Far be it from me to agree with President Donald J. Trump on anything, but as the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Trump’s decision to MABGA — Make American Buildings Great Again — finds him decreeing in a new executive order that federal structures in Washington, D.C. should be classical in style, rather than Modern.
The liberal media, Modernists and the art world are not taking this well — understandably. Everyone gets nervous when the federal government starts telling folks what to do, especially conservatives. And Modernism isn’t less a standard of beauty than classicism, Marion Smith, chairwoman of the National Civic Art Society, which is leading the anti-Modernist charge, notwithstanding. As the great composer-pianist Duke Ellington — who wrote jazz standards and haunting classical works alike — observed, there are only two types of music, good and bad. So it is with all the arts.
But the Trump order is in keeping with a growing backlash against Modernism n art and design.. After more than half a century, many are tired of angles, glass, metal, boxes, monochromatic palettes, neutrals and hard, spare furnishings. They’re sick of the Modernists putting down us classicists as old fogeys. They’re fed up with Marie Kondo and her philosophy of declutter but first honor the object you’re removing. (I wonder if this would work when firing people.) Some of us would just like to thank Kondo for her service — before we adios her from our lives.
The classicism versus Modernism battle is an old one. In last Sunday’s installment of WNET-Thirteen’s “Treasures of New York,” the great architect Ralph Walker, the man behind such Art Deco jewels as the New York Telephone Building, the Irving Trust Building (One Wall St.) and the Verizon Building ,said of Modern chairs that buttocks must’ve changed.
It’s not just architects. If you look at the great homes of fashion designers like the late Oscar de la Renta and Valentino, they teem with color, pattern, texture, life. Decorative and fine artworks, books and family photographs are out on display, covering surfaces. These houses are lived in, loved, their mementoes marking the occasions of life’s passage. There’s little of interest in a room with angular furnishings, no knickknacks but lots of technology that requires a degree in physics to operate. (It brings to mind Jennifer Aniston’s remark after her divorce from the Modern-loving Brad Pitt that now she could go back to comfortable furniture.)
Plus, who doesn’t love the ancient Greeks? With all due respect to The TImes, there’s nothing fake about their culture, even as we experience it third-hand. They understood the individual profoundly and savored mind, body and soul deeply. That’s why their culture is still around today. (Consider New York Life’s Super Bowl commercial, which discussed the ancient Greeks’ four different types of love. We are the heirs of this culture, and the proof of this is that the Founding Fathers created a capital modeled after neoclassical Paris, which owed a debt to the Renaissance, which in turn rediscovered the Greeks and Romans. Classicism suits D.C. It’s Modern buildings are meh. And Modern U.S. embassies around the world, like the Louis Kahn-designed one in Athens — fuhgeddoubit.
There are cities that mix classicism and Modernism stunningly, like New York with its predominantly Beaux Arts, Art Deco and International styles. Jakarta is another example, though less seamlessly eclectic than New York. But it’s trying.
As usual with the Trump Administration, it’s not just what it says, but how it says it. Everything’s a zero sum game. And the sudden love of the classical carries a whiff of white nationalism. (One colleague of mine said it smacked of Hitler, another admirer of classical beauty.)
But both classicism and Modernism transcend their contemptible supporters. When Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial design was proposed, there was such a hue and cry against its .abstraction that a figurative memorial by Frederick Hart had to be added to the National Mall as well. Today, Lin’s design is a literal touchstone.
Washington should stay true to its neoclassical roots. But it shouldn’t throw the contemporary design baby out with the Modernist bathwater.