The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century

by Mark Lamster Narrated by Mark Bramhall

Overview

When Philip Johnson died in 2005 at the age of ninety-eight, he was still one of the most recognizable—and influential—figures on the American cultural landscape. The first recipient of the Pritzker Prize and MoMA's founding architectural curator, Johnson made his mark as one of America's leading architects with his famous Glass House in New Caanan, Connecticut, and his controversial AT&T Building in New York City, among many others in nearly every city in the country—but his most natural role was as a consummate power broker and shaper of public opinion.

Johnson introduced European modernism—the sleek, glass-and-steel architecture that now dominates our cities—to America, and mentored generations of architects, designers, and artists to follow. He defined the era of "starchitecture" with its flamboyant buildings and celebrity designers who esteemed aesthetics and style above all other concerns. But Johnson was also a man of deep paradoxes: he was a Nazi sympathizer, a designer of synagogues, an enfant terrible into his old age, a populist, and a snob. His clients ranged from the Rockefellers to televangelists to Donald Trump.

Award-winning architectural critic and biographer Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. A roller-coaster tale of the perils of wealth, privilege, and ambition, this audiobook probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful and tells the story of the built environment in modern America.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Paul Goldberger

You want to begin a review of The Man in the Glass House, Mark Lamster's stimulating and lively new biography of Philip Johnson, by saying something about architecture. But the reality of Johnson—one of the most compelling architects who has ever lived, which is not the same as being one of the best architects—is that the most interesting thing about him was not the buildings he designed. The qualities that make him, and this book, fascinating are his nimble intelligence, his restlessness, his energy, his anxieties, his ambitions and his passions, all of which were channeled into the making of a few pieces of architecture that will stand the test of time, and many others that will not…Lamster's most important contribution may be to show us that, however electrifying the ability to command the spotlight may be, it does not confer the lasting qualities of greatness.

Publishers Weekly

★ 10/22/2018
Architecture critic Lamster (Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of Painter Peter Paul Rubens) outlines the complicated and contradictory life of architect Philip Johnson in this engrossing, exhaustively researched account of a brilliant opportunist who introduced modernism to America. Johnson (1906–2005) came from a well-to-do Cleveland family and graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Design, traveled to Germany in the 1930s (where he was in awe of Adolf Hitler and developed “a continued fascination with the dictator’s Nazi party”), and founded MOMA’s architectural department before becoming one of the architectural world’s most skilled and controversial members. A theoretician as much as practitioner, Johnson continuously pushed boundaries, designing the Glass House in Connecticut in 1949, New York City’s Seagram Building in 1958, and the Johnson Building at Boston Public Library in 1972. Lamster employs thoughtful analysis (“Because he was restless and his mind was nimble, he could not resist the narcotic draw of the new, and the opportunities for self-aggrandizement the new presented”) to demonstrate Johnson’s desire to make his mark. This is an entertaining and in-depth look at one of architecture’s most complex and influential characters. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

One of the Best Books of the Year - Smithsonian Magazine

"Smoothly written and fair-minded... [a] searching and thorough overview of Johnson's engrossing life."—Wall Street Journal

"[a] brisk, clear-eyed new biography... Johnson emerges in Lamster's treatment as a person of utter consistency, determined in every instance to strip architecture of social purpose."—the New Yorker

"Searing yet judicious... thoroughly documented and convincingly laid out... [an] insightful investigation."—The New York Review of Books

"The perfect addition to the aesthete's bookshelf... essential"—The Globe and Mail

"[A] thoroughly researched and highly readable volume that vividly captures the essence of a complex and disturbing character."—Architectural Record

"The Man in the Glass House is a vivid, thoughtful, illuminating, disturbing, and definitive chronicle of one of twentieth-century architecture's most celebrated and powerful figures."—Kurt Andersen, author and host of Studio 360

"Mark Lamster thoughtfully teases out the real history of this modernist icon, from his impressive sexual appetites and more-than-flirtation with fascism in Hitler's Germany to his 1990s collaboration with Donald Trump. It's clear that Johnson was a fascinating and disturbing figure; Lamster's biography, impressively and honestly, displays him with his full complexity."—Ruth Franklin, author of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

"More than a dozen years after his death Philip Johnson remains a perplexing, polarizing, magnetic and frustrating figure: although he was far from our greatest architect, no one did more to shape our architectural culture. In this compelling biography, Mark Lamster deconstructs Johnson's complex persona, evaluates his work and begins the complex process of establishing his place in history."—Paul Goldberger, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry

"Philip Johnson was as complicated and contradictory as the American century that created him and which he helped define. Modernist, reactionary, anti-Semite, populist, artist, and commercial powerhouse, he lived, in some sense, to contradict himself. In Mark Lamster's nuanced telling, Johnson becomes more than the man in the round glasses or the avatar of modernism; he becomes a symbol of America itself. This is biography as history, and it is a magnificent piece of work."—David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles

"The Man in the Glass House captures the essence of a prodigious, multivalent, enigmatic American talent with authority and aplomb. It's a biography with attitude, a bullet train through the shifting landscapes of twentieth-century America, and a sheer pleasure to read."—Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do

"Philip Johnson led many lives—as curator, aspiring demagogue with a Third Reich fixation, modernist architect, winking post-modernist, and finally kingmaker in the profession—and Mark Lamster has masterfully woven them together in a biography that is as much literary as critical achievement. Required reading for anyone hoping to make sense of the American century, for Johnson was its house architect."—Christopher Hawthorne, Chief Design Officer for the city of Los Angeles and former architecture critic, Los Angeles Times

"An astute... look at the influential modernist architect. Offering a fresh look at his subject's less-than-savory aspects, Lamster portrays a diffident genius for whom being boring was the greatest crime."—Kirkus (starred review)

"Lamster's mesmerizing, authoritative, and often-astonishing study grapples with Johnson's legacy in all its ambiguity... Lamster depicts a man by turns enchanting and irritating, sublime and subpar, pioneering and derivative... Johnson's contradictions, Lamster argues, reveal something of the nation's. Readers may come away with both contempt and admiration, a testament to Lamster's masterful achievement."—Booklist (starred review)

Library Journal

06/15/2018
The first recipient of the Pritzker Prize and the Museum of Modern Art's founding architectural curator, Philip Johnson was one of America's most distinguished architects—even if you can't put his name with a building, you'll know his famous don't-throw-stones Glass House in New Canaan, CT. Award-winning architectural critic/historian Lamster details Johnson's life and aesthetics. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2018-10-14

An astute but not terribly sympathetic look at the influential modernist architect.

Brilliant and iconoclastic but prickly and controversial, Philip Johnson (1906-2005) led a seemingly charmed existence, but he was essentially restless, opportunistic, and—as Dallas Morning News architecture critic Lamster (Architecture/Univ. of Texas at Arlington; Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens, 2009, etc.) portrays through analysis of his architectural creations—often joyless. The well-off son of a Cleveland corporate lawyer and Quaker matron, Johnson was a dilettante in his youth. He became a scholar of classics and philosophy at Harvard, where he fell into a "fraternity of sympathetic gay men" who fervently discussed modern art and design; the group was led by Lincoln Kirstein, Paul J. Sachs, and Alfred H. Barr. The last would become the first director of the new Museum of Modern Art in New York. After a tour of radical European modernism, Johnson—before he even attended architecture school—was chosen to curate the museum's first groundbreaking architectural show in 1932, which featured exhibits by Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. As "house architect" for the museum during four decades, Johnson produced such successful shows as Machine Art (1934) and fashioned the enduring urban oasis of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden (1953). Lamster marvels at how Johnson was able to "straddle both the modernist and the traditionalist factions," from his own New Canaan Glass House (1949), skyline-altering Seagram Building (1958), postmodern AT&T Tower (1994), and other creations to his activism for various cities' Beaux Arts preservation. Notably, the author devotes significant attention to Johnson's troubling foray into fascist anti-Semitic politics of the 1930s, which indeed would haunt him later on.

Offering a fresh look at his subject's less-than-savory aspects, Lamster portrays a diffident genius for whom being boring was the greatest crime and whose work, while often riveting, was also "barren and inert and lonely."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169922554
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	06/25/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

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