Tag Archives: Criticism

Why is modern art so bad?

Posted on May 8, 2015 by David Brussat

Malcolm Millais, author of Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture and an upcoming book correcting the record on Le Corbusier, sent me a video of an artist, Robert Florczak, at Prager University, explaining the erosion of standards in the art world … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Humor, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Hazlitt’s literary skyscraper

Posted on March 12, 2015 by David Brussat

William Hazlitt, whom I’ve quoted here before on the art of painting, is a writer whose sentences evoke the architecture of English. The one below certainly suggests a skyscraper. He liked to say that he wrote in a “familiar style” … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Books and Culture | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Justin Lee Miller: Architecture and the operatic angst

Posted on January 19, 2015 by David Brussat

Justin Lee Miller, the opera singer, actor and playwright, has sent me a fascinating essay that elucidates the parallels between opera and architecture, especially in regard to the handling of traditional works by their modernist interpreters. Here is the passage … Continue reading →

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Ramp it up, Bob! Ramp it up!

Posted on February 18, 2014 by David Brussat

Robert A.M. Stern, the only classicist among American starchitects, designed a new building for the Museum of the American Revolution, in Philly, a couple of years ago. The design, which was neocolonial, hit the usual buzzsaw wielded by the usual … Continue reading →

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Sneaky review of “The Monster-Builder”

Posted on February 6, 2014 by David Brussat

Now that the play “The Monster-Builder,” by Amy Freed, has opened – indeed premiered – at the Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Ore., here is a theater review. The writer, Richard Wattenberg, is not identified other than as, I presume, … Continue reading →

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Column: Architecture critic, heal thyself!

Posted on January 30, 2014 by David Brussat

Witold Rybczynski’s 18th book, “How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit,” opens with a quarrel in its title. By any definition of humanism, architecture has been broken for at least seven decades. The book, published in October by Farrar, Straus and … Continue reading →

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