), The Sea Gull (1927), etc.]

  December 9, 1937

  Lewis Mumford: “A critic who deals with the whole field of American culture.” A swell description of Toohey.

  [The following note pertains to an item clipped from a newspaper.]

  The Beaux-Arts Ball (January 23, 1931 ) where famous architects wore costumes representing one of their buildings. “Human Skyline for Beaux-Arts Ball.”

  (Note the little guy with the glasses peering through a hole in his headpiece—the Waldorf-Astoria.)

  December II, 1937

  Note the difference of approach to their profession between all these successful New York architects and Frank Lloyd Wright. He wouldn’t go on a stag trip to the “Alma Mater” in Paris. He wouldn’t go to a ball dressed as his building. This is the difference between the “common touch” and the ideal, between art as a business and art as a religion. The difference in the men is also in their buildings. It is this feeling I want for Roark—the burning reverence as against the “meal-ticket” architecture.

  Note also, for Toohey, the measly trick in the Vanity Fair article quoted previously, of not coming out with a direct statement of the writer’s own opinion, but hiding behind such phrases as: “There are many who believe” and “his friends claim.”

  December 22, 1937

  A. T. North, “The Passing Show,” Current Architecture, September, 1930.

  This gentleman criticizes someone for saying that an architect must have convictions about his style—“as though the architect must have a style conviction just like one has a religious conviction.” (Precisely! That’s what he must have.)

  We expect our tailors and modistes to produce equally well any selected pattern or style of garment, our physician to correctly diagnose and prescribe for all ailments, and our attorneys to conduct any manner of litigation—but the exceptioned architect cannot render any and every style equally well because he would be “so lacking in convictions.” Unfortunately, too many architects make a cult of style. Style “conviction” in architecture?—it is amusing.

  What logic! Here’s mediocrity speaking.

  Ugliness can be produced only by abnormal persons, the normal persons always desire beauty.

  Now what is beauty? Who is to decide? By what rules?

  December 24, 1937

  Pictures of the A.I.A. convention: terribly stodgy, pompous, either “Babbitt” or “Social Register” faces of prominent architects. What a figure Howard Roark will be among them!

  December 30, 1937

  In December, 1935, Mayor La Guardia announced a list of fifty architects who would get all the big municipal work [in New York City].

  The jurors who selected the fifty architects were Phelps Stokes, Ralph Walker, and Kenneth Murchinson. These last two are architects (I don’t know about the first). Murchinson is the life-of-the-party of the architectural profession; he hasn’t built anything to mention—but what power! He is always in the thick of things, particularly in “social activities.”

  The men who selected the jury were all presidents of various architectural organizations. Two of these electors were named among the list of fifty. One of the two—Upjohn—spoke utter drivel about Gothic architecture at the meeting I attended. (“The long nave is a symbol of the long road of the sinner to redemption.”) And he was president of the A.I.A.! Such is the power and the glory of organized mediocrity.

  January 1, 1938

  Notes on a conversation with Kahn:

  Plagiarism in architecture: plenty of it. Buildings which are copies of Kahn’s buildings. Copies of his ornament. Case of client who asked him to build a replica of a certain building, and upon going to see the model, Kahn discovered it to be a copy of one of his own buildings, which he showed to the client, much to the latter’s amazement. Case of bank which planned a building; Kahn was asked to submit a sketch, which he did; no further action was taken upon it and Kahn was informed that the plans had been abandoned ; upon returning from Europe some months later, he found his building done and erected, very badly done and unskillfully interpreted from his rough sketch, but still his very building. The bank had taken his sketch and given it to some friend of theirs to build. Nothing done about this. Kahn did not sue or receive any payment for the sketch. Later, some “arty” book on architecture mentioned this particular building as the best building of that year, giving credit to the plagiarist-architect.

  A draftsman in an architect’s office is usually called “a designer” and typically does the actual designing of his bosses’ buildings. If a draftsman refused to work in the style ordered, he would be fired immediately.

  Frank Lloyd Wright, Modern Architecture.

  The preface to this book mentions instances of Wright’s lack of consistency and logic, and quotes the following: “When asked to write The Logic of Modern Architecture, Wright replied: ‘Is the rising sun logical? It is natural and that is better.’ ” (This is sheer drivel. I am afraid that Wright has some of it once in a while. When is logic going to be fully explained and vindicated?) From the same preface: “Whose likes and dislikes are logical? We are now finding that logic, as a convention of human thinking, will not confine within its premises art and life as creative activities.” (Rubbish!)

  [Wright] calls the A.I.A. the “Arbitrary Institute of Appearances.”

  Arthur T. North [editor]: Contemporary American Architects, by E. J. Kahn.

  The abysmal idiot who wrote the preface [A. T. North] displays quite a different spirit and approach to architecture than that in the writings of Frank Lloyd Wright. Thus, in praising Kahn’s work, he has nothing of greater significance to say than the following, which he considers to be important architectural criticism: Appraisals of buildings to determine their real contribution to architecture must include inquiries as to whether they “work”—fulfill their intended purpose—and are sound financial projects. In both these respects the buildings designed by Mr. Kahn are successful and at the same time he has complied with all legal and economic requirements.

  Such inspired writing!

  [North writes] of Kahn: “His democratic manner, interested consideration of matters brought to his attention, tolerance for the views and opinions of others, and amiable disposition, cause him to be held in friendly regard and respect.” What a tribute to pay to an architect! This, then, constitutes Mr. North’s idea of a great architect. Certainly, Kahn’s work deserves more serious consideration and more valuable comment. Yet, here is Mr. North as editor of works on modem architects and as publicist of ideas on architecture. What chance would Frank Lloyd Wright or Howard Roark have here, [since they] are not “tolerant of the views and opinions of others”?!

  January 9, 1938

  Bruno Taut, Modern Architecture.

  In building, no personal isolation of the individual actually exists. The process of building, by reason of the participation of innumerable artisans and workmen and the considerable expenditure involved, which again represents labor, is in itself of a collective nature. [...]

  The test with regard to the collective attitude of mind of the architect is of particular value in this case, in that he is bound to hold sternly aloof from any favorite constructive ideas, particularly dear to his own personal taste. [...]