Gehry's Dead End

Frank Gehry's cavorting is the Dead End of the Modernism that got fully up to speed with Marcel Duchamp's urinal signed R.Mutt. Modernism is a secular religion that the likes of Walt Whitman began by asserting that the Poet was to be the New Priest, and Leaves of Grass a Newer Testament.

(I taught and love old Walt, but the older I get the fewer of his poems move me enough to proselytize him.)

And just as nineteenth century Biblical scholars applied rational tests to the Old Scriptures, so modern critics must blow the aesthetic whistle when they judge an artist (including architects) to be off-side. How proud Gehry and the other Starchitects must feel designing museums and high risers for the Dubai oiligarchs, while Indian and Filipino migrants do the dirty work for peon wages, living in despicable hovels.

Cameron Sinclair's Architecture for Humanity's "bible", "Design Like You Give a Damn!" is civilized alternative to being hacks for the luxury industry of globalization.