Philistinism: An Object Lesson

I'm in a really pissy mood this morning. I point this out by way of apologia for taking even the slightest notice of the mindless bourgeois philistinism below remarked upon, and for the modicum of my time required to make remark. But it seems to me that in the rabidly populist and rampantly promiscuous equalitarian era in which we today live, such mindless philistinism needs occasional skewering if only to make small attempt to balance the scales somewhat.

The virtually unanimous glowing critical and journalistic praise, here and abroad, for architect Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall, recently opened in downtown Los Angeles, is pretty much unparalleled in our era for an architectural work, Gehry's own Guggenheim, Bilbao perhaps excepted; a testament to Gehry's genius, the Disney's astonishing and profound architectural beauty — beauty plainly manifest even in two-dimensional exterior and interior photographs — and the by all accounts superb acoustics of its performance space.

That unanimous praise, however, is seen by at least one proud-as-punch philistine as nothing more than an instance of "mass hysteria," and "bow[ing] and scrap[ing]" idol and "hero worship." This sensible-shoes bourgeois — an urban design zealot, and a professional in the field, whose name, as is our practice in such cases, is being withheld here as an act of charity, and because we don't intend this skewering as a personal matter — takes it upon himself to do his own critical "analysis" of Disney Hall in a post on his weblog wherein he focuses on such crucial architectural matters as the "nice pastel color theme" of the signs in the building's underground parking facility (helps you remember where you parked), the urban design quality of the building's street frontage (mostly bad because nothing more than a blank wall on three sides), the TV monitors in the building's snack bar (what could they possibly be showing?), the snack bar location (too deep inside the building), the outdoor lighting (too harsh), and the toilet facilities (not enough).

While all these are undeniably design considerations of some architectural concern, focusing on them when confronted with a new and important building of such breathtaking architectural accomplishment is a bit like .... well, let me simply quote myself from a comment that I left in the comments section of the weblog post in question; a comment which was deleted within hours of its being posted (surprise!).

Your response to the Disney calls to mind nothing so much as an image of someone seeing for the first time a Rembrandt or El Greco, and considering of major importance and worthy of extended comment the frame over which the canvas is stretched, and the fasteners that secure the canvas thereto.

Interesting perspective — and sense of proportion.

And this zealot's professional assessment of the architecture itself? "[A] goofy, 'arty,' 'post-something' building"; "a 'precious object'"; "cold and sterile, and with a (largely) bad pedestrian environment"; "gimmickry"; "freaky"; "a freakish series of swooping roofs"; "eye-candy trivia"; "freak-show architecture"; all this accompanied by multiple sneers at the very idea of genius, which term this bourgeois philistine childishly sees fit to always enclose in scare quotes so that we won't miss that he's making a statement.

He closes this sharp-eyed critique of the Disney thus:

So don't get me wrong. The Disney is not a complete failure; the failure is in the critics total and complete failure to be able to view the building as anything but a cartoon. The building indeed has got some positive attributes. But it's basically an example of freak-show architecture and should be considered in that light. I can understand that some people might like freak-shows but I can also recognize that they are not a good model for how humans should evolve. Freaks stand alone and isolated by their unfortunate and tragic nature.

The parallel tragedy of course is that had Gehry paid more attention to the edges, to truly "taking things to the edge," he and Los Angeles could have had a comfortable urban building and a glamorous precious object. There is, to my mind, no inherent contradiction. The Disney could have been a truly great urban building had Gehry followed [certain rules which constitute this professional's simplistic formula for good urban building design].

That this zealot's critical "analysis" of the Disney is at polar odds with almost all the expert architecture critics would be perfectly OK had he even the vaguest idea, the most rudimentary aesthetic sense, the most fundamental knowledge, of what architecture is about; critical prerequisites this bourgeois philistine appallingly lacks (appalling because of his putative professional expertise in his field) as his repeated purblind and ignorant whining on his weblog about what he considers the general horribleness of the great architecture of the past century makes manifest, as do his purblind and ignorant whining complaints against the knowledgeable critical commentary of first-rate architecture experts (he has an especial hatred for former New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp; but, then, what bourgeois philistine doesn't), which critical commentary is clearly beyond this philistine's woefully limited architectural understanding.

Is such public ignorant and purblind whining a triumph of democracy, democratic thinking, and the democratic process, or is it something else entirely?

You decide. I've said quite enough, and quite sufficient. In any case, it's all the time and words I'm today willing to devote to the matter.

By the way, did I mention I was in a really pissy mood this morning?

Oh. So I did.