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A review by tyrant_flycatcher
From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.25
A very short, snarky and useful introduction to Modern and Post-Modern architecture. Unless you are in the know, you probably will need to read this with your cellphone by your side (as I did), searching for artists' work as they are introduced. Aside from that, it is a surprisingly quick read.
I have one criticism to Wolfe's angle on the movement: for someone who makes so much fun and argues that Modernism had a superficial anti-bourgeois angle to it, Wolfe has very little to say about the social issues caused by some of the public works made by these people. If anything, he approaches such topics dismissively, haphazardly throwing in phrases like "any decent folk had left the building by X time" (I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm not far off) when discussing massive housing issues such as Pruitt-Igoe. Mr. Wolfe has much to say about the isms and pretentious blabber that some of these guys had going on, but he himself can be surprisingly myopic when it comes to the big picture.
I have one criticism to Wolfe's angle on the movement: for someone who makes so much fun and argues that Modernism had a superficial anti-bourgeois angle to it, Wolfe has very little to say about the social issues caused by some of the public works made by these people. If anything, he approaches such topics dismissively, haphazardly throwing in phrases like "any decent folk had left the building by X time" (I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm not far off) when discussing massive housing issues such as Pruitt-Igoe. Mr. Wolfe has much to say about the isms and pretentious blabber that some of these guys had going on, but he himself can be surprisingly myopic when it comes to the big picture.