Johnson on Kahn  

Thanks !
Don't miss the second episode (found below the main image) -- unfortunately it cuts off in the middle of a talk with I M Pei. . .
I saw the movie, but I don't recall these episodes. That's nothing new for me, though.

All mythologies, or world views...
that indoctrinate the young systematically occassionally yield an artist that, whether or not he or she believes they mythology, or not, cannot help but try in his art to reconcile that world view's virtues and vices, embrace its paradoxes and fulfill its canonical expectations in the material world at one level or another. Wright was indoctrinated into Reformation Christianity and enlightement democracy. Their expectations were phenomenally high for mankind. Judaism narrows the great expectations to a subset of people. The result in art is quite different on the surface, but essentially the same underneath. The artist, like some oyster irritated with a grain of sand, produces pearls in hopes of saving himself. One can observe the same phenomenon with Michelangelo. And many, many more.
This is the profane and sacred dimension of art and it is the part that seduces some artists into becoming nothing but there art.
And in a culture where cultural continuity is broken, the cults of their identities are more seductive than ever.
I am comfortable talking about the greatness of his and Wright's architectures, but I do not dwell on the tragedies of their private lives and do not wish my son to grow up and be like them.
Architect, like ballplayers, can be role models, but usually are not.
What we need from them are good buildings and occassional great ones, not life lessons. Oh, and we need knowledge of the design rules they respected and the design rules they broke to achieve what they achieved.
I really feel sorry for his son who made this documentary. A father should be solely judged on what he does for and gives to his son. Kahn gave his son almost nothing it appears. Forgiving his father and fashioning a mythology about his father may be what the son needed to do to heal therapeutically, but bottom line he was a son of a bitch to his son and no building, no career, no greatness, no purpose, is worth any cruelty to any innocent.
If you have children, be a father.
If you don't want to be a father, or aren't capable of it, keep your joystick in your pants.
That being said, Kahn did do some PHENOMENAL buildings that speak to me as deeply as any poet or architect ever has.
And that being said, Kahn seems a poor excuse for a father; all the more bitterly ironic, then, that he came from a tradition that so elevates the father and family.
Did he have to have multiple families to transcend the world view in his daily life that he was trying to transcend in his architecture?
Puzzles wrapped in mysteries wrapped in enigmas.

I really feel sorry for his...
I really feel sorry for his son who made this documentary. A father should be solely judged on what he does for and gives to his son. Kahn gave his son almost nothing it appears. Forgiving his father and fashioning a mythology about his father may be what the son needed to do to heal therapeutically, but bottom line he was a son of a bitch to his son and no building, no career, no greatness, no purpose, is worth any cruelty to any innocent.
good statement from you DC at least i can understand it...
I feel the son wrote the story for closure
I saw the movie last year and it was a academy award documentary
that is the closure the son needed,
I feel all through the movie every great architect that was interviewed new the troubled unhappy life of LOUIS I KAHN , I feel his son got to know his father in the end and that is what makes the story so good.
I also feel he forgave Kahn for the jerk he was. It is hard to be one the greatest architects and admired by your peers and be blundering womanizer and loose the respect of your only son.
I think during Kahns life that was the trade off. The son righted the wrong.

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Gosh, guys -- get out the violins and the hankies !