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The City as Spectacle: A View from the Gondola
Stanislaus von Moos
Feb 10, 2011 (6pm)
Talk

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Venice and Modern Architecture, or Venice and Modernism altogether make an odd couple. According to Filippo Marinetti, the author of the Futurist Manifesto (1909), gondolas are no more than “rocking chairs for idiots.” One hundred years later, we must acknowledge that rather than being its opposite, the passatismo castigated by Marinetti is a powerful aspect of modernity. In fact, John Ruskin’s incantations of the waves of the laguna dangerously rippling against the “Stones of Venice” have transformed the city into one of the 20th century’s proverbial tourist destinations and resulted in an extravagant race against Las Vegas. The lecture is about the architecture of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and the way it has turned this race into art.

Stanislaus von Moos, a Swiss Art Historian, has published monographs on Le Corbusier (1968ff.), Italian Renaissance Architecture, the History of Industrial Design in Switzerland (1992) and the Architecture of Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates (1st volume 1987; 2nd volume 1999). More recently he published Le Corbusier Before Le Corbusier (ed., with Arthur Rüegg, 2001) and Ernst Scheidegger. Chandigarh 1956 (ed., 2010). Currently he is interested in the culture of the Cold War era and the cross-pollinations between architecture and the visual arts since 1970. He has been professor of Modern Art at the University of Zurich (1983-2005) and is presently the Vincent Scully Visiting Professor at Yale University.

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