Titanic
Stanley Tigerman
STANLEY TIGERMAN, 1978. PHOTOCOLLAGE.
After decades of dominance, in the 1970s the architectural style of Mies van der Rohe that had held the American architect in its grips was beginning to wane. Modernism was being replaced by postmodernism, and the clean minimalism that was considered the paramount of aesthetic style was being challenged by iconoclastic ideas that uprooted the very principles the modern nation had based its visual language. Yet, as architectural schools and practices around the country were rebelling against Miesian ideals, Chicago, where van der Rohe had held the position of director of the School of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology was the last hold out of his pure, unadulterated philosophy. Tigerman created this photocollage of the Rohe’s famous ‘Crown Hall’ building sinking into the depths of the ocean as a sort of ultimatum to the architectural institutions. He mailed out the image to leading figures in the medium, with the option for a one way ticket on the Titanic, implicitly urging them to adapt, improve, modernise or die. The work has become a landmark of postmodernism, and a watershed moment in the history of American architecture, serving as the most implicit nail in the coffin of van der Rohe.