The Purple Decades (50 page)
Read The Purple Decades Online
Authors: Tom Wolfe
He could close his eyes and try to believe that all that mattered was that
he
knew his work was great ⦠and that other artists respected
it ⦠and that History would surely record his achievements ⦠but deep down he knew he was lying to himself.
I want to be a Name
,
goddamn it!â
at least that, a name, a name on the lips of the museum curators, gallery owners, collectors, patrons, board members, committee members, Culture hostesses, and their attendant intellectuals and journalists and their
Time
and
Newsweekâ
all right!âeven that!â
Time
and
Newsweekâ
Oh yes! (ask the shades of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko!)âeven the goddamned journalists!
he
knew his work was great ⦠and that other artists respected
it ⦠and that History would surely record his achievements ⦠but deep down he knew he was lying to himself.
I want to be a Name
,
goddamn it!â
at least that, a name, a name on the lips of the museum curators, gallery owners, collectors, patrons, board members, committee members, Culture hostesses, and their attendant intellectuals and journalists and their
Time
and
Newsweekâ
all right!âeven that!â
Time
and
Newsweekâ
Oh yes! (ask the shades of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko!)âeven the goddamned journalists!
Â
During the 1960s this entire process by which
le monde
, the culturati, scout bohemia and tap the young artist for Success was acted out in the most graphic way. Early each spring, two emissaries from the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred Barr and Dorothy Miller, would head downtown from the Museum on West Fifty-third Street, down to Saint Marks Place, Little Italy, Broome Street and environs, and tour the loft studios of known artists and unknowns alike, looking at everything, talking to one and all, trying to get a line on what was new and significant in order to put together a show in the fall ⦠and, well, I mean, my Godâfrom the moment the two of them stepped out on Fifty-third Street to grab a cab, some sort of boho radar began to record their sortie â¦
They're coming!
⦠And rolling across Lower Manhattan, like the Cosmic Pulse of the theosophists, would be a unitary heartbeat:
le monde
, the culturati, scout bohemia and tap the young artist for Success was acted out in the most graphic way. Early each spring, two emissaries from the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred Barr and Dorothy Miller, would head downtown from the Museum on West Fifty-third Street, down to Saint Marks Place, Little Italy, Broome Street and environs, and tour the loft studios of known artists and unknowns alike, looking at everything, talking to one and all, trying to get a line on what was new and significant in order to put together a show in the fall ⦠and, well, I mean, my Godâfrom the moment the two of them stepped out on Fifty-third Street to grab a cab, some sort of boho radar began to record their sortie â¦
They're coming!
⦠And rolling across Lower Manhattan, like the Cosmic Pulse of the theosophists, would be a unitary heartbeat:
Pick me pick me pick me pick me pick me pick me pick me â¦
O damnable Uptown!
O damnable Uptown!
By all means, deny it if asked!âwhat one knows, in one's cheating heart, and what one says are two different things!
So it was that the art mating ritual developed early in the centuryâin Paris, in Rome, in London, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, and, not too long afterward, in New York. As we've just seen, the ritual has two phases:
(1) The Boho Dance, in which the artist shows his stuff within the circles, coteries, movements,
isms
, of the home neighborhood, bohemia itself, as if he doesn't care about anything else; as if, in fact, he has a knife in his teeth against the fashionable world uptown.
isms
, of the home neighborhood, bohemia itself, as if he doesn't care about anything else; as if, in fact, he has a knife in his teeth against the fashionable world uptown.
(2) The Consummation, in which culturati from that very same world,
le monde
, scout the various new movements and new artists of bohemia, select those who seem the most exciting, original, important, by whatever standardsâand shower them with all the rewards of celebrity.
le monde
, scout the various new movements and new artists of bohemia, select those who seem the most exciting, original, important, by whatever standardsâand shower them with all the rewards of celebrity.
By the First World War the process was already like what in the Paris clip joints of the day was known as an apache dance. The artist was like the female in the act, stamping her feet, yelling defiance one moment, feigning indifference the next, resisting the advances of her
pursuer with absolute contempt ⦠more thrashing about ⦠more rake-a-cheek fury ⦠more yelling and carrying on ⦠until finally with one last mighty and marvelous ambiguous shriekâ
pain! ecstasy!
âshe submits ⦠Paff paff paff paff paff ⦠How you do it, my boy! ⦠and the house lights rise and Everyone,
tout le monde,
applauds â¦
pursuer with absolute contempt ⦠more thrashing about ⦠more rake-a-cheek fury ⦠more yelling and carrying on ⦠until finally with one last mighty and marvelous ambiguous shriekâ
pain! ecstasy!
âshe submits ⦠Paff paff paff paff paff ⦠How you do it, my boy! ⦠and the house lights rise and Everyone,
tout le monde,
applauds â¦
The artist's payoff in this ritual is obvious enough. He stands to gain precisely what Freud says are the goals of the artist: fame, money, and beautiful lovers. But what about
le monde,
the culturati, the social members of the act? What's in it for them? Part of their reward is the ancient and semi-sacred status of Benefactor of the Arts. The arts have always been a doorway into Society, and in the largest cities today the artsâthe museum boards, arts councils, fund drives, openings, parties, committee meetingsâhave completely replaced the churches in this respect. But there is more!
le monde,
the culturati, the social members of the act? What's in it for them? Part of their reward is the ancient and semi-sacred status of Benefactor of the Arts. The arts have always been a doorway into Society, and in the largest cities today the artsâthe museum boards, arts councils, fund drives, openings, parties, committee meetingsâhave completely replaced the churches in this respect. But there is more!
Today there is a peculiarly modern reward that the avant-garde artist can give his benefactor: namely, the feeling that he, like his mate the artist, is separate from and aloof from the bourgeoisie, the middle classes ⦠the feeling that he may be
from
the middle class but he is no longer
in
it ⦠the feeling that he is a fellow soldier, or at least an aide-de-camp or an honorary cong guerrilla in the vanguard march through the land of the philistines. This is a peculiarly modern need and a peculiarly modern kind of salvation (from the sin of Too Much Money) and something quite common among the well-to-do all over the West, in Rome and Milan as well as New York. That is why collecting contemporary art, the leading edge, the latest thing, warm and wet from the Loft, appeals specifically to those who feel most uneasy about their own commercial wealth ⦠See? I'm not like
themâ
those Jaycees, those United Fund chairmen, those Young Presidents, those mindless New York A.C.
goyisheh
hog-jowled stripe-tied goddamn-good-to-see-you-you-old-bastard-you oyster-bar trenchermen ⦠Avant-garde art, more than any other, takes the Mammon and the Moloch out of money, puts Levi's, turtlenecks, muttonchops, and other mantles and laurels of bohemian grace upon it.
from
the middle class but he is no longer
in
it ⦠the feeling that he is a fellow soldier, or at least an aide-de-camp or an honorary cong guerrilla in the vanguard march through the land of the philistines. This is a peculiarly modern need and a peculiarly modern kind of salvation (from the sin of Too Much Money) and something quite common among the well-to-do all over the West, in Rome and Milan as well as New York. That is why collecting contemporary art, the leading edge, the latest thing, warm and wet from the Loft, appeals specifically to those who feel most uneasy about their own commercial wealth ⦠See? I'm not like
themâ
those Jaycees, those United Fund chairmen, those Young Presidents, those mindless New York A.C.
goyisheh
hog-jowled stripe-tied goddamn-good-to-see-you-you-old-bastard-you oyster-bar trenchermen ⦠Avant-garde art, more than any other, takes the Mammon and the Moloch out of money, puts Levi's, turtlenecks, muttonchops, and other mantles and laurels of bohemian grace upon it.
That is why collectors today not only seek out the company of, but also want to hang out amidst, lollygag around with, and enter into the milieu of ⦠the artists they patronize. They
want
to climb those vertiginous loft building stairs on Howard Street that go up five flights without a single turn or bendâ
straight up!
like something out of a casebook dreamâto wind up with their hearts ricocheting around in their rib cages with tachycardia from the exertion mainly but also from the anticipation that just beyond this door at the top ⦠in this loft ⦠lie
the real goods â¦
paintings, sculptures that are indisputably part of the new movement, the new
école,
the new wave ⦠something unshrinkable, chipsy, pure cong, bourgeois-proof.
want
to climb those vertiginous loft building stairs on Howard Street that go up five flights without a single turn or bendâ
straight up!
like something out of a casebook dreamâto wind up with their hearts ricocheting around in their rib cages with tachycardia from the exertion mainly but also from the anticipation that just beyond this door at the top ⦠in this loft ⦠lie
the real goods â¦
paintings, sculptures that are indisputably part of the new movement, the new
école,
the new wave ⦠something unshrinkable, chipsy, pure cong, bourgeois-proof.
Great Moments in Contemporary Architecture
The Clients' First Night in the House
Â
“Well, maybe we'll make
Architectural Digest
anyway.”
Architectural Digest
anyway.”
“We damn well better.”
*
A
ll at once, in 1937, the Silver Prince himself was here, in America. Walter Gropius; in person; in the flesh; and here to stay. In the wake of the Nazis' rise to power, Gropius had fled Germany, going first to England and coming now to the United States. Other stars of the fabled Bauhaus arrived at about the same time: Breuer, Albers, Moholy-Nagy, Bayer, and Mies van der Rohe, who had become head of the Bauhaus in 1930, two years after Gropius, already under pressure because of the left-wing aura of the compound, had resigned. Here they came, uprooted, exhausted, penniless, men without a country, battered by fate.
ll at once, in 1937, the Silver Prince himself was here, in America. Walter Gropius; in person; in the flesh; and here to stay. In the wake of the Nazis' rise to power, Gropius had fled Germany, going first to England and coming now to the United States. Other stars of the fabled Bauhaus arrived at about the same time: Breuer, Albers, Moholy-Nagy, Bayer, and Mies van der Rohe, who had become head of the Bauhaus in 1930, two years after Gropius, already under pressure because of the left-wing aura of the compound, had resigned. Here they came, uprooted, exhausted, penniless, men without a country, battered by fate.
Gropius had the healthy self-esteem of any ambitious man, but he was a gentleman above all else, a gentleman of the old school, a man who was always concerned about a sense of proportion, in life as well as in design. As a refugee from a blighted land, he would have been content with a friendly welcome, a place to lay his head, two or three meals a day until he could get on his own feet, a smile every once in a while, and a chance to work, if anybody needed him. And insteadâ
The reception of Gropius and his confreres was like a certain stock scene from the jungle movies of that period. Bruce Cabot and Myrna Loy make a crash landing in the jungle and crawl out of the wreckage in their Abercrombie & Fitch white safari blouses and tan gabardine jodhpurs and stagger into a clearing. They are surrounded by savages with bones through their nosesâwho immediately bow down and prostrate themselves and commence a strange moaning chant.
The White Gods!
Come from the skies at last!
From
From Bauhaus to Our House
, chapter 3 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981). First published in
Harper's
, June 1981.
From Bauhaus to Our House
, chapter 3 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981). First published in
Harper's
, June 1981.
Gropius was made head of the school of architecture at Harvard, and Breuer joined him there. Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus, which evolved into the Chicago Institute of Design. Albers opened a rural Bauhaus in the hills of North Carolina, at Black Mountain College. Mies was installed as dean of architecture at the Armour Institute in Chicago. And not just dean; master builder also. He was given a campus to create, twenty-one buildings in all, as the Armour Institute merged with the Lewis Institute to form the Illinois Institute of Technology. Twenty-one large buildings, in the middle of the Depression, at a time when building had come almost to a halt in the United States âfor an architect who had completed only seventeen buildings in his careerâ
O white gods.
Such prostrations! Such acts of homage! The Museum of Modern Art honored Gropius with a show called “Bauhaus: 1919â1928'” those being the years when Gropius headed it. Philip Johnson, now thirty-four years old, could resist the physical presence of the gods no longer. He decamped to Harvard to study to become an architect at Gropius' feet. Starting from zero! (If the truth be known, he would have preferred to be at Mies' feet, but to a supremely urbane young man like Johnson, we may be sure, the thought of moving to Chicago, Illinois, for three years was a bit more zero than he had in mind.)
It was embarrassing, perhaps ⦠but it was the kind of thing one could learn to live with ⦠. Within three years the course of American architecture had changed, utterly. It was not so much the buildings the Germans designed in the United States, although Mies' were to become highly influential a decade later. It was more the system of instruction they introduced. Still more, it was
their very presence
. The most fabled creatures in all the mythology of twentieth-century American artânamely, those dazzling European artists poised so exquisitely against the rubbleâthey were â¦
here!
â¦
now!
⦠in the land of the colonial complex ⦠to govern, in person, their big little Nigeria of the Arts.
their very presence
. The most fabled creatures in all the mythology of twentieth-century American artânamely, those dazzling European artists poised so exquisitely against the rubbleâthey were â¦
here!
â¦
now!
⦠in the land of the colonial complex ⦠to govern, in person, their big little Nigeria of the Arts.
This curious phase of late colonial history was by no means confined to architecture, for the colonial complex was all-pervasive. Stars of the two great rival movements of European painting, the Cubists and Surrealists, began arriving as refugees in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Léger, Mondrian, Modigliani, Chagall, Max Ernst, André Breton, Yves Tanguyâ
O white gods!
The American Scene and Social Realist painting of the 1930s vanished, never to reappear. From the Europeans, artists in New York learned how to create their own clerisy. The first American art compound, the so-called New York School of abstract expressionists, was formed in the 1940s, with regular meetings, manifestos,
new theories, new visual codes, the lot. Arnold Schoenberg, the white god of all the white gods in European music, arrived as a refugee in 1936. For the next forty years, serious music in America became a footnote to Schoenberg's theory of serial composition. There was considerable irony here. Many European composers looked to American jazz and to American composers such as George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Ferde Grofé as liberating forces, a way out of the hyperrationalization of European avant-garde music as typified by Schoenberg. But serious American composers, by and large, were having none of that. They acted like Saudis being told their tents were marvelous because they were so natural and indigenous and earthy. They wanted the real thingâthe European thingâand they fastened onto it with a vengeance. Thereafter, Gershwin, Copland, and Grofé were spoken of with condescension or else plain derision.
v
O white gods!
The American Scene and Social Realist painting of the 1930s vanished, never to reappear. From the Europeans, artists in New York learned how to create their own clerisy. The first American art compound, the so-called New York School of abstract expressionists, was formed in the 1940s, with regular meetings, manifestos,
new theories, new visual codes, the lot. Arnold Schoenberg, the white god of all the white gods in European music, arrived as a refugee in 1936. For the next forty years, serious music in America became a footnote to Schoenberg's theory of serial composition. There was considerable irony here. Many European composers looked to American jazz and to American composers such as George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Ferde Grofé as liberating forces, a way out of the hyperrationalization of European avant-garde music as typified by Schoenberg. But serious American composers, by and large, were having none of that. They acted like Saudis being told their tents were marvelous because they were so natural and indigenous and earthy. They wanted the real thingâthe European thingâand they fastened onto it with a vengeance. Thereafter, Gershwin, Copland, and Grofé were spoken of with condescension or else plain derision.
v
In architecture, naturally, the Silver Prince became the chief executive, the governor of the colony, as it were. The teaching of architecture at Harvard was transformed overnight. Everyone started from zero. Everyone was now taught in the fundamentals of the Internationalâwhich is to say, the compoundâStyle. All architecture became nonbourgeois architecture, although the concept itself was left discreetly
unexpressed
, as it were. The old Beaux-Arts traditions became heresy, and so did the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright, which had only barely made its way into the architecture schools in the first place. Within three years, every so-called major American contribution to contemporary architectureâwhether by Wright, H. H. Richardson, creator of the heavily rusticated American Romanesque, or Louis Sullivan, leader of the “Chicago School” of skyscraper architectsâhad dropped down into the footnotes, into the
ibid.
thickets.
unexpressed
, as it were. The old Beaux-Arts traditions became heresy, and so did the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright, which had only barely made its way into the architecture schools in the first place. Within three years, every so-called major American contribution to contemporary architectureâwhether by Wright, H. H. Richardson, creator of the heavily rusticated American Romanesque, or Louis Sullivan, leader of the “Chicago School” of skyscraper architectsâhad dropped down into the footnotes, into the
ibid.
thickets.
Wright himself was furious and, for one of the few times in his life, bewildered. It was hard to say what got under his skin more: the fact that his work had been upstaged by the Europeans or the fact that he was now treated as a species of walking dead man. He was not deprived of honor and respect, but when he got it, it often sounded like a memorial service. For example, the Museum of Modern Art put on an exhibition of Wright's work in 1940âbut it was in tandem with a show of the work of the movie director D. W. Griffith, who had retired in 1931. Mies made a very gracious statement about what a genius Wright was and how he had opened up the eyes of European
architects ⦠back before the First World War ⦠As to just what debt he might have felt to the eighty-odd buildings Wright had designed since then, he didn't say.
architects ⦠back before the First World War ⦠As to just what debt he might have felt to the eighty-odd buildings Wright had designed since then, he didn't say.
The late 1920s and early 1930s had been disastrous for Wright. He was already fifty-eight when a fire destroyed his studio at Taliesin, Wisconsin, in 1925. Troubles with his mistress, Miriam Noel, seemed to paralyze his practice. His business had fallen off badly even before the Depression. Wright had finally holed up, like a White Russian on his uppers, in his rebuilt redoubt at Taliesin, with a dozen or so apprentices, known as the Taliesin Fellows, his porkpie hats, berets, high collars and flowing neckties, and his capes from Stevenson, the Chicago tailor. Wright himself had been an apprentice of Louis Sullivan and had broken with or been fired by himâeach had his own versionâbut Wright had taken with him Sullivan's vision of a totally new and totally American architecture, arising from the American terrain and the spirit of the Middle West. Well, now, finally, in the late 1930s, there was a totally new architecture in America, and it had come straight from Germany, Holland, and France, the French component being Le Corbusier.
Every time Wright read that Le Corbusier had finished a building, he told the Fellows: “Well, now that he's finished one building, he'll go write four books about it.” Le Corbusier made one visit to the United Statesâand developed a phobia toward Americaâand Wright developed a phobia toward Le Corbusier. He turned down his one chance to meet him. He didn't want to have to shake his hand. As for Gropius, Wright always referred to him as “Herr Gropius.” He didn't want to shake his hand, either. One day Wright made a surprise visit to a site in Racine, Wisconsin, where the first of his “Usonian” houses, medium-priced versions of his Prairie School manor houses, was going up. Wright's red Lincoln Zephyr pulled up to the front. One of his apprentices, Edgar Tafel, was at the wheel, serving as chauffeur. Just then, a group of men emerged from the building. Among them was none other than Gropius himself, who had come to the University of Wisconsin to lecture and was anxious to see some of Wright's work. Gropius came over and put his face at the window and said, “Mr. Wright, it's a pleasure to meet you. I have always admired your work.” Wright did not so much as smile or raise his hand. He merely turned his head ever so slightly toward the face at the window and said out of the side of his mouth, “Herr Gropius, you're a guest of the university here. I just want to tell you that they're as snobbish here as they are at Harvard, only they don't have a New England accent.” Whereupon he turned to Tafel and said, “Well, we have to get on, Edgar!” And he settled back, and the red Zephyr sped off, leaving
Gropius and entourage teetering on the edge of the curb with sunbeams shining through their ears.
w
Gropius and entourage teetering on the edge of the curb with sunbeams shining through their ears.
w
One up for Daddy Frank!âas the Fellows called Wright, when he was out of earshot. But it was oneupmanship of a hollow sort. Daddy Frank had just seen the face of the German who had replaced him as the Future of American Architecture.
Tafel and the other Fellows were Wright's only followers by now. Among the architecture students in the universities the International Style was all you heard about. Enthusiasm had been building up ever since the pilgrims had returned from Europe and the Museum of Modern Art began touting the compound architects. When the white gods suddenly arrived, enthusiasm became conversion, in the religious sense. There was a zeal about it that went quite beyond the ordinary passions of aesthetic taste. It was the esoteric, hierophantic fervor of the compound that seized them all. “Henceforth, the divinity of art and the authority of taste reside
here with us
⦔ The university architecture departments themselves became the American version of the compounds. Here was an approach to architecture that turned the American architect from a purveyor to bond salesman to an engineer of the soul. With the Depression on, the bond salesmen weren't doing much for the architecture business anyway. New building had come to almost a dead halt. This made it even easier for the architectural community to take to the white gods' theories of starting from zero.
here with us
⦔ The university architecture departments themselves became the American version of the compounds. Here was an approach to architecture that turned the American architect from a purveyor to bond salesman to an engineer of the soul. With the Depression on, the bond salesmen weren't doing much for the architecture business anyway. New building had come to almost a dead halt. This made it even easier for the architectural community to take to the white gods' theories of starting from zero.
Studying architecture was no longer a matter of acquiring a set of technical skills and a knowledge of aesthetic alternatives. Before he knew it, the student found himself drawn into a movement and entrusted with a set of inviolable aesthetic and moral principles. The campus itself became the physical compound, as at the Bauhaus. When students talked about architecture, it was with a sense of mission. The American campus compounds differed one from the otherâto an ever so slight degree, just as de Stijl differed from Bauhaus. Harvard was pure Bauhaus. At Yale they would experiment with variations. At one point the principle of “the integrally jointed wooden frame” seemed exhilaratingly rebelliousâbut it would have taken the superfine mind of Doctor Subtilis himself to have explained why. This, too, was after the manner of the European compounds.
Faculty members resisted the compound passion at their peril. Students were becoming unruly. They were drawing up petitionsâmanifestos in embryo. No more laying down laborious washes in china ink in the old Beaux-Arts manner! No more tedious Renaissance
renderings! After all, look at Mies' drawings. He used no shading at all, just quick crisp straight lines, clean and to the point. And look at Corbu's! His draftsmanshipâa veritable scribble! A pellmell rush of ideas! His renderings were watercolors in mauve and brown tones, as fast and terribly beautiful as a storm! Genius!âyou had to let it
gush out!
We declare: No more stone-grinding classical Renaissance details! âand the faculties caved in. By 1940, the sketchiness of Corbu's quivering umber bird had become the modern standard for draftsmanship. With the somewhat grisly euphoria of Savonarola burning the wigs and fancy dresses of the Florentine fleshpots, deans of architecture went about instructing the janitors to throw out all plaster casts of classical details, pedagogical props that had been accumulated over a half century or more. I mean, my God, all those Esquiline vase-fountains and Temple of Vesta capitals ⦠How very bourgeois.
renderings! After all, look at Mies' drawings. He used no shading at all, just quick crisp straight lines, clean and to the point. And look at Corbu's! His draftsmanshipâa veritable scribble! A pellmell rush of ideas! His renderings were watercolors in mauve and brown tones, as fast and terribly beautiful as a storm! Genius!âyou had to let it
gush out!
We declare: No more stone-grinding classical Renaissance details! âand the faculties caved in. By 1940, the sketchiness of Corbu's quivering umber bird had become the modern standard for draftsmanship. With the somewhat grisly euphoria of Savonarola burning the wigs and fancy dresses of the Florentine fleshpots, deans of architecture went about instructing the janitors to throw out all plaster casts of classical details, pedagogical props that had been accumulated over a half century or more. I mean, my God, all those Esquiline vase-fountains and Temple of Vesta capitals ⦠How very bourgeois.
At Yale, in the annual design competition, a jury always picked out one student as, in effect, best in show. But now the students rebelled. And why? Because it was written, in the scriptures, by Gropius himself: “The fundamental pedagogical mistake of the academy arose from its preoccupation with the idea of individual genius.” Gropius' and Mies' byword was “team” effort. Gropius' own firm in Cambridge was not called Gropius & Associates, Inc., or anything close to it. It was called “The Architects Collaborative.” At Yale the students insisted on a group project, a collaborative design, to replace the obscene scramble for individual glory.
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