From Bauhaus to Our House

Infobox Book
name = From Bauhaus to Our House
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Tom Wolfe
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Art criticism
publisher = Farrar, Straus & Giroux
release_date = 1981
media_type = Print
pages = 143
isbn = ISBN 0-374-15892-4
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"From Bauhaus to Our House" is a 1981 book critiquing Modern architecture, written by Tom Wolfe.

Background

In 1975 Wolfe made his first foray into art criticism with "The Painted Word", in which he argued that art theory had become too pervasive because the art world was controlled by a small elitist network of wealthy collectors, dealers and critics. Art critics were, in turn, highly critical of Wolfe's book, arguing that he was a philistine who knew nothing of what he wrote. [Harvnb|Ragen|2002|pp=23-24]

After "The Painted Word", Wolfe published a collection of his essays, "Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine" (1976), and his history of the earliest years of the space program, "The Right Stuff" (1979). Undeterred by the hostile critical response to "The Painted Word", and perhaps even encouraged by the stir the book made, Wolfe set about writing a critique of modern architecture. "From Bauhaus to Our House" was excerpted in "Harper's magazine" and published by Wolfe's long-time publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1981. [Harvnb|Ragen|2002|pp=24-28]

Themes

Wolfe bluntly lays out his thesis in the introduction to "From Bauhaus to Our House" with a riff on the patriotic song "America the Beautiful"

O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within thy blessed borders today? [Cite web | url = http://www.tomwolfe.com/Bauhaus.html | title = From Bauhaus to Our House | accessdate = 2007-12-08 | work = tomwolfe.com]

Wolfe criticizes the tendencies of modern architecture to avoid any external ornamentation. Wolfe praised architects like Louis Sullivan who, from the late 1800s to his death in 1924, built a number of ornate buildings. Wolfe turned his criticism on the International Style and Modern Architecture exemplified by architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius (the founder of the Bauhaus school in Germany, whose ideas influenced Modern Architecture, and from which the title of the book derives). Wolfe believed that the buildings of the International Style and Modern Architecture could barely be appreciated by those who had to work in them. [Harvnb|Ragen|2002|pp=28-29]

Wolfe's critique, however, was not purely aesthetic. As in "The Painted Word" Wolfe was critical of what he saw as too much adherence to theory. Wolfe characterized the architecture as based on a political philosophy that was inapplicable to America, arguing, for example, that it was silly to model American schools on "worker's flats" for the proletariat. The architecture world—like an art world dominated by critics, and a literature world dominated by creative writing programs—was producing buildings that nobody liked. [Harvnb|Ragen|2002|pp=29] Many architects, in Wolfe's opinion, had no particular goal but to be the most avant-garde.Cite news | title = Wolfe: Tilting His Lance at the Glass Box | author = Grier, Peter | work = The Christian Science Monitor | date = December 14, 1981 In Harvnb|Shomette|1992.]

Critical response

As Wolfe's arguments mirrored those he made in "The Painted Word" so was mirrored the critical response. The response to Wolfe's book from the architecture world was highly negative. Critics argued that, once again, Wolfe was writing on a topic he knew nothing about and had little insight to contribute to the conversation. "Time" critic Robert Hughes wrote that Wolfe had added nothing to the discussion of modern architecture except "a kind of supercilious rancor and a free-floating hostility toward the intelligentsia". [Harvnb|Shomette|1992|pp=xxii-xxiii] Cite news | title = Tom Wolfe Behind the Facade of Modernism | author = Forgey, Benjamin | work = Book World | publisher = The Washington Post | date = November 15, 1981 In Harvnb|Shomette|1992.]

Hilton Kramer writing in the "Saturday Review" found Wolfe's writing hyperbolic and refuted some of Wolfe's points. Wolfe had claimed, for example, that a Modern Architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art had played a large role in subverting native culture; Kramer rebutted that the museum had displayed the art of Charles Burchfield and Edward Hopper before Picasso and Matisse and that the exhibition occurred in 1932 while the architecture itself remained uncommon for another 20 years.Cite journal | title = Tom Wolve vs. Modern Architecture | author = Kramer, Hilton | journal = Saturday Review | volume = 8 | month = October | year = 1981 | pages = 65–66 In Harvnb|Shomette|1992.]

Some critics conceded that Wolfe was right that many people did not appreciate the buildings. Blake Morrison, writing in the "Times Literary Supplement" observed that perhaps some people felt such hostility to architecture because it is "a gallery we can't walk out of, a book we can't close, and art we can't even turn our backs on because it is there facing us on the other side of the street".Cite news | title = Lords of Glass, Steel and Concrete | work = Times Literary Supplement | author = Morrison, Blake | date = March 26, 1982 In Harvnb|Shomette|1992.]

Others noted that, regardless of whether Wolfe was right or wrong, architecture was already moving away from Modern architecture to Postmodern architecture. Many of the complaints that Wolfe lodged against Modern architecture, particularly the austere boxiness of the buildings, were no longer a facet of postmodern architecture.Cite journal | title = From Our House To Las Vegas | journal = The Virginia Quarterly Review | month = Summer | year = 1982 | volume = 58 | pages = 533–36 | author = Wilson, Richard Guy | url = http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9602(198311)89%3A3%3C739%3AFBTOH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4 | accessdate = 2007-12-09]

Critics observed that the book was well-written. Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for "The New York Times" wrote, "Mr. Wolfe's agility continues to dazzle, more than fourteen years after his essays first began to appear in print. But dazzle is not history, or architectural criticism, or even social criticism, and it is certainly not an inquiry into the nature of the relationship between architecture and society."Cite news | title = From Bauhaus to Our House | date = October 11, 1981 | author = Goldberger, Paul | url = http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/08/specials/wolfe-bauhaus.html | accessdate = 2007-12-09 ] Cite journal | title = Review of From Bauhaus to Our House | author = Bergesen, Albert | journal = American Journal of Sociology | volume = 89 | pages = 739–41 | doi = 10.1086/227929 | year = 1983 In Harvnb|Shomette|1992.]

References

;General
* Citation
title = Tom Wolfe: A Critical Companion
last = Ragen
first = Brian Abel
year = 2002
publisher = Greenwood Press
isbn = 0-313-31383-0
* Citation
title = The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe
last = Shomette
first = Doug
year = 1992
publisher = Greenwood Press
isbn = 0-313-27784-2;Specific

External links

* [http://www.harpers.org/archive/1981/07/0024599 From Bauhaus to Our House] excerpt in "Harper's magazine".
* [http://www.tomwolfe.com/Bauhaus.html From Bauhaus to Our House] at tomwolfe.com.