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Voysey...was Re: Success
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| Michael Bulatovich 2008-03-10, 1:25 pm |
| HVS wrote:
<snip church stuff>
> (FWIW, that's why I can't view International Modernism as anything
> other than intrinsically classical in its approach. It's also why
> Voysey kept shouting throughout the 1930s that he most definitely
> *wasn't* a "pioneer of the Modern Movement".)
Was that because he wasn't 'intrinsically classical' or wasn't a 'pioneer'?
I love that guy's work. A British friend who graduated in England, but never
certified, worked for a time in an office that was an industrial building of
Voysey's...
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| On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote
> HVS wrote:
><snip church stuff>
>
>
> Was that because he wasn't 'intrinsically classical' or wasn't a
> 'pioneer'?
Both, really. He kept writing to the Architects' Journal in the
1930s when "the history of the modern movement" was being written
by people like Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, and who
were casting him as a direct forerunner. (They had to find a way
to co-opt him into their grand theory that Internatinal Modernism
was the culmination of all sound architectural theory, as his stuff
was too good -- and too recent -- to simply ignore.)
Voysey's objection was that he had nothing at all in common with
what (IIRC) he termed the "super modernistic" style with flat
roofs, and explained that he was a Goth who designed buildings
around spaces, rather than one who used formal principles to
establish the exterior form.
He died in 1941, and reading the commentators you could almost hear
the sigh of relief that he wasn't around any more to mess up their
"pioneer" theory. (The obituary in the Architectural Review went
something like "Although he said he had little in common with the
Modern Movement, little did he realise that it fully reflected his
principles....")
--
Cheers, Harvey
Architectural and topographical historian
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| Michael Bulatovich 2008-03-10, 5:26 pm |
| HVS wrote:
> On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote
>
>
> Both, really. He kept writing to the Architects' Journal in the
> 1930s when "the history of the modern movement" was being written
> by people like Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, and who
> were casting him as a direct forerunner. (They had to find a way
> to co-opt him into their grand theory that Internatinal Modernism
> was the culmination of all sound architectural theory, as his stuff
> was too good -- and too recent -- to simply ignore.)
>
> Voysey's objection was that he had nothing at all in common with
> what (IIRC) he termed the "super modernistic" style with flat
> roofs, and explained that he was a Goth who designed buildings
> around spaces, rather than one who used formal principles to
> establish the exterior form.
After Pugin?
> He died in 1941, and reading the commentators you could almost hear
> the sigh of relief that he wasn't around any more to mess up their
> "pioneer" theory. (The obituary in the Architectural Review went
> something like "Although he said he had little in common with the
> Modern Movement, little did he realise that it fully reflected his
> principles....")
That's pretty safe when he isn't around to differ, eh? The spatially
figurative approach is my default as well. All the way through school in the
80's they kept trying to paint me as a 'post-modernist' or an
'anti-modernist'since I wasn't a modernist, but I kept explaining that I was
a 'pre-modernist' at heart. There was none of the irony of PoMo in me, nor
the anachronism of Mod-haters. Now, of course I work in all manners....
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| On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote
> HVS wrote:
>
> After Pugin?
Yeah, pretty well. I'd say that Pugin's a good example of another
one they co-opted into the "history that led to International
Style". The only thing they arguably shared was a real and/or
professed belief in honesty of form and materials -- but the
differences far outweigh that commonality.
20th century modernism -- regardless of what its early proponents
maintained -- belongs more closely to the line of Beaux Arts
classicism than it does to neo-Gothic and arts and crafts.
(IMNSHO, of course.)
>
> That's pretty safe when he isn't around to differ, eh? The
> spatially figurative approach is my default as well. All the way
> through school in the 80's they kept trying to paint me as a
> 'post-modernist' or an 'anti-modernist'since I wasn't a
> modernist, but I kept explaining that I was a 'pre-modernist' at
> heart. There was none of the irony of PoMo in me, nor the
> anachronism of Mod-haters. Now, of course I work in all
> manners....
--
Cheers, Harvey
Architectural and topographical historian
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Michael Bulatovich wrote:
>
>
>That's pretty safe when he isn't around to differ, eh? The spatially
>figurative approach is my default as well. All the way through school in the
>80's they kept trying to paint me as a 'post-modernist' or an
>'anti-modernist'since I wasn't a modernist, but I kept explaining that I was
>a 'pre-modernist' at heart. There was none of the irony of PoMo in me, nor
>the anachronism of Mod-haters. Now, of course I work in all manners....
>
>
The problem iwth labels like PoMo is that they are reductive attempts to
populaize small palettes of elements - What I found particularly
irritating in PoMo, come to that, was its seeming insistence on bathroom
tile colors of the 50s and coopted Deco decorative elements recast into
a characature of buildings
>
>
>
>
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| Michael Bulatovich 2008-03-10, 5:26 pm |
| HVS wrote:
> On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote
>
>
> Yeah, pretty well. I'd say that Pugin's a good example of another
> one they co-opted into the "history that led to International
> Style". The only thing they arguably shared was a real and/or
> professed belief in honesty of form and materials -- but the
> differences far outweigh that commonality.
>
> 20th century modernism -- regardless of what its early proponents
> maintained -- belongs more closely to the line of Beaux Arts
> classicism than it does to neo-Gothic and arts and crafts.
>
> (IMNSHO, of course.)
That's an interesting proposition.... You have to the rigid top-down
training, right down to presentational techniques, you have a codified
compositional techniques, you have the zealous pursuit of pedagogical
hegemony...lots of similarities once you stop looking at the designs
visually. Have you or anyone else published along those lines?
[color=darkred]
>
>
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| Michael Bulatovich 2008-03-10, 5:26 pm |
| ++ wrote:
> Michael Bulatovich wrote:
>
>
> The problem iwth labels like PoMo is that they are reductive attempts
> to populaize small palettes of elements - What I found particularly
> irritating in PoMo, come to that, was its seeming insistence on
> bathroom tile colors of the 50s and coopted Deco decorative elements
> recast into a characature of buildings
IOW, the irony.
| |
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| On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote
> HVS wrote:
>
> That's an interesting proposition.... You have to the rigid
> top-down training, right down to presentational techniques, you
> have a codified compositional techniques, you have the zealous
> pursuit of pedagogical hegemony...lots of similarities once you
> stop looking at the designs visually. Have you or anyone else
> published along those lines?
Not that I'm aware, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't a fairly
common observation.
I recall discussing the viewpoint some years ago when asked to
provide preliminary context/angles for a competitive entry for the
V&A's retrospective on Pugin. (The company that brought me in
didn't win the commission, but I don't think my input was remotely
decisive.) ISTR they found it reasonable and interesting rather
than ridiculous -- at least, as you say, the proposition doesn't
collapse when you start thinking about it.
I'm pretty convinced that the reason the International Modernists
co-opted the Pugin/Ruskin/Arts-and-Crafts tradition into their
narrative is that (a) they *had* to: it was self-evidently
excellent (and recent) work; and (b) they were fighting an
internecine war which ruled out any acknowledgement that they and
the detested Beaux Arts designers were cut from the same formalist
cloth.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Architectural and topographical historian
| |
| Michael Bulatovich 2008-03-10, 8:25 pm |
| HVS wrote:
> On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote
>
>
>
>
> Not that I'm aware, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't a fairly
> common observation.
It's the first time I've heard it. <blushes>
> I recall discussing the viewpoint some years ago when asked to
> provide preliminary context/angles for a competitive entry for the
> V&A's retrospective on Pugin. (The company that brought me in
> didn't win the commission, but I don't think my input was remotely
> decisive.) ISTR they found it reasonable and interesting rather
> than ridiculous -- at least, as you say, the proposition doesn't
> collapse when you start thinking about it.
>
> I'm pretty convinced that the reason the International Modernists
> co-opted the Pugin/Ruskin/Arts-and-Crafts tradition into their
> narrative is that (a) they *had* to: it was self-evidently
> excellent (and recent) work; and (b) they were fighting an
> internecine war which ruled out any acknowledgement that they and
> the detested Beaux Arts designers were cut from the same formalist
> cloth.
Another point of congruence was they both argued the 'morality' of their
positions. That rhetoric was somewhat interchangeable, add the attitudes
about 'craft/process' and the 'nature of materials' vis a vis form , which
seem mainly technical issues in Neo-Classicism (as opposed to approaching
the status of ideals), and you've got yourself a few grappling points to
pull Vosey into the boat with you. Plus, there's the old saw about your
enemy's enemy...
| |
| Kris Krieger 2008-03-11, 5:26 pm |
| HVS <usenet@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk> wrote in
news:Xns9A5DB5B3860F8whhvans@news.albasani.net:
> On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote
>
>
> Both, really. He kept writing to the Architects' Journal in the
> 1930s when "the history of the modern movement" was being written
> by people like Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, and who
> were casting him as a direct forerunner. (They had to find a way
> to co-opt him into their grand theory that Internatinal Modernism
> was the culmination of all sound architectural theory, as his stuff
> was too good -- and too recent -- to simply ignore.)
>
> Voysey's objection was that he had nothing at all in common with
> what (IIRC) he termed the "super modernistic" style with flat
> roofs, and explained that he was a Goth who designed buildings
> around spaces, rather than one who used formal principles to
> establish the exterior form.
>
> He died in 1941, and reading the commentators you could almost hear
> the sigh of relief that he wasn't around any more to mess up their
> "pioneer" theory. (The obituary in the Architectural Review went
> something like "Although he said he had little in common with the
> Modern Movement, little did he realise that it fully reflected his
> principles....")
>
Odd, there don't seem to be many images of his work online...
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"HVS" <usenet@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Xns9A5DE4ECA393whhvans@news.albasani.net...
> On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote
>
>
>
>
> Not that I'm aware, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't a fairly
> common observation.
>
> I recall discussing the viewpoint some years ago when asked to
> provide preliminary context/angles for a competitive entry for the
> V&A's retrospective on Pugin. (The company that brought me in
> didn't win the commission, but I don't think my input was remotely
> decisive.) ISTR they found it reasonable and interesting rather
> than ridiculous -- at least, as you say, the proposition doesn't
> collapse when you start thinking about it.
>
> I'm pretty convinced that the reason the International Modernists
> co-opted the Pugin/Ruskin/Arts-and-Crafts tradition into their
> narrative is that (a) they *had* to: it was self-evidently
> excellent (and recent) work; and (b) they were fighting an
> internecine war which ruled out any acknowledgement that they and
> the detested Beaux Arts designers were cut from the same formalist
> cloth.
>
> --
> Cheers, Harvey
> Architectural and topographical historian
>
>
I worked at TAC ( The Architects Collaborative) during the early and late
60's, and worked as a drafter with Gropius. Grope always included
H.H.Richardson and Louis Sullivan when talking about "modern" architecture.
(Seldom FLLW as they mutually disliked each other) His rational, as I
recall, was the open floor plans. There was (and is) a magnificent
Richardson house in Cambridge a couple blocks down the street that he
referred to. I was a beginner, the master was speaking, I swallowed the
line. I believe that Harvey's point is well taken. Grope was a teacher more
than an architect, who gathered the believers around him to develop and
spread the anointed word, and teachers are often dis-inclined to closely
examine their own theories.
EDS
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