Posted on 05/01/2006 7:53:22 PM PDT by Mia T
(just when you thought the clintons couldn't get any more shameless... or tacky....)
thanx to RichInOC for the scoop
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WRITTEN IN STONE: AN ARCHITECT DEFINES THE CLINTONS
by Mia T, 12-30-02
Whereas a huckster removes meaning from institutions--the wife picked up where the husband left off--an architect encodes meaning in buildings. James S. Polshek, the architect with the dubious distinction of having been commissioned to build the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, believes that a successful architectural solution must necessarily be rooted in relevance.
Just as Polshek's buildings have physical layers, so too do they have layers of meaning. His Rose Center for Earth and Space, for example, is informed formally and programmatically by the historic architecture of a designated landmark even as it redefines itself, (often too self-consciously, in my view), in Star-Trekian terms. Reduced to its essence, the building is the nascent universe before the Big Bang, the promise of the undifferentiated cell in its mother's womb.
The "bridge to the 21st century" was, perhaps, clinton's most delusional conceit, so it is not surprising that it would become clinton's self-referential metaphor of choice. His library was to be that bridge, if he had anything to say about it...
The architect is often the master of the inside joke, witness Robert Venturi's postmodern chairs. Venturi exploited--unabashedly and with abandon--the vocabulary of Las Vegas, its stage-set-as-reality and its roadside culture--bright, clashing, ugly and fake. The architect's inside joke is his hedge against the sycophancy that comes with patronage.
The flip side of the encoded meaning of the architect is the terrorist's decoding of it. To bin Laden, the World Trade Center was Jewish capitalism encoded in urban space. If Polshek's vision of clinton's library is a bridge, the inside joke is that, at best, it is a bridge to nowhere.
More likely, it is a bridge to the 7th century...or a doublewide to house clinton double-speak. Take your choice.
copyright Mia T 2002, 2005 |
thx for the scoop ;)
Heavens, that is so tacky.
ping
I think its borders on the sick.
ping
Chickas for sale at the Clinton museum? There is something odd about that?
ping
Yeah, but...all the Presidential Libraries sell this kind of stuff.
My favorite from the Nixon library (sent to me by my daughter) is a tee shirt with a picture of Nixon greeting Elvis. It says: "The President Meets the King".
It makes one wonder whether there are any limits to Bubba's ego.
Yeah, it's not the chachka part. It's the self-aggrandizing part.
The Nixon tee that you cite ("The President Meets the King") is actually quite the opposite. It's self-effacing.
A great find. ;) Thanx again.
I saw that bumpersticker on a car here in Portland just last month. I was laughing so hard that the sweet lady driver flashed me here IQ and almost slammed into a bus. Even more interesting was that was the only sticker on her car(no rainbow, no Gore or Kerry). Usually the liberals around here will have multiple stickers.
Good point.
I do remember that. Did the artist use hillary's pilfered silver? Or did he lift the placesettings, himself?
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