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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31358 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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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.

In my darker (and less sober) moments, I wonder if there's an active campaign against beauty itself. On my local city sub-Reddits I often see people complaining about "wasteful" government spending on a modicum of ornamentation on anything. Faux stone veneers on highway support columns? Wasteful. Planting trees along the highway? Wasteful. Apparently brutalism ugly-ass concrete boxes is the only acceptable architectural form these days.

Edited for Gdanning's pedantry

Brutalism hasn't been in vogue for 40+ years. See recent Pritzger winners.

Edit: No, concrete boxes are not the only acceptable architectural form. Frank Gehry does not design concrete boxes. Nor does Rem Koolhaas. Nor does Santiago Calatrava. Nor does Renzo Piano. Nor does Daniel Libeskind.

And of course there is a wide variety of styles represented here

This is the usual facile reply to complaints about the ugly architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Uh, you complain about the ugliness of modern brutalist buildings, but actually modernism and brutalism are separate architectural movements, and the current-year trend of ugly concrete boxes and geometric turds is called something else.

You don't need to be versed in the jargon of an insular artfield to criticize its output, especially for architecture where this output is forced upon millions of unwilling victims to suffer daily.

Dude, modernism predates Brutalism. The point is not that contemporary architecture is beautiful, nor that is ugly. It is that if you are going to criticize contemporary architecture, then it helps to come across as knowing what you are talking about. Take a look at the newest buildings built in NYC, for example. How many are brutalist?

  • -12

It is that if you are going to criticize contemporary architecture, then it helps to come across as knowing what you are talking about.

This is exactly the attitude that fmaa was talking about. Sorry I didn't learn the specifics of what various kinds of concrete boxes are called but that doesn't mean I automatically have to defer to the aesthetic tastes of someone with a better grasp of the vocabulary and jargon. Whatever you want to call it, it's ugly and I hate it.

No one says you have to defer to anyone. But it is impossible to have a conversation unless we have a common understanding of terms. If someone says, "I hate contemporary architecture because I hate brutalism," I would think he would be happy to learn that most contemporary architecture is not Brutalist. Ditto if he says "I hate contemporary architecture because I hate concrete boxes," he should be happy to learn that most contemporary architecture is not concrete boxes. See,eg, Frank Gehry and other "starchitects."

And, guess what? With some exceptions, I don’t like brutalism either. But I like plenty of more contemporary stuff. Because they aren't synonyms.

  • -11

Lol, everyone did have a common understanding of the terms - everyone knows what @heavywaternettipot meant, and what they were referring to, even you know what they are talking about. You stopped the conversation and turned it into an endless back and forth on the definition of words, like you always do when people are discussing things you don't like.

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You're not saying outright that I have to defer, but your statement "It is that if you are going to criticize contemporary architecture, then it helps to come across as knowing what you are talking about" certainly carries the implication that I ought to be deferring to those with the right vocabulary.

At any rate, I've edited my comment from "brutalist" to "ugly-ass concrete boxes" because that's what's getting built in my area. As I stated in my original reply to you, my city/county/state certainly isn't hiring Pritzker-nominated architects to design its public buildings.

Edit: Stupid auto-correct.

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I'm aware of the difference. Part of my point was that naming a specific artstyle "modern" and then sneering when people use that word to mean contemporary is just being a condescending asshole and bad at communicating.

The other, bigger part was that no, you don't need to know the jargon to complain about things being forced on you. I'm not going to find lists of NYC buildings, but I think like 90% of that Pritzker prize list is ugly and about half of it is concrete boxes. It really doesn't matter to anyone living in/near them if these particular ugly concrete boxes don't count as brutalist according to architects.

No one says you have to accept anything, nor that those Pritzker winners are attractive. But if you go to your local planning commission and say "no contemporary architecture because I hate brutalism and concrete boxes, you cant complain if this gets built down the street from you.

  • -11

Treating bureaucrats and architects like malicious genies might not be wrong, but would hardly make them blameless. Though really the most fantastic part of this scenario would be them caring what you say in the first place.

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