Philip Johnson & Architecture

Johnson's work is widely acknowledged to be firmly modernist in character. His initial ten years of work in the architectural field saw him function as a commentator and architectural curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a strong advocate of the shift toward modern, simple, cool architectural lines and materials such as glass and steel. This embrace of the modern style in architectural projects persisted from 1942, the year of Johnson's first practical commission. It derived from the influence of the modernist Bauhaus in general, and from the work of Mies van der Rohe, director of the Bauhaus from 1930 until Hitler took power in 1933 (Mies van der Rohe, 1975, p. 286). Upon emigrating from Germany in the 1930s, Mies van der Rohe became something of a mentor to Johnson, even working with him on various projects through the 1950s, including the Seagram's building in New York in 1958.

The coolness of Bauhaus mood never seems to have declined in interest for Johnson, whose status as Mies van der Rohe's "protege" has been frequently ackn

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ohnson's significant break with his own past, a veritable rejection of Bauhaus modernism, particularly in the case of the so-called "crystal cathedral," located in Orange County, California (Goldberger, 1978). Huxtable put it another way, by casting doubt on the way so-called neoclassical architecture so easily overtook or at least temporarily displaced what might be called "standard" modern design (Huxtable, 1979). Filler (1979) takes the view that Johnson's work as an architect may be limited in range or at any rate of unpredictable or variable quality, another allusion to the neoclassical period of his late career. But as he develops his argument, Filler also makes plain that Johnson's influence on modern architecture has been decisive. His basis for declaring Johnson an architectural icon is the clarity of vision that he expresses in his writings about the profession. The point is that the substance of Johnson is ever-present in his work, even if there may (by Filler's lights) be an apparent gap between the original conception and the power of execution of the project. This may be due in part to the fact that Johnson's early career was not spent as a hands-on architect apprentice but as a student, critic, and curator of
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Approximate Word count = 1496
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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