Philip Cortelyou Johnson (1906–2005)

This work sets out to describe the aesthetic qualities intrinsic to the work of such architects as Le Corbusier, Oud, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. The authors observed the distinguishing features that made possible a definition of a new "style": emphasis on volume as opposed to mass; regularity as opposed to symmetry; and dependence on the intrinsic elegance of materials as opposed to applied decoration. First published in 1932 to coincide with an architectural exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, this reissue contains a new foreword by Philip Johnson reflecting on the impact of these principles over 60 years after they were first set forth.… (més)

In most instance I skip reading a book's acknowledgments; they tend to be laundry lists of far too many names or the usual thanking of friends, family, and editors (heck, I'm guilty of that, too). But sometimes acknowledgments are revealing, as in Deconstructivist Architecture, the catalog to the 1988 MoMA show curated and authored by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley. Johnson is the one who gets the acknowledgments, with Wigley just penning an introduction to the projects by seven now-famous architects: Coop Himmelblau, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libesind, and Bernard Tschumi. Johnson's thanks are hard to miss; instead of being tucked at the back of the book, they come at the end of his preface but are not even called out as acknowledgments. So picking up this book just recently after five years (when I wrote a piece on the 25-year anniversary of the show and book) I just continued reading Johnson's thanks as if they were part of the preface, where he argues for the relevance of the seven architects and they show he mounted. Most revealing is this paragraph:

"For the impetus to undertake this exhibition I must thank two men who are working on books related to our theme. First there is Aaron Betsky, who called my attention to the telling phrase 'violated perfection' -- originating from the title of an exhibition proposed by the team of Paul Florian and Stephen Wierzbowski for the University of Illinois, Chicago. The second man is Joseph Giovannini, who was another valuable source of preliminary information on the subject."

So, not surprisingly given his track record as an architect, Johnson managed to take an idea generated by others and mount what would become the defining exhibition on it, beating them to the punch and to the glory. I have a bunch of books on Deconstructivism (or Deconstruction, whichever term one wants to use), but all of them follow on the heels of the MoMA catalog. Some of the books that followed are better in many ways (I don't have Betsky's Violated Perfection from 1990, but I recall liking it a good deal in college), but it's hard to deny the importance of the book that came first, and in turn defined the "movement" (much like Johnson's legendary 1932 "International Style" show and companion book done with Henry-Russell Hitchcock) for people who didn't even manage to see the exhibition during its short run at MoMA.… (més)