" Johnson's repeated description of architects as "high-class whores" triggered a storm of controversy and resentment within the profession. "What's wrong with a high-class whore if she's high enough class?" he asked once in a Washington Post interview. "It's the oldest profession in the world. It can be the noblest profession. We're other things besides whores. But all I meant was that we are for sale.""
I personally do NOT share Johnson's views....so don't condemn me. Nonetheless, I think they are interesting and make for a lively discussion in this chat room.
Comments???
...architects as "high-class whores"
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Roderick Grant
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Johnson said anything that popped into his head whether it was sensient or not, just yammering for the sake of yammering. Nothing he said should be taken any more seriously than his architecture or his sponsorship of the likes of Stern, Graves or Gehry. Remember, this is the man who found Hitler to be a noble man.
Phillip Johnson is so devoid and class and dignity, its no surprise he's an emperor without any clothes when it comes to architecture. He couldn't design even a mildly pleasing space even if Frank Lloyd Wright came riding in on a white horse, got off the horse and hit Johnson in the ass with a banjo!
Johnson's remark is a catchy way of putting the unexceptional point that architects are in a service profession and they make their money by giving clients what they want.
Self-employed professionals have to stay in the public eye in order to bring in business. Most, architects or otherwise, do this by hooking up with Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis and various other community efforts. If they get a national reputation, they do it by attracting media coverage, and one way to do this is to say quotably naughty things. Wright himself was a master of this, the difference being that he did so to better ends.
Peter
Self-employed professionals have to stay in the public eye in order to bring in business. Most, architects or otherwise, do this by hooking up with Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis and various other community efforts. If they get a national reputation, they do it by attracting media coverage, and one way to do this is to say quotably naughty things. Wright himself was a master of this, the difference being that he did so to better ends.
Peter
Johnson may have been the author of this quip: "The building itself is just the necessity that comes between the drawings and the photographs" (or words to that effect).
I came across this maybe fifteen years ago, reading something (a magazine ?) at the library. I wish I knew for sure who said it. . .
You have to hand it to Frank Lloyd ("The Mouth") Wright; in a bad mood, he happened upon Johnson -- in New Haven, in 1955 -- and delivered himself of this: "Why, little Phil. . .I thought you were dead ! Are you still putting up all those little houses and leaving them out in the rain ?"
SDR
I came across this maybe fifteen years ago, reading something (a magazine ?) at the library. I wish I knew for sure who said it. . .
You have to hand it to Frank Lloyd ("The Mouth") Wright; in a bad mood, he happened upon Johnson -- in New Haven, in 1955 -- and delivered himself of this: "Why, little Phil. . .I thought you were dead ! Are you still putting up all those little houses and leaving them out in the rain ?"
SDR
Wright's quip to Johnson, "...I thought you were dead..." is probably a "come back" by Wright to Johnson's answer to a reporter's question in the 1930's as to why Wright was not included in the 1932 MOMA show that introduced America to the International Style. In the interview Johnson answered "Isn't he dead?"
Johnson and Wright actually did have a friendship of sorts, though it consisted mostly of verbal sparring. Pedro Guerrero gives a detailed account of an afternoon with Johnson and Wright in his book, "Picturing Wright".
Johnson and Wright actually did have a friendship of sorts, though it consisted mostly of verbal sparring. Pedro Guerrero gives a detailed account of an afternoon with Johnson and Wright in his book, "Picturing Wright".
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Roderick Grant
- Posts: 11815
- Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:48 am
Roderick Grant wrote:On a visit to Johnson's glass house in New Canaan, Frank Lloyd Wright walked in, took of his hat, put his hat back on, took it off again, put it on again, and said: "I don't know whether to take my hat off or put it on."
Johnson could have gotten Wright back on this little jab by visiting Wingspread and sitting down at the table under the leaky roof during a rainstorm. He'd be able to use the exact same line Wright did.