The politics of historiography: Writing an architectural canon into postwar American national identity

This article questions the official recognition of émigré architect Mies van der Rohe as the canonic figure shaping the International Style as the quintessential American mode of architectural expression. The article examines how historians, critics and curators placed the work of Mies in the Americ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:National identities 2011-03, Vol.13 (1), p.67-88
Main Authors: Fershtman, Dorit, Nitzan-Shiftan, Alona
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
American architecture
Architects
Canons
Democracy
Freedom
Historiography
Individualism
International Style
Ludwig (1886-1969)
Mies van der Rohe
modernist canon
Modernity
National Identity
Politics
Post-war history
Pragmatism
Puritans
Rohe, Mies van der
Transnationalism
U.S.A
United States of America
Values
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Summary:This article questions the official recognition of émigré architect Mies van der Rohe as the canonic figure shaping the International Style as the quintessential American mode of architectural expression. The article examines how historians, critics and curators placed the work of Mies in the American historiography of the modern movement by interpreting his work in light of modernist paradigms that prevailed in the United States from the early 1930s to the years following the Second World War. It is argued that Mies's work provided for scholars of the emerging First World a fertile ground to figure the universal transnational merits of modern architecture as a particular expression of the American nation, spirit and cherished values of freedom, individualism and pragmatic, puritan rigor. Dwelling on concepts such as 'liberal democracy', 'American Exeptionalism' and 'the patrimony of a modernist past', the article examines how the Miesian canon and the image it offered for postwar 'America' was entangled in intertwined architectural and national histories.
ISSN:1460-8944
1469-9907
DOI:10.1080/14608944.2011.552571