[441]. See ‘The American Radiator Company Building, New York’, American Architect, CXXVI (1924), 467-84.
[442]. It is this that makes it so difficult to decide which architects should be discussed in Chapters [18]-[21] and which in Chapter [24]. No two critics will agree, but most now recognize that the boundary line is not a sharp one. For this reason in Modern Architecture, published thirty years ago, I labelled the work of this generation ‘The New Tradition’ and did not then reject the work of the Scandinavians as too ‘traditional’ to be classed, broadly at least, with that of Wright, Perret, Behrens, Wagner, and Loos, as I have done here.
CHAPTER 22 - Notes
[443]. That is, Barr proposed the title The International Style for the book prepared by myself and Philip Johnson to go with this Exhibition, drawing the word ‘international’ from the title of Gropius’s Internationale Architektur. For various reasons the name ‘International Style’ has often been castigated since 1932; yet it is still recurrently used, with or without apology, by many critics. The term is, for example, used in English and in a rather unflattering sense by Gillo Dorfles in L’ Architettura moderna—one chapter is entitled ‘“L’lnternational Style” ed i nuovi regionalismi’—with no indication of its origin. Since this term had rather generally acquired a pejorative meaning, I avoided using it as far as possible in this book, preferring the vaguer but less controversial phrase ‘modern architecture of the second generation’ despite its clumsiness. For the possible claim that the original meaning of ‘International Style’, as used by Barr, Johnson, and myself, still retained some validity in the early fifties, see my article ‘The “International Style” Twenty Years After’, Architectural Record, CX (1952), 89-97. (See [Epilogue].)
[444]. See Roggero, M. F., Il Contributo di Mendelsohn alla evoluzione dell’ architettura moderna, Milan [1952].
[445]. See Jaffé, H. L. C., De Stijl, 1917-1931, London [1956], and Zevi, B., Poetica dell’ architettura neoplastica, Milan, 1935.
[446]. See Mendelsohn, E., Bauten und Skizzen, Berlin, 1923; and English ed., Buildings and Sketches, London, 1923.
[447]. The whole question of Expressionism in architecture is still a difficult one despite a renewed critical interest in the intentions and achievements of the architects influenced by the movement (see Note [[422]] to Chapter [20]). As will shortly be noted, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe were both briefly affected by Expressionist concepts and used forms of distinctly Expressionist character in the years 1919-21.
[448]. An earlier Goetheanum of 1913-20, which was destroyed by fire, had been largely of wood. It was not at all like Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower but still somewhat Art Nouveau. See Brunati and Mendini, Steiner, Milan [n.d.], for both versions. See also Steiner, R., Wege zu einem neuen Baustil, Dornach, 1926 (Eng. trans., London-New York, 1927), and Der Baugedanke des Goetheanum, Dornach, 1932; and Rosenkrantz, A., The Goetheanum as a New Impulse in Art, [London, n.d.].