Early adulation can morph into a fearsome burden, the “how-do-I-top-myself?” syndrome that frequently shadows exceptional success. Sometimes external factors interject a negative answer to that question. Shifting trends in taste thwarted the prospects of several early-20th-century vanguard architects, including Louis Sullivan, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, C.F.A. Voysey, and the Greene brothers, all of whom were labeled old hat when a resurgent vogue for Beaux-Arts Classicism — which Sullivan foresaw at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair — reared its neo-Roman head.
Gwathmey prided himself on not jumping aboard the Postmodern bandwagon, unlike his opportunistic colleagues. But he didn’t go broke by sticking to his Modernist guns, as did the aforementioned fin de siècle mavericks circa 1910. Architects who discover a marketable formula are understandably tempted to mine it as long as demand persists, a tendency shared by many painters, composers, and writers. Why mess with success? However, the pitfalls of coasting on established ideas, even very good ones, can also prompt ambitious artists to veer off in radically different directions.
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