veredes, arquitectura y divulgación VADo1 Los Inicios | Page 92

VAD. 01 | Junio 2019 | ISSN 2659-9139 e-ISSN 2659-9198
1 Searing, Helen. “International
Style: the crimson connection”,
Progressive Architecture, 2 (February
1982), 88-97. Helen Searing clarifies 1 how the exhibition was composed by ten models
and seventy five photographs, apart from plans and other explanatory
documents, being that package the one who travelled to eleven different
cities throughout twenty months. Another lighter package in which mo-
dels were substituted by photographs for transportation purposes was
on tour for six years, which gives us the dimension of the success of the
exhibition eventually. About the catalogue, Hearing specifies that there
were two, one entitled Modern Architects and the other one Modern Archi-
tecture, with slight variations in authorship and distribution.
2 Wilson, Richard Guy. “Internatio-
nal Style: the MoMA Exhibition”,
Progressive Architecture (February
1982), 98-100. Richard Guy Wilson explains 2 how Philip Johnson divided the exposition
in three parts to disguise the European predominance in order to answer
to the already mentioned requests from the Museum Board to include
American architects. The first part was devoted to the achievements of
modern architecture, the second to a detailed study of the leaders and
the last one to housing buildings. This content plus some essays and a
smaller number –and in a smaller scale– of the illustrations, would be the
body of the catalogue.
Another important role was the one done by Alfred H. Barr. According
to Richard Guy Wilson, not only he picked the names of the curators, the
young Philip Johnson and the well-known historian Henry-Russell Hitch-
cock, he was the first director of the Museum of Modern Art and, as such,
he wrote the introduction for the catalogue, which turned out to be a very
polemical one as he connected the aesthetic principles of the Internatio-
nal Style with the nature of modern materials and the structure, and mo-
dern determinants related to the planning. Although the last part of the
statement is very vague, within the first one, Barr is proclaiming the many
mistakes of the built works tagged as International Style so far as they
were not always but rarely relying on the modern materials but trying to
imitate or leading to an industrial appearance regardless of the essence
of these materials. This failed aspect of the architecture of the twenties
has been highlighted many times through many buildings like Villa Savoye
for example, where the slenderness of the vertical parameters and the
flat roof are hiding an endless number of constructive problems whose
technical solutions were still unknown by the time.
On the same note, although not related to the International Style but to
the same period only, would be the Einstein Tower by Eric Mendelsohn
where the appearance of a plastic and expressive pretended concrete
façade is just a mere stucco coating. Still, as it was said before, the exhi-
bition would feature the most important European architects (Le Corbu-
sier, Mies, Gropius and Oud) and without Frank Lloyd Wright, none of the
American (Hood, Howe & Lescaze, Bowman brothers, Neutra) would be
at the same level.
The complexity about the event itself and its different parts (exposition,
catalogue and book) are still part of the discussion even though the con-
tents are accessible thanks to the MoMA itself. Terence Riley wrote the
most comprehensive and clarifying book about the exhibition, The Inter-
national Style: Exhibition 15 and the Museum of Modern Art, published in
1992 when he was also appointed senior curator of the MoMA before
becoming The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design till
March 2006.
92
FRANCISCO JAVIER CASAS COBO. The Survival of the International Style in the History of Architecture. pp. 90-101