Philip Johnson; NY Sun obit
Hyfler/Rosner
BYLINE: By STEPHEN MILLER, Staff Reporter of the Sun
The architect Philip Johnson died Tuesday night at New
Canaan, Conn., in the glass house he designed as his first
broadside of the International Style of architecture. He was
98, and had announced his retirement only last October.
His career included such highlights as founding the
architectural division at the Museum of Modern Art; naming
and codifying the "International Style," the austere look
that dominated major architecture for much of the 20th
century; designing with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe the Seagram
Building on Park Avenue, an epitome of International Style,
and designing the AT &T Building, whose Chippendale pediment
and cavernous street-level arcade made postmodernism a
business friendly style.
There were other major buildings as well, most notably the
glass and steel Crystal Cathedral, the Garden Grove, Calif.,
home to televangelist Robert Schuller. "Architecture is
basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing
interior space," Johnson said in a 1965 interview. The New
York State Theater at Lincoln Center was a particularly
successful interior, as was the Four Seasons restaurant,
located within the Seagram Building.
In a career of more than 70 years, there were low points as
well, including a years-long flirtation with fascism in the
1930s, as well as gaudy postmodern buildings that resembled
wedding cakes in their profusion of decoration and device.
It was as if, after finding his true vocation as architect
relatively late in life, Johnson sublimated the manic
depression that had circumscribed his first 40 years. His
early devotion to severe modernism was replaced by its polar
opposite.
Yet such a schematic formulation neglects the intellectual
vitality of Johnson's career, the way in which he led, or at
least stayed current with, the leading edge of his
profession for more than a half-century.
A flamboyant aesthete as noted for his open homosexuality as
for his ardent table talk, Johnson was especially notorious
for an interview he gave to Esquire in 1983 in which he
said: "I've always thought of myself more as a populist than
as an elitist, not that an elite isn't a necessary part of
any society. Architects are pretty much high-class whores.
We can turn down some projects the way they can turn down
some
clients, but finally we've both got to say yes to someone if
we want to stay in business."
Johnson was born in Cleveland in 1906, the son of
sophisticated, older parents. His father, a lawyer, settled
a large chunk of preferred stock on Johnson, which relieved
him of the financial necessity to work for a living.
Johnson's mother showed Philip and his two sisters lantern
slides of Italian paintings and took them on a European tour
in 1919, during which the 13-year-old Philip was moved to
tears by the sight of Chartres.
In 1923, Johnson enrolled in Harvard University, where he
studied Greek and majored in philosophy under Alfred North
Whitehead. His studies were interrupted by periodic bouts of
depression, during which he "went home to Ohio and cried
every day and read two detective stories every day," he told
the New Yorker in 1977.
During one of his absences from Harvard, Johnson visited
Italy, Greece, and Egypt. He said he was transformed by
viewing the Parthenon. "After the Parthenon I had a call, as
religious people might put it, and I've never changed," he
told Esquire. Soon, Johnson was visiting the Bauhaus school
of design in Dessau, Germany. He met the school's founder,
Walter Gropius, as well as Le Corbusier and van der Rohe,
and was deeply impressed with the revolution in architecture
emanating from Germany. He also took full advantage of the
aesthetic and physical pleasures offered by Weimar Germany.
If he had left America in a funk, Johnson returned with a
mission.
In 1930, shortly after graduating from Harvard, Johnson was
named the first director of the architecture and design
department of the newly founded Museum of Modern Art. Two
years later, in 1932, he presented an exhibit of modern
architecture that coincided with the publication of his
influential book "The International Style; Architecture
since 1922," written with his friend, Henry-Russell
Hitchcock. In 1934, he presented the exhibition "Machine
Art," which treated for perhaps the first time as
museum-worthy such objects as household appliances, tools,
dinnerware, and other common machine-made items.
Late in 1934, Johnson and another MoMA colleague, Alan
Blackburn, abruptly resigned their positions and dedicated
themselves to fascist politics. Johnson was evidently
impressed by the economic strides in Hitler's Germany, and
traveled to New Orleans to see how that government's
American counterpart functioned under Huey Long. In a 1935
interview with the Washington Post, Johnson and Blackburn
plumped for the Kingfish and demonstrated a kind of
multimedia slide-viewer and record player they called the
"Visomatic," in which they seemed to grasp the
propagandistic possibilities of television. The
demonstration, however, was what we would today call an
industrial video about peanut butter production.
Johnson and Blackburn attempted to form a political party,
and after Long's assassination they joined the vaguely
anti-Semitic Union party. Johnson then succumbed to a new
bout of depression and retreated once again to his parents'
farm. He re-emerged in 1939 as a correspondent for Social
Justice, a right-wing magazine edited by Father Charles
Coughlin. Johnson sent dispatches from the Wehrmacht's
invasion of Poland, including one subtitled "Jews Dominate
Polish Scene." William Shirer, who briefly shared a hotel
room with Johnson, branded him "an American fascist" and
suspected him of spying for the Nazis.
Johnson many times expressed regret for his political
activities before and during the war. "I was a damned fool,"
he told Esquire.
In 1940, Johnson returned to Harvard to attend the Graduate
School of Design. He studied under Gropius - an anti-fascist
whom Johnson disliked - and Marcel Breuer. For his thesis,
Johnson built a controversial Mies-inspired house with a
full-glass wall. A neighbor sued, unsuccessfully. After
graduating in 1943, Johnson somewhat improbably enlisted in
the Army and spent the remainder of the war at Fort Belvior
in Virginia.
Back in New York after being demobilized, Johnson failed the
state architecture licensing exam several times, then passed
it and went into business designing homes. He also returned
to the architecture and design department at MoMA, where he
remained until 1954.
In 1949, Johnson produced his Glass House in New Canaan,
which, despite its small size, is generally accepted as one
of his most important contributions to American
architecture. It is a triangular structure built entirely of
glass and contains no interior walls. The following year,
Johnson designed the Rockefeller Town House, which was
adjacent to MoMA and later became its guesthouse.
At the Schlumberger administration building (1952) at
Ridgefield, Conn., Johnson innovated by incorporating air
conditioning into the design. Johnson was also responsible
for much of the architecture at MoMA, including the
sculpture garden (1953), and he oversaw the 1964 renovation
that added two wings.
In 1958, Johnson teamed with Mies van der Rohe to produce
the Seagram Building, an elegant 38-story structure that was
a classic of the International Style. Johnson's main
contribution was the building's interiors; he maintained an
office for many years on the penultimate floor.
Johnson broke with Mies not long after, and from 1960 began
designing in a more eclectic mode. Having never been much of
a businessman, Johnson in 1967 teamed with the young Chicago
architect John Burgee. Together they produced major
corporate commissions during the 1970s, such as the IDS
Center in Minneapolis and Penzoil Place in Houston. One of
their most dramatic buildings, the Crystal Cathedral, was
completed in 1980.
A slew of other buildings followed. The AT &T Building,
located on Madison Avenue, was completed in 1984. Shortly
before that, Johnson had made his infamous "whore" comment,
and he seemed determined to follow through on it.
Johnson/Burgee produced dozens of corporate buildings in the
years to come, but critics grew increasingly dubious.
"The people with money to build today are corporations -
they are our popes and Medicis," Johnson said. "The sense of
pride is why they build."
For at least the last decade, Johnson was hailed as the
eminence grise of architecture, the most famous, the most
honored, even the most amusing exemplar of his craft.
Especially if one counted his writings - including a
monograph on Mies - he was among the most influential. And
he remained active in his craft, working right up until last
October, when he finally threw in the towel.
In 1979, Johnson won the first Pritzker Architecture Prize,
and he was also the recipient of the American Institute of
Architects' Gold Medal, among many other awards.
Philip Cortelyou Johnson
Born July 8, 1906, at Cleveland; died January 25 at New
Canaan, Conn.; survived by a sister, Jeannette Dempsey.