Philip Johnson was both an evangelist for modern architecture and a political propagandist for evil. Shielded by personal wealth, he reinvented himself many times over as a curator, journalist, and architect of varying styles before dying in 2005, at age 98, inside the Glass House that remains the architect’s most celebrated building.
A quarter of a century ago, in his book Philip Johnson: Life and Work, art historian Franz Schulze laid bare the architect’s Nazi past, arguing that, in his political activities, Johnson was “decidedly unheroic” but that in the end he was “a trifler . . . a model of futility.” Now a new biography by Dallas Morning News architecture critic Mark Lamster passes tougher judgment on Johnson, for both his life and his work, finding a fundamental emptiness at the core of each.
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