Philip Johnson Interview (page: 2 / 4) Dean of American Architects	Print Interview

What were some of the pressures that affected you? What were some of the things you had to overcome?

Philip Johnson: The political side, the war. I was not an athletic type, and the other soldiers were children half my age. It was a traumatic experience. Would I make it? It tested me as nothing else could.

The military is the most important single profession in this country, except for architecture. If it weren't for the military, I couldn't do architecture. So I admire the military very, very much. That isn't popular either among Harvard intellectuals. You know, you try to get to get out of fighting in wars if you can. No! That got me out of my namby-pamby spoiled kid position in the world. My family had money, which is a very bad handicap. I didn't realize that. I thought it was kind of nice. I had a car when I was a private in the Army and drove up to Washington every single night from the camp. Terrible.
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The arduous part of the day was so arduous and so collapsing. That I lived through it at all was a triumph. It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened. That was a moment of the purest pleasure that I could get along with these kids. They didn't hate me. They did call me grandpa, but I wasn't condemned the way I was condemning myself all the time because I wasn't physically fit. I was a stupid intellectual, you know. The type that wore glasses and went around reading. When I had to stay up all night in the army watching a machine or something -- they put you on the funniest duties -- I read Madame Bovary in French, you see. Just it was easier and it was a lovely language. I can't read it now, but I mean, it was so concentrating, that atmosphere in a camp.
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I'll tell you what happens when you get crushed together like that with a bunch of men: all their character comes out much quicker, much sharper. I led a lonely life with my family. I was a spoiled kid. And then to be thrust in with all these decisions that you have to make every two seconds with the armed forces, anyway, whether you're with your captain -- whom we naturally hated because he was an evil figure -- or the lieutenant, which was a hero figure because the captain didn't like the lieutenant at all. If you are a novelist, how could you do anything except join an army? So I agreed with Napoleon that it was fine to fight for your country.
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And then you came out and began your career as an architect?

Philip Johnson: Yes, right away.

And had some trouble passing the New York State exam?

Exams are so stupid. I couldn't be bothered to work for them, so I kept flunking them. They were too simple-minded. So I went to a cram school. The cram school of course said, "You idiot, look at that piece of paper." I said, "Yes. It's a fine piece of paper." He said, "You've only got six lines on it." I said, "Yeah, the paper's so beautiful, what do you want to spoil it for by covering it with all these lines?" They said, "Look, you've got to pass the exam. You stop your damn theories and cover the sheet with extra trees, then. It doesn't make any difference, just fill it up. Put more bricks in or something." And then another clue, "How do you know how to get into that building?" And I said, "It's right here." They said, "No, you take a red arrow. And it doesn't matter if it's the only red thing you've got on the sheet, put that in, so the examiner will see it." I said, "Oh, I see, he knows where to go in." Those simple little tricks I had trouble at. I passed it by doing -- they wanted a house in the suburbs. So I did it, just out of my memory. I took a suburban house. Don't like them, would never build one, hated the whole thing. I used to go to an exam and do what I wanted to do. Of course they didn't like it, because I was always doing something different from other people. Anyhow, by knuckling under I had no trouble. You learn lessons, you see. Always give in. I mean at the proper moment -- when you have to.
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Is that what it takes to be an architect?

Philip Johnson: To be an architect, you've got to know people. Like most professions. You have to know people in order to get the next job.

As the richest and the greatest American architect said, "The first principle of architecture is, get the job." In other words, if you aren't personable enough or persuasive enough to get the job, you'll never get anywhere. Another important thing, it's hard to tell anybody what's important because it's inside you. Alas for education. Education doth not help you. You can read all the books in the world and make terrible designs. I had learned professors that I worshipped. Russell Hitchcock. He was a great, great historian of architecture. I wanted to be an architectural historian, that was one of my passing fancies, but I wasn't any good, and this guy was great. And then he tried to build a building. Disaster! In other words, it takes something else besides intellectual prowess. Harvard will never help you become an architect. Never. It takes what they laughingly call genius, but there are only a couple of geniuses once in a while like an Einstein or a Frank Lloyd Wright. No one can aspire to that. That either is God-given or not. There is nothing you can do about it. It's just too big. So you've got to have at least a spark. I'm no Frank Lloyd Wright, that doesn't bother me anymore. It used to, but I was never the genius. It was interesting though, to see who would be and who could be. I foresaw a lot of kids' careers that are now on the top, and I foresaw. I could tell when they were younger that they were going to be good. "I never could see why you like Frank Gehry's work," and I said, "You wait." And in ten years, indeed, he's the leading architect of the world. That kind of thing gives one a certain pleasure.
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All of my advice is straight to all kids, "Should I be an architect?" I say "No." Always say no, because if you can help it, don't. Go into something that'll make money, if that's what most Americans seem to want, me included. Just don't bother with architecture. You remember when a kid came up to Mozart and said, "Should I write a symphony now, Mr. Mozart? Do you know what I do?" Mozart said, "No." And the kid said, "Why do you say no? You wrote a symphony when you were my age," and he said, "Yeah, but I didn't ask anybody." In other words, if you're going to be an architect, you'd better have a feeling inside that you can't help it. A "calling" it used to be called in the days when religion was a little more popular.
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What about your meeting Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe? How did that influence you?

Only Mies influenced me. Le Corbusier I met. He was a nasty man, but obviously a genius. You don't have to like the people just because they're geniuses. Mies and I got along better and we became pretty close. I worked with him on his greatest building here, the Seagram building, which was kind of fun, but again, you can't be a hero-worshipper and be an uncommon architect; you've got to be your own man. So I split with Mies and did a different kind of work.
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Can you say something about what inspires an architectural design? What goes through your mind?

Disaster. Agony. You're a writer. You know what a thing that blank piece of paper is. That's the ultimate horror. After about an hour of sweating over nothing, you finally, crabbedly write the beginning and that's what I do, what all architects do. Then you make a very tentative drawing and that's terrible. But somehow you get interested. Then you start a different idea and that's no good, but what about that idea, what about that idea? And your whole day passes in flashes because -- it's not a flash of genius in my case, but it's a flash of getting something on paper. Very funny.
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There's no talking about it though.

The Glass House has been called one of the most influential designs of this century. Why?

Philip Johnson: I don't know. I didn't know it was.

It's the most photographed house. Bothers the hell out of me. I'm supposed to live there and then people come and look at you all the time. It's annoying. I don't think it is. That was the time when I was working with Mies. Mies's ideas are perfectly clear there, of using nothing but glass for the walls. Seemed the natural thing to do. Most people didn't think it was so natural. As they said in the local papers, "If Mr. Johnson wants to make a fool of himself, why doesn't he do it in somebody else's town?" Oh dear. Of course, I enjoyed all of that. I enjoyed the battle.
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How important is the battle and the struggle? Can you create without it?

Philip Johnson: Maybe I can't.

Maybe the battle is the thing. Like a horse in wartime, it smells the gunpowder and gallops off to war. Maybe it's the charge and the challenge that makes you work. That's why you can't talk about these things. It's just that it satisfies something needed for living that nothing else will. And the best days in the world today are spent alone in my study with a piece of paper. Great satisfaction. In the evening I can relax and watch Dallas or something.
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Do you have to work alone?

Philip Johnson: Oh my goodness yes. The reason I like architecture against painting is that I don't have to be alone, because every ten minutes there's a disaster and they say, "Well I don't think you can take that piece of steel and do that with it. It'll fall down." Well that has nothing to do with art, but it takes a lot of time. So when I mean being alone, I mean when you're doing your so called creative work, you have to be alone.

How important is it to be able to collaborate with others?

Philip Johnson: Very. I'm a people person. I don't know how painters or writers sit there and work month after month. I don't know how you go to the woods in Maine like E.B. White and just sit there. I'd go stir crazy. I can't work if I'm alone. If I take a vacation, I can't work. Therefore I don't take vacations. It's so silly to sit around a beach for God's sake.

What is the feeling of having designs become reality? Seeing your buildings?

Philip Johnson: Now that's another pleasure, to see it come up and watch other people's faces and have them appreciate it. But everybody wants that. That's called the desire for fame. Every movie star has that feeling of wanting to be accepted and be praised. That's a natural ambition in the world. A sense of conquest too. Very, very satisfying, but the trouble is, you mentioned a few very nice buildings, but what about the ninety percent of the other buildings? There's two sides to every one of these coins and I certainly won't talk about those. I only talk about the ones that did come out well.

What are your disappointments?

Philip Johnson: Most buildings, if I'd had another chance. If somebody had only given me that extra money that I needed at that particular point. If I only hadn't made the decision to give in when I thought it was inevitable and it wasn't. Was it really inevitable that I give in on this point or that point? That's the sin against the holy ghost. You're betraying yourself. And how many times do you do it for expediency? It used to be the old excuse, I remember. I haven't used it recently, but I can see it: "I took that job and I knew it was a lousy job," they say, "but I had to keep the kids in the office, at work. I couldn't fire them because of the Depression and so I had to feed them. Therefore, I took that job, yes." You didn't have to take that job. But you do that, you compromise -- one does I mean. You do, and that's what you're ashamed of. I'm only proud of the buildings I built in my own place, really, because there was nobody to stop me, no financing, no troubles, and if they're bad, at least I don't know it. I go on building little houses around, in and on the place.
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