Stirling aftermath

The exhibition James Stirling: Notes from the Archive has just closed at Tate Britain.  Visiting for five months, it now moves onto the Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart before returning home to the CCA in Montreal. This is not a posthumous review but instead a reflection on the exhibition, and the events surrounding it.

This exhibition was markedly different from most others in Britain. Stirling is not a canonical architect in the same way as the recent blockbusters: Palladio and Le Corbusier.  Nor is he simplistic, sexy, or polemic. Relevant could be added to this list. Professor Neil Jackson commented at the recently that Stirling has become as easily forgotten by a younger generation as his generation forgot Edwin Lutyens. Stirling is unusual because there is not the combination of rhetoric and form hand-in-hand. 

In recent years the stylistic battle, and a new found curiosity of postmodernism have been evolving.  The later is gathering momentum. Immediately following Stirling at the V&A is one of Autumn 2011’s main shows, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion. Stirling’s oeuvre shows us that there is no easy, and lazy, distinction between Modernism and Postmodernism. It is absurd and wrong to see architecture as a teleological process within which one formal language succeeds another. The history of Postmodernism, just like Modernism, was constructed as a mechanism for the practice of architecture in a contemporary context. After a period of empty formalistic pluralism, where better than in Postmodernism for architects to find comfort and justification.

Thirdly, there is a lack of a critical appreciation of architecture. A university-organized mock critique involving Stirling’s partner Michael Wilford presenting the Neue Staatsgalerie was distressing. Three different groups were involved. Firstly either his friends and colleagues who have seen him shunned for a while. Secondly those who were educated whilst he was alive, before the OMA phenomenon took hold of most schools. The second group organized the thing, whilst the first group chaired it. In the crowd sat fifty students who were baffled by the whole thing. Later, in the pub, it emerged that few of them had ever been taught about Stirling’s work. One 4th year student asked Michael Wilford: "What the upside-down axonometrics were all about?". This should be opposed to the reports of London summer shows which announced a resurgence of axonometric drawings. There was also the strange sight of Wilford discussing the work with little regard to it being the work of a collection of people. Only Jim himself was celebrated as genius. A few weeks later this was followed by a Tate Britain symposium which traded mostly on influences and anecdotes rather than talk about the work.

A few positive things have come from the exhibition. Anthony Vidler’s book and potential further research in Montreal. It could be hoped that the prominent positioning of an unfashionable architect in such a gallery could help develop a critical understanding of architecture. The direction of Penelope Curtis at Tate Britain can do much good. However it is clear that reassertion of Vittorio Greggotti’s words upon Stirling’s death in 1992 were more accurate  than we first realized: "from now on everything will be more difficult."