1943

One of the prophetic

monumentality"
modernism's

themes to be debated

in the 1940s was that of the "new

The 1937 World Exposition

In Paris had been the occasion

official triumph for most of the participating

time, though, in the confrontation

between Albert Speer's

countries.

that took place at the foot of the Elffel Tower

pavilion for the Third Reich, avatar of Prussian

classicrsm, and BOris loan's Soviet pavilion, an embodiment

dynamic

aspirations

challenge

of social realism, the new architecture

to ItS potency

of the more
received

an implicit

as a form of civic representation.

view was that "If It is a monument

The accepted
modern

of

At the same

it cannot be a monument,"

it is not modern,

as Lewis Mumford

Culture of Cities. Earlier, Henry-Russell

and If It IS

wrote In 1938 In The

Modern Architecture

Hitchcock's

Romanticism and Remteqreuon (1929) had helped to Inculcate this Idea Yet the
between "new traditionalists"

dichotomy

oversimplification
realized

and "new pioneers"

for a long time that the new aesthetic

collective

was an

Many of those within the folds of the modern

and symbolic

needed

movement

had

to be infused With a

content. The dispute over Le Cor busier's

League of

Nations project had raised the Issue In exphcit terms In 1927.

On the eve of the Second World War, J. J. P. Oud, responsible
the most distinguished
decade,

103-6

returned

reintroduction
scandal

examples

to hierarchical

of decorative

provoked

of International
massing,

elements

modernism

symmetrical

progressive

ideology.

In a catalogue

introduction

Mock lauded

a prize-winning

Saarinen and Robert F. Swanson

Washington,

expression

for an exhibition

and

held at the

Built in U.S. A.

1932 1944,

design of 1939 by Eliel and Eero

for the Smithsonian

O C., as a monument

of the effort by

monumental

Museum of Modern Art in New York In 1944 entitled

Elizabeth

and a cautious

In the Hague. But the

by Oud was only the most extreme example

at trus time to find a syntnesrs between

architects

planning,

in his Shell Building

for some of

dUring the prevrous

epitomizing

Gallery of Art on the Mall In

"the very nature of our

democracy."

Sigfried Giedion, Jos Luis Sert, and Fernand Lger entered the
debate

in 1943 with a position paper entitled "Nine Points on Monumentality"

The JOint pronouncement

a painter
intended

historian, an architect-planner,

and

all living In New York dUring the war years and in close contact

by an architectural

was

for publication

In a volume planned

which never appeared.

their respective
Lger appeared
while Giedion's

A more extended

by the American

discussion

outlooks was to have accompanied

In 1946 In another publication

Abstract

Artists

by each of the three from

It. Of these, an essay by

by the American

essay "The Need for a New Monumentality"

Abstract

Artists,

came out in 1944 In

a book edited by Paul Zucker entitled

New Architecture and City Planning, a

major section of which was dedicated

to the monumentality

The approach
Monumentality"
cultural needs"
architecture
mundane

large-scale

"the expression

evolution

period would be the reorganization

on the more Immediate

of community

free of association

The work of contemporary

and publiC

of architects,

In their view, was to Invent forms of

with oppressive

and historicist bombast ("pseudomonumentallty").

colorful and mobile forms and lightweight,

and

its new task in

life through the

ensembles,

Tns "third step" would involve the collaboration

expression

itself. While modern

the authors argued,

monumental

and artists. The chief difficulty,

of man's highest

of modernism

to concentrate

of housing and urbanism,

and design of civic centers,

spectacles.
planners,

Within the historical

had earlier been obliged

the postwar
planning

was to place monumentality

problems

question.

taken In both the "Nine POints" and "The Need for a New

ideologies of the past

To trus end, a repertory

naturalistic

materials

artists like Picasso, Constantin

of

was proposed.

Brancusi.

Naum Gabo,

27