The quixotic personality of Philip Johnson has fascinated and frustrated critics for over half a century. How to approach the curator who heretically transformed the Modern Movement into a stylistic category by way of the famous exhibition on the International Style and book of 1932; who openly supported fascist movements in the years leading up to World War II; who switched careers by becoming a Harvard-trained architect just before the war; who was a follower of and collaborator with Mies van der Rohe in the 1950s; who then became an adopter of Postmodernism by the late 1970s and who reigned as the premier architecture broker of New York from his seat at the Four Seasons restaurant for nearly half a century?
Is it all a delightful masquerade, a firefly dancing on the surface of life and art for half a century? Is it a series of deeply felt attempts at engaging and transforming the discipline that had, to quote architectural historian Paolo Portoghesi, “too many inhibitions”? Is there a hidden sense of inadequacy that drives a designer to more and more outlandish stylistic experiments? Was it, simply, a lust for power, whether political or architectural? Certainly this is a subject that calls for an analysis beyond the usual categories of art history, architectural criticism, and political commentary.
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