Though I’ve never built a domehome or anything, I’ve been as much of an armchair fan of Buckminster Fuller as anyone. I mean, come on, man! DOMES!
But it also bugs that most of the discussion of Fuller today is wildly uncritical, tinged either with Boomer-era nostalgia for a near-paradise lost, or with the Koolaid-drunk ecstasy of the True-Believing dome builder. [Also, I’ve been annoyed by the seeming indifference among Fullerites for the material objects and artifacts of an ostensible architect/artist. But that’s just my collector’s bias.]
So the upcoming Whitney show on Fuller should be a winner on both fronts. Meanwhile, I wonder why it feels like it matters that Fuller apparently made up the oft-quoted anecdote of quasi-divine intervention that prevented him from killing himself and set him on his path to save Spaceship Earth and all her passengers? Is it because Fuller so unabashedly put on a messianic mantle? Or because even non-culty admirers like myself realize that they’d given the myth some kind of critical weight?
The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller [nyt]
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the making of, by greg allen