Critical reflections

ArtForum, May, 1995 by Herbert Muschamp

WRITING AN INTRODUCTION to an essay by an architecture critic who has written, to this point, rather kindly of my work, and who at some point will inevitably have a reason to do otherwise, presents a rather precarious position.

The world we live in is a place where a lot of buildings are made, but very few eke out the merits to be called "architecture." When they do, it is the job of the architecture critic to tell people, from some intelligent vantage or viewpoint, what they are looking at. The critic presents a context for the work, and a passion for both its successes and its failures, and does so with an understanding befitting a trusted partner.

Herbert Muschamp shoulders that responsibility and then some. He became the New York Times architecture critic a couple of years ago, following in the footsteps of two formidable giants in the field: Ada Louise Huxtable, who still has a powerful presence in the architectural community, and Paul Goldberger, who has taken a more diverse journalistic path (including architecture) since appointing Muschamp to his former position. Herbert hit the deck running. From the beginning, he established a style different from his predecessors', and one distinctly his own: as a writer, he's willing to allow some of his own agony and angst in the preparation of his arguments to show through. This and the level of seriousness and commitment he brings to his work are comforting to me as a reader and as a maker of architecture, for they reveal a creative process like what I go through in creating buildings.

Herbert is a perceptive and articulate observer of the art of architecture, and he has a passionate sense of the social and urban concerns that inform the field at its best. Not given to superficial or trivial discussion, he does not pander to the winds of style and fashion but probes deeply into architecture's relationship to cultural, economic, and political conditions while at the same time reveling in the medium's sensual power. His brilliance in articulating the complex web of factors and aspirations that inform architectural work makes his columns accessible and interesting to a large audience; they have become a significant agent in refocusing the perception of the built environment in the national cultural debate.

I am grateful fo this homecoming to Artforum, which is the magazine that gave me my first chance to practice journalism. That was in 1984, when Ingrid Sischy, then Artforum's editor, started the monthly columns section, and invited me to contribute a column on architecture. Ingrid could be tough. I called her "my trainer," partly because her editing sessions could leave me sore, but also because she taught me a lot. The first time we met to discuss the column, for example, Ingrid shocked me by asking, "Don't you think writing books is a kind of death wish?"

Well! I'd written two books by that time, and was proud of them. But it was like Ingrid to use a shock tactic to get a message across, and this time the message was: journalism moves at the speed of life. So it's a very unjournalistic thing that I'm about to do: look backward over the past three years and trace a few arcs along the learning curve that began in June of 1992, when I took the job of architecture critic at the New York Times.

Writing for the Times is a kid's outsized fantasy of what he might do when he grows up. I mean, the reality of it is outsized and fantastic. It's the Times. And it occupies this immense Gothic chateau in the city's heart. The atmosphere, the tradition, the power of the institution - all these can bring out the scared 12-year-old in anyone. But for a writer, that chateau can also be an enchanted palace.

It's place dedicated to storytelling. Have you filed your story yet? When are you filing your story? That was a great story yesterday. Do you have a moment to go over your story? I used to write essays. Now I write stories. That's probably the best way to sum up the way my writing has changed since I began at the Times. Essays have the deliberation, detachment, and polish of a literary form. They have some aspiration to permanence; you can imagine them collected between hard covers, sitting on a shelf. Stories - newspaper stories - are more informal, more gut-driven. They're more oral than literary. (I usually talk them aloud as I write them.) Stories exist in the moment; yesterday's story is old news.

It's scary to write on gut. What if you don't have a gut to go on? The fear is not just that there's too little time to revise and polish, it's that perhaps there's been nothing there but polish all these years. Maybe when all that gloss is taken away, your hollowness will be unmistakably revealed. Since the Times is widely and closely read, this fear can become acute. The first time I did a cover story for the Sunday "Arts and Leisure" section, I was appalled when I walked past the newsstand on Saturday night and saw a stack of papers with my story facing out. It was like seeing a wanted poster with my face on it. I felt guilty - of half-baked thoughts, faulty logic, clunky language, the hubris of supposing I had anything to say that belonged on a front page.