Philip Johnson called himself a whore, partly to diffuse critics who didn’t like his constantly changing style or his intense curiousity in pursuit of new architectural ideas.
Apparently, though, it didn’t save him from an eviscerating obituary in the Guardian at the hands of Andrew Saint. Unlike Homer Simpson–who likes his beer cold and his homosexuals flaming–this venal Cambridge architecture professor prefers his beer warm and his homosexuals safely confined to those four years of British public school, thank you very much. At least that’s what the whole obituary is about.
Saint’s acid conflation of the evils of gayness, inherited wealth, corporations, aesthetics, modernism and Nazism was enough to drive archinect’s Javier Arbona to the typewriter to call Saint to repentance.
Philip Johnson: Flamboyant postmodern architect whose career was marred by a flirtation with nazism [Guardian]
A response to Andrew Saint, by Javier Arbona [archinect]
[update: In a NYT op-ed, Mark Stevens says basically the same thing as Saint, but with more quotes and less gay.]
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the making of, by greg allen