The politics of historiography
Writing an architectural canon into postwar American national identity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12653166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dorit Fershtman (Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, corresponding author), Alona Nitzan-Shiftan (0000-0002-1628-4437, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 67-88 |
| Publication date | 2011-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | National Identities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1460-8944 • E-ISSN: 1469-9907 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14608944.2011.552571 |
| OpenAlex | W2025963973 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
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
Aesthetics · Art · Democracy · Historiography · Identity (music · Individualism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Aviation History and Innovations · Historical and Architectural Studies · History · Law
The anatomy of national fantasy
Virgin land
American exceptionalism
American Renaissance
Democracy in America
The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness
The Great American Thing
The Vital Center
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
Nationalism, Internationalism and the ‘Naturalisation’ of Modern Architecture in the United States, 1925–1940
Conversations with Architects
American Freedom and Catholic Power
The South in Architecture
American Exceptionalism
The Age of Doubt
The Great American Thing
The Vital Center
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness
Is America different? A new look at American exceptionalism
The American Writer and the Great Depression
The Rise of an American Architecture
Culture as History
American Exceptionalism Reaffirmed
The Lewis Mumford Reader
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |