SZACKA - Exhibiting The Postmodern 2016 pp.180-207

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When Postmodernisms

Met in Venice

On 21 June 1988, architects Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Peter


Eisenman met at the opening of the Deconstructivist Architecture
exhibition at the MoMA in New York. 1 Documented in a series of
photographs now kept in the MoMA QNS reading room archive,
the event launched an exhibition often claimed as heralding the
end of postmodernism in architecture. In her review of the show
for Interiors magazine, Sylvia Lavin wrote: 'Although there has
never been a consensus as to what Post-Modern architecture is,
there are a lot of people who now think it is no longer: according
to them the fad for Post-Modernism has been replaced by a fet­
ish for Deconstructionism'.' Lavin here describes MoMA's con­
scious initiative to move away from postmodernism by creating
and legitimising a new 'trend' in architecture, presented within
the modern lineage or, in other words, as a direct continuation
of modernism. This strategic institutional move happened just
over a decade after Arthur Drexler's 1975 The Architecture of the
Ecole des Beaux Arts, a show prompting a return to drawing and
which is commonly acknowledged as having diverted MoMA
from its modernist path. Yet neither at MoMA in 1975 nor a year Previous spread:
later at the 1976 Europa-America Biennale exhibition was the The Presence of the Post, construction
of the 'Strada Novissima'.
term 'postmodernism' yet part of the established rhetoric. And 0 Antonio Martinelli

if by 1988 'postmodernism' was already being vilified, one can


situate the start of this decline in 1980. The First Internation­ Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas
and Peter Eisenman at the opening
al Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale was meant to
of the Deconstructivist Architecture
celebrate postmodernism - 'the end of prohibitionism' for Pao­ exhibition at MoMA, 21 June 1988.
lo Portoghesi, or the 'triumph of communication' for Charles 0 MoMA
Ill. The Beginning ofthe End and the End ofthe Begi

Jencks. Yet far from clarifying the growing discourse on p


modernism, it marked instead the beginning of its end as it c
tallised postmodernism as predominantly a style of historic
eclecticism.
If 1984 is sometimes identified as a benchmark year for Am
ican postmodernism on the international scene3 - this was t
year of the English translation of Lyotard's The Postmodern c
dition and the completion of Philip Johnson and John Burgee'
AT&T tower in New York - 1980 was undoubtly the decisiv
moment. As the end of the beginning and the beginning of th
end,4 the First International Architecture Exhibition of the Ve
ice Biennale marked a shift in architectural discourse and mo11
precisely in the perception, diffusion and understanding of the
term 'postmodernism'. This chapter and the next one address the
place the exhibition The Presence of the Past occupies within the
wider history of the development of postmodernism in architec­
ture. The argument is that the exhibition represents a moment
of institutionalisation that -in spite of an apparent desire for the
convergence of many postmodernisms - propelled greater diver­
gences amongst both its supporters and detractors.
Though the word 'postmodernism' was absent from the ex­
hibition title, it was nonetheless resolutely associated with the
event. To what extent then was postmodernism promoted by the
exhibition? As a unified style, or as a philosophy? What place
did the exhibition occupy within the ongoing discourse on post­
modernism, in Italy and beyond? And-perhaps more important­
ly -what was the impact of the exhibition on the development
of postmodernism at an international level? According to Robert
A.M. Stern, the exhibition 'came at the peak moment of postmod­
ernism's stylistic impact, bringing together a very interesting
group of people, architects, some of whom had never met each
other before, and gave a legitimacy and an authority to these peo­
ple'.5 But was this really the case? Or did the exhibition -by put­
ting together many different growing tendencies -rather create
further confusion around the term 'postmodern'?
The Presence ofthe Past closed on 19 October 1980, but its reper­
cussions were felt far beyond this date. Through publications and
other media, the exhibition expanded- both in words and imag­
es-as was understood, judged, confronted or praised not only on
the basis of what was seen directly by the visitors or indirectly
through circulating photographs and film footage of the exhibi­
tion, but also by what was heard and read. The implicit question
184
in
When Postmodernisms Met Venice

running through the last section of this book is whether it was


through the show itself or through its mediation that the exhibi­
tion's effect was mainly felt.

MAPPING POSTMODERNISM BEFORE 1980


Postmodernism was not born in 1980. The questioning of mod­
em architecture and urban planning's supremacy began rather
in the mid-1960s with the publication of a number of books - in­
cidentally coinciding with the disappearance of some of modern­
ism's greatest masters6 - that proposed new ways of looking at
architecture, the city, and the relation between the two. The first
of these influential publications was Jane Jacob's The Death and
Life of Great American Cities (1961),7 a polemical book defending
the values and forms of the traditional city. The book fuelled the
critique of the 1950s urban renewal policies and ushered in post­
modern urbanism, attributing the decline of local neighbour­
hoods in the United States to zoning and other modern dogmas.
A few years later, Aldo Rossi's L'Architettura della citta (The Archi­
tecture of the City, 1966)8 advocated a return to traditional urban
forms and a more 'human way' of designing cities, focusing on
monuments and collective memory. That same year, Robert Ven­
turi published Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966),9
a rebellion against the purism of modern architecture and a gen­
tle manifesto calling for an eclectic approach to design and an
openness to the multiple influences of historical tradition. These
books emerged at a time when both architects and historians
began to focus on the problem of meaning in architecture. The
Norwegian Christian Norberg-Schulz, for example, published In­
tentions in Architecture ( I 965), 10 his doctoral dissertation, in which
he argued that meaning in architectural forms derived from cul­
tural intentions. Further, in their collection of essays Meaning in
Architecture (1969)," Charles Jencks and George Baird explored
the idea of architecture as language, showing how signs and sym­
bols, linguistics, structural anthropology or information theory
could inform our reading of the built environment.
Although the concept of postmodernism in architecture had
been in a process of maturation for almost 20 years before the
1980 Architecture Biennale, it was not until the 1970s - just be­
fore the exhibition - that the term 'postmodern' began to infil­
trate architectural circles. This development was brought about
by another series of books further concretizing the discourse on Cover of Post-Modernism,
architecture and urbanism beyond the orthodoxy of the modern Architectural Design. 47/4, 1977

185
Ill. The Beginning ofthe End and the End ofthe Beginning

movement. First was the publication in 1972 of Robert Venturi


Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour's Learning from La s Ve�
gas, 12 a volume that looked at unplanned American urba nism
and the aesthetics of the everyday, calling architects to be more
receptive to their environment and in particular to the shared
values of 'common' people rather than to elitist, prescribed
rules.13 The work - hailed as a cornerstone of postmodemis m _
regarded architecture as a form of communication, arguing that
in the architecture of the everyday symbol outweighs space. In
1976, Robert A.M. Stern attempted to provide his own clear defi­
nition of the term in his essay 'Gray Architecture: quelques varia­
tions postmodernistes autour de l'orthodoxie' which appeared in
the journal L'Architectu.re d'Aujourd'hui. Focusing on the stylistic
and historical part of the movement as well as the link between
'high' and 'low' (later theorised by Fredric Jameson), Stern wrote
that '"postmodernism" embodies a search for strategies that will
make architecture more responsive to and visually cognisant of
its own history, the physical context in which a given work of
architecture is set, and the social, cultural, and political milieu
which calls it into being'. 14 The following year, in 1977, Charles
Jencks's The Language ofPost-ModernArchitecture' 5 and Peter Blake's
Form Follows Fiasco16 were published, both explicit critiques of the
modern movement. While the former proclaimed the death of
modern architecture, 17 the latter was a clear attack on functional­
ism. And whilst Blake's book impact on the later development of
postmodernism was somewhat tepid,18 Jencks's bestseller coined
and propelled 'postmodernism' (or rather, as spelled by Jencks,
'post-modernism') as an umbrella term, first in architecture, and
then later in the arts, philosophy, literature and other branches
of the humanities.' 9 Published in full colour and sold at a rea­
sonable price, Jencks's book was very easily accessible to a large
number of architects and students. Also in 1977, Stem published
another important article, 'New Directions in Modem American
Architecture: Postscript at the Edge of Modernism', in which he
wrote that postmodemism 'seeks to resolve the modernist split
between "rationalism" (that is function and technology) and "re­
alism" (that is history and culture)'.'0 Only a year later, in 1978,
Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter's Collage City21 and the exhibition
Roma Interrotta - even though without explicitly using the term
postmodernism - rejected and condemned as utopian the Ath­
ens charter's pretentions to an absolute truth of total urban plan­
ning. Also important in the early dissemination of the concept
116
When Postmodernisms Met in Venice

of'postmodernism' in architecture was the appearance of special


issues of two architecture magazines, one in the US and the other
in the UK. First, in 1977, Architectural Design (AD) published an
issue simply and emphatically entitled 'Post-modernism'22 which
coincided with the publication of Jencks's book. In 1980, just a
few weeks prior to the opening of Architecture Biennale, the first
issue of the Harvard Architecture Review appeared with the title
'Beyond the Modern Movement'.' 3 Alongside these publications
were the works of the architects who in the postwar decades -
first in Italy, later in the US, Japan, and the rest of Europe - had
begun to experiment with new architectural solutions and stylis­
tic responses.'4
If all of the aforementioned publications are mainly concerned
with architecture and urban design, the terms 'postmodern' and
'postmodernism' had been timidly in use in other disciplines
since the 193os.' 5 The first incursion of the 'postmodern' with­
in philosophy and the social sciences, however, is accredited to
French thinker Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard. In 1979 Lyotard published
his seminal book La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir
(The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge),'6 which point­
ed to the disenchantment with modernity and discussed the lost
of faith in 'metanarratives'. The roots of this change for Lyotard
lay in the 1950s: as we entered the postmodern age, the status of
knowledge was altered. While others had already suggested sim­
ilar ideas about the transformations occurring in post-industrial
societies,' 7 Lyotard was credited with the diffusion of the term
'postmodernism' as a theoretical concept within the broader in­
tellectual world, reaching all of the humanities - from philoso­
phy to sociology and politics - and marking a gradual opening of
the debate on postmodernism beyond architecture. As Jameson
explains in the foreword to the 1984 English translation of The
Postmodern Condition, the book
opens up this subject matter, at least by implication, in the direc­
tions of aesthetics and economics ... involv[ing] a radical break,
both with a dominant culture and aesthetic, and with a rather
different moment of socioeconomic organization against which
its structural novelties and innovations are measured: a new so­
cial and economic moment (or even system), which has various­
ly been called media society, the "society of the spectacle" (Guy
Debord), consumer society (or the "societe de consommation"),
the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption" (Henri Lefe­
bvre), or "postindustrial society" (Daniel Bell).'8
187
Ill. The Beginning of the End and the End of the Begin

In other words, Lyotard's book was the first to treat postm


nity not as a cultural shift or for its aesthetic and linguistic in
vation but as a general change of human circumstance. And
highlighted by Perry Anderson, 'the vantage-point of the phil '
pher assured it a wider echo, across audiences, than any previo
intervention'.29 Yet, despite being responsible for the introdu
tion of the term 'postmodernism' to the social sciences and b
yond, Lyotard's book was a diagnosis of the 'status of science an
technology and the control of knowledge and information toda
rather than an argument for postmodernism.3°
In Italy, although the word 'postmodernism' had not strict­
ly entered common language before 1980, the orthodoxy of th e
modern movement had been put into question and challenged
since the 1950s - both in buildings and writings.3' Italy was un­
doubtedly a hotbed of postmodernism. Publications such as Ca­
sabella-Continuita in the 1950s and 1960s and Controspazio maga­
zine from 1969 onwards preceded the Biennale in initiating and
promoting discussion on the use of history and tradition and in
their insistence on drawing, language and meaning in architec­
ture - all facets of what was later to be brought together under
the umbrella term 'postmodernism'. In December 1953, just after
the creation of Team X at Aix-en-Provence CIAM, Ernesto Nathan
Rogers became chief editor of Casabella magazine, changing its
name to Casabella-Continuita:32 to suggest a desired continuity yet
critical revision of the modern movement and opening a debate
on the question of tradition.33 Rogers, who saw the recuperation
of history and tradition (both high and low) as linked to a desired
'communicability' of architecture,34 opened the pages of Casabel­
la-Continuita to the young generation, notably to the giovani de/le
colonne (youngsters of the columns),35 a group of students from
the School of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano who in
the mid-195os had suddenly started using columns, arches and
pinnacles in their architectural compositions. It was also in the
pages of Casabella-Continuita that the debate on Neo-Liberty ar­
chitecture had emerged, identified by Jencks as the beginnings of
postmodernism. 36 Another publication central to Italian architec­
tural debate was Controspazio, the architectural magazine found­
ed in 1969 by Paolo Portoghesi. In the pages of the magazine, Por­
toghesi's young collaborators such as Ezio Bonfanti and Massimo
Scolari questioned the modern movement whilst defending the
autonomy of the discipline. Starting from the premise that ar­
chitecture was not only about construction, the monthly feature
188
Whe n p05tmodernisms Met in Venice

'Architettura interrotta'-edited from 1969to 1972 by Luciano Pa­


te tta - published unrealised projects by young Italian architects.
concurrently, buildings such as the Monte Amiata housing com­
plex in the Gallarat�se district in Milan (1967-74)_ also put �nto
practice some of the ideas defended by postmodermsm: 'relat10ns
among urban spaces within the historical city through the mon­
tage of "parts" ... typological variation of housing, sequential con­
necting spaces, volumetric layout of the complex, and linguistic
experimentation'.37 Finally, in Italy, the term 'Tendenza'-a move­
ment away from late modem functionalist theories and defined
by the anthropological and sociological ambitions of Team X or
the utopian designs of Archigram and Italian radical architecture
groups such as Superstudio, Archizoom or 999938 - anticipated
many of the themes of postmodemism.
Practically every text on postmodemism starts by raising the
difficult question of the exact meaning of the word.39 Confusion
around the term - a word that signifies many things at once -
has always existed and still remains today.40 The only certainty
is perhaps that, in the words of Anderson, "'postmodemism" as
a term and idea supposes the currency of "modemism"' .4' It also
marks a break from 'modernism', a term which, as accurately put
by Andreas Huyssen, 'remains inscribed into the very word with
which we describe our distance from modemism'.42 But the ques­
tion remains: how to read this break - whether economically
(as the end in a belief in indefinite growth), philosophically (as
a new condition of knowledge and a new sensibility), linguisti­
cally (as a renewed need to communicate) or socially (as a mate­
rialisation of an increased social pluralism and diversity) - and
propose something that went beyond modernism? The issue sur­
rounding the definition of 'postmodemism' came partly from the
fact that the term 'had arisen not only from a variety of different
and sometimes conflicting criticisms of the modem cultures or
modem industrial societies of the twentieth century, but from
a variety of different ideals and programmes for both the pres­
ent and the future'.43 After 1980, as 'postmodemism' turned into
a much debated topic and different disciplines sought to make
the term their own, it became increasingly difficult 'to specify ex­
actly what it is that "postmodemism" was supposed to refer to'.44
However, and given these premises, this chapter does not seek to
propose any precise definition of postmodemism. Quite to the
contrary, it will serve to expose and analyse the plurality of defi­
nitions offered by the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale, mainly
189
When Postmodernisms Met in Venice

call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be


a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense i n ­
volves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its
presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely
with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the
whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the
whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous
existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical
sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal
and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a
writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer
most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contempora­
neity.57
Eliot here 'redefines "tradition" by emphasising the importance
of history to writing and understanding poetry', and he 'argues
that poetry should be essentially "impersonal," that is separate
and distinct from the personality of its writer'. 58 It is Eliot's com­
plex and unusual idea of tradition, easily transposable to archi­
tecture, that most captivated the exhibition's organisers. 'Post­
modern as a term was like a red flag', recalls Robert A.M. Stem, Exhibition catalogue cover, The Presence
'and it was much more probably my shifting thinking, that the of the Past: First International Exhibition
past and the present were all together. And the T.S. Eliot essay is of Architecture (Milan: Electa/Venice:
something I have been inspired by and return to frequently when Edizioni La Biennale di Venezia, 1980)

I am trying to have an intelligent thought'.59 For Stern, who firm­ Exhibition catalogue cover, La presenza
ly insisted on referring to Eliot's text,6° 'The Presence of the Past' def passato. Prima mostra internaziona/e
described the conditions of architecture at the turn of the 1980s di architettura (Milan: Electa/Venice:
Edizioni La Biennale di Venezia, 1980)
much more accurately than 'The Future of the Past'.61 Ultimately,
the idea Stern and the other organisers wished to convey with Exhibition catalogue cover, La presenza
their title was that the past should be altered by the present as def passato. Prima mostra intemazionale
much as the present is by the past. di architettura (Venice: Edizioni La Biennale
di Venezia, 1980)
After numerous discussions and changes, the term 'postmod­
ernism' was definitely excluded from the exhibition title. In the Exhibition catalogue cover, The Presence
exhibition catalogue, Portoghesi wrote: 'In choosing a title differ­ of the Past: First International Exhibition
of Architecture-Venice Biennale 80
ent from Postmodern, this exhibition proposes a clarification.' (London: Academy Editions, 1980)
He argued that 'in choosing a sphere both vaster and at the same
time more restricted within a great area of phenomena still only Exhibition catalogue cover, Architecture
1980: The Presence of the Past Venice
temporarily classified, it intends to point to the changes of the Biennale (New York: Rizzoli International,
specific disciplining of linguistic exigencies rather than to the 1980)
psychological attitude with which the forms, whatever they are,
are used'.62 Yet rather than clarifying what Postmodernism was Exhibition catalogue cover, La Presence
de l'Histoire. L'Apres modernism, Festival
really about-pluralism, communication, disengagement and de­ a
d'Automne Paris. La Biennale di Venezia
polarisation, and so on - the chosen title bent the message of the (Paris: L'Equerre, 1981)

193
Ill. The Beginning of the End and the End of the Beg·1nn1

based on a deeper understanding of that everyday life-world these


which man and architecture form part'.90 More lavishly illustra er tha
ed than the three other texts, Norberg-Schulz's essay - echoin vissirr
his panorama installation in the Arsenale - also offered a sort 0 were(
visual argument: first, images of 'places' such as Khartoum, Den­ I fe
mark, Amsterdam and, in Italy, Subiaco, Chia, Monteriggioni lov
Procida, Vitorchiano and Florence; then of exemplary mode� pre
projects (Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Building, Le Cor­ Fat
busier's Ronchamp Chapel and Kahn's First Unitarian Church in Ni<
Rochester, New York), and finally of two projects by Portoghesi Scull)
(Casa Baldi and Casa Papanice). Showing continuity with rather other
than a break from modem architecture, Norberg-Schulz marked were
a relative distance with his friendPortoghesi. vant f
The final essay was 'Towards Radical Eclecticism', in which of pee
Charles Jencks promoted an architecture that 'seeks to enhance [sic], J;
a plural society in all its richness and diversity and one that looks the ab
for a deeper justification for its use of various languages of archi­ surpri
tecture that existed in the past'.91 Jencks called for the use of a the or
universal metaphorical imaginary and postmodern space, that si and
is to say, a space that is 'fragmented, rich with symbols, ambigu­ on at
ous, layered with cut-out screens and ordered for an experience of andP,
continuous surprise'.92 Jencks was in favour of great variety, and activi
of incorporating more and more styles from the past in order to spoke
reach an eclecticism that was indeed radical. This eclecticism, he reduc
claimed, came from a pluralist society. For Jencks, postmodern ar­ pects.
chitecture is 'double-coded'; mixing the language of late-modern ship t
architecture with vernacular, historical or commercial languag­ more
es, and all this to provoke irony.93 In his text Jencks insisted on
architecture being a response to social, political and metaphysi­
cal problems rather than to pure formal or technical ones: what In r9l
dictated the new plurality is 'the variety of cultural experience, mode
the plurality of psychic, social and metaphysical states possible in arc
to people'.94 Jencks's essay was also richly illustrated and was the the li1
only one to include a generous selection of work by contempo­ histm
rary architects present in the exhibition: Charles Moore's Piazza impa<
d'Italia, Robert A.M. Stem's Lang House, Ricardo Bofill's Arcades the d,
du Lac, Hans Hollein's Travel agency in Vienna, Leon Krier's Roma it's or
Interrotta project and Aldo Rossi's Modena Cemetery - reflecting chitec
once more the show eclectic plurality within the pages of the cat­ move
alogue. of 'po
A look at each of the four critical essays reveals the tensions the sr
and divergences of opinion between the organisers. Together discn
198 199
When Postmodernisms Met in Venice

these texts constitute a discourse, a form of internal debate rath­


er than a manifesto. The choice of participants in the 'Strada No­
vissima' and the internal disagreements in the decision process
were exposed in the pages of the catalogue. Portoghesi wrote:
I feel it my duty to mention that in the initial proposal, the fol­
lowing were included in the twenty names selected for the street
project: Roberto Gabetti and Aimaro Isola, Ricardo Porro, Hassan
Fathy, and in that of the exhibitors, Pietro Derossi, Uberto Siola,
Nicola Pagliara.9s
Scully, practically replicating Portoghesi, wrote: 'Perhaps many
other important architects should have been included in it, but
were excluded because their work did not seem especially rele­
vant for the chosen theme. One thinks in Europe of any number
of people from Bohm to Lasdun, in America of Roche Dikeloo
[sic], Richard Meier, Eisenman and many others. Among them
the absence of Jaquelin Robertson is especially regrettable'. 96 Also
surprising were the mutual direct attacks amongst members of
the organising committee. While Scully praised the work of Ros­
si and Venturi, he compared it with 'a good deal else that is going
on at the moment, from the Gaudi-like choreographies of Bofill
and Portoghesi in Europe to the whole extraordinary scramble of
activity in the United States'.97 Norberg-Schulz, for his part, out­
spokenly attacked Jencks's approach: 'In our opinion semiology
reduces the problem of meaning to one of its more superficial as­
pects. If the meaning of a thing (building) consists in its relation­
ship to other things, this relationship evidently comprises much
more than similar "looks"'.98

In 1984, Andreas Huyssen wrote in his essay 'Mapping the Post­


modern': 'While the recent media hype about postmodernism
in architecture and the arts has propelled the phenomenon into
the limelight, it has also tended to obscure its long and complex
history'.99 Huyssen's statement provides a good overview of the
impact of the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale with regards to
the definition of postmodernism and ultimately its fate. As per
it's organisers desire, the exhibition gave visibility to a new ar­
chitecture developing away from the orthodoxy of the modern
movement. Yet it did not clarify or propose any fixed definition
of 'postmodernism'. Quite to the contrary, it revealed - beyond
the space of the show and within the pages of the catalogue- the
discrepancies inherent to a movement grounded in the rejection
199

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