An Exceptional Association

THE ARCHITECTURAL FORUM
Volume 138, Number 1, 1973

William Marlin [Editor]

Laid in is a typed letter signed by Johnson on Johnson/Burgee Letterhead to Alfred "J." Barr. It is unknown whether this is a simple typo, or an inside joke on Johnson's part. The short note mentions a feeling of nostalgia over Barr's review of a recent [Henry-] Russell [Hitchcock] book. "You do come out the hero of those days. Every year I see more and more how you became a central figure of all of our endeavors."

The Architectural Forum for January 1973 serves as a retrospective for Philip Johnson at mid-career. Starting with a wonderful cover portrait by Andy Warhol, this special issue of the Forum includes Philip Johnson [An Introduction] by William Marlin; Form and Procession by Paul Goldberger; and Beyond Monuments by Philip Johnson.

Terence Riley noted that the early taste makers at MoMA understood their job was to separate "the wheat from the chaff." Few people rose to that challenge with more vigor than Philip Johnson, the young head of the Department of Architecture and Design. Alfred Barr's insistence on including Architecture and Design as a fully functioning department within MoMA was a radical curatorial departure, which seems only obvious today.

Philip Johnson's 1928 visit to the Bauhaus Dessau sparked his imagination and solidified his role as a proselytizer for the European Avant-Garde architecture. "We were proud to be avant-gardists; we wore our enthusiasm as a badge of honor that distinguished us as culturally superior to those around us." Johnson said. From this plateau, Johnson and his MoMA collaborators Barr and Hitchcock eventually labeled this architecture "The International Style."

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