So they gave the Pritzker Prize to another architect whose buildings make me feel like I am trapped in the wrong universe. Or at least the wrong century. Why, oh why, must we endure these awful rectangular monstrosities? Did you look at those buildings above, the
Ciutat de la JustÃcia in Barcelona (2009) and think, wow that's amazing, give that man a prize! I thought,
where is the portal back to the world where I belong?Or how about this wonder? Oh, the pathos.
I have really tried at various times in my life to understand this kind of art, but I have finally given up. This just looks to me like psychic torture deliberately inflicted on the world by Satan's minions. I simply don't understand how this can be in any way good, or why anyone wants it. And this is, no kidding, the
Museum Folkwang in Essen (2009), that is, the museum of folkways. Is there any kind of folk art anywhere in the world as awful as this building?
Here is the Turner Contemporary Museum 2011. Of course one expects a ghastly building to house contemporary art, I mean, a building with any beauty would overwhelm the contents. But what if you tried to walk around this building, heading off to the left of the stairs? You would behold, the whole way around, a blank concrete wall extending above your head. Why do we, by far the richest society in human history, insist on inflicting bare concrete walls on our fellow humans? I look at this and I see a complete indifference to humanity, a utter lack of caring about human emotion.
Now, maybe somebody likes this stuff. I find it hard to believe, but let's posit, for the sake of argument, that such people exist. Fine. They have their buildings. People who design them win prizes. Why is there nothing in the architectural world, absolutely nothing, for people like me? I know there are millions of us; every time anyone asks the public how they feel about modern architecture, they turn their thumbs down. Why does this not matter at all? Why does the machine of architecture keep churning out these monstrsities, colder than antarctic winter, more brutal than Bolshevism, with a capitalist titan's contempt for the masses?
Why must we go on blighting our own world?
Why are we forced to work in what feel like giant icebergs hollowed out to serve as prisons? Why are we forbidden beauty?
Ach. Time for a break to go look at my flowers.
Why is there nothing in the architectural world, absolutely nothing, for people like me? I know there are millions of us; every time anyone asks the public how they feel about modern architecture, they turn their thumbs down. Why does this not matter at all? Why does the machine of architecture keep churning out these monstrosities, colder than antarctic winter, more brutal than Bolshevism, with a capitalist titan's contempt for the masses?
ReplyDeleteWhy? Because neither you or 'the public' are the ones paying for the buildings.
Architecture is a product of what the people who hold the purse-strings want. That's always been the case.
In the past, the elites who were heading up these kinds of projects often wanted to display their wealth and power to the masses as much to their peers, and so they built towering cathedrals and gold-encrusted palaces, and other ornate and opulent designs that you seem to enjoy so much, and find so beautiful.
But today, the elites view their audience chiefly as other elites, not the common people. And so they chase the various trends and preferences of that sphere of people.
The people who pay for these museums are not concerned with 'beauty' - or at least, not with the kind of beauty that you or others think of. They're concerned with appearing fashionable among their peers; with being on the cutting edge; with being hailed as 'visionaries' and 'futurists', etc. This is the same sphere of people who go to fashion shows to watch depressed-looking anorexic women strut emotionlessly down a runway wearing dresses made of meat, or out of abstract lumps of foam.
Whether or not you like the current aesthetic choices of the elites doesn't matter. Hell, it doesn't even matter if the elites themselves like them or not. The entire point of it all is status signalling - someone may actually personally hate how their Rolex watch looks, but they wear it anyway because it cost $4.8 million, and they know other people know that fact.