Architectural Record 2015-04

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MAS: The Modern Architecture
Symposia 1962–1966: A Critical
Edition, edited by Rosemarie Haag
Bletter and Joan Ockman, with Nancy
Eklund Later. Yale University Press,
February 2015, 348 pages, $80.
Reviewed by Suzanne Stephens
thirty years after the legendary
show Modern Architecture:
An International Exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA),
its curators, Henry-Russell
Hitchcock and Philip Johnson,
launched a series of symposia
assessing the development of this
new architecture. Whereas the
MoMA show was accompanied by
a book, the symposia had
to wait almost 50 years
for the proceedings to be
published. It is like opening
a time capsule—and a
compelling one.
The three Modern
Architecture Symposia
(MAS) took place at
Columbia University in
May 1962, 1964, and 1966,
and were organized by
Columbia historian
George Collins and the
director of Avery Library, Adolf
Placzek. They brought together a
formidable ensemble of scholars
and critics from a range of institutions
to examine three decades
(not in strict order): the first, 1918
to 1928; the second, 1929 to 1939;
and finally the third, 1907 to 1917.
Since the symposia took place,
they have been called a convocation
of the gods of architectural
history and criticism—Rudolf
Wittkower, Vincent Scully, Colin
Rowe, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, James
Marston Fitch, Catherine Bauer
Wurster, Edgar Kaufmann Jr.,
William Jordy, Eduard Sekler,
Alfred Barr, and others, including,
of course, Hitchcock and Johnson.
Even young historians-in-waiting,
Robert A.M. Stern and Christian
Otto, gave presentations. But few
were privy to the details except
for invited architects, curators,
critics, and stu dents. (This writer,
newly on the editorial staff at
Progressive Architecture, cajoled her
way into the 1966 meeting.) So it
has been a question: was it as
significant as the roster of participants
makes it sound? This book
shows the answer is a resounding
yes. Illuminating essays by editors
Rosemarie Haag Bletter (who
attended two sessions as a graduate
student) and Joan Ockman
(a former director of Columbia’s
Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the
Study of American Architecture)
add to its heft.
Don’t expect, though, a
“Wasn’t it swell?” nostalgic recap
of the International Style. The
book provides testimony to a
many-sided debate: Maholy-Nagy,
outspoken critic and professor at
Pratt, blamed Gropius and Breuer
for the “slow death
of architecture
and urbanism”
in the U.S. in the
1930s. Elizabeth
Mock Kassler, the
director of MoMA’s
department of
architecture from
1942 to 1946,
argued that the
International Style
resulted in “no
buildings of
intrinsic value in this country.”
Bletter provides an account of
the considerations determining
the scope of each symposium,
with footnotes revealing often
amusing backstories. The first
one discussed functionalism and
expressionism; the second, regional
and national aspects of this
new architecture. The third session
analyzed the influences of
such movements as De Stijl and
Deutscher Werkbund.
Ockman puts this period of
architecture within the larger
context of intellectual history,
including architecture’s turn to
theory. The MAS provide a synoptic
history of those years: candid
comments show the give-and-take
as the gods growled at each other
and debated the mythical status
of modernism—as a style, an
urbanistic solution, and a social
concern. One wishes for more
illustrations of the buildings, but
this is a fascinating immersion
in the MAS mysteries. ■
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