Style, University of Tennessee Journal of Architecture, No. 16, 1995, pp. 29-34

Revisiting Fascism:

Degenerate Art and the New Corporate Style

Michael Kaplan
Associate Professor of Architecture
University of Tennessee / Knoxville

"If only our totally superficial culture of today, which loves rapid change, could visualize the future by learning to look more closely at the past! This rage for innovation that collapses foundations, this foolish negligence of the deep spiritual content in life and art, this modern concept of life as a rapid sequence of instant pleasures, ... so many signs of decadence, a sad denial of health and of the transcendent character of life." Martin Heidegger(1)

The epigraph from Heidegger's Abraham a Sancta Clara, written in 1910 and excerpted by Victor Farias in Heidegger and Nazism, reveals a virulent anti-modernist stance that later became the ideological substrate of Nazi cultural revisionism. Appropriated by Hitler in his writings on the degeneracy of modern art, this position formed the basis for the attack on progressive German culture leading to a ban on art criticism in 1936 and the slanderous Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibit of Germany's great modern artists mounted in Munich in 1937.

The relation of trends in the theoretical and practical architectural agenda to the conservative political climate of the last two decades has become a subject of speculation and debate. Bruno Zevi, advocate of modernism, argues that certain formal aspects of historicism interface with ideological intents of fascism.(2) Leon Krier, while acknowledging the appropriation of the classical style by totalitarian forces, believes the convergence incidental and not an indictment of the style.(3) David Harvey, in The Condition of Post-Modernity, frames the debate in terms of "a search for an appropriate myth" where modernist art served a capitalist version of the Enlightenment, and classicism a reaction to the universalist implications of technology.(4)

In the context of the current debate, and within the framework of Harvey's 'appropriate myth' theory, this paper examines two examples of contemporary architecture -- one historicist and the other modernist -- by relating their stylistic language to the agenda of their patrons.

Whittle Headquarters: An Architecture of Decency and Deceit

The New Corporate Style -- as distinguished from the curtain-walled office towers of the 1950s and 1960s -- is exemplified by the corporate headquarters of Whittle Communications in Knoxville, Tennessee. This company, now defunct, was partially owned by Time Warner Inc., and promoted itself as being on the cutting edge of educational reform. The celebration of pastiche in its headquarters, however, reveals a conservatism, indeed, revisionism in its agenda.

Whittle had been active in three interrelated areas: the publication of magazines directed at a specific clientele, the development of educational/commercial television (including Channel One and the Whittle Educational Network), and the development of a for-profit school system (The Edison Project). Whittle publications developed a theme, were distributed free of charge, and contained intensive advertising for products related to the theme. The Family Health Adviser pamphlets, for example, were available, without cost, in the waiting rooms of physicians' offices in a special display rack provided by Whittle. The pamphlet itself contained about 40% advertisements related to the subject. Channel One was conceptually similar. Television sets and satellite receiving equipment were provided free of charge to the 9,000 schools (representing about 6 million students) that enrolled in the plan. Schools were required, by contract, to tune in daily to the 12-minute Whittle-produced news broadcast, which contained 2 minutes of advertising. Channel One has been vigorously opposed by many school systems as an invasion of a traditionally public, non-commercial domain by private interests with their own commercial and political agenda. This concern, among others, was raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan recently when four teachers were reprimanded by their administrators for refusing to air the news program during their classes. The Edison Project is a further attempt to market mass education as a commodity by transferring the design of education to the private sector. Whittle conceived and constructed model schools would be supplied as part of a total education package to local school boards. This concept shared similarities with the Education 2000 initiative of Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander who was, not surprisingly, an early investor in Whittle Communications. Both Channel One and Edison have the potential to reduce the prerogative of the teacher in disseminating information.

For Whittle corporate headquarters, designer Peter Marino of New York created a 4-story complex described as an urban campus, occupying two city blocks in downtown Knoxville. The site, formerly occupied by a Trailways bus station and small retail/commercial venues, was bisected by Market Street, a major pedestrian connection between the TVA complex at its northern end and the City-County Building at the south. The city agreed to close a length of Market Street, now incorporated within the gated Whittle complex, as the north-south axis of a large, private open space. The new building did not replace retail or commercial uses at the street level, and pedestrian activity is limited to those who use its several entrances. It is an example of the process of gentrification of downtowns, or what is left of them, that excludes 'dirty' uses.

The neo-Georgian architecture, suggesting familiarity and gentility, can best be described as 'decent,' one of several code-words used by the Nazis to describe what 'degenerate' art was not. Philip Morris, editor of Southern Living magazine, has called it "a darn good way to make a building." Its brick facades pierced by small, double-hung windows suggest traditional bearing-wall construction, but the building, responsive to a 1990 budget, has a steel frame with metal stud exterior walls clad in brick veneer. The use of repetitive window openings might indicate partitioned interior spaces such as small offices, but the space planning is efficiently modern, with expansive open-plan work areas punctuated by enclosed rooms that contain the more private functions. The insistent symmetry of the plan contradicts the functionally-diverse physical program and a site that contains many possibilities for asymmetrical development. Bruno Zevi assigns political and psychological meaning to the use of symmetry:

"Symmetry is the facade of sham power trying to appear invulnerable. [It is] fear of flexibility, indetermination, relativity and growth -- in short, fear of living."

"Symmetry is one of the invariables of classicism. Therefore asymmetry is an invariable of the modern language. Once you get rid of the fetish of symmetry, you will have taken a giant step on the road to a democratic architecture."(5)

But democracy, or power through representation, is not what Whittle was about. By hiding its true nature behind an historicist facade, the building accurately reflects the philosophy of a company whose product is advertising hidden behind a veneer of 'information.' (Whittle correctly and unapologetically asserts that exposure to advertising is the price we usually pay to receive information.) The project has, indeed, been considered by the architectural press in terms of its image, rather than as a 'serious' piece of design. Its visual language communicates a deliberate critique of modern architecture -- indeed, of 'elitist' taste -- in a way that the populist language of the company's publications delivers a subtle critique of intellectualism. Not wishing to give it too much prominence or risk criticism for praising it, Progressive Architecture chose a student intern writer to summarize the building's (and the company's) message:

"In an age of star designers, it is refreshing to see work that clearly reflects the will of a client, rather than the ego of the architect. Equally refreshing is an office building which refuses to succumb to the 'corporate aesthetic.' "(6)

The author fails to suggest that the Whittle headquarters represents a new corporate aesthetic, one that is perhaps more efficient and audacious than the old. The building, through its aesthetic, not only projects the image of a company that confuses concern for society and concern for profit, but subtly attacks those 'elitists' who might challenge its authority.

Degenerate Art: An architecture of respect and retreat

Designed by William Pereira in the 1960s and expanded by New York architects Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates in the early 1980s, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is prominently situated on Wilshire Boulevard, competing as an edifice and cultural institution with Arata Isozaki's Museum of Modern Art downtown. The complex is described by Los Angeles historian Mike Davis as a product of the desire of new (and mostly Jewish) money to legitimize itself on its own turf.

"As if to precisely counterbalance the Music Center's pretensions to anchor Culture securely in Downtown, LACMA, heavily endowed by the Ahmansons and other Westside patrons, opened a few months later in the Jewish Hancock Park area. Since the late 1940s the Westside had been staking claims for a distinctive cultural identity beyond mere affinity with Hollywood."(7)

As part of its search for 'distinctive identity,' LACMA has in recent years mounted shows of social conscience and controversy, the latest being Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany. Curated by Stephanie Barron, its gala opening in February, 1991, was attended by none other than Madonna. The show contained 175 of the 650 objects originally exhibited in Munich. The catalog, edited by the curator, attempts to draw parallels between events in Nazi Germany and the latest manifestation of artist-bashing in the United States, led by Senator Jesse Helms.

Robert Darnton, writing in the New Republic, criticizes the exhibit as "strangely out of place in Los Angeles." I would disagree, arguing that Los Angeles became the center of the emigre artist community in the United States during and following the war, a haven for those who were rejected by the Nazis, or those who feared for their careers and lives. Los Angeles has been and continues to be a center of avant- garde art and architecture, the LACMA building itself being the subject of ongoing critical controversy. Finally, the exhibit was designed by local architect Frank Gehry, known for his unconventional partis and dissonant juxtapositions of materials, an artist who might well have been labeled "degenerate" by the Nazis.

Several critics of the exhibit have expressed discomfort, if not disagreement, with the "parallel" theory, and Gehry expresses this ambivalence of purpose by using an overly subtle display format. The designers of the original Entartete Kunst chose to create a grotesque setting to reinforce what they considered grotesque art. Paintings were hung, intentionally tilted, against walls defaced by insulting rhetoric -- a device obviously intended to titillate a curious public. By contrast, paintings in the 1991 version were hung in an orderly. respectful way against white, unadorned walls. Three-dimensional pieces were supported on substantial Mission-style wood constructions reminiscent of the rough furniture constructed by death camp inmates. Photographs of the original exhibit were mounted on the walls to provide the historical context. What was missing was one of the stated intents of the show: to graphically represent the parallel -- not the difference -- between then and now. This might have been accomplished by the inclusion of works by contemporary artists considered obscene or degenerate. With LACMA not having taken such a polemical stand, it is not surprising, Darnton observes. that "the pictures look incapable of giving offense."

Davis provides perhaps the most incisive explanation as to why Gehry was chosen as architect of the exhibit:

"(Gehry's) portfolio is ... a mercenary celebration of bourgeois-decadent minimalism. With sometimes chilling luminosity, his work clarifies the underlying relations of repression, surveillance and exclusion that characterize the fragmented, paranoid spatiality towards which LA seems to aspire."(8)

Gehry's modernism, then, becomes a dialectic between relentless, cynical critique of society. and service to his 'enlightened' capitalist patrons as the "human face of the corporate architecture that is transforming Los Angeles." His exhibit design for The Avant-Garde in Russia 1910-1930 (mounted at LACMA in 1980) confirms his ability to respond boldly and sympathetically to a given theme. Yet, in this sanitized design Gehry plays it safe, perhaps not wanting to offend Holocaust sensibilities, perhaps not daring to challenge the idea that 'it couldn't happen here.' By not taking a direct offensive against contemporary critics of the arts, the exhibit has the effect of disarming and pacifying its viewers. By its deflection of criticism and the blurring of issues, its ends are remarkably similar to the Whittle project, though its stylistic means are different.

Lessons of fascism

The ongoing controversy over governmental control of the content of artists' work raises questions about the freedom professionals have to express their concern on important and politically sensitive issues: the environment, the state of the economy, civil rights, and the correctness of foreign policy. When agents of political and economic authority (such as Whittle and LACMA) become arbiters of taste, they have the power to not only physically shape the environment in their image, but to manipulate thought as well. A submissive cadre of artists whatever their stylistic language -- serves to legitimize such power.

Modernism, in questioning and challenging the past, can serve as a vital critic of the present. It can be a language of optimism and change, a sign of life rather than decadence. The re-creation of Degenerate Art comes at a time when modernism, however, is subject to assaults by politicians, designers and entrepreneurs, and historicism vigorously promoted. In suggesting Seaside, Florida as the New American Suburb, architect Andres Duany claims German town planning during the Third Reich as one of his sources of inspiration.(9) Seaside, with its authoritarian building code and derivative style, is, in the end, a scheme for the affluent by an enterprising private developer, hardly a paradigm for socially responsive urban development. Another of Duany's patrons, HRH The Prince of Wales, chooses to ignore social issues by considering contemporary design predominantly in 'archaicist' terms, favoring historicism over history -- style over process. The wide acceptance of this kind of reductionist thinking suggests that an alliance of patron/mentors, their chosen developers and architects, and the establishment media can conspire to set the standards for architectural and social critique, thus effectively isolating and neutralizing those who might provide an alternative view.

Epilogue

Since this essay was conceived, there has been an array of remarkable events related to its theses. HRH The Prince of Wales has established an architecture school in London based on the principles set out in A Vision of Britain, blurring the philosophical boundaries between populism and elitism, evoking themes of the fascist past. The Whittle empire has collapsed financially, its pieces sold individually to the highest bidders. In a eulogy written in The New York Times, Whittle's former media relations director, Gary Belis, stated that, "Even inside the company, you were always trying to get a handle on what was real and what wasn't."(10) Channel One was bought by K-III Communications Corporation, amid protests by educators that it was a destructive influence in the schools. It continues to function. The Edison Project remains under the guidance of Benno C. Schmidt, Jr., although Chris Whittle has been removed as its chairman. The idea of privatized schools awaits a political climate more sympathetic to its aim of for-profit management of public education. Lamar Alexander, one of its outspoken advocates, has announced his candidacy for President of the United States, urging conservative activists to deal with "that little intellectual elite" in Washington.(11) While referring specifically to the current administration, he uses populist language that has broad and chilling implications.

Of the pieces of the empire, the Whittle headquarters building has perhaps come to the most ironic fate: it has been sold (at a supposed bargain-basement price) to the federal government for remodeling into a new federal courthouse. The same forces that favor the reduction of big government, the privatization of public assets and the "free" operation of market forces, are quick to advocate the transfer of private liabilities to the public domain through legitimized salvage operations and direct subsidies.

While the building has changed hands, the values of power and capital that created it remain very much alive, and move freely and conveniently between private and public sectors as necessary or desired. The consolidation of power that transcends private or public boundaries depends on the marginalization of its critics for its success. Artists, traditionally among the avant-garde of the criticized, are once again finding themselves in a compromised and dangerous position. Shifts in the political spectrum have threatened the reduction or elimination of federal funding of the arts. This will not end art, but it will surely infringe on its autonomy and thereby serve to hush some of society's most persistent, strident and needed critics.

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Michael Kaplan is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He lectures and writes on social, political and cultural aspects of design. This essay is adapted from a presentation given at FASCISM[S]: Roots/Extensions/Replays, an interdisciplinary graduate student conference held at The University of Oregon in April 1992. E-mail: mkaplan@utkux.utcc.utk.edu.

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1 Victor Parias, Heidegger and Nazism (Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1989), p. 32

2 Bruno Zevi. The Modern Language of Architecture (University of Washington Press, Seattle 1978), pp. 15-22

3 Leon Krier, "An Architecture of Desire," Architectural Design, April 1986

4 David Harvey, The Condition of Post-Modernity (Basil Blackwell, Cambridge 1989). pp. 34-35

5 Bruno Zevi, p. 15

6 Stephen Case. "Campuslike HQ for Whittle in Knoxville," Progressive Architecture, October 1991, pp. 18-19

7 Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Verso, New York 1990). p.72

8 Mike Davis, pp. 236-238

9 Duany's comments were included in his presentation at the 1985 AIA convention in Lexington, Kentucky.

10 Elliott, Stuart, "Whittle Communications' Fall Is Dissected" The New York Times, October 24, 1994

11 Alexander urges ousting 'intellectual elite'," The Knoxville News-Sentinel, February 10,1995, p. A9

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[Graphics captions]

Hitler's sketch for the Great Hall planned for Berlin, 1925

Whittle Communications' Family Health Advisor, showing theme-related advertising

Whittle Communications headquarters for Knoxville, 1991

Whittle Communications headquarters, First Floor Plan

Interior of a barrack a Birkenau camp, Poland

Degenerate Art exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Chris Whittle and Lamar Alexander

Copyright 1995, Michael Kaplan and University of Tennessee School of Architecture

[End]

[Fax from Leon Krier to Professor Kaplan]

Fax emis par: 94478594 KRIER-CLAVIERS

OPEN LETTER TO UOT ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL No. 16

Prof Kaplan, Claviers, 10.V.96

Dear Prof Kaplan,

I do not quite understand what your transcendant (sic) agenda may be, writing what you did in "Revisiting Fascism." But to insinuate, as you do, that the Duany's -conceal- a totalitarian agenda, is either inexcusable ignorance on your part -or- a lie with intent to damage. Whatever your interests may be, your article does not help democratic debate nor the quality of actual choices; but may be that is of no concern to you? How to tell??

Yours sincerely,

[Signature]

Leon Krier

[End]

[Krier's fax original]: