Von Jan Tabor.
Von Jan Tabor.
Am I to blame for the fact that my friends are good architects?
(Friedrich Achleitner, end of the 1970s).
On friendship in architectural criticism. Axiom 1: architectural criticism is not a science but literature. Axiom 2: it is easiest to write about architecture and art when one does not know exactly what one wants to write about. Axiom 3: the architecture most suited to the architectural critic is architecture without architects.
“Am I to blame for the fact that my friends are good architects?” In the 1980s architecture critics recounted to each other that it was along these lines that Friedrich Achleitner, the most influential of us, had answered architect Harry Glück, who had accused him of writing positively only about his friends, about Holzbauer, Kurrent, Spalt, Gsteu or Peichl.
At that time, in the 1980s I didn’t like his answer at all. At that time I was a young critic and as such I had a rigorous understanding of professional ethics. As a critic, I believed, you should have no friends among those whose work you write about, and if you knew any of them, then it should only be as enemies.
As time goes by I get to like the statement by Friedrich Achleitner better. For by now I have myself arrived at the fortunate situation where many of my friends are or have become good architects or, to put the other way around, many good architects are friends of mine.
Naturally, various possibilities must be considered: for instance that they have become good architects precisely because they are my friends, or that they are regarded as good because they are friends with a good architecture critic or, apodictically, that only those architects who are friends of a good architecture critic are good architects (one critic will do, good critics are rare). Or vice versa: that good architecture critics have become so good because they are friendly with good architects – or with good architecture critics.
Now, you could possibly believe I mean all of this ironically, but this is not the case. The theme is a serious one that complicates relationships. A critical sensibility regarding the quality of friends’ work is, namely, particularly painful when the work is not particularly successful. As an architecture critic you can avoid this dilemma by writing nothing. But by following this path the friend of the critic could discover that the critic does not think his work worthy of being written about. The critic is then generally asked directly what he actually thinks of the work in question. If he lies to his friend then the critic could be asked to write about the (supposedly good) work. If he does not lie to his friend – but I don’t even want to think about this. I once dared to do this but since then never again.
And anyhow my argument has arrived at a crux. Can an architect who is friends with a good architecture critic ever be a bad architect? If he can, then the rule is: better write nothing. There are enough excuses. For example that as a critic you cannot get enough space in the newspaper for which you write.
This has the disadvantage that, in the eyes of your friend, you become less important, as you cannot have your way in the newspaper you write for. There is no serious answer to this, because it is simply true.
The critic’s dilemma when the issue is work of a friend, who is good, perhaps very good, is a different one. The impression can arise that the critic evaluates the work so highly only because it is the work of a friend. Even the friend can interpret the situation in this way.
One can avoid this dilemma by writing more fulsomely than one had intended to or than is appropriate. Then the architect friend thinks: if my critic friend is so enthusiastic then what I have done must in fact be very good. And I must also be very good, as after all my friend is an excellent critic. Here something a famous actor once said about his critics occurs to me. “I love the critics who love me.”
If the work is not as good as the critic describes it then there is a danger that the readers and other friends will recognize this fact and think (quite rightly) that the critic is either incompetent or that he is doing his friend a favour. This would be harmful for the reputation of the critic. He cannot afford to remain untrustworthy over a longer period. This could even cost him the friendship, but, incidentally, never his job. Perhaps Friedrich Achleitner’s answer to Harry Glück was as follows “I write positively about them, even though they are my friends.”
The real problem is the critic’s guilty conscience, the permanent qualms of conscience that can be felt over the years. This is an occupational disease of good critics. The guilty conscience has nothing to do with what you have written about whom, it results from the fact that being a critic is, in fact, a Christian vocation. Ceaseless appeals are made to two fundamental professional virtues of the critic: truthfulness and mercifulness. Truthfulness, also called objectivity, is a serious problem only at the start of a critic’s career. It is a kind of sin-virtue of youth. As soon as one arrives at the opinion that there is no such thing as objectivity and that it therefore does not matter whether one praises or criticises a building, this problem is solved. What Albert Einstein once postulated for formulas in the fields of maths and physics also applies to criticism: “a formula that is not beautiful can not be correct.” A critique that is not well written cannot be right.
The second virtue is mercifulness. One can also call it professional ethics. This is where the real battle zone of the critic lies. In Austria cultural critics are traditionally divided into the important and unimportant groups. The important group includes theatre, music and film critics, who are increasingly being replaced by the media critics that are currently taking over the culture desks in the magazines and newspapers. The “unimportant” sector consists of literature, art and architecture critics, listed according to their diminishing degree of importance. In the editorial offices these are, by a long chalk, the least appreciated.
This has to do with the fact that the culture editors (most of whom studied theatre and music studies) do not understand what the architects mail them. And the other culture editors think that what the architecture critics write about is something that has to do with lasting or permanent values, which, given the urgent topicality of concert, opera and theatre premieres, can be postponed. “Your piece has a timeless beauty,” is something a culture editor used to say to me when he had delayed publishing it – over and over again, which rather tends to diminish one’s self-confidence.
Due to shortage of space designs of buildings worthy of architectural criticism accumulate on the architecture critic’s desk so that, when he is finally offered print space, he can no longer decide what he should deal with first: the currently topical material or the material that he has put aside.
In the two so-called “quality” Austrian newspapers, Die Presse and Der Standard, the question of space for architecture criticism has been regulated; once a week in the weekend supplement. This regulation is a blessing for the reception of architecture but it alters little in the “mega-backlog of architecture deserving critical attention.” The growing backlog on the desk of the Austrian architecture critic is surpassed by the backlog of talented Austrian architects who deserve media attention. Friends, we are struggling with time and with the amount!
It occurs to me at this point that I have never had a guilty conscience about what I have written or how I have written it. Never. I am troubled by pangs of conscience only over things that I have not written about. And also due to unwritten beauty. I would like to thank Manuela Hötzl and Antje Mayer from Redaktionsbuero and the company Franz Schneider Brakel for enabling me to salve my sorely troubled conscience three times in this book.