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21st Century
Peter Eisenman: "Liberal Views Have Never Built
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Jul 27, 2004
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An Interview by Robert Locke
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Peter Eisenman, 70, is one of the founding theorists of
postmodern architecture and a distinguished
practicing architect who will probably be best
remembered for his Monument to the Murdered Jews
of Europe (view images from the Archinect gallery)
currently under construction in Berlin. Thus it was
very surprising to hear what he had to say about the
failures of contemporary architecture one morning at
his firm's offices in an industrial loft in Manhattan's
wholesale antiques district.

Although he is usually classed with postmodernists


and deconstructivists who consider themselves
cultural radicals with an agenda of revolution,
Eisenman turns out upon closer examination to be a
very different thinker, who is surprisingly blunt about
the failures of modern architecture, the uselessness
of the cultural left, and the obsolescence of the avant-
garde. He is a cantankerously honest thinker in a field
rife with glib ideologues and trendy posers.

Would you care to elaborate a little on the


connection you see between politics and
architecture?

Well, I think architecture is a form of politics. I believe


that architecture does make political statements.
There is no doubt. I mean, I was just in Naples
recently, and three of the great buildings that I saw in
Naples, in the most beautiful shape, were built by
Mussolini. But that doesn't mean I agree with
Mussolini's politics.

I have just written a book, which I've spent 40 years


of my life on, on one of the most important Italian
fascist architects (Giuseppe Terragni:
Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques), who was
a party member: he built the House of the Fascists in
Como. Why would I be doing that if I'm such a lunatic
on the left?

Well, I didn't say that. But people assume it.

Right. They assume that, but here's proof that I'm


not. You know, I can tell you this: most of my clients
are Republicans, most of them are right-leaning. In
fact, my client in Spain for the cultural center at
Santiago de Campostela is the last Francoist minister.
And I have the most rapport with right-leaning
political views, because first of all, liberal views have
never built anything of any value, because they can't
get their act together.

I find this public process about what monument we


should build in downtown at the WTC site an aberrant
one, because since when does the public choose? I
would think that what you just said to me would lead
one to believe that we ought to listen to the voice of
the people as to what we should build, and I'm not
convinced that you're not the liberal in the room and
I'm not the conservative.

I would say that the voice of the people is one


voice to be listened to, if only because the
public has no choice but to look at buildings
once they're built, unlike paintings or poems.
But most people, insofar as there is a cultural
right in this country, tend to assume that
anyone who advocates and practices the kind of
architecture you do has to be someone like
Bernard Tschumi ' architecture in the service of
Marxist revolution or whatever kind of
revolution they've moved on to now.

Right - exactly.

So you're at the other end of the spectrum?

Yes and no.

I don't mean you're a fascist like your pal in


Spain.

He's not a fascist.

Well, a former fascist, if you classify Franco as


a fascist, which I realize is controversial.

The people who support me in Arizona are all


Republicans. The support I had in the state of Ohio
was from the head of the Republican Party in Ohio.
They supported my work at the Venice Biennale. They
supported my buildings. Rudolph Giuliani supported a
cultural museum I was doing in Staten Island.
Republican Borough President Guy Molinari was my
big supporter in this city, who helped me in this city,
who couldn't be more conservative, right? My appeal
to Governor Pataki at the time of the World Trade
Center was from a conservative point of view - I
believe our project was the most conservative of all of
the projects proposed.

World Trade Center Proposal


You mean the tic-tac-toe building

Yes. I think it was a very conservative icon compared


to what's being done. So therefore, I find it very
difficult to see myself to see myself as a wildly - I
mean, I'm very happy your magazine is choosing to
write an article about my views because I think my
views are not too far from The New Criterion and
Hilton Kramer and those people.

That's why a lot of my students see me on the other


side of the fence: they see Leon Krier and me both as
troglodytes. I am attacked more readily by the left
than I am by the right. You know, this is what's
interesting: If you take the left-leaning critics, I am
one of their big enemies, because I stand for
something that threatens them, because it appears to
be radical, but for them it isn't radical, so for them it's
very threatening. They don't worry about Leon Krier,
because he's obviously off the charts for them. The
people, like myself or Rem Koolhaas, that they worry
about, are the people who appear to be radical but
that they believe to be conservative. That's a fair
assessment of where the young radical left in
architecture is.

So if you describe yourself as an architect as


being on the right, but not conservative like,
say, a Robert A.M. Stern or a Demetri
Porphyrios, wouldn't that be like how some
people would describe Italian fascism, as in
futurism and Marinetti and all those nutty
guys?

I wouldn't call it nutty. In fact, I'm writing a piece...

He wanted to blow up Rome.

I'm writing a piece now for an Italian exhibition on


metaphysics. On de Chirico, Corac, all of these so-
called crazy guys, the Italian crazies. I've been
working on this: what was the nature of the
disciplinary specificity of architecture that was what I
consider autonomous? My whole position is that
architecture participates in what I call the continual
unfolding of existence, that architecture, like any
other discipline, has the capacity to do that, and that
there is what I would consider to be a disciplinary
specificity to architecture, so that even though the
deconstructionists say that everything is one, and
there's an intertextuality, and that there is no subject,
I believe there is a subject, I believe there is a
disciplinary specificity to all disciplines and what I
believe one is looking to do - in addition to anything
else - is find what that disciplinary specificity is in
architecture.

You see, my work basically says that while I may have


my own personal political leanings, or I may have
affinities to conservative politics, when it comes to
architecture, ultimately its politics is autonomy. That's
why I can look, as Leon Krier does at Albert Speer,
even though he was what he was - and I'm best
friends with his son - I have no problem with that. I
don't have to be an ideologue; I'm not a flag-waver. I
believe that the architecture that the fascist regime
was doing was a very important moment in time.

This can't help provoke a question about the


building you yourself have said is the one you
are mostly likely to be remembered for, the
Holocaust memorial in Berlin. I'm not sure what
to ask you about it: it reminded me of a sea of
gravestones in a military cemetery.

What I was thinking was something quite different.


I'm very much against the Holocaust industry. I'm
against the nostalgia that is brought up about the
Holocaust. I am against kitchifying the Holocaust.

I think it was something that defies representation; I


think you cannot represent it. And what I've tried to
do is say if you go to Auschwitz, if you go there, it's
horrific: you're reminded of all these images et
cetera. But you can re-assimilate your internal
mechanisms to say, OK, that was then and here we
are now.

What I tried to do in Berlin was to do something that


couldn't necessarily be as easily re-assimilated. It has
no imagery. In other words, it was not about imagery,
it was not about marking, it was not about a
cemetery. The fact that it could look like a cemetery
is possible. It could also look like a field of corn. I was
thinking about a field of corn I was lost in in Iowa
when I did it. I was trying to do something that had no
center, had no edge, had no meaning, that was dumb:
D-U-M-B. And there's nothing in the city that's dumb.
And therefore it was silent, it didn't speak.

I believe that when you walk into this place, it's not
going to matter whether you are a Jew or a non-Jew, a
German or a victim: you're going to feel something.
And what I'm interested in is that experience of
feeling something. Not necessarily anything to do
with the Holocaust, but to feel something different
than everyday experience. That was what I was trying
to do. It's not about guilt, it's not about paying back,
it's not about identification, it's not about any of those
things; it's about being. And I'm interested, in a
sense, in the question of being and how we open up
being to very different experiences.

I've got to tell you the biggest supporter of that


project was Helmut Kohl, the conservative prime
minister of Germany. When the liberal Gerhard
Schroeder came in, he almost killed it. My first project
in Berlin was when Richard Von Weisacker was mayor
and I did this field at Checkpoint Charlie, and VW
came to me after I won the competition and he said
to me,

"You know, Peter, my problem with your project is


this: the left wing hates it because they think it's right
wing and the right wing hates it because they think
it's left. Nobody can make an assessment. You have
created something that is, in a sense, problematic for
everybody, because they can't label it. And if they
can't label it, then they can't tell whether they like it
or dislike it."

That's what I've tried to do in Berlin. That's what I've


tried to do with myself, with my work. I don't want a
label. I don't want to be either good or bad, right or
wrong, left or right,

I am one of the most outsider of all the insiders. I


mean, a lot of people say, you teach at Princeton, you
teach at Yale, but I never had tenure at those
institutions. I never wanted tenure at those
institutions. But I'm not yet a maverick. I don't dress
like a maverick. My dress is either Brooks Brothers or
J. Press.

I believe that art and life are two different discourses,


and how I want to live is different from how I want to
practice architecture. I love living in an old New
England house; my in-laws have a small sea-side
house in Connecticut. I had this 1740s farmhouse in
Connecticut where I used to live. What I do not want
to do is to recreate a 1740s farmhouse; I want the
original thing, with the original boards, because you
can't get those kinds of wide boards any more, the
kind of nails that were made.

But doesn't saying that art and life are two


different things mean alienating our culture
from the people it's supposed to be the culture
of and lead to a kind of hothouse aestheticism
that has nothing to do with real life?

Well, I'm very interested in real life, but that depends


on your definition of 'real life." Who represents real
life? I don't have any idea who, really. My clients that
come to me, they're not coerced into coming to me, I
don't have that many, and there's not any worry that
Peter Eisenman is going to destroy real life. Just like
there's no worry that Webern or Bartok are going to
destroy pop music, right?

I wasn't talking about you so much as the idea


that you suggested.

The idea that I suggested is very important to keep


alive in the culture. I would think that both Demetri
Porphyrios and Leon Krier would think that not having
me in the culture would not be a good thing. It helps
them to point to what the problems are. I represent
certain problems. Just like I think would be very much
less of a culture not to have them around, because it
helps me to point out what some of the problems are.

I don't believe in the homogeneity of culture or the


hierarchy of culture. I don't believe in one system,
one - gestures - et cetera. I'm interested in
fundamentals. I'm interested in fundamental
research. But I am not a fundamentalist. Nor am I a
Marxist. Nor am I a modernist. If the world were all
deconstructionist buildings, I'd go nuts. I am
interested in what the discipline has to show us about
architecture as it relates to the culture.

As I said, I taught gothic. It's to do with the nature of


the work. I believe that the history of architecture. I
mean, Bob Stern, I have his lecture, his
commencement speech. He made a strong critique of
modernism. And I might make a similar critique of
modernism. What I might say is Bob Stern,
unfortunately, has to deal with the so-called
marketplace, and his students don't want to hear
about classical architecture.

You know, people say architects are not supposed to


like sports, but I'm an avid sports fan. Doing a
stadium for me is like doing a cathedral. I'm doing two
other stadiums right now in addition to that (points at
rendering on wall) stadium for the Arizona Cardinals.
It's a very conservative area, Arizona, and they're so
excited about the stadium. I think it's a classical
stadium: look at it; it has a classical aura about it, but
it doesn't have the trappings, classical ordination, but
it seems classical, and what I'd like to think, if you
saw see my Wexner Center at Ohio State University,
you'd say it has a classical feeling to it. And I'm not
against that.

And that's what I've been trying to touch: that


moment in space and time that doesn't brand you as
a conservative, doesn't brand you a fundamentalist et
cetera. I'm against fundamentalism, because
fundamentalism as preached by regimes in the Middle
East is against secularism (which doesn't mean you're
against God) and against progress, and I believe in
both.

But what I'm talking about is not progress in the


historicizing sense of the word as in ultimate
progression to a better future. I believe that progress
is something which opens up the present, not gets
better. I don't think things get better; I don't believe
in idealism; I don't believe in an ontological view of
the world. I believe in the here-and-now, as in making
this here-and-now better than it has been.

But I don't think it can be done: while I aspire to that,


I don't think I make the world any better. And that's
not my role: it's opening it up to the possibility of
that.

Do you have any thoughts on the oft-made


accusation that there's too much theory in
modern architecture, particularly in teaching?

I don't think you can understand history unless you


understand its theory. Alberti said in his Della Pittura
in 1500 that what painting needs is to invent a history
for itself. That's a theoretical proposition, not an
historical one. To understand why he said that, why
art and architecture need a history, that's a
theoretical proposition.

All of the developments in architecture, the


developments that we hold dear, have come about
through theoretical pronouncements that then
become history. So I can never distance theory from
history. When I teach history to the freshmen at Yale,
I start with Piero della Francesca, then Montaigne,
then late gothic painting, then early Renaissance
painting, and then we get to Brunelleschi. Hardly
radicals, in one sense of the word - then Bramante,
Palladio, Borromini, and Schinkel, right down to the
present day.

For example: to understand what Brunelleschi was


doing with perspective, he was interested in
instantiating the subject in architecture as the subject
hadn't existed in the Gothic world, and in the
Renaissance it was now the subject that was the
center of the universe, and so he said the only way
the subject can be involved in architecture is to set up
the subject's eye as the way of understanding space.

What do you make of the argument, which has


been floating around for some years now, that
the so-called avant-garde isn't avant-garde any
more, has been getting long in the tooth, is a
bunch of clich's from the 1920s and frankly, we
all ought to be laughing at its pretensions?

I agree. I agree. (laughs) No, I agree. The avant-garde


cannot exist in the way it did in the 20s, to repeat the
20s is no longer avant-garde, and I am myself not an
avant-gardist.

When you get to be 70 years old, to try and pretend


that you're a young Turk, doesn't wear very well. To
dress like a teeny-bopper is really problematic, and to
behave like one is equally so. When you get to be 70,
you have a role in the world that's important to act
your age.

(The interview is briefly interrupted as Prof. Eisenman


takes a phone call from a member of the conservative
Catholic organization Opus Dei who wants to know if
he would mind being nominated for an architectural
prize of theirs in connection with his cultural center in
Santiago de Campostela in Spain. He does not, and
the interview resumes.)

Looking at your convention center in Columbus,


what it says to me is you've taken the very
banal big-box suburban type architecture that
gets ground out all over this country and you've
said, - if this is the reality of contemporary
America then let's do something clever with it
that will actually be nice to look at...

Yeah - But I am very much against the idea of


"aestheticizing" anything. I would like to think that
just as I'm against the politics of fascism - that used
thought to aestheticize their politics - I would like to
think that what I'm talking about is not aestheticizing
anything.

While we were stuck with this dumb box, OK, I would


like to think that what we did - and this is where we
may disagree - I would like to think that what we tried
to do was, that we tried to find an alternative way: we
cut the dumb box up into strips, right? And I don't call
that aestheticizing. I call it reconfiguring or
transforming the dumb box.

The Greater Columbus Convention Center, Columbus

I just mean making it pretty as opposed to ugly.

I don't know if I would say it's "pretty."


I liked it, and I don't mean "pretty" as an insult.

OK. Let's say, making it something that people take


notice of, that causes them to say, I like it or I don't
like it.

That improves the built environment...

Yes. OK.

That's all my questions. Anything else you'd like


to add?

Don't confuse me with Bernard Tschumi. You know,


when he was dean of the architecture school at
Columbia, I could never get a job there. I may seem
like a person that's far out to you and Bob Stern and
Demetri Porphyrios, which is fine, but to the students,
whom Bob and I both have to deal with, Bob and I are
both seen as conservatives, and they want stuff that's
more relevant to what they believe is relevant. It's a
very difficult moment because Bob has to hire me to
placate the students and he has to hire people like
Gregg Lynn to, in a sense, show the students who are
constantly demanding, "where is the world today?"
And I think part of the reason why Yale hires
somebody like a Richard Meier to do the arts building
is because they believe they have to in fact keep up
with what's happening in the world of architecture,
like many other universities.

Robert Locke - robert_locke_journalist@yahoo.com - is


a freelance journalist residing in New York City
Did you know that Peter and Richard Meier are cousins?
Posted by: redchairs on Jul 27, 04 | 9:07 pm
And born in Newark, NJ?
Posted by: sewage on Jul 28, 04 | 12:45 pm
well, the comment on politics is an old can of worms. eisenman already
spent lots of ink by having several arch writers respond to diane ghirardo
in a famous p/a debate in nov 94 & feb 95.

i'd be more interested in knowing how eisenman responds to current


trends in formalism. given he's in the middle of a long trajectory
[wittkower, rowe, eisenman, lynn, diaz-alonso ?]... has there really been
an evolution in the stance of formalism or has it only been lead by
software development?

isn't it contradictory that he is careful to point out that he is not trying to


be avant-gardist at 70, but he still insists on his outsider status [those
princeton, yale, not tenured commnents...]? i mean, i see the difference
between being in the avant garde and being an outsider, but i'd like to
know why he feels like one..

and if we are going to go into politics, i'd like to know why he thinks
acceptance for his projects has usually come from the "conservative
right"... maybe it has something to do with his formal studies of classical
buildings? is the message here that he has distilled, proportion, harmony
and recondensed it in new purified form...? i can see that in very few of
his projects... the formalist play is most often a reference to itself, not a
mathematics of the ideal villa game.

it just seems to me the answers are so vague and general... i'd like to read
more about where his current interests lie, and less about his 'i'm the kid
left out of the game' routine. is the theoretical cosmos really so different
from the academia cosmos?
Posted by: aml on Jul 28, 04 | 6:49 pm
"And I have the most rapport with right-leaning political views, because
first of all, liberal views have never built anything of any value, because
they can’t get their act together."

ahh the poetics of bullshit. the best of art and architecture is a response
to the right-wing agenda.
Posted by: b3tadine[sutures] on Jul 29, 04 | 5:53 pm
Eisenman proves again that he'll say or do anything to remain
conroversial. This move is brilliant--now that he's been typecast for
decades as a leftist intellectual radical, he "shocks" us all by switching
sides and playing a football-fan Republican. Whatever he says it's all
calculated so that he remains on the radar (you clicked the cover story,
now didn't you?). He's about as faithful to liberalism as Philip Johnson is to
modernism--i.e. so long as it suits his self-hyping agenda.
Posted by: frankencense on Jul 29, 04 | 6:09 pm
*sniff sniff*

I smell bullshit.
Posted by: oe on Jul 29, 04 | 6:11 pm
Peter Eisenman is a two bit hack with no talent.
I wouldn't let him design my outhouse
Posted by: RqTecT on Jul 29, 04 | 6:11 pm
shit, he sounded like a schoolboy trying to impress an older girl and
almost not getting away with it, if not the content of wat i said, just the
way he said it...very disappointing.
Posted by: bigness on Jul 29, 04 | 8:15 pm
I agree with STARK3D.

The reason that his support comes from the right is due to the fact that
most republicans are idiots.
Posted by: mdler on Jul 29, 04 | 8:27 pm
frankencense is onto something with the Philip Johnson reference, that
name popped into my head as well Though I think Eisenman is less of a
trend-whore than PJ, he's certainly equally as calculating when it comes to
remaining in the public eye. At best, this is Eisenman trying to destabilize
his public perception, ostensibly by shaking its very foundations, and thus
generating a buzz. But I think he really comes off pretty poorly, it all just
seems so trite. I'll bet upon reading the interview, he wishes he could do it
over.
Posted by: Shalak Moore on Jul 29, 04 | 8:50 pm
Aside from hearing a few of my acquintances were inpired by his lecture
at Texas A&M some years ago, it appears to me that a right wing patron
once had not asked him not to reason out a way to circumvent left wing
thought to make it sound more right wing.
Posted by: agarch on Jul 29, 04 | 11:20 pm
It's strange to read the answers of a (certainly) intelligent man that sound
so superficial and dumb. I mean, he positions himself on the right (while
saying hypocritically that he doesn't want to be labelled) because right-
wing politicians have backed him up (is there more to it, or should we
think that that's all you have to do to get Peter on your side, offer him
cookies?)

Then the remark about liberals not getting anything done is obviously a
straight attack, not against the left, but against democracy and the
decision making process in most civilized countries today. He seems to
have a fit of nostalgia towards Speer and Terragni and their environment,
that let them do "pure design" for the sake of the ART of architecture. He
doesn't see how the fussiness and contradictions of today are intertwined
with human rights and the idea of equality.

And the way he says all this... Insinuatingly circling his subjects without
sticking his neck out even once. Shame on you mr. Eisenman.
Posted by: Helsinki on Jul 30, 04 | 2:25 am
no comment, i mean not even worth.....
Posted by: gringodms50 on Jul 30, 04 | 4:48 am
have you seen the ramp house that comes with wedge-shaped shoes?
Posted by: ArchAngel on Jul 30, 04 | 6:16 am
sometimes i think guys like eisenman say this stuff just to stir things up.
like his infamous comment that theory is dead.
liberals built this nation.
Posted by: norm on Jul 30, 04 | 8:15 am
Some flowers in this manure, including this one:

"My whole position is that architecture participates in what I call the


continual unfolding of existence, that architecture, like any other
discipline, has the capacity to do that, and that there is what I would
consider to be a disciplinary specificity to architecture, so that even
though the deconstructionists say that everything is one, and there’s an
intertextuality, and that there is no subject, I believe there is a subject, I
believe there is a disciplinary specificity to all disciplines and what I
believe one is looking to do – in addition to anything else – is find what
that disciplinary specificity is in architecture."

What is architecture's specificity? I'll quote my old friend Aditya and say
it's body and memory.

Body as in the physical material stuff that makes it, memory in being a
reflection of culture - AKA the emotional stuff that makes it.

Posted by: liberty bell on Jul 30, 04 | 9:34 am


I think Eisenman is playing into the 'architects only build for the rich'
image. read: My clients are rich/republican therefore I side with their
politics as architects should do as their masters tell them.

Its interesting to note that 70% of principals at corporate design firms are
also right leaning...

Slightly different topic but interesting nonetheless...

Architects donations to the 2004 campaign more right this year

Whats interesting about architects, money and politics is who is doing


what : on the list of top 10 contributors there are at least 3 Bush
'Rangers'.
The head of Turner construction has raised $100,000 for Bush.

Also Hans Hertell is the chairman of American Builders Corporation, a


general contractor in Puerto Rico. In addition to attaining Pioneer status as
a Bush fundraiser ($100,000), Hertell made a total of $23,000 in GOP
contributions during the 2000 election cycle. In 2001 Hans was appointed
as Ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

FYI: Peter can't be that political as he has not contributed to any political
campaign in the last year...

(FOG and Steven Holl gave to Kerry)


Posted by: Cameron on Jul 30, 04 | 10:20 am
the thing with eisenman is that he loves stirring things up. but after a
while it gets tiring... yes you are being 'controversial' by talking about
right wing, but he ends mocking both left and right. that is all amusing
and good, but it gets tiring. where is his commitment? if not in the political
arena, then in architecture... if you mock positions but avoid taking one,
you are left with no discourse.

so taking up a side angle: architecture and wealth have always had this
love hate relationship. i guess that is what eisenman is mocking in the
end, the idealist that needs to eat. but there are men that have bypassed
this hurdle [sam mockbee, and i'm gonig to say architecture for humanity
is doing a pretty good job also].

the mocking and double entendres are fun, but don't get us anywhere.
eisenman has avoided any constructive discussion by limiting his
discourse to innuendo.
Posted by: aml on Jul 30, 04 | 10:55 am
The PJ comparison is right on. Werner Seligman use to tell great stories
about Eisenman, from PE's cheerleader/frat boy days....

It's all about positioning himself, not necessarily a bad thing but just too
obvious in this case.

And that business about "...because it appears to be radical, but for them
it isn’t radical so for them......."

Ahhhhh...............what?
Posted by: aldorossi on Jul 30, 04 | 12:09 pm
the flower:

"My whole position is that architecture participates in what I call the


continual unfolding of existence, that architecture, like any other
discipline, has the capacity to do that, and that there is what I would
consider to be a disciplinary specificity to architecture, so that even
though the deconstructionists say that everything is one, and there’s
an intertextuality, and that there is no subject, I believe there is a subject,
I believe there is a disciplinary specificity to all disciplines and what I
believe one is looking to do – in addition to anything else – is find
what that disciplinary specificity is in architecture."

- my guess is 'specificity" is: buildings/built environment

Posted by: Sir Arthur Braagadocio on Jul 30, 04 | 4:23 pm


Peter Eisenman is what you a true 'nihilist' he believes in nothing but self
preservation at the level he enjoys most.

to a 'nihilist' there is no left wing or right wings, there is no hyprocrisy,


there is no true or lies, its all a here-and-now - live in absolute absurd
freedom of doing what you feel.

so to critize the man as being this or that is an absolute waste of your


time, moreover he's a 70 year old man, i think his days of low-self esteem
and peer pressure are over.

just thought i'd defend a man most of the people on this site - especially
the political debaters can't understand
Posted by: Sir Arthur Braagadocio on Jul 30, 04 | 4:27 pm
but then again does my defense even matter...
Posted by: Sir Arthur Braagadocio on Jul 30, 04 | 4:29 pm
I do not understand why you see him as a nihilist. I personally think the
man is anything but a nihilist...however he is quite clever in seperating
journalistic accounts of himself...from what he himself writes. The article
above is nothing more than an attempt on his part NOT to say anything
(or too much)...and I would understand it coming from a decent writer
(rare are those that build well and write well), if he has anything to say he
would write it himself..in his way. The interview is boring, and Eisenman is
a happy participant in actively making it boring. Anyways, I've always
disliked him (his intellect has a stinky fishy smell about it) ...that bow tie is
so '"pimpin' architecture". I think Philip Johnson, since he was brought in
the discussion, is a much more interesting architect (as opposed to much
more interesting architecture). Eisenman's logic is interesting though
vulgar...no, not perverse, just vulgar. He also looks like an octogenarian
gollum-nerd.
Posted by: uneDITed on Jul 30, 04 | 5:01 pm
i am intertersed in Eisenman's reference to Della Pittura and the need for
a subject to "invent a history for itself" as a theoretical rather than
historical proposition. In many ways one could argue that this is exactly
how the right has a leg up from the left. The right has its positions more
clearly defined--and its history laid out--than the left. There is no need for
position clarification with the today's right. History for the right is a set of
binary oppositions (good/bad)coalescing into a linear historical narrative.
The left, however, seems to always be defining and re-definfing its
positions (sometimes according the right's coordinates). Politics on the left
is constantly reinventing itself (as it should, as Alberti observed painting
should) and writing its own history. This 'invention of history' as a
theoretical proposition weakens the clarity of a the left's platform and a
discernable (even predictable) stance on issues.

I think Eisenman enjoys the ambiguity of his position as being not


dependent upon the language of right and left (inventing his own history
as well) and therefore outside of that confining pendulum ... BUT an
architect with so much resistance to 'the norm' cannot rightly associate
himself or herself with predictability, structuralist, linear history OR
theory. I think it safe to say that Peter is a third party member, the Peter
Party.
Posted by: Mason White on Jul 30, 04 | 5:17 pm
that just brought memories of roland barthes's chapter on the right and
the left in the mythologies book...
Posted by: aml on Jul 30, 04 | 5:52 pm
"I don’t think you can understand history unless you understand its
theory. Alberti said in his Della Pittura in 1500 that what painting needs is
to invent a history for itself. That’s a theoretical proposition, not an
historical one. To understand why he said that, why art and architecture
need a history, that’s a theoretical proposition."

" the need for a subject to "invent a history for itself" as a theoretical
rather than historical proposition"
What is theoretical (in his sentence) is the Alberti proposition (in its
interiority...in its exteriority, it is de facto a historical outcome) for that
'invention' and not the actual invention (or its subject..namely its own
history) or your extracurricular 'need'. Eventually, the only thing he said
was that a proposition is theoretical. Really? amazingly perceptive... You
made it a bit clever by endowing the subject (for example, the painted
mule in 15th century Italian paintings of Mary and Joseph) with its own
need...an inherent kantian aesthetic in turmoil behind its own plasticity
(an urgent aesthetic insurrection- a NEED for fuck's sake) ...rather than a
sociological (and therefor necessarily historical) need. He gave you a little
intellectual toy for you to decieve yourself with (it becomes more than a
toy).

of course, this proposition belongs in a history of propositions. This


eisenman rhetoric is not removed from much of his usual rhetoric that
tries to escape history and meaning (through geometric absolutism or
architectonic connotative exaggerations)..only to crashland on the
neighbouring ground of monstrofied meanings..i.e postmodernism. This is
largely why I find his intellect vulgar. It is an intellect of equivalences, of
things that crash into each other.

Also, in your logic (which I find a tad simplistic) the left could also be said
to have an equally binary opposition setup(the good (not right (i.e left))
and the bad(the right(i.e not left)). This is the natural effect of
antagonistic co-dependency. As such, the 'left' is equally
predictable/unporedictable as is the 'right'...the re-inventions are part of a
constant formula that accomodate a possibility to react to the 'right'. And
on par, the 'right' reacts to the 'left'. In america especially...this kitchifying
of right and left has led to the simplistic seesaw nature of your logic (no
personal offense intended ;-)
Posted by: uneDITed on Jul 30, 04 | 6:10 pm
he still cant build a building that is not a piece of shit. And his memorial in
Berlin, wasnt that done in the garden of Liebskind's museum a few years
before???
Posted by: mdler on Jul 30, 04 | 8:22 pm
Thinking about what architectures these day are really political, I wouldn't
count Peter Eisenman's among them. What I would count are "the great
wall of Israel", US military bases all over the globe, any secured border
checkpoints, architectures like that. Was the USSR the last great political
architecture of the 20th century? Could be. And how does Communist
Chinese architecture stand up these days?

John Young's eyeball series at http://www.crytome.org is at the head of


the class when it comes to scoping super-power architectures.

I like Eisenman for often letting me know what he does not know.
Posted by: two on Jul 31, 04 | 7:36 am
I think you meant this eyeball series
Posted by: John Jourden on Jul 31, 04 | 8:03 am
Gosh, John never tells me anything anymore!
Posted by: two on Jul 31, 04 | 8:14 am
a bit off subject, but just to folow through the above post earlier ... As for
my argument that the left is constantly re-defining its position (sometimes
to its detrement), hence rescripting its history, lets take the example of
stem-cell research. The hard right needs not think about the issue at all.
They hear that it involves toying with the origins of human life and
immediately their position is sharply against it. The left, however, seeks a
better understanding of the science to clarify the issue and then defines
its position (therefore its history) on that contemporary understanding.
The right seems to take a more historical position, while the left takes a
more theoretical position. I know it is not necessarily as clear cut as just
that, there are in-betweens and contradictions. But at their foundations,
that is my impression.
Posted by: Mason White on Jul 31, 04 | 10:03 am
well, the right (in the us at least) changed its opinion in an hour as soon as
regan was diagnosed alzaymer...all of a sudden stem cell research was
ok...you're making it sound like the only political side with a clear set of
rules/morals/ideals. you can advocate that most of the times, in western
countries, the right campaigns for the keeping of the status quo (while the
left pushes for reform), or refers back to decades-old values, but that its
mainly because the protests of the 70's destroyed those values, and those
protests where almost completely leftist.
if we're talking about extremes, then its probably the left which tends to
have more historical positions on big issues concerning morals, possibly
connected to the fact that the left's political philosophy is much better
codiified than the one of the right...my two cents.
Posted by: bigness on Jul 31, 04 | 11:29 am
dear uneDITed,

"This eisenman rhetoric is not removed from much of his usual rhetoric
that tries to escape history and meaning (through geometric absolutism or
architectonic connotative exaggerations)..only to crashland on the
neighbouring ground of monstrofied meanings..i.e postmodernism"

- you just described the philsophical nihilist strategy of convincing others


to change the way they think.

- i mean here an 'existential nihilist" not a political one. someone who


doesn't even believe in destruction (deconstruction), rather in nothing
more than the "continual unfolding of existence" without a goal. perhaps,
as only a result of your biological pre-dispositions changing due to your
environment. you have to be somewhat of a 'fatalist'. free will is fated.

there is no 'left' and there is no 'right', render them both historicaly and
presently meaningless in relation to the 'continual unfolding of existence'.
destory everything so that you can re-invent everything. destroy yourself
to become something else. this is the goal of deconstruction - somewhat
of a paradox.

'left' and 'right' are more similar to 'modes of thinking' than 'sets of
systems of thought'. you can not choose a 'mode of thinking' for life,
rather just for a moment in the present-and-now. and to stick with any
moral or ethical set of values is just plane stupid, unless you're insecure
and hate being lost in the desert empty of meaning.

mdler - did libeskind do the garden at the Jewish memorial or did someone
else?

here's a pop quiz question for you 'side pickers': if i made a promise under
one set of morals and then changed my moral 3 years later, and
according to the first set of morals broke that promise, but in the second
set i didn't do anything unusual - did i break a promise? (don't use the
accountability argument, try something else)
Posted by: Sir Arthur Braagadocio on Jul 31, 04 | 1:08 pm
"(through geometric absolutism or architectonic connotative
exaggerations).." <= I said that...so I meant he meant something. He
meant something, so I meant he couldnt be a nihilist.Well...a nihilist as
you use it. Nihilism actually demands an assiduous,affirmative and
imaginative stance. Its lineage is a history of such stances...from anti-
tsarist autocratism through a novelistic tradition ( Dostoevsky and
Tugenev) to a tittilated ethos (Nietzsche-is it better to be swaying at the
top of the reed at the mercy of the wind, or down below..safe,out of
harm's way ..and near blind) and the theatres of
beckett,pirandello,ionesco and the like (when nihilism is finally freed from
a need to always be allegorical (art emphasizing, mimicking, the pains of
life) to become acutely aware of its own artificiality....nihilism becomes a
desperate attempt to prolong life through art).

Eisenman is hardly that. He is,utterly, a positivist. As I said upstairs, his


logic is that of equivalences.He might not profess a belonging to either
camp (and some silly people here might see him so idiosynchratic as to be
one of a kind...no one is one of a kind. This manner of thinking, or not
thinking, demands puerile reverence (not for Eisenman himself but for the
notion of individuality. Individuality is an artifice that be believed as much
as it is disbelieved in)) but an argument can be construed that he does
THINK like a conservative and his tone is that of the conservative right (a
smug self assured self dependent absolutism). Another slightly more
bullshitty argument can also be made regarding his geometric absolutism
that only houses the needs and comforts of the individuals through the
rules and regulations of the 'democracy' he lives in. It would be interesting
to see what Eisenman would do in a rabidly facist system given the
chance (I still wont deem the U.S that facist..though u nevvvvver know).
This is why Eisenman is seen to be so idiosynchratic..he is a fusion of the
avant garde (previously seen as anti-autocratic) and the autocratic. He is
the vulgarized corruption of the intellectual who is pissed off at the
'rubbish' that has run amock following people-choice.

Posted by: uneDITed on Aug 01, 04 | 7:24 am


Eisenman: "I believe that art and life are two different discourses, and how
I want to live is different from how I want to practice architecture. I love
living in an old New England house; my in-laws have a small sea-side
house in Connecticut. I had this 1740s farmhouse in Connecticut where I
used to live. What I do not want to do is to recreate a 1740s farmhouse; I
want the original thing, with the original boards, because you can’t get
those kinds of wide boards any more, the kind of nails that were made."

Q: "But doesn’t saying that art and life are two different things mean
alienating our culture from the people it’s supposed to be the culture
of and lead to a kind of hothouse aestheticism that has nothing to do with
real life?"

Eisenman: "Well, I’m very interested in real life, but that depends on
your definition of “real life.” Who represents real life? I don’t
have any idea who, really. My clients that come to me, they’re not
coerced into coming to me, I don’t have that many, and there’s
not any worry that Peter Eisenman is going to destroy real life. Just like
there’s no worry that Webern or Bartok are going to destroy pop
music, right?"

*****

We need to separate his work from his "life".

Eisenman is a conceptual artist whose medium can sometimes be a


functional building. While Eisenman's clients and supporters may be
republicans, that is about his life, and less about how he sees his work. As
with his Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, he sees his work as having no moral
agenda other than to introduce the subject to new conceptions of space.

About his work, Eisenman states "I am looking for ways of conceptualizing
space that will place the subject in a displaced relationship because they
will have no iconographic reference to traditional forms of organization.
That is what I have always been trying to do, to displace the subject, to
oblige the subject to reconceptualize architecture."

But his intention of reconceptualizing space and revealing to the subject


new possibilities in architecture is not about "changing the world"... He
doesn't think that his work is "dangerous", or revolutionary... He doesn't
have any kind of moralist agenda to "transform the world" or make the
world a better place through his architecture, but simply to expose it to
something new.
Posted by: bRink on Aug 01, 04 | 9:42 am
this is a terrible interview.

eisenman has much more to offer than answers to these silly questions
and even worse - built work!
Posted by: Philip Gentleman on Aug 01, 04 | 5:49 pm
boring
Posted by: satan on Aug 03, 04 | 3:51 am
and with one word, satan halts the thousands and thousands of words
pouring down upon the indifferent shoulders of peter eisenman.

very impressive.
Posted by: joed on Aug 03, 04 | 6:43 pm
i, for the most part, enjoy pete's work; however, as an architecture
student at the university of cincinnati, i have to go to one of his buildings
everyday...the DAAP building. anyway, i was walking out the door of that
building one day talking to some friends. my head was turned so i didn't
see...and i whacked my scull into the corner of a drywall cube that stuck
out from the wall...apparently pete thought it was a good idea to have a
sharp corner sticking out of his wall at exactly 6 feet off the ground. might
want to consider those of us over 5'11 next time pete. at least that corner
is no longer dangerous...seeing how i rounded it off pretty well with my
head.
Posted by: placemj on Aug 30, 04 | 9:51 am
It seems many of you were hoping that P.E. would say something that you
would agree with. Does that mean you are still looking for a leader you
can join in lockstep? Abandon such hope. Caress the dragon.
Posted by: gustav on Sep 22, 04 | 7:17 am
He's not even right-wing, he's just an egomaniac. It's like being at a party
when you're 17, and you want to rile feathers and sound cool, so you lean
against the wall and you look up at the ceiling, and you say, yeah, I want
to be eaten by wolves... or some shit like that, and it's just a joke, but you
think you sound profound. You think you sound tough and interesting, but
everyone's already moving on the next person. Rather than dick around
bobbing and weaving and saying nothing of substance - does this
interview actually have any content? - why doesn't he calm down? Get
over it. He's a conservative. Who cares? Now say something in an
articulate manner, for god's sake. He's like a fat person obsessed with
being fat, when no else gives a shit if you're fat or not. So what if you're
fucking fat? You're not the only person in the universe.
Peter Eisenman is the Kirstie Alley of architecture.

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