From: usenet@REMOVETHISwhhvs.co.uk   
      
   On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote   
      
   > HVS wrote:   
   >> On 10 Mar 2008, Michael Bulatovich wrote   
   >>   
   >>> HVS wrote:   
   >>>    
   >>>   
   >>>> (FWIW, that's why I can't view International Modernism as   
   >>>> anything other than intrinsically classical in its approach.   
   >>>> It's also why Voysey kept shouting throughout the 1930s that   
   >>>> he most definitely *wasn't* a "pioneer of the Modern   
   >>>> Movement".)   
   >>>   
   >>> Was that because he wasn't 'intrinsically classical' or wasn't   
   >>> a 'pioneer'?   
   >>   
   >> Both, really.  He kept writing to the Architects' Journal in   
   >> the 1930s when "the history of the modern movement" was being   
   >> written by people like Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip   
   >> Johnson, and who were casting him as a direct forerunner.   
   >> (They had to find a way to co-opt him into their grand theory   
   >> that Internatinal Modernism was the culmination of all sound   
   >> architectural theory, as his stuff was too good -- and too   
   >> recent -- to simply ignore.)   
   >>   
   >> Voysey's objection was that he had nothing at all in common   
   >> with what (IIRC) he termed the "super modernistic" style with   
   >> flat roofs, and explained that he was a Goth who designed   
   >> buildings around spaces, rather than one who used formal   
   >> principles to establish the exterior form.   
   >   
   > After Pugin?   
      
   Yeah, pretty well.  I'd say that Pugin's a good example of another   
   one they co-opted into the "history that led to International   
   Style".  The only thing they arguably shared was a real and/or   
   professed belief in honesty of form and materials -- but the   
   differences far outweigh that commonality.   
      
   20th century modernism -- regardless of what its early proponents   
   maintained -- belongs more closely to the line of Beaux Arts   
   classicism than it does to neo-Gothic and arts and crafts.   
      
   (IMNSHO, of course.)   
      
      
   >> He died in 1941, and reading the commentators you could almost   
   >> hear the sigh of relief that he wasn't around any more to mess   
   >> up their "pioneer" theory.  (The obituary in the Architectural   
   >> Review went something like "Although  he said he had little in   
   >> common with the Modern Movement, little did he realise that it   
   >> fully reflected his principles....")   
   >   
   > That's pretty safe when he isn't around to differ, eh? The   
   > spatially figurative approach is my default as well. All the way   
   > through school in the 80's they kept trying to paint me as a   
   > 'post-modernist' or an 'anti-modernist'since I wasn't a   
   > modernist, but I kept explaining that I was a 'pre-modernist' at   
   > heart. There was none of the irony of PoMo in me, nor the   
   > anachronism of Mod-haters. Now, of course I work in all   
   > manners....   
      
   --   
   Cheers, Harvey   
   Architectural and topographical historian   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)