Confessions of an Archiholic: Crash Course Modernism: Arts and Architecture Magazine 1945-1967

“The critics and practitioners that wrote in Arts and Architecture spanned the gamut of social strata, from obscure art critics, to structural engineers, to famous architects, to modern painters. Each was able to articulate a vision and understanding of modernism for a general public through paying attention to language and context, without being overtly intellectual.[6] Their intelligent writing styles could be described as didactically affectual, ­not attempting to teach an audience, but instead affect them in ways to learn a lesson or take something meaningful away from the writing.[7] The hierarchy of teacher/student is erased and replaced by a dichotomy of sharing knowledge, person to person. This is done through the careful construction of criticisms that display the critic’s respective knowledge of architecture, art, design, culture, society, science, and politics, yet does not saturate the writing with esoteric terminology found in academic journals or the ‘watered’ down terminology found in consumer magazines.”

Great read. What are the new tools and channels of communication from which we should educate a new public? 

andrewsantalucia:

“The magazine was hopeful about life; it had a sense of mission”.

- David Travers on Arts and Architecture, Santa Monica, Ca., 2007


“(the) image of process includes the consumer in the producer role as well”.[1]

- Marshal McLuhan


“…the focus was more on the…