Martin Filler Quotes

Quotes about:

• The most basic task of any museum must be the protection of works of cultural significance entrusted to its care for the edification and pleasure of future generations.

  Martin Filler

  Museums, Tasks, Generations

  16 Copy quote

• Masterpieces of art possess immense potential to advance a worldview that could help assuage the societal terrors posed by globalization, the most thoroughgoing socioeconomic upheaval since the Industrial Revolution, which has set off a pandemic of retrogressive nationalism, regional separatism, and religious extremism.

  Martin Filler

  Religious, Art, Pandemics

  8 Copy quote

• All architecture, classical or not, must have some sense of order, and order is much harder to achieve without the straight lines and right angles that have dominated the building art from time immemorial.

  Martin Filler

  Art, Order, Lines

  4 Copy quote

• The tall building, concentrating man in one place more densely than ever before, similarly concentrates the dilemma of our public architecture at the end of the twentieth century: whether the new forms made possible by technology are doomed by the low calculations of modern patrons and their architects.

  Martin Filler

  Technology, Men, Architecture

  7 Copy quote

• There is no sadder tale in the annals of architecture than the virtual disappearance of the defining architectural form of the Modern Movement - publicly sponsored housing.

  Martin Filler

  Defining, Movement, Architecture

  5 Copy quote

• The popular mythology of creative genius depends on beloved stereotypes of the artist in youth and old age: the misunderstood upstart who forces us to see the world afresh; and the revered sage who shows us depths of insight attainable only through a lifetime of hard-won experience.

  Martin Filler

  Artist, Creative, Misunderstood

  6 Copy quote

• Architecture traditionally has been the slowest of art forms. It was not unusual for great cathedrals to take centuries to complete, with stylistic changes from Romanesque to Gothic or Renaissance to Baroque as common as the addition of chapels or spires. But because the function remained the same, the form could be flexible and its growth organic.

  Martin Filler

  Art, Growth, Renaissance

  4 Copy quote

• Snohetta promotes a more democratic workplace atmosphere than most other architectural offices. This may merely reflect prevalent employment practices in Scandinavia, but Snohetta places a stronger emphasis on group participation in the design process than typical high-style firms.

  Martin Filler

  Practice, Design Process, Office

  4 Copy quote

• By 1970, the first stirrings of the revolt against Modernist orthodoxy in architecture had been felt, although it would be several years more until Postmodernism was widely accepted and made classical motifs permissible in high-style building design for the first time in decades.

  Martin Filler

  Years, Design, Style

  4 Copy quote

• As with many other folk beliefs, 'feng-shui' undoubtedly incorporates some scientifically correct observation or received wisdom based on direct experience of natural phenomena; but it needs to be dealt with skeptically as a credible system of thought. Some feng-shui prescriptions can certainly lead to desirable results.

  Martin Filler

  Needs, Feng Shui, Belief

  4 Copy quote

• Cost overruns are not uncommon in architecture, particularly for designs that depart from structural or technological norms, or demand a finer quality of execution than commercial schemes - conditions typical of buildings for cultural institutions. Budgets are exceeded for many reasons, not all of them within an architect's control.

  Martin Filler

  Design, Quality, Typical

  4 Copy quote

• Few developments central to the history of art have been so misrepresented or misunderstood as the brief, brave, glorious, doomed life of the Bauhaus - the epochally influential German art, architecture, crafts, and design school that was founded in Goethe's sleepy hometown of Weimar in 1919.

  Martin Filler

  Art, School, Design

  "The Brief, Glorious Life Of Bauhaus (New York Review)" by Martin Fuller, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 18, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century exponents of prefabrication were certain it would supplant age-old traditions of individualized design and handcrafted construction. The building art would be revolutionized by freeing designers and construction workers from repetitive tasks, and democratized by making high-style architecture more affordable.

  Martin Filler

  Art, Construction Workers, Design

  9 Copy quote

• Always beware an unsigned architectural design.

  Martin Filler

  Design, Architectural Design

  4 Copy quote

• During the modern period, the vanguard architect has usually relied on small residential jobs both to supply a steady income and to serve as 'sketches' for ideas that are often later translated to the larger scale of public commissions.

  Martin Filler

  Jobs, Ideas, Income

  Luis Fernández Galiano, Martin Filler (2000). “El siglo americano: The American century”

  4 Copy quote

• Despite the persistent image of the architect as a heroic loner erecting monumental edifices through sheer force of will, the building art has always been a highly cooperative enterprise.

  Martin Filler

  Art, Loner, Force Of Will

  4 Copy quote

• Experimental architecture by its very nature is more prone to the depredations of time and natural elements than buildings made from conventional materials through traditional methods. Avant-garde architects often simply do not know how the products of their imagination will perform when implemented, especially if untested components are involved.

  Martin Filler

  Imagination, Avant Garde, Natural Elements

  4 Copy quote

• The financial benefits of prefabrication have never been as large as its advocates predicted, for although some labor costs can be reduced by machine manufacturing, on-site assembly of any building still depends to some extent on the handwork of skilled craftsmen.

  Martin Filler

  Cost, Machines, Benefits

  7 Copy quote

• Architecture is not a profession for the faint-hearted, the weak-willed, or the short-lived.

  Martin Filler

  Architecture, Weak, Hearted

  4 Copy quote

• Although prefabrication has a long history - the ancient Romans shipped pre-cut stone columns, pediments, and other architectural elements to their colonies in North Africa, where the numbered parts were reassembled into temples - the idea took on a new impetus with the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution.

  Martin Filler

  Cutting, Ideas, Long

  8 Copy quote

• Truly great architecture always transcends its stated function, sometimes in unanticipated ways.

  Martin Filler

  Way, Architecture, Sometimes

  4 Copy quote

• Avant-garde architects have never been able to depend on the support of the establishment, since the customary patrons of this most conservative and slowly moving art form have historically been resistant to innovation and experiment.

  Martin Filler

  Art, Moving, Support

  Martin Filler (2007). “Makers of Modern Architecture”, New York Review of Books

  4 Copy quote

• Before the professionalization of architecture in the nineteenth century, it was standard for an aspiring mason or carpenter to begin his apprenticeship at fourteen and to become a master builder by his early twenties.

  Martin Filler

  Twenties, Architecture, Century

  7 Copy quote

• Any set of decisions about design is inevitably influenced by cultural prejudice, no matter how intent an architect might be to avoid it.

  Martin Filler

  Design, Decision, Prejudice

  4 Copy quote

• The magnificent lobby of the Chrysler Building - faced with rare marbles, aglitter with decorative metalwork, and surmounted by a ceiling painted with a totemic image of the tower itself - leads to elevator cabs inlaid with exotic woods in fanciful patterns. The entire route from street to office is invested with ceremony, dignity, and delight.

  Martin Filler

  Office, Ceilings, Towers

  8 Copy quote

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