PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
This article was downloaded by:
[EESC Escola De Engenharla de Sao Carlos - USP]
On:
17 April 2011
Access details:
Access Details: [subscription number 936154793]
Publisher
Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
National Identities
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713439360
The politics of historiography: Writing an architectural canon into postwarAmerican national identity
Dorit Fershtman
a
; Alona Nitzan-Shiftan
aa
Technion University, Haifa, IsraelOnline publication date: 16 March 2011
To cite this Article
Fershtman, Dorit and Nitzan-Shiftan, Alona(2011) 'The politics of historiography: Writing anarchitectural canon into postwar American national identity', National Identities, 13: 1, 67 — 88
To link to this Article: DOI:
10.1080/14608944.2011.552571
URL:
Full terms and conditions of use:http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdfThis article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
The politics of historiography: Writing an architectural canon intopostwar American national identity
Dorit Fershtman* and Alona Nitzan-Shiftan
Technion University, Haifa, Israel
This article questions the official recognition of e´migre´ architect Mies van derRohe as the canonic figure shaping the International Style as the quintessentialAmerican mode of architectural expression. The article examines how historians,critics and curators placed the work of Mies in the American historiography of the modern movement by interpreting his work in light of modernist paradigmsthat prevailed in the United States from the early 1930s to the years following theSecond World War. It is argued that Mies’s work provided for scholars of theemerging First World a fertile ground to figure the universal transnational meritsof modern architecture as a particular expression of the American nation, spiritand cherished values of freedom, individualism and pragmatic, puritan rigor.Dwelling on concepts such as ‘liberal democracy’, ‘American Exeptionalism’ and‘the patrimony of a modernist past’, the article examines how the Miesian canonand the image it offered for postwar ‘America’ was entangled in intertwinedarchitectural and national histories.
Keywords:
American architecture; modernist canon; national identity; Interna-tional Style; Mies van der Rohe; Ludwig (1886
Á
1969); historiography
Introduction
In 1963 President John F. Kennedy asked the members of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to create in their contemporary designs for Washington, DC, ‘asetting in which men and women can fully live up to their responsibilities as freecitizens’ (Kennedy, 1963, p. 25). Concurrently, he re-established the Medal of Freedom tradition, begun under President Harry S. Truman in 1945, to awarddistinguished Americans with the highest civic award in a time of peace. On 6December 1963, two weeks after Kennedy was assassinated, the newly inauguratedLyndon B. Johnson revealed his predecessor’s conviction regarding the bond betweenarchitecture and American values by awarding Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Á
‘teacher,designer, master builder’
1
Á
with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Medal of Freedom (Figure 1).A decade and a half earlier, when Philip Johnson curated Mies’s first retro-spective show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947, he lamented that ‘[o]f all thegreat modern architects Mies van der Rohe is the least known’ (Johnson, 1947, p. 7).It came as no surprise that the exhibition found limited success. Yet only 16 yearslater, Mies was already known as a legendary architect, celebrated for conceiving‘soaring structures of glass, steel and concrete’, which, according to the presidential
*Corresponding author. Email: dfersht@technion.ac.il
National Identities
Vol. 13, No. 1, March 2011, 67
Á
88
ISSN 1460-8944 print/ISSN 1469-9907 online
#
D o w nl o ad ed B y : [ E E S C E s c ol a D e E n g e nh a rl a d e S a o C a rl o s - U S P] A t : 02 :55 17 A p ril 2011
text,
‘
at once embody and evoke the distinctive qualities of our age
’
. This amazingleap to the top of the American profession prompts the question: Why Mies? Howdid he accommodate American aspirations? How did his ideology and aestheticsappeal to the modernist canon then being formed? And how did he embodyAmerica
’
s eager quest for its national identity, for its exceptional spirit?We propose to examine the allure of Mies
’
s work through a dual lens: betweenmodern architecture as, on the one hand, a universal expression of
‘
our age
’
, and onthe other hand, a specific articulation of
‘
the American Century
’
(i.e., the termAmericans use to describe the historical period in which their nation became thepolitical, financial and cultural leader of the
‘
First World
’
). In this light, we suggestthat the Kennedy and Johnson administrations applauded the
‘
soaring structures
’
of Mies van der Rohe because they viewed them as at once embodying and evoking notonly the artistic zeitgeist of the postwar era, but also, and simultaneously so, theAmerican character that captured and nurtured this zeitgeist as its own. In otherwords,
‘
the distinctive qualities of our age
’
that were found in Mies
’
s work helped hisadmirers articulate the universality of modern architecture as distinctively American.This study, we should emphasise, is neither of Mies
’
s architecture
Á
the buildingsthat brought him fame, or their construction, materials or location
Á
nor is it of theample influence that these buildings had on his immediate successors (like Skidmore,Owings & Merrill and many others). Rather, we focus on the culture, the people andthe mechanisms that made the architecture of Mies into the ultimate embodiment of American nationalism, as articulated by the powerful hubs of the architecturaldiscipline in the United States after the Second World War. With this focus, we cansee how a single discipline can contribute to the evolution of a national identity.
Figure 1. Mies receives the Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon B. Johnson,Washington, DC, 1963.
68
D. Fershtman and A. Nitzan-Shiftan
D o w nl o ad ed B y : [ E E S C E s c ol a D e E n g e nh a rl a d e S a o C a rl o s - U S P] A t : 02 :55 17 A p ril 2011
Search History:
Result 00 of 00
00 results for result for
p.
Dorit Fershtman - The Politics of Historiography Writing an Architectural Canon Into Postwar American National Identity (National Identities)
285
Reads
1
Readcasts
0
Embed Views
More From This User
Notes
Load more
