New Art City

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John Updike's hilarious review of Jed Perl's New Art City. My favorite quote:

The words "existential" and "empirical" remain hazy, as much as Perl loves and uses them. The verb "existentialize" doesn't exist in my dictionary, and I groped to attach meanings to such nuanced variations of the concept as "in their wackily existentialist way" and the report that some Buckminster Fuller domes were sent out "into the world in a pure, almost existentialized form." Almost existentialized - an unlucky near miss!

At one time, we architects had a critic who was a master at architectural writing. He balanced description with illuminating generalization. Unfortunately, he unexpectedly died. And now we're still where we were. We need a master of language, like Updike, who can navigate the dangerous shoals of Writing About Architecture. Me, I'm going to do some more drawings.

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