<i>Eliel Saarinen, Finnish-American Architect and Educator</i> (review)
1981; University of Hawaii Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bio.2010.0855
ISSN1529-1456
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Archaeological Studies
Resumo368 biography Vol. 4, No. 4 cialized as never before, Santa Claus in twentieth century America had a following that rivaled that of Saint Nicholas in Europe during the age of the crusades. The product of almost half a century of intense interest and many years of research, this biography draws upon evidence from eighty-five vestigia or "verbal relics" which comprise the extant Nicholas legend, documents in half a dozen languages, and the most important works on the saint. It has copious notes and an extensive bibliography. During the course of his research, Jones inspected shrines and artifacts from Constantinople to Manhattan and toured medieval churches as well as the more recent monuments to the saint, the Santa villages of the United States. Marvelously objective and extremely informative, this biography of a legend is a serious study that removes many misconceptions and provides an accurate historical picture of the saint's evolution. At the same time, it capsules more than a millenium of western developments . It is the best single study of Saint Nicholas in English and the best account of where Santa Claus came from and how he got here. Frank J. Coppa St. John's University Albert Christ-Janer, Eliel Saarinen, Finnish-American Architect and Educator (revised edition). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979. $12.50. Eliel Saarinen is one of a handful of modern Finns to achieve a world reputation in any field. Remarkably, most of those who have done so have been architects, and of these, Saarinen can be properly considered the first; the inspiration of his career must have encouraged the extraordinary number and quality of architects who have made this tiny country one of the leaders in recent architectural development. In some ways, Saarinen can be said to have had three careers: the first as the brilliant young architectural exponenet of emergent Finnish nationalism , who won every honor and knew everyone in his small country—and many beyond its boundaries; the second as a revered architectural educator, both in his own country and his adopted nation, the United States; and the third as amalgam and extension of the first two, as a kind of father figure (enhanced by his fathering a famous architect son) of contemporary architecture, whose status transcends the corpus of his executed works. We might ask, however, why is he so revered ? Why did he leave Finland, just when he seemed to be securely its leading architect, for an uncertain future in an unknown country? reviews 369 Albert Christ-Janer's recently reissued biography must be considered the official chronicle of Saarinen's long and happy life, since it was done with the old man's extensive cooperation in the last years of his life; but it is, alas, little more than pedantically respectful reporting . The questions raised above are essentially not mentioned, much less examined, and the man, who by all accounts was marvelous company , comes across as a rather pompous old coot, delivering himself of such platitudes as, "I learned, also, that even when the struggle was honest and sincere, it was still possible to violate the clearest primary principles because the principles were not clearly apprehended. But as the search progressed and the struggle went on, some leading thoughts sprang up which pointed a direction. . . ." Part of the problem may be that architects, even of Saarinen's generation , were rarely eloquent or broadly literate men, and such statements as they make about their work and philosophy often sound pompous and made-up after the fact—certainly this is true of Sullivan and Wright. But lurking behind Christ-Janer's bland prose and obviously heavily emended quotations is a fascinating man who knew Gorky, Mahler, and, of course, Sibelius, who gave large and uproarious parties, who left his native land on the strength of winning second prize in a competition to design a skyscraper in Chicago (and then never got to design another tall building), and who was widely loved as a great teacher and friend. Wouldn't it have been marvelous to know him! Saarinen's architecture is less immediately engaging than he apparently was in person, but, as Christ-Janer suggests, it has a substance...
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