Quote:
Originally Posted by honte
This is where I draw the line in Art History. I always love it when the people working at a distance - the historians in their gothic, limestone-clad offices - look down and "spot the styles." People look for connections, they attribute ideas, and they foremost try to bolster their own status in the Art History world with new theories and papers.
Any working artist does not want to be misclassified. People take ideas from others and build on them, but this doesn't mean their work is postmodern or post-anything. If I practice preservation, that has absolutely nothing to do with me being a postmodernist, even if our ideals might collide in certain cases.
You can witness this phenomenon most clearly with music, where the critics and scholars are constantly grouping people and corralling them, often against vocal protests by the artists themselves.
If Rossi writes a book that says, "This my idea of Postmodernism," it catches on, and people follow him, then yes, this can be considered an adaptation/progression of the style. If Gang does a building that's not a box, it's her call whether it belongs to the style, what her inspiration was, and what her philosophy is. From what I know of her, I personally don't think her design has much to do with your list of sources, and I really don't care what the "leading scholars" of the style claim. People might read these things; they like certain ideas. They move on. You could also claim that every tower that has a pronounced base, shaft, and crown is "Sullivanesque" or even that any building with a steel frame is "Chicago Style."
Ultimately, classifying art in any means other than chronologically is entirely useless and only serves the limited human mind to draw connections and understand things for what they really are - unless the artist himself draws specific connections that are desired.
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Gang's architect has everything to do with the list of sources. Also, it should be mentioned that not one of those sources (with the exception of Jencks) ever used the term "postmodernism" I just get frustrated when everyone seems to think building in a historical style is what postmodernism is. Certainly historicism is a postmodern movement but so is organic architecture, abstract architecture, iconic architecture and so on.
I think your premise that an architect only is part of a philosophical movement if they directly state "i am a such and such" is incorrect.
For example... If i believe in socialist ideals i am necessarily a socialist. The definition of a socialist is one who believes in socialist ideals.
Applying this to Gang's Aqua. The building is a direct metaphor/analogy of water. Metaphorical/analogous architecture is, by definition, postmodern. Therefore, Gang is a postmodernist.
And, no, you can't call every building with a base, middle (shaft) and crown "sullivan-esque", because the "Chicago School" refers to a direct period in history. Just as baroque and rococo architectures are similar, but two distinct periods. Postmodernism is a theoretical movement that doesn't refer to a specific period of time other than "after modernism".
New urbanism (especially), neotraditionalism, whatever-ism is all postmodernism. Gehry, Thomas Mayne, Libeskind (hugely), me, Graves, Eisenman(immensely), you, Koolhaas, Jahn, Pelli, Hadid, etc. all postmodernists, whether they like it or not.
I know it seems like a strict academic discussion but you can't throw around a loaded term like "postmodernism" believe it to be simply historicism. We are in the midst of the postmodern movement, which everyone is aware of and will continue to be. Postmodernism is, in it's most basic form, embracing complexity and contradiction. And a theory that accepts all nuance, particularities, and incongruities is inescapable, even by those who reject it.