Make Room for Dada

Ohio State University’s new Wexner Center for the Visual Arts has attracted attention not only from the press, but from Christian critics who take issue with the building’s apparent philosophical foundation. The structure is a $43 million argument for deconstructionism, and not since a glass pyramid was added to the Louvre has an architectural controversy spilled over into mass culture with such ferocity. The building, by architect Peter Eisenman, was praised by Newsweek as a work of art and “America’s first big deconstructivist building.”

It defies architectural conventions. As Cathleen McGuigan writes in Newsweek, the Wexner Center “turns architectural convention on its head: There’s no façade, no center, no stable ground plan. Windows are set along the floor; columns slam down from the ceiling and stop in midair.”

Study In Contrast

Meanwhile, at the University of Notre Dame, a believing Christian architect is working in the opposite direction. Thomas Gordon Smith, new head of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, practices classical architecture, which draws on over 2,000 years of tradition while working within modern constraints. It is based on the aesthetics of people—unlike modern architecture’s aesthetics of engineering. Though deconstruction’s methods and details are similar to modern architecture’s, Smith said, it challenges the conventionality of modernism.

“Deconstructionism and classicism,” said Smith, “represent diametrically opposed ends of the architectural spectrum.” Classical architects “believe in continuity,” he said. “We believe in the potential, over time periods, of ideas that have been an important part of Western culture.” And though deconstruction may hold the current spotlight, he is not worried that it will become the dominant style. “Its approach to architecture is highly theoretical, extremely impractical, and extremely stylish,” he said.

Smith and others suggest that by flouting architectural tradition, deconstruction creates inhospitable buildings. “I think that’s a stated aim. The theme of alienation and nihilism is the root of deconstruction,” Smith said.

A Decadent Idea

Smith is not alone in deploring the deconstruction approach. Virginia Stem Owens addresses aesthetics in her book The Total Image and in a recent Reformed Journal essay. She says, “I suspect that what is behind this style is a certain kind of anger directed at the audience and the patrons. It’s almost a narcissistic kind of self-loathing.”

James Mellick, a sculptor who teaches at Calvin College, compared deconstruction to Dada, the artistic movement that reveled in irrationality, chance, and intuition. “It’s sort of Dada comes to architecture. When you confront the public and rub art in the stupid public’s face, and do that on an architectural scale, it’s a pretty expensive joke and a pretty expensive whim,” he said. “When you turn architecture into sculpture—where you’re only concerned about form—I think that is a decadent idea.”

Charles Young, a Calvin College facility planner and art teacher, compares the Wexner Center to an elaborate puzzle or a funhouse mirror. “I enjoy puzzles. I would not like to spend all my time figuring them out, but I enjoy working on them,” he said. “I think I would be very frustrated spending my life inside of one. Once you’ve figured it out, [the mystery] is gone.” He believes the Wexner Center would be a fun place to visit. “But our lives, long-term, are not built on entertainment. At some point you become jaded, and nothing matters.”

Young, Owens, and Smith all see deconstruction as part of a larger philosophical conflict. “In all the humanities, we face a crisis in history,” says Young. “The model that history is going somewhere has been dismantled and abandoned.” And Smith says he finds the battles “are being fought at every level. So many of the ethical values and world-view issues are at work.”

Owens believes “American culture is getting the buildings its imagination is currently capable of”; she doesn’t think people consciously plan these things, but that they come from the inside out. Says Owens, “There is a strained way in which people are building churches today so they can be identified as churches and not be confused with the savings and loan. I’m not sure how successfully that works out.” Mellick, a sculptor in Columbus, Ohio, before he joined the Calvin faculty, called the building a reflection of “extravagant, self-centered arrogance.”

For his part, Smith is at work on a residence for his family in South Bend that should give the Wexner Center some competition for architectural flair. He is basing the design on a formula for a temple front by Vitruvius, a Roman architect and engineer in the first century B.C. It will feature six Ionic columns adhering to Vitruvius’s specifications for height, diameter, and spacing between columns.

“It’s very common that a particular building is cited as a paradigm for a movement,” Smith said, adding that he hopes his home will become such a paradigm for a resurgent classicism—just as the Wexner Center stands as a chaotic tribute to deconstruction.

By Doug LeBlanc, an editor with Compassion International.

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