Philip Johnson Interview

What made you want to be an architect?

Philip Johnson: I don't know. Because I couldn't do anything else probably. I wasn't very good at anything.

My mother was interested in architecture. She wanted a house by Frank Lloyd Wright when she was young, but my father didn't see it the same way, naturally, for obvious reasons, so we compromised by not having one. I suddenly realized in the middle of my political work -- ran for the local state legislature and didn't want that. It didn't work at all. I was a lousy politician, terrible, had stage fright, everything wrong. I was like certain candidates for Mayor in New York, but we won't go into lots of things. So I said, obviously, I had missed my calling. So at the age of 34, I decided to really be serious about architecture. So I went to Harvard at 34. You see, my problem always was I couldn't draw, so I knew I couldn't be an architect. Harvard didn't care whether I could draw or not. It seemed like a good idea. By that time, I'd worked for some years at the Museum of Modern Art on architecture, so I decided what the hell, I might as well be one.
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I majored in philosophy at Harvard, and I didn't know if I wanted to be a teacher or a theoretician or just what, but I was always interested in art and architecture to look at. I was mostly interested in ideas and politics and world events. So I suddenly realized -- in the middle of my political work -- I had missed my calling.

Was there an event, a moment early on that influenced you?

Philip Johnson: Yes. I was a young man, much more inspired than I thought I was. You don't know what you're doing when you're young.

You get very excited about something but you don't know you're getting excited about it and you think everybody's the same way. I don't see how anybody can go into the nave of Chartres Cathedral and not burst into tears, because I thought that's what everybody would do. That's the natural reaction I had. That and the Parthenon -- one in 1919 and one in 1928 -- gave me the realization that I had to be in architecture in some way. Those events were sort of a Saul/Paul conversion kind of a feeling that determined me to play some part in architecture. So when I joined the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, I started the Architectural Department and worked there for some years and wrote a book. When I went to Harvard, it was taught in the school, so I was allowed not to take that course. It was very funny.
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How old were you when you saw Chartres Cathedral for the first time?

Philip Johnson: I was 13.

So I thought, my goodness, if a kid like me can get this excited, I didn't think it was anything unusual. Mother didn't either. She was interested in art, she took me (to France during) the Versailles Treaty years and I remember saying to myself, and I wrote it later in letters, that if I lived in Chartres, I would turn Roman Catholic to enjoy that cathedral, and if I turned Roman Catholic however, I would go and live in Chartres. Because how else could I exist without this closeness to this particular thing?
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Tell me about the Parthenon.

I first saw the Parthenon in 1928. By then I knew more about architecture and the history, but the actual presence of those stones was entirely different than the books. If you've just seen pictures of the Parthenon you haven't the slightest idea of what it is. But to be on that particular hill, with the other great hills around you, and be standing with those stones practically in your hands -- because a lot of them are falling down -- was an experience that was second only to Chartres. I wrote an article at that time saying there was a pre-Parthenon Philip Johnson and a post-Parthenon Philip Johnson, because that was the strongest single point of my learning about architecture. I was already 22, I should have known more. I should have known in 1922 when I was 17, 18, that I was going to do that. But I thought everybody did, so I'd do what I was interested in at that time, which was music, philosophy and the Greek language. I thought one of those three I was going to be into. I had this terrible thing happen to me at the Parthenon, but it wasn't until I was 34 that I had sense enough to go and get my education. Education's terribly important. But at the time, I would have none of education. It was all feeling and being converted to a dedication.
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What were you like as a young man in Ohio?

Philip Johnson: A twerp.

I was a spoiled brat. I was insufferable, very unpopular at school, very unpopular with the girls. Couldn't dance, couldn't mix. I was a loner and family practically gave up on me, wanted to give up on myself. You know the usual, "Oh goodness, what good am I?" bit, that every young person goes through, but I thought it naturally was unique and that I alone suffered. I read books on suffering, The Sorrows of Werther and so on. I was a lousy kid. It was when architecture hit me that I became more sensible.
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What kind of a student were you?

Philip Johnson: Good. Amazing. I was a patchy student.

Sometimes I couldn't do something like write. That was a writer's block kind of thing, exaggerated up to a disease. So I flunked everything to do with writing or any expression in writing. Of course, it seems funny later that I did produce a book or two, but at that time, it was an unbelievable hurdle. There were no psychiatrists in those days, so I finally went to a nerve specialist. You're too young to remember that they were called neurologists or nerve specialists. They were naturally shrinks, but they didn't have the Freudian overtones. He told me I was sick. I was manic depressive. Naturally, I was delighted, but I was in tears most of the time. Somehow you get over all these things. I never thought I would. It's the end of the world again, you know. But early unsuccesses shouldn't bother anybody, because it happens to absolutely everybody. Every one of us goes through this and it's a funny thing that they don't tell you when you're young that depression now and then is perfectly normal, that sense of failure is also normal, but so is a sense of excitement and delirium normal. And I may be talking only for artists, but I doubt it. I think everybody has these inadequacy feelings that are helped by religion or psychiatry or just plain grow up. That's all I did, was just grow up.
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Any books or teachers that helped you or influenced you?

Philip Johnson: Yes, my philosophy professor at Harvard, Rafael Demos. He was a Greek and we worked on Plato together a good deal. He was personally a great influence, but he didn't help my architectural feeling at all. I was going to teach philosophy. The head of the philosophy department at Harvard said, "Why don't you come and teach? Become a professor." Well I knew I wasn't any good at that! I got turned off of that by Whitehead, the great philosopher. He took me into his class, but I was hopeless. Couldn't understand the simplest things, apparently, and that got me off philosophy.

Any heroes, any role models?

Philip Johnson: That I knew personally? No. I must have, because I'm naturally a hero-worshipper type. Out of history, Napoleon, for instance. I still believe in the "great man" theory of history which, of course, is so much against the historiographers today that I never dare say so in public. I've got a new hero right now, General Schwarzkopf, simply because he's down to earth and straightforward and very, very funny. The man has an enormous sense of self-assurance and enormous competence in handling people and a very fast mind. Those are the things I admire most in people, and he has them all. But that's just a passing love of the moment. I had some bad times too.

My hero-worship got around to Huey Long. That'll suprise anybody, because Huey Long is a forgotten figure, a populist from the South who wanted to save the world from Roosevelt and from the Depression. Things were bad in the '30s. That I couldn't stand. I said, "What is it? We've got plenty of wheat and grain and trees, and why is there hunger?" Of course there was in those days. This depression hasn't gotten to that stage yet. But that was bad at that time. So I said, "What do I do about it?" I didn't want to be communist, which seemed to be what one's intellectual friends did. So instead, I became what was later called fascist, but it wasn't in those days; it was populist, and Huey Long was going to fix everything. So I drove down and met Huey and said, "What are we going to do?" And one of his people said to me, and I'll never forget this, he said, "How many votes do you control?" I was only asking whether I could even work with the man! In other words, he was so individual and chaotic that there was no way of getting along. So I came home and he got shot and that was the end of that. He was quite a figure.
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I recall your being interested in Father Coughlin.

Philip Johnson: He was my substitute for Huey Long. Father Coughlin was more of an intellectual of course, but also not as basic, not as good.

You could not have graduated from college at a more challenging or unsettling time -- economically, politically, socially. It was the start of the Great Depression. What were those days like?

Philip Johnson: Tragic. I didn't see how art fit in. It was too close to me, the farms and people in debt and people plain hungry. You wouldn't believe it was possible in this country. Roosevelt didn't seem to be doing enough, although I voted for him six times... no, he didn't run that many times... but he was a great man. So art was not so important in those years, all of the '30s.

What were you looking for during that time?

Philip Johnson: Hero worship. Speedy solutions. I didn't see why we shouldn't get things going instead of dithering all the time and talking so much. The first time I joined any political thing was a milk strike in Cleveland. My farm was nearby and I fought with the farmers against the milk companies. Took radio time and made talks. Was finally threatened off the air by the milk companies. They got to the head of the station and said, "Don't sell that man any more time!" I hit a nerve anyhow. I had fun. I doubt if I helped the farmers much

Any lessons from those experiences in the '30's?

Philip Johnson: I put it out of mind.

That's what I like, is causes. I always overreact. If I go religious, I go on my knees for days, that kind of thing. That was a very short interval, but the cause was a good one. Once I discovered architecture as a need of my nature, then of course that enthusiasm knew no bounds and it's been the same ever since. The turning point was 1939. And ever since then, art is the only thing I've been alive for. I spend my waking hours. There's no such thing as leisure time, for instance. If your work is architecture, you work all the time. You wake up in the middle of the night. I got a wonderful idea last night! Still working in Berlin on one of those things and I know just where that window is going to be. I'm varying between that shape and this shape. I enjoy it more and more all the time. I've got to hurry now.
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Architecture sometimes seems like politics or religion. It's full of movements and orthodoxies and heresies and controversy. You always seem to be right in the middle of it all.

Philip Johnson: I love that, you see. I didn't lose that just because I switched from philosophy to architecture. I'm still a thought kind of an architect more than a genius type. I'm not a genius. There are some, and I love them, but I like the give and take and the change and the prophesying what's happening and catching onto the next train by the caboose. Caboose? You don't have 'em anymore do you? Just seeing what's going to happen, and figuring it out with the young. Where are we at? Every one of my articles is a struggle, a "where are we at?" thing. History's in the making right now. It's very exciting and it's changing all the time. So to be in on it is my biggest pleasure. I always thought everybody felt that, but again, I guess everybody's different.

What brought about this turning point in 1939?

Philip Johnson: The war. It was pretty obvious to me what was coming and I didn't have any part in it. I wasn't connected. I loved the Germans and I didn't see any particular sense in it, but my country was terribly important and I realized that we weren't in danger perhaps, but that the next battle line was the war. Of course I wanted to be in it and I finally succeeded, but I was too old. They called me Grandpa. But they did draft me and I had a very nice time indeed.

What took you so long?

Philip Johnson: I was a damned fool. That's not hard to explain.

Everybody's their own kind of a damn fool. I'll bet even you think now and then of opportunities missed and think that you could have done perhaps better? I'm full of regrets. Piles and piles of them, but you must not let that bother you. You'd just shoot yourself, which would be nice, but it doesn't pay out. What's the point? So if you can find something to do the way I did, then it keeps you alive. That's the reason I'm alive and active at 85 with lots of work and traveling all over the place. I'll work until I drop, which will be a long time from now.
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