On Jewish Architecture

Posted by sirrealpolitik on February 14, 2010, 12:24 AM | #

I think it is a stretch to say Jews invented atonality in music, or asymmetry in architecture or art.

For instance, many Jew composers co-opted tonal dissonance from Wagner’s Tristan chord.

However, I agree many of the architectural clusterfucks you reference above seem hell-bent on screaming a big “f to the idea of harmonizing with their environment, as dictated by neighboring structures. Yet I think this says as much about the politics on the ground as it does about aesthetic preference.

Jews have a dissonant presence in general, and that carries over into their art. But it would be overstating it to suggest that all dissonance in art comes from them. If the idea of going against the grain, stirring up discord, and being artistically revolutionary were alien to Western culture, we wouldn’t have had Homer, Giotto, Pound, Wagner, Beethoven, Shelley, the chariot, or Apollo 11.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 14, 2010, 12:35 AM | #

But it would be overstating it to suggest that all dissonance in art comes from them.

I didn’t actually make that suggestion. What I wrote - entirely within the context of the Jewish contribution - was that an emphasis on dissonance is a principal characteristic of that contribution.

Of course there are many examples of dissonance within western culture generally. Even Mozart has a string quartet (K.465) which is called ‘The Dissonant’.

But no-one would claim that that is a principal characteristic of his work, nor of any other western artist, at least that is until modern times perhaps, when many have fallen under the spell of Modernism.

Posted by alansdottir on February 14, 2010, 12:38 AM | #

I am no student of architecture, so perhaps this is simply a common trend in modern architecture that I am unaware of.  However, when I saw these buildings I was immediately reminded of a few other examples that I have come across:

Experience Music Project
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

These works were designed by the noted Jewish architect, Frank Gehry.  The similarity between his work and that of Daniel Libeskind is simply striking.  So yes, I believe that there *could* be a distinctly Jewish architectural tradition.  Though I didn’t know who the architect of the Experience Music Project of Seattle was when I went to look these up, I saw enough similarity between it and your posted examples to notice, layman though I am.

Posted by sirrealpolitik on February 14, 2010, 01:09 AM | #

emphasis on dissonance is a principal characteristic of that contribution.

Dan, I would be inclined to agree with you on this.

Though, in line with my comment above, I don’t think there is anything inherently “wrong” with dissonance/Modernism. Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, F.T. Marinetti, and Wyndham Lewis are some of my heroes.

Though the same formal revolutions (as per 1910s Modernism) that these men espoused have been ickily co-opted, codified and weaponized by the Holocaustian e$tab£ishment, as you rightly imply.

Posted by Captainchaos on February 14, 2010, 01:32 AM | #

So the Synagogue of Satan revealed at last and it looks like...a cement block.  LOL!  What engines of culture creation we will lose once all the Jews are deposited in Madagascar.

Posted by Armor on February 14, 2010, 02:21 AM | #

James Kunstler has a webpage dedicated to monstrous architecture: eyesore

Posted by MOB on February 14, 2010, 02:46 AM | #

I’ve wondered if the architect who designed the glass dome presently atop the Reichstag in Berlin is Jewish, even though his name is Foster and I’ve found nothing that says he is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Foster,_Baron_Foster_of_Thames_Bank

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_berlin_reichstag-1.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reichstagsgebaeude.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reichstagsbrand.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mass_demonstration_in_front_of_the_Reichstag_against_the_Treaty_of_Versailles.jpg

Many examples of Foster’s work are on the first wiki page above; here’s one enlarged:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foster_-_Willis_Faber_and_Dumas_Headquarters_Ipswich.jpg

Writing recently about physical beauty and ugliness, Tom Sunic wrote “Theologies and ideologies come and go but the merciless laws of racial biology are here to stay. One can flee his country’s oppressive rulers, but one cannot escape his heredity. It was not some wicked proverbial “Nazi,” but the Jewish British Prime minister and author Benjamin Disraeli, who said: “The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance.”

This applies also to the works and creations of difference races; whereas Disraeli sees superiority leading to predominance, I see it leading to envy and a rage to destroy.

Posted by MOB on February 14, 2010, 02:59 AM | #

This 3-part article is very relevant to this thread.

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Knutsson-PostmodernismI.html

The Archaeology of Postmodernity
E. R. E. Knutsson

Part I: Viennese Mutations

Part II: The Emancipation of Dissonance

Part III: Transvestism in Music

Posted by Dan Dare on February 14, 2010, 03:50 AM | #

Norman Foster is not Jewish, and his renovation of the Reichstag - sorry Bundestag - is really quite spiffing.

As is IM Pei’s glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre. Both, I would claim, are innovative and edgy without being dissonant or disturbing.

Posted by Grimoire on February 14, 2010, 08:53 AM | #

Looked at in a certain unexpected way...the architectural forms could be quite edifying. Perhaps as memorials dedicated to the historic 21st century re-expulsion of the Jews. I think the one in Berlin also serves an object lesson. I think this explanation truly explains the architects deeper intention.

Posted by James Bowery on February 14, 2010, 03:54 PM | #

You forgot this example of “dissonant architecture”:

Although, to be fair to the little crustacean, he is probably more tied to the fate of the fish than is “the International Jew” to the nation within which he replaces the cognitive elite.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 14, 2010, 07:18 PM | #

Yes Grimoire, I suspect you are on the right trail. So little Jewish art is either uplifting or aesthetically pleasing to the eye that it has to serve a different purpose. There are of course honourable exceptions – Mendelssohn and Heine come to mind – but in general it seems to me that the primary intent of Jewish art is to accuse and punish. Us.

You mention Berlin and I assume you refer to the primus inter pares of the genre:

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

What is so striking about this installation is not so much what it is – a monstrous carbuncle par excellence – but where it is.

How could a once-proud people have been brought to such a degrading level of supine self-abasement that they would not only permit the erection of this structure in the centre of their new capital city, just a couple of hundred meters from the national parliament, but also finance its construction?

Posted by Dasein on February 14, 2010, 08:39 PM | #

It’s a far cry from what was possible in the 30’s, but, however meek or unintentional, there has been some native resistance to this monstrosity.  A few years back there was a stink in the Berlin papers because a currywurst and chips stand had set up shop just across the street.

Posted by Dasein on February 14, 2010, 09:32 PM | #

What is the message that it conveys?

Spite.

You people destroyed this?

Watch us take an architectural dump on your city.

Posted by rocket on February 15, 2010, 02:43 AM | #

Von Shelling said that Architecture is frozen music ...so i will buy that comparison . but , what i dont by is the symmetry/asymmetry polemic . why ? becuase asymmetry highlights symmetty by showing what is missing . this is also true in music . as a professional musician of 40 years , i have found that the dissonance/consonance duality is an illusion to untrained ears. listen to clusters of so call dissonance in john cage and edvard varese and after a while it begins to sound consonance.
my point is : there is no such thing as these duailitys in reality , and even if there was , jewish music is no different , or more dissonant than any other. as a matter of fact , it seems to more consonant than other forms of music . nothing can be more trying on the ears than Beethovans ‘’pounding the piano ‘’ , as his former teacher Papa Hayden so deplored. but that pure Germaic spirit of Beethovan kocked the doors down and began the romantic era of music.
where you do find your difference between jewish and gentile art in my view is in film .

Posted by Dan Dare on February 15, 2010, 03:24 AM | #

We might take your standing as a professional musician of 40 years experience a little more seriously if you could bring yourself to spell Beethoven’s name correctly.

But to your general point, in what way do you feel that Libeskind’s addition to the museum in Dresden highlights the symmetry in the original? Isn’t its symmetry already quite plain to anyone using the good old Mk I eyeball? And why should it need highlighting? Would we be able to better appreciate the symmetry of Michaelangelo’s David or the Venus de Milo if each had an elephant’s trunk grafted on its forehead?

Posted by rocket on February 15, 2010, 10:06 PM | #

Dan , the symmetry A-symmetry duality as a said is a straw man debate. and , anyway form is not content . when i said that jewish ideals can be found in art thru movies ( plays for that matter --Wiemer-weil , Brecht....i was refering to content .
as far as my spelling . it has always been bad.

Posted by Dan Dare on February 15, 2010, 10:55 PM | #

Well rocket, it was you who introduced the a/symmetry theme into the discussion, not I. So if there’s a strawman in the mix it’s one of your own construction.

As a matter of fact, asymmetry can be appealing in art as well as architecture. Chartres, for example, has two asymmetrical spires but no-one has ever complained that the overall effect is disharmonious, dissonant or disturbing.

And it’s Haydn btw not Hayden. And Weimar. I’ll let you off with Weill since he bats for the other team.

Posted by PW on February 16, 2010, 12:29 AM | #

Jewish-designed ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ architecture reflects the degenerate inner-spirit of the Jewish soul, mind, and heart.  As for the non-Jews who design such monstrosities, they were probably taught by Jewish professors in architecture school and thus they just don’t know better (or else they too are Judaized in spirit).

Posted by rocket on February 17, 2010, 01:59 AM | #

PW - in all do respect i just dont see it . i see it in the Weimar republic . i see it in Allen Ginsberg’s poetry . but , i contend that there are certain things in the history of visual art that are just downright style only . its just form . when one states that degeneracy is seen in form , then that assumes that form is content . to assume form is content is to make a statement about Art in general that puts the burden of proof on the one who makes such a bold statement . content is content . form is only content by the intentionality of the artist. and if the artist wont explain their work then we are stuck with a very real problem of our subjective perception of it .
concerning Gehry’s work , the sidney pollock documentry about him , Gehry explains his work . he had to . Pollock was so perplexed by it . great art that confounds the viewer does not mean that its degenerate , but rather the opposite . it arrests.and in Gehrys case it is non idealogical . he doesnt even know what its about . but he explained the process by which it came about .  that is not deconstructionists in spirit , but rather life affirming . The downfall of the jewish art and plays and music in Weimer was becuase it was ideological . this is where the Nazis had alot in commen with Weimer . they were both idealogues.

Compare the Nazi art to the Weimar music . both very preachy . both degenerate. the Germans and the Jews have a hell of alot in commen . they both see themselves as the chosen people .

Posted by AlmostMusicPhD on March 02, 2010, 05:42 PM | #

“I think it is a stretch to say Jews invented atonality in music, or asymmetry in architecture or art. “

I beg to differ. I wrote a Graduate term paper on Schoenberg, and I can say the above statement is either a conscious lie, or an outright example of wishful thinking. Schoenberg, the twelve-tone guru of the 20th-Century ‘avant garde’ in music, may not have been the first ‘jewish composer’ of the Twentieth century. But He was the “First Zionist Composer.”

Schoenberg was so megalomaniacal, he thought himself not just as a new Mozart of Beethoven, but as MUCH MORE. “What could Vienna’s reaction rightly have been, to one such as Schoenberg, who (ostensibly) discarded that entire tradition, in proclaiming a completely ‘new music,’ and himself as its new “Moses”? -“His (Schoenberg’s) view of the musical genius as a figure of unquestionable authority- its origins were in Nietzsche rather than the Bible- now found a parallel in the role of Moses as the giver of the law. Even his own fate as a creator of new musical ideas that seemed eternally lost on the public of his day reminded Schoenberg again of Moses, leading a recalcitrant people to a promised land.” Bryan Simms, ed. Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern: A Companion to the Second Viennese School, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), 1999, 143.

Indeed, so inflated a Jewish ego AS had, that he was incensed when his name was not considered for the President’s chair of the new ‘state’ of Israel!

As I posited in the beginning of this paper, “What if all that Schoenberg wrote and stood for, with his ‘emancipation of dissonance,’ the ‘12-tone row,’ and everything that the term ‘atonality’ stood for, was, as the Interlocutor for the RAVAG (Radio Vienna) interview (with Schoenberg’s disciple, Alban Berg) said it was – “…a music that is no music…the exact opposite of what has heretofore been considered music”?  - Bryan R. Simms, ed. Composers on Modern Musical Culture- An Anthology of Readings on Twentieth-Century Music, (Belmont, CA: Schirmer/Wadsworth Group-Thomson Learning), 63

AS’s music is a CONCRETE reflection of his Jewish Weltanschauung. Its utter UGLINESS is Jewishness captured in an ‘anti-incarnation’ of the diatonic scale system in the West, that arose directly from the Christian Church’s Gregorian Chant.

“Nowadays, any discussion of ‘tradition’ is considered suspect. Gerald Abraham (another Jew!) noted this back in 1969, when he delivered the Ernst Bloch lectures at the University of California, Berkeley. These lectures were subsequently put into book form. Abraham wrote the following, over thirty years ago: “Tradition of every kind is much spat upon nowadays and to label anything ‘Western’ is to sound overtones of racialism and politics, or at best to suggest a deplorably limited outlook.”

But he goes on, to note the necessity of honestly dealing with tradition: “…But this is tradition misconceived. The true essence of tradition, as I see it and propose to discuss it, is perpetual life and change, very often slow and organic… The long tradition of Western music also fascinates by its complexity …It is not simply a matter of forms or techniques or ways or conditions of performing music. There emerges something much more subtle, an underlying ethos which is hardly definable but which we Westerners feel and comprehend instinctively because we are a part of it…” - Gerald Abraham, The Tradition of Western Music, (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1974,1.

And why is AS’s music a form of Jewish subversion? The better question to ask would be, Why would it NOT be (especially after one hearing!)?

For “The West is assailed not only from without by Islam, but from within as well, as the dying snake that is Marxism pumps its last poison into America. That poison is designed precisely to make the West unable, psychologically and morally, to defend itself at the very time that self-defense is most vital. Multiculturalism is, quite simply, culture treason.’ ” From ‘Multiculturalism Reigns Over the West’ by William S. Lind, from an article in the December 31, 2001 issue of Insight reprinted in the March 2002 issue of The Schwarz Report. pp. 6-7...”

And the leader of that ‘culture treason’? AS himself, almost a hundred years ago.

“The attempt to ‘liberate’ dissonance (leading, as Schoenberg thought, to a ‘golden age’ comparable to the fertile period in which Bach lived, as the link between what went before and what came after) instead found Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern opening a Pandora’s box of tonal ugliness, a musical mayhem that can only be classed as a religious and cultural musical aberration, a musical dis-incarnation; [I John 2:22] indeed, if one may say it, Schoenberg’s ‘counter-tradition’ was no less than a musical abortion...”

- “Schoenberg single-mindedly pursued the path of the pure idea…Historically, the idea as transcendent abstraction, accounts in no small measure for the oft-cited “Jewish Problem,” a problem created long ago by a Christian civilization committed for its part to the word in all its seductive concreteness.” Ringer, Jew, 55. Here is the fundamental battleground between Christianity and Judaism. Judaism denies Christianity the Incarnation of God, (and membership in the Kingdom) and Christianity (through the Church and Christ) denies Judaism a place in the Kingdom, for her very denial of that Incarnation! Thus the ‘seductive concreteness’ of Ringer.”

Well, I hope I have at least made a point in this discussion. IS there such a thing as a Jewish art, a Jewish life, a Jewish Culture? One would think that, after Neal Gabler ("HOw the Jews invented Hollywood") and the overt admission that “Jews control the Media” recently, the answer would be an unqualified, “YES - Oh GOD, YES!”

But that is the problem with elephants in teh living room. It’s only when the sh*t begins to smell, do we wonder where it is all coming from; and by that time, the elephant has become accustomed to invading your castle, your home, your turf… and it’s a damn sight harder to get an animal OUT of the house, once he’s come to like living there....

Posted by Guessedworker on March 03, 2010, 12:31 AM | #

AlmostMusicPhD,

Thanks for an interesting and informative post.  It has always been self-evident to me that only a Jew could deliver the gift of destruction that Schoenberg did.

The other musical issue that I find worthy of reflection is the very high incidence of Jewish soloists in piano and violin, compared to the other instruments - where I know opportunities are fewer but, still, there is not nearly such a strong representation.  Of course, if one looks at the great pianists of the present day, one cannot argue against their brilliance.  But, even so, I wonder who never develops, who never has the opportunity, whose genius is never heard, and who takes decisions influencing such matters.

Posted by James Bowery on March 03, 2010, 05:18 AM | #

Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother was apparently Jewish which would have qualified him as a Jew.  Its clear that much of his architecture strives for the opposite of dissonance—at least with nature—but the Guggenheim Museum in New York does exhibit dissonance with its surroundings although within itself it seems acceptable as prototype of “modern” architecture.  It is, after all, meant to house much “modern” art.

PS:  Full disclosure, my paternal grandmother was a Wright, although that line traces back to Ohio in the 1800s rather than Wisconsin.

Posted by Dasein on March 04, 2010, 08:43 PM | #

It seems that Mother Nature has taken it upon herself to rescue Berlin from Eisenman’s monstrous carbuncle.

Most of the concrete blocks now have cracks and are leaking lime (!).  Some think that the damage is such that they can’t be properly repaired.  The foundation in charge of the memorial has said that before repairs can begin, it has to be established who is at fault.  How about a show trial and pinnig it on Zuendel? 

There’s a video here on the damage (in German):

http://www.bild.de/BILD/regional/berlin/aktuell/2010/03/03/beton-stelen-gerissen/ist-gedenkstaette-holocaust-mahnmal-nicht-mehr-zu-retten.html

Here’s a video of Zuendel being released yesterday in Mannheim (after 7 years in jails in 3 different countries).  It’s quite sad to watch him piling up his garbage bags with his possessions outside the prison gate.  I haven’t read anything he’s written, but I admire his courage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8YHqfaVSC4&feature=player_embedded