The Michiqan Daily-Sunday
Page 2-Sunday, April 1, 1979-The Michigan Daily
RAMBLINGS/joshua peck
AIRT/r.j.smith
A It MOMA, the walls have4
D OGMA IS everywhere. Political
and religious ideologues and
zealots of every stripe rail with abso-
lute certainty that their particular con-
tingent has found the Truth, and that
that Truth is the only idea entitled to a
capital 't.'
All that ideological vigor is really all
right with me. I am pleased by the
diversity of this town as it is manifested
by the mad flurry of leaflets one en-
counters on a brief diagonal traverse of
the Fishbowl. Maoists to the left of me,
Marxists to the right of me, Chassidic
Jews and Zionists on the rear wall, and
the Palestinian support group by the
front glass. The crazy array of causes
that is allowed to flourish in this coun-
try is the single element of American
life about which I find it easiest to get
teary-eyed and patriotic.
But there are those True Believers
who have thrust their way past a cer-
tain point, and these are the beatly ones
who offend me. They leap into their
political programs wich such en-
thusiasm that opponents oft-times find
their toes trampled. Through a variety
of techniques, they rob the public of the
right to sample the other side's words,
or they take steps to, interfere with
arriving at any democratic decision
that opposes their own beliefs.
Examples are plentiful:
In 1976-77, four Soviet dissidents
arrive at the 'U' at different times to air
their views on the unquestionably
repressive nature of life in Russia for
any who dares to differ. Members of the.
Young Socialist Annoyance and other
communist groups turn out-not to
learn about the very dangerous ways in
which their utopian plans can go
astray, not to ask any . of these
politically astute men for help in
shaping a Marxism that can work, but
instead to chide dissidents, to heckle
them, and to block the transfer of in-.
formation altogether.
Jonestown. Moonies. Hare Krishna.
Jews for Jesus. Rabbis who phone me
at 7:30 a.m. to beg my presence at
prayer.
And now (oh Christ, my feminist
friends are going to kill me for this),
supporters of the Equal Rights Amen-
dment-with the successful drive to ex-
tend the ratification deadline under.
their belts-have initiated a deter-
mined effort to keep the four state
legislatures that have changed their
minds since ratifying the ERA six or
seven years ago from rescinding their
votes.
It is clear that there has been an
overall rightward shift since the early
seventies. The citizens of the
recession-bent states have expressed
their conservative leanings by electing
legislators anti-feminist enough to
abrogate their predecessors' approval
of the amendment.
"YOU CAN'T," shrilly choruses the
National Organization. for
Women. "Once decided, always de-
cided." So it seems that they would
have an amendment approved that has
fewer than 'the requisite number of
states behind it at the actual time of its
approval, possibly as much as ten years
after its introduction. Sickening.
A Maoist once accousted me on the
Diag, and badgered about how my
thinking was not "correct," about how
it needed to be aligned with the
"correct" mode of thought. Her vision,
and that of many of her radical
brethren, is that somewhere up high in
the ether there is a perfect political
line; a human's simple task is to iden-
tify it. Her little band of leftists, she im-
plied, had already succeeded.
But there is no perfection, any more
than there is an Absolute Good or a San-
ta Claus. There is only a set of political
choices that benefits the greatest num-
ber of people and harms the fewest. We
search it out through a painfully slow
process of debate, argument, and
discussion. The Founding Fathers knew
that, and arranged an incredible maze
of checks and balances to keep anybody
from being deprived of an audience. To
attempt to disrupt that complexity is
worse than selfish; it is perfidiously
subversive.
When I was younger, my parents sen-
tenced me to four years in a Jewish
parochial school. I sometimes engaged
my religious chieftains there in
arguments about the existence of God. I
did admit to them that I was unable to
assert without question that there in-
deed was no Head Honcho. They replied
that they were certain that they were
right, and that their certainty proved
them right.
But it did not, and does not. The test
of Truth is just that, to test it, challenge
it, and answer its detractors. When will
they ever learn?
sundir!' ingazine iCIIId[! CPUZZLE
BY
STEPHEN .
POZSGAI
Copyright 1979
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..22!
A. Regard for one's own
interest to the disregard of
the well-being of others
B. Science of character formation
C. Egocentrism
D. Humbug; trifles
E. Oust; dismiss
F. "-Absurd"-Waitng for
' Godot e.g. (3 words)
G. One of the months in the
French Republican calendar
adopted in 1793
H. Fit of uncontrollable
laughter or crying
. Due to external causes
J, Untrammeled; free
(.Genuine; trustworthy
1. Communist who believes that
only forcecould produce serious
social change, and that by force
almost any change could be
effected
12 19 130 84 102 113 128 152 169 196 225
7 47 89 180 209 219 35 106
14 53 50 146 82 95 123 141 174 187
17 13 34 139 150 181 204 154
3 98 124 18 51
1 48 63 80 87 94 '137 157 167 178 183 208
21 58 68 176 111 119 153 186 202
2 44 132 75 85 f92 104 156 200
10 135 27 36 90 120 175 201 207
29 16 70 81 198 92 110 133 145
8 96 24 79 116 164 190 195 213
M.Raw recruits often possess two
of these (2 words)
N. "That-of Desire" Bunuel film
(2 words)
0. Incite; instigate
P. What government officials
retire to (2 words)
Q. Senior males
43 25 126 57 171 108 131 101
5 97 26 69 151 93 112 163 173 62 188 197
182
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9 22 40 67 114 127 138 170 179 206 216
39 136 177 49 155 100 125 147 165 168 185 203
INSTRUCTIONS
Guess the words defined at the
left and write them in over
their numbered dashes. Then,
transfer each letter to the cor-
responding numbered square
in the grid above. The letters
printed in the upper-right-hand
corners of the squares indi-
,ate from what clue-word a
particular square's letter
comes from. The grid, when
filled in, should read as a
quotation from a published
work. The darkened squares
are the spaces between words.
Some words may carry over
to the next line. Meanwhile,
the first letter of each guessed
word at the left, reading down.
forms an acrostic, giving the
author's name and the title of
the work from which the quote
is extracted. As words and -
phrases begin to form ,in the
grid, you can work back and
forth from clues to grid until
the puzzle is complete.
Answer to Last Week's Puzzle
"Theoretical discoveries
that have radical conse-
quences can usually be seen
at once to be striking and
original. But practical dis-
coveries even when they
turn out to be far-reaching
often have a look that is
more modest and less mem-
orable."
(J.) Bronowski
The Ascent of Man
A N OUTSPOKEN writer and a
visionary, the Swiss architect Le
Corbusier was guided in his plans for
buildings (specifically houses) by the
ideal of creating structures which
would be "machines for living." In a
quote which dates from the same
decade, the 1920s, in which Le Cor-
busier began to receive architectural
acclaim, the German-born architect
and teacher Walter Gropius wrote, "We
want to create a clear, organic ar-
chitecture, whose inner logic will be
radiant and naked, unencumbered by
lying facades and trickeries. . . . We
want an architecture adapted to our
world of machines, radios, and fast
motor cars."
Although the work of these two is not
greatly similar, and has lead architec-
ture down distinct paths, the work of
both has spurned a certain general
paradigm of thought; a kind of
thinking, some would say, which puts
too much stake in conforming to the
realities of architecture as a business,
and not in working on what that
business could be-a frame of thinking
which fails to consider closely whether
architecture should serve the most
essential physical human needs, or be
allowed freer reign in its ability to in-
spire.
To the Italian visionary architect
Gaetano Pesce, that conflict requires
no decision at all-to follow the path of
almost all conventional architecture, he
seems to say, ensures a deathful,
stultifying prison sentence. "The
system of pillar-girder-pillar has
brought about boxes and only boxes
(have we forgotten what Wright said:
The box is fascist?)," he writes.
Pesce's designs mirror his hatred for
the conformity of so much of modern
architecture. They are skyscraper-tall
blob-like structures which at first glan-
ce seem remarkably awkward; odd,
monumental biomorphic forms which
would stick out of a skyline scene as one
would imagine a tower of smelly foam
rubber to do. In his fantasy-plans,
Pesce has inverted the architectural
mechanization of both Le Corbusier and
Gropius: the "machine for living" has
become a nearly living machine-and
the architecture meant to be "adapted
to our world of machines" instead of
demands that an ethic based on
machine be abandoned, replaced by
one which values the organic.
Pesce's latest project is part of a
major exhibit of modern architecture
now, being shown at New York's
Museum of Modern Art, called "Trans-
formations in Modern Architecture."
A troubling, darkly humorous work
(ghettoed to a third-floor spot only after
Pesce fought MOMA administrators
who wanted to oust his exhibit com-
pletely), Pesce's group of building
plans offers a stark contrast to the rest
of the exhibit. The bulk of "Transfor-
mations" consists of some 400
photographs of buildings of various
sizes from all over the world, presen-
ting well the case that modern ar-
chitecture if far from an art risking a
death by homogenity, and in fact is
flourishing in numerous styles lacking
any central trend.
Meanwhile, upstairs, five brown
foam rubber sculpted panels and a
R. J. Smith is co-editor of the
Daily Arts page.
rambling posted text harshly whine
Pesce's discontent: as is sculpted into
one of the panels, "We are no longer
satisfied by this space.- The system
designed by last century's construction
engineers is no longer able to stimulate
our creativity. Almost every architect
has savagely obeyed the system. Today
however it has nothing left to offer us."
SO WHO DO we believe? That is a
persistent question one is left with
after leaving the museum. But if one
sees only the first-floor main section,
most likely he would be overwhelmed
by diversity. The architecture of the
past 20 years, "Transformations"
exhorts, has not presented us with any
major new architectural approaches,
and instead has been a series of
refinements on advancements con-
ceived largely in the thirties and for-
ties.
The tale of architecture in the fifties
and sixties is largely unfolded by
examining the interphase between
"classical" modern architecture,
which stresses that all architectural
pleasures derive from a straightfor-
ward encounter with the necessary, and
various "architectural fictions," a
term which encompasses any sort of
unnecessary use of form. The work of
such architects as Mies van der Rohe,
Le Corbusier, and in many ways Wright
falls, under the classical heading; so-
called architectural fictions predate the
work of these architects, and also live
on in various examples of regional and
vernacular styles, largely found away
from urban settings.
In perhaps its purest form, classical
architecture sought to solve the
problems of design efficiency versus
the nature of form; that is, to devise an
architectural aesthetic that would be
true to all the functions of a building yet
also wholly pleasing. "Transfor-
mations" leads us to believe-that this is
by and large exemplified in the Miesian
"skin and bones" architecture. The
relationship between the skin of a
building (the windows, or similar flat
space), most usually a skyscraper, and
its bones (the structure-girders,
braces, reinforcements between win-
dows) has been a rich area for architec-
tural experimentation.
The bones can be completely inter-
nalized, as a result of technological ad-
vancements which create lighter and
Daily Photo By MAUREEN O'MALLEY'
Detroit's Renaissance Center is included in "Tranformations in Modern Archi-
tecture," currently on view at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
less obtrusive building materials,
leaving the skin seemingly stretched un-
broken over the building surface; they
can be clearly visible and even
exaggerated, establishing a feeling of
powerful structural strength. The most
prominent and recent exploration of
skin and bones architecture is the ex-
panding use of mirrored glass in
skyscrapers, which, when used with
thick, witheld building supports,
creates an impermeable surface not
seemingly of a building, but of sky and
sunlight. Advancements in this design
made for greater variations in struc-
tural effects, and helped the skin and
bones approach to be applied smoothly
to buildings of less than skyscraper
proportions.
But, of course, classical modern
architecture has roots before Mies. The
most open-ended and influential, it
seems, was the "brutalist" architec-
ture for which Le Corbusier was greatly
responsible. Whereas Mies was concer-
ned with exposing the nature of glass
and steel in architecture, Le Corbusier
focused on concrete, creating works
that were massive, had many closed
surfaces (no windows or doors), and
exerted the displacement of the area
surrounding them. In the hands of Le
Corlbusier, brutalism exerted the
rough, sculptural nature of concrete.
The approach was used to create a
variety of structures, from chapels to
many-storied office and apartment
buildings; when applied by other ar-
chitects, brutalism was often respon-
sible for extremely blocky forms and
windowless planes. The general ap-
plication of brutalism was with in-
stitutional buildings-quite natural,
considering their generally improving
quality.
The use of "architectural fictions"
can fall under no such headings as
classical modern architecture, for in
the past 20 years these fictions have
themselves come to be single, un-
similar responses -to the oft-followed
forms of classicism. Thus, "Transfor-
mations" shows us a bewildering assor-
tment of structures to illustrate such
fictions, everything from Japanese
teahouses to Mexican nautical
clubhouses to French housing projects.
A RCHITECTURE in the first half
of the century followed various
trends in ar
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117
R. Manner of conducting oneself
S. The-of Darkness-Ursulate Guin
novel (2 words)
T. Victims of indiscriminate
bombing attacks
(4 words)
U. Instrumentforsmeasuring small
time intervals
V. Dick's first name
W. Cut short
X. Castrate; after
61 30 144 46 142 162 214 220
86 59 210 65 222 191 41 159
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33 28 38 55 64 73 115 122 91 99 148 172
158 194 78 205 218 212 189
15 52 45 60 71 76 83109166221 184
4 199 211 193
23 107 149 11t 31 103 66217 161 143 118
20 37 224 72 129 6
32 42 54 121 74 160 140 105
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