Witold

PHILLY PANTO

Do we still celebrate Columbus Day? This summer, statues of the intrepid explorer were defaced, beheaded, and toppled. In South Philadelphia, the City shrouded a Columbus statue and recently announced its removal. It is unclear what will happen to the Columbus Memorial near the Delaware River. The 106-foot ersatz obelisk was designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in 1992. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Delaware River Waterfront Corp., which maintains the monument but was not responsible for its construction, said in a statement Tuesday that the statue ‘does not align with DRWC’s mission to create and maintain a safe and welcome space for all.’” In order to “protect public safety” and “reduce continued pain” the now offensive text at the base of the obelisk,

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THE TALENTED MR. CRET

Perhaps the most televised twentieth-century work of American architecture is the Federal Reserve headquarters (Eccles Building) in Washington, D.C., designed by Paul Philippe Cret (1876-1945) in 1938. Cret’s stripped classical facade inevitably accompanies any report on the Fed on the nightly news. Now Cret has a twofer: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, where President Trump was taken for treatment of Covid-19.  Walter Reed was designed by Cret in 1939-42. It is said that President Roosevelt suggested the twenty-story tower to Cret after visiting Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue’s Nebraska State Capitol. Walter Reed is an example of Cret’s late style,

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INFLUENCE

The cancel culture never sleeps. The discovery that Edward Hopper once copied paintings “challenges the notion that Hopper was an absolute original, uninfluenced by others” according to the breathless headline in the New York Times. A rather silly conclusion since Hopper was sixteen at the time, and was obviously using the paintings of others as an exercise, to hone his—yet unformed—skills. And since neither the technique nor the themes of these pedestrian paintings prefigure his later work, it is a real stretch to speak of “influence.” When I was sixteen I remember clumsily copying Picasso’s “Mirror Woman”;

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THE USUAL SUSPECTS

The City of Philadelphia has announced a $2.2 billion development on the Penn’s Landing site beside the Delaware River. The twelve towers include apartments, offices, and a hotel, the architects are Pelli Clarke Pelli and Bjarke Ingels Group. PCP has already designed high-rise buildings in the city; BIG is a newcomer. Both continue the recent pattern of importing outsiders such as Vinoly, Foster, Gehry, Snøhetta, Williams & Tsien, Pei Cobb Freed, Ennead—the usual suspects. Philadelphia, like most big cities, once had its own stable of eminent practitioners—Strickland, Walter, Furness, Cope & Stewardson, Eyre, Trumbauer, Cret, Howe—and their buildings gave the city its own particular character.

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CANCEL CULTURE

Although some have claimed that the “cancel culture” doesn’t really exist, a nationwide Zogby Analytics poll of likely voters recently found that a narrow plurality (37 percent) supported cancel culture, with 32 percent opposed and 30 percent “not sure.” Some of the poll details are interesting: support was stronger among men than among women, and stronger in the East than in the Midwest; the strongest support was among younger voters, 18-29 and 30-49, whereas the strongest opposition was among voters over 65; and also—surprisingly, at least to me—opposition was strong among the youngest group, 18-24. Self-styled conservative voters were equally split between support and opposition to the cancel culture,

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WOKE SPEED BUMP

Museum directors, college deans, and newspaper editors take note.

A few weeks ago a petition spearheaded by a San Francisco Bay Area high school senior was submitted to the Trader Joe’s supermarket company that included the following claim. “The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes [sic] other cultures — it presents ‘Joe’, as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters falling outside of it … The common thread between all of these transgressions is the perpetuation of exoticism, the goal of which is not to appreciate other cultures, but to further other and distance them from the perceived ‘normal.’” These days such statements are followed by steely-eyed demands,

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THE WAY WE LIVE TODAY

I am a latecomer to the Jordan Peterson phenomenon. I haven’t read any of his books but I have listened to numerous lectures and interviews. A 2018 interview with NYU professor Jonathan Hardt, founder of the Heterodox Academy,  about the causes for the unravelling of the contemporary university touched me close to home. Peterson appeared on the social media battlefield after involving himself in a free speech controversy with the University of Toronto, his employer. Peterson’s views have made him a lightning rod for radical left-wing critics who have trotted out the usual accusations: hate-speech mongerer,

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COSY GLASS BOX

The current exhibition at the Farnsworth House gets rid of all the Mies furniture, which was never a part of the original decor, and recreates the interior as it was when when Dr. Farnsworth actually lived in the house. There are Moroccan rugs  on the travertine floor, and wooden chairs and chaises longues—mostly Scandinavian (Risom, Matthson, Wegner), although the curators didn’t hang stuff on the pristine primavera as the good doctor did. I notice that she turned the   freestanding closet ninety degrees to create a more intimate bedroom (there is such a thing as too much glass). The result is a revelation—the house is,

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