UIA Congress, Barcelona, 1996

In constrast with the solitary heroe who is portrayed in front of his work, both socialist collectivism and the capitalist company promote cooperation. After the archetypal individualism of Wright, the still conventionally depicted Gropius encourages team effort at the Bauhaus or at The Architects Collaborative, his American office: from the creative collective of Tatlin to the design by committee of the Rockefeller Center, industrial culture is corporate. But the defense of a common project in the consecutive photographs of Johnson with his apostles and pupils does not exclude the construction of autonomous biographies, and the image of those in the background fades away like the fallen from grace disappeared in the Soviet photographs, in a visual purge not too different from that which manicures buildings by erasing references, completing crowds or eliminating elements foreign to the canon that the resilient reflection restores. In the struggle between author and audience, the ecstasy of architects before the public has a dark reverse, the trivialization of the city: the iconic triple Koolhaas in concert has defined this situation as an inextricable mixture of omnipotence and impotence. The anxiety of influence has turned into the anxiety of existence...[+]