Philip Johnson Paintings, Bio, Ideas
The modern architect Philip Johnson developed the International Style and left his mark on 20th century cityscapes.
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The Art Story
Summary of Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson's longevity (he died in 2005, aged 98) matches the extraordinary breadth of his influence on twentieth-century architecture. From his early days as a precocious, lonely Harvard student co-editing perhaps the most important book on modernist building, The International Style (1932), to the self-conscious classicism of his New York State Theatre (1964) and the postmodern bombast of his late skyscrapers, Johnson never failed to leave his mark on the cultural epochs he inhabited. A homosexual in an era of prejudice, and a political cynic - if not a reactionary - in an era of grand ideologies, he was an unpredictable, abrasive, and by all accounts memorable character. His legacy is in the skylines of Manhattan - and beyond that, in our conception of the metropolitan cityscape.

Accomplishments

With the publication of The International Style in 1932, Johnson and his co-editor Henry-Russell Hitchcock defined a new paradigm in architecture that would hold sway for decades. What Johnson helped to identify, and what his own architectural practice reflected at the time, was a form of functional minimalism with its origins in the radical world-building of post-revolutionary Russia and the Bauhaus philosophy. Johnson realized this aesthetic could be - indeed, was being - applied all over the world, from Dhaka to Sao PÃ£ulo, ushering in a new era of transnational modernism in building design.

Johnson, perhaps more than any other figure, helped to separate modernist architecture from revolutionary politics. Modernism in architecture began in revolutionary Russia and the Bauhaus in Germany, and many of its leading figures were leftist or Marxist in their politics. But Johnson's International Style, based on modernist architecture, was not tied to any political agenda. For example, he was happy to apply International Style principles when constructing skyscrapers for New York capitalists. He also flirted with fascist politics during the 1930s-40s, indicating the extent to which he stripped the new architectural ideas from their original political connections.

Later in his career, Johnson's work began to evolve beyond the modernism of his youth. With projects such as the New York State Theatre he introduced a kind of classicism, including a rectangular portico with columns in his design. In the 1980s-90s, the imposing yet decorative nature of his designs, such as the AT & T Tower (1994), saw him contribute to the new paradigm of postmodernism. As such, Johnson's significance to global architecture shifted with the times.

Important Art by Philip Johnson

Biography of Philip Johnson

Childhood and Education

Philip Johnson was born into wealth in Cleveland, Ohio. His father, Homer Johnson, was an attorney and his mother, Louise Pope, came from a distinguished family including noted industrialists and philanthropists. He had two older siblings, Jeannette and Alfred (who died at age four), and a younger sister, Theodate. His childhood was not an overly pleasant one. Raised primarily by governesses, according to author Mark Lamster Johnson, Johnson spent his youth as "a prop in his parents' kabuki act of haut-bourgeois respectability. An obedient son, he was happy, or at least amenable, when asked to play his part in the family drama. And so he became a walking doll, photographed in a succession of dresses (at the tail end of acceptability for boys), Lord Fauntleroy outfits, knickerbockers, and sailor suits as ordered by his mother. The clothes changed, but he always wore the same affectless expression, ... he was not inclined to smile." What his father did pass along to his son from an early age was his strong anti-Semitic views, something that would influence Johnson, at least for a time, in his adult life.

School was equally difficult, partly due to a stutter that Johnson had until his high-school years. According to Lamster, "Philip was a loner at school. He ate his lunch by himself, and was reluctant to participate in sports and other group activities. The remoteness that had always been a part of his character, however, was metastasizing into a debilitating emotional affliction that would follow him throughout his early life." Illness also impacted Johnson during these years, first with the onset of the same ear disease, mastoiditis, that had taken his brother's life, and then through the development of bipolar disorder, which went undiagnosed for many years and further contributed to his feelings of isolation.

Early Training

Johnson was accepted to Harvard in the fall of 1923. There, his sense of isolation set in, accompanied by bouts of depression and mood swings. Of this time, Johnson would later state, "I was an outsider, and I felt it at the time." His lack of friends, however, may partly have been due to his arrogance towards others, which, according to Lamster, included his often walking around the campus with his roommate speaking only French. This attitude was furthered in the winter of 1924, when Johnson's father gave each of his children their share of their inheritance, making him a very wealthy eighteen-year-old who began to spend extravagantly.

After suffering a nervous breakdown Johnson was forced to take a leave of absence from school. The start of his coming to terms with his homosexuality may have added to his anxieties. Eventually, his nerves recovered enough for him to return to school on a limited course-schedule, and it was then that he began taking architecture courses. He met fellow student Lincoln Kirstein and professors Alfred Barr and Henry-Russell Hitchcock, all of whom would impact his future career, helping to set him on his modernist path. Barr, for instance, told Johnson who he should meet and what buildings he should visit on a trip to Europe, which helped to expose him to the great Bauhaus architects. Across various overseas trips he would eventually interact with all of the field's giants, including Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, J.J.P. Oud, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Mature Period

An important early event in Johnson's career was a book-project he worked on with Hitchcock about modernist architects. Their publication, The International Style, became a key text on modernist architecture, helping to define and establish a global movement of the same name. Johnson's first real mark in the field, however, was owed to Barr, who got him a job along with Hitchcock planning an exhibition about modern architecture at his new Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Bringing the show Modern Architecture to fruition in 1932 was not without its challenges, due largely to Johnson's personality, which caused him to butt heads with architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who would only stay in the show if Johnson agreed to include something he had written in the exhibition's materials. The show's ultimate success led to Johnson's promotion to chairman of the museum's department of architecture.

While traveling to Europe in the summer of 1932 to prepare for his next exhibition, Johnson got swept up in the rising tide of Nazism in Germany, attending his first Hitler Youth rally in October. Friends including Barr become concerned with the direction of Johnson's politics. Indeed, despite his growing recognition in his field, his political interests overtook all else for the next several years, during which he tried to build a nationalist party in the United States incorporating many of the ideas he had embraced in Europe, including Nazism. This led him to associate with controversial figures connected to the US populism of the day, including Lawrence Dennis, Huey Long, and Father Charles Coughlin. For the latter Johnson designed a large rally platform in 1936 in the International Style. The architect travelled to Europe again later in the decade, writing articles for fascist magazine The Examiner, attending a rally to hear Adolf Hitler speak, and reportedly meeting several Nazi officials. Johnson's activities led the FBI to open a file on him, and many believed he may have been working as a spy for the German government. According to Lamster, "when interviewed in 1942, Johnson's former secretary Ruth Merrill told the FBI that Johnson believed 'the fate of the country' rested on his shoulders, and that 'he wanted to be the 'Hitler' in the United States.'"

At the height of the Second World War, as opportunities at home including at his beloved MoMA dwindled due to his controversial actions and views, Johnson began to distance himself from his prior political statements. Trying to reinvent himself, he decided to enroll in Harvard's architecture school in 1940. Then, just as he earned his degree in spring of 1943, he was drafted into the army at the age of 37. Concerns over his possible allegiances to Germany prevented him from getting good assignments, and he was instead forced to do menial work for the duration of the war. In fact, despite various attempts to distance himself from this past, in the coming years it would haunt him, in no small part due to his own contradictory and often inflammatory statements, including in a letter in 1964 where he wrote: "personally I think the Nazis were better than Roosevelt, but I haven't had time to dig up the truth."

After the war, Johnson established an office in New York City, and was eventually able to get back onto the staff of MoMA as Consultant to the Department of Architecture. In 1947 he curated a major exhibition of the work of his hero Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, his hero. Not long after, in March 1948, Johnson began building his iconic work, the Glass House, on his property in New Canaan, Connecticut. The positive reception and press for this work led to more important commissions, many for influential figures, including the Rockefeller family. A promotion to Director of MoMA's Architecture Department followed, but once more Johnson proved difficult to work with. According to his curator Peter Blake - not to be confused with the British Pop Artist of the same name - "he could be arrogant, insulting, cutting, bitchy, devastatingly nasty - and he was often all of those things. But he was never boring." He became well-known for fallings out, grudges, and recriminations.

A series of mainly residential and interior design projects dominated the first third of Johnson's career. It was also, however, during this period that he received a rare corporate commission designing the Seagram Building (1958) in New York City in a secondary role to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Importantly, while the building was a Mies design, the Four Seasons restaurant in the building's ground floor was completely Johnson's design.

The second phase of Johnson's career could be seen to have begun in the late 1950s, and was marked by a move away from the modernist aesthetic and International Style he had helped to champion. Wanting to return to a more traditional approach, what he referred to as "structural classicism," his most famous work of the period was the design for the New York State Theater (now known as the David H. Koch Theater) (1964) at the Lincoln Center. This project led to his style sometimes being referred to as the "ballet school" because of the ballets performed there.

As some of these new traditional designs were less well received, Johnson shifted his focus once more, this time to urban design and planning. Having secured a coveted spot on New York City mayor John Lindsay's Task Force on Urban Design, Johnson focused on the redesign of the city's waterfront (something that would not be accomplished until years later, and without his oversight). Interested also in preservation, he teamed up with former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to lead a "Committee to Save Grand Central Station" in 1975. Their friendship would be destroyed years later, once again due to his contrarian nature, when he pulled out of a book deal on which he was working with friend Rosamond Berneir. Onassis was serving as his editor at Doubleday when, without informing her, Johnson abruptly left for a new publisher. According to Lamster, Onassis was furious and instructed Bernier that neither of them would have any further communications with him.

Later Period

The final part of Johnson's career was primarily spent building skyscrapers and corporate buildings. This phase can be seen to have begun when, in 1967, Johnson took on John Burgee. The younger architect skillfully landed many of these commissions, many of which were completed in a postmodern style, including AT&T Tower (1994) in New York, an important late work for Johnson.

Despite his growing success, controversy continued to trouble Johnson during the last decades of his life. He was angry when MoMA did not select him as the architect for their new expansion project and refused to give the museum any further gifts from his impressive art collection. Johnson's health also began to fade and he would go through two heart surgeries, the first in 1972 and another in 1986.

Johnson also suffered professionally, struggling to maintain the stability of his architectural practice, the Philip Johnson Firm, which he ran since 1946. Burgee came to resent his role as secondary to Johnson in the firm they shared, and even Johnson's agreement to change the name of the company to "John Burgee Architects, Philip Johnson Consultant" was not enough to satisfy the younger figure. In the end, Burgee publicly forced Johnson out of the business, after which it ironically declared bankruptcy, Burgee having taken on all financial responsibility for its survival. Unscathed, Johnson started a new firm, but his declining health decreased his presence in the office.

Johnson spent most of his final years at his beloved Glass House and estate in New Canaan, with his partner of nearly four decades David Whitney. Johnson died quietly at the age of ninety-eight. Of his death, Lamster wrote: "Johnson had ordered there be no great obsequies, no grand memorial service. The man who courted attention and publicity his entire life wanted none that he could not experience himself. His end was a private affair. 'Death is nothing, you see - it just happens and that's the end,' he said."

The Legacy of Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson had a profound impact on the field of architecture. He lived through and effected the two major ages of twentieth-century architecture, loosely categorized as modernism and postmodernism. In particular, he played a leading role in the spread of modernist architecture both through his early designs and through the articulation of what his hugely influential 1932 dubbed The International Style. Also, through the legacy of his skyscrapers, Johnson helped to reimagine what a city landscape could be, as well as predicting the look of postmodernist architecture. Author Mark Lamster writes that "the legacy he did leave extends beyond his architecture into art, design, and urban affairs....The architect of aesthetically modest modern residences of the mid-century became the designer of aesthetically bombastic postmodern towers as that same century came to a close. In between there were moments of enduring civility and dignity offset by works that were overblown, nihilistic, and crass."

Johnson's designs and visions have even made their mark on contemporary culture. His Glass House, for instance, created early in his career, broke down any sense of barriers on what a house could be for future generations in a way that still resonates. It can be argued, for example, that the contemporary "tiny-house movement" is possible in part due to the risks Johnson took with his Glass House concept.

Johnson's legacy also extends to the art world. Beginning early in his life during his trips to Europe, Johnson displayed a keen and intuitive eye in art-collecting, notably purchasing works by Paul Klee, Aristide Maillol, and Pablo Picasso. The large collection he amassed not only led to substantial gains to the MoMA's collection via gifts but also impacted his architectural designs. He often incorporated artworks into building projects, including in his design for the Four Seasons, in which artworks were a key part of the overall design aesthetic.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Philip Johnson