Before World War II, Modernist architects sometimes had to resort to custom fabrication or outright fakery to achieve the machine imagery advocated by the Bauhaus after its initial, Expressionist, phase. Stucco masqueraded as reinforced concrete; rivets were used for decoration. — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
The financial benefits of prefabrication have never been as large as its advocates predicted, for although some labor costs can be reduced by machine manufacturing, on-site assembly of any building still depends to some extent on the handwork of skilled… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
Elevated locations imply elevated purposes, even in American cities departing as radically as Los Angeles does from the traditional planning patterns of the Eastern… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
Architecture is not a profession for the faint-hearted, the weak-willed, or the short-lived. — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
The danger for any artist whose work is both recognizable and critically acclaimed is complacent repetition - the temptation to churn out easily identifiable,… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
Architectural kitsch is most common in the commercial pop vernacular - typified by the Big Duck of 1931 in Flanders, New York, a Long… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
The Frankfurt Museum of Decorative Arts is a handsome building, which takes its cues from the riverside Biedermeier villa next to it, and it… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
The most basic task of any museum must be the protection of works of cultural significance entrusted to its care for the edification and pleasure of future generations. This imperative rightfully takes precedence over acquisition, interpretation, outreach, or any number of other activities now believed to be crucial to the survival of our great art repositories. Sometimes a museum gains… — Martin Filler Copy Share
Postmodernism came nowhere close in quality to Modernism at its apogee, not least because that later style wholly lacked the social impetus that animated… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
One reason I've never been a fan of graphic novels is because a central aspect of literature for me has always been imagining what… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
The truth be told, the World Trade Center was neither a very good work of architecture nor a very successful piece of urbanism. Its… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
During the modern period, the vanguard architect has usually relied on small residential jobs both to supply a steady income and to serve as… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
We take from the art of the past what we need. The variable posthumous reputations of even the greatest artists and the unpredictable revivals… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
Masterpieces of art possess immense potential to advance a worldview that could help assuage the societal terrors posed by globalization, the most thoroughgoing socioeconomic… — Martin Filler Copy Share Image
