Architecture & ideology.

"The problem of architecture as I see it ... is the problem of all art--the elimination of the human element from the consideration of form"

--Professor Otto Silenus, in Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall

This meticulous observance of "pure styles" is a mark of failing energy in imagination; it is a mark, also, of an inadequacy in thought: of a failure to define the nature of style in general. We cling in architecture to the pedantries of humanism, because we do not grasp the bearing upon architecture of the humanist ideal.

--Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism

I was delighted to learn that my presence at Yale's recent symposium about the American architect Peter Eisenman and the Luxembourg-born architect Leon Krier was to be under the aegis of my late friend Brendan Gill. (1) Brendan was a distinguished alumnus of Yale--I trust other alumni will forgive that pleonasm--and he was also widely admired as a keen, lively writer about architecture for The New Yorker.

Brendan was a merry soul. It is pleasing to speculate about what his reaction would have been to the news that Robert A. M Stern, the Dean of the School of Architecture, had decided not only to ask me to introduce this symposium, but also to denominate me, if but momentarily, the Brendan Gill Lecturer. I suspect that his response would have been one of amusement--spiced, perhaps, with a soupcon of anxiety.

Since I happened to be in New Haven while this exhibition of Mr. Eisenman's and Mr. Krier's work from the 1970s and 1980s was being installed, I took advantage of the coincidence to get a glimpse of the exhibition as it went up. It is one of the privileges of being a critic that one often has the opportunity to drop in as an exhibition is being mounted. There is always a certain excitement, a certain freshness, about seeing an exhibition in this state of morning dishabille, as it were. The bustle of technicians fixing labels, touching up the paint, making some late decisions about exactly how that last row of pictures should be hung is somehow more energizing than distracting. It's like a glimpse backstage at a theatrical performance, which to my mind tends rather to enhance than dissipate the magic of the performance.