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I see that neither side of the culture war right now focuses on the positive, on something beautiful. Both sides see themselves as righteous oppressed victims fighting against the evil empire of the other side, but for both it is less a Star Wars vision than a Terminator vision. War machines running over skulls at night-time, death and lasers. The culture war is bleak and stark, it has no poetry, no romance. It is a grim attrition war, trenches and minor offensives but few large breakthroughs if by breakthroughs one means reaching one's opponent and convincing him of something. Where are the creative songbirds of thought and word who would transcend this opposition and maybe get both sides to become aware that both are equally stuck in the human condition? Has rhetoric truly reached the limits of its potential power? I have so rarely seen anyone change his mind about anything more than minor details.
It is all so tiresome. Maybe it is possible to move in some orthogonal direction and flank this whole conflict from a side that has the breath of fresh air behind it?
I often think this. Who is building beautiful things these days in the public realm? Beautiful schools, libraries, railroad stations, hospitals, parks, museums, even apartment buildings? Yes, there are always a handful of examples, sandwiched between generic shitty modern buildings or awful pastiche. But not enough. No one’s thinking big. You have to inspire people.
I was watching some shitty talk show appearance by the astronauts who are supposed to be going to the moon again with NASA next year. The commenters on the YouTube video (who I presume watch a lot of talkshow clips) were saying it was the most applause they’d ever seen on the show, the audience were standing up and hollering and cheering and so on. People want to believe in something real. Yes, a return to religiosity would be a good thing, but there also has to be real progress, real improvement, something in the kingdom of earth or whatever the biblical term is that inspires and drives people, that suggests some kind of civilizational progress. ChatGPT is good, but right now it’s unclear how it’s going to improve most people’s lives and if anything most people who look into LLMs get panicked about becoming permanently unemployed.
If I was president I’d organize a huge World’s Fair for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding in 2026. Host it in New York, in Flushing Meadows park where the last big one was, around that giant sphere that once symbolized all the possibility of the late 20th century. Invite all the great corporations, every state, other countries, to come and present their vision of the future. Make it free to visit. Hire Robert Stern to design it in a vaguely mid-century Americana style. Have all the classics - the house of the future, the car of the future, the plane of the future etc. It wouldn’t solve the country’s problems (“the controversy over drag queen story hour in the California state pavilion continues…”), but I think it would be mostly fun and hopeful.
You can't design anything in a vaguely mid-century Americana style or any style that is older than 1964, because it will be decried as racist. Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture was a stillbirth. Even if the artist were called Sha'neequah instead of Robert, she still wouldn't be able to do this.
Yes, because fuck neo classical architecture. It sucks now and it sucked then.
We have a bunch of home grown styles that are better anyway; eg frank furnace and such. There is no need to make everything an austere roman larp.
And yet people still find eg. the SCOTUS building to be uniquely beautiful in DC.
Uniquely? It's neoclassical, which makes it anything but unique.
(oh, wait, my mistake, it's actually this building)
Yes, it is still neoclassical but great effort was taken with the exterior ornamentation and proportionality to make it truly impressive. The Treasury Dept building in your first picture looks like a standard 1930s or 1940s office building with basic ornamentation and columns, almost like early Stalinist architecture in the USSR. The SCOTUS building looks like an actual temple. It looks worse from above, but from street level the impression given is excellent.
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