Philip Johnson: The Constancy of Change
, , foreword by Robert A.M. Stern. . Yale Univ., $60 (278pp) ISBN 978-0-300-12181-0
Responding to criticism of the skyscrapers he was building in 1983, Pritzker Prize–winning architect Philip Johnson (1906–2005) replied, “I am a whore.” The 16 essayists in this volume, edited by Petit, assistant professor at Yale's School of Architecture—and originally presented in a symposium co-sponsored in 2006 by Yale and the Museum of Modern Art—tackle Johnson's “whoredom,” his enormous influence as a curator and the mixed quality of his built legacy from historical, theoretical and sociological perspectives. The contributors admit, as Joan Ockman writes, that “his claim to fame may be his greatest claim to fame,” and that few of his critics could be as truthful about his shortcomings as was the architect himself. His involvement with Father Coughlin's anti-Semitism in the 1930s runs through many of the essays, but so does admiration for the compound he developed in New Canaan, Conn., for his Glass House and other outlying buildings. One finishes this book with the feeling that Johnson is a case for further study, summed up by one essayist as the star of “a reality-TV show that ran longer than anyone could have imagined.” 163 b&w and 53 color illus.
Reviewed on: 01/12/2009
Genre: Nonfiction