veredes, arquitectura y divulgación VADo1 Los Inicios | Page 98

VAD. 01 | Junio 2019 | ISSN 2659-9139 e-ISSN 2659-9198
In this sense, the author is consistent with the former consideration of the
International Style and its lack of social commitment in a way, and thus,
both may be identified as one at least in that period. Even more, later in
the introduction, Colquhoun clarifies that he will use the terms modern ar-
chitecture, modern movement and avant garde indifferently in the book, all
of them in reference to the decades of 1910 and 1920 as a whole. Could
here be granted that, since International Style: architecture since 1922 deals
with the so called modern architecture (European modern movement
plus American) in the same period (the twenties), Colquhoun may match
also International Style with modern architecture in that period? Probably
not because the exhibition was just a sample but, reversely, it could be
said that, in the twenties, modern architecture was the International Style
and nothing else. More recently and in line with this long-lasting interest
in the exhibition, Beatriz Colomina, shed more light to the subject. In her
book Privacidad y publicidad: la arquitectura moderna como medio de comu-
nicación de masas (2010), The aim of Colomina’s book is to emphasize the
role of modern architecture in the modernity as a vehicle to spread pro-
paganda and, when analysing the International Style exhibition, she does
not hesitate in confirming this but at the same time, she also criticizes the
fact that modern architecture in Europe had a social, ethical and political
components that were completely neglected in the exhibition which, in
her words, would be the (American) translation of Le Corbusier, in favour
of mere aesthetic and stylistic aspects of the resulting architecture. 14
14 Colomina, Beatriz, Privacidad y
publicidad: la arquitectura moderna
como medio de comunicación de
masas, 137. A more recent history (2012) by Jean-Louis Cohen deals only superficially
with the MoMA exhibition, included within other expositions in the epi-
graph “Modern architecture enters the museums” as part of chapter 15
“Internationalization, its networks and spectacles”. Nevertheless, Cohen
highlights the key role of the MoMA as a remarkable exception, which
outstands among the very little significance he concedes to the rest of
museum institutions. Particularly, he underlines the activity within the
new department of architecture, created in 1929, and the International
Exhibition of 1932. Cohen states how the exposition excluded constructi-
vists and expressionists to focus on Gropius, Oud, Le Corbusier and Oud,
mainly.
15 Cohen, Jean-Louis. The Future of
Architecture Since 1889. A Worldwi-
de History, 190. Cohen digs deeper to recall the origin of the term, which he attributes to
a slogan formulated by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1923. 15 Finally, the
author summarizes the impact of the exhibition as the show travelled to
sixteen 16 different American cities although, conspicuously, he frames the
success to the American territory for decades. Cohen makes one more
important remark about the disambiguation of the different terms used
to define the modern architecture in the introduction of the book. He ac-
knowledges how he has preferred to avoid the use of the term Interna-
tional Style in favour of a broader definition of Modernity. Moreover, he
also avoids the use of the term Modern Movement, which he links with
Pevsner’s book Pioneers of Modern Design.
16 Eleven according to other sources.
Conclusions
To summarize the previous, we may quote Spanish architect and Profes-
sor María Teresa Muñoz who, with a certain sadness, wrote about the
peak and decline of the International Style in a few sentences in which she
described the style as powerful and unified, but also as something that
could have been but never was.
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FRANCISCO JAVIER CASAS COBO. The Survival of the International Style in the History of Architecture. pp. 90-101