Philip Johnson, 98
Beck goes after the late architect for his AT&T Building, alleging that it is a scar upon the New York City skyline. By that standard virtually everything built in Manhattan after WWII could get the respective architects named as co-defendants. The skyline per se has long been reduced to nothing more than the spectacular immensity of The City viewed from afar. Were it not for the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and a few others, the skyline wouldn't look all that different from an enlarged circuit board. Viewed close-up, the AT&T--now the SONY--Building doesn't drift more than a degree or two away from the entire post-war aesthetic mess.
I don't recall whether I've ever actually gone into the AT&T Building, but passing by it gives one the feeling of being at the entrance of an overarching walk-in freezer. In that sense, it reaches above and beyond its postmodernist duty, if in fact it even qualifies in that category. Perhaps Johnson should be laid to rest beneath the lobby floor, so as to bring the place fully to its purpose.
By way of comparison, for sheer aesthetic dyspepsia, consider the four towers that sit along the west side of Sixth Avenue across from Rockefeller Center. Neat and trim and of absolutely no merit, they could just as easily find their place in an industrial park outside of Toronto.
Back to Johnson: I had a Johnny Carson "I did not know that" moment when I read in his obituary in The New York Times that he admired Hitler and was a fascist activist during the 1930s. That should have gotten him run out of New York circles for good, but apparently his lavish spending on others, being gay, and having powerful patrons (especially the Rockefeller connection through his Museum of Modern Art gig) won him a pardon.
It doesn't appear that aside from his 1930s mishap that the cowboys of elite culture had much trouble keeping him within the great herd of independent minds.
I don't recall whether I've ever actually gone into the AT&T Building, but passing by it gives one the feeling of being at the entrance of an overarching walk-in freezer. In that sense, it reaches above and beyond its postmodernist duty, if in fact it even qualifies in that category. Perhaps Johnson should be laid to rest beneath the lobby floor, so as to bring the place fully to its purpose.
By way of comparison, for sheer aesthetic dyspepsia, consider the four towers that sit along the west side of Sixth Avenue across from Rockefeller Center. Neat and trim and of absolutely no merit, they could just as easily find their place in an industrial park outside of Toronto.
Back to Johnson: I had a Johnny Carson "I did not know that" moment when I read in his obituary in The New York Times that he admired Hitler and was a fascist activist during the 1930s. That should have gotten him run out of New York circles for good, but apparently his lavish spending on others, being gay, and having powerful patrons (especially the Rockefeller connection through his Museum of Modern Art gig) won him a pardon.
It doesn't appear that aside from his 1930s mishap that the cowboys of elite culture had much trouble keeping him within the great herd of independent minds.
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