Vincent Scully
Yale Professor of Art History (1947-2009) and one of the twentieth century's most influential American architectural historians (The Shingle Style, 1955; American Architecture and Urbanism, 1969; Modern Architecture, 1961). Mailer's antagonist in the three-part Mailer-vs.-Scully debate on modern architecture, published across the spring of 1964 in Architectural Forum (64.10) and the Village Voice (64.16, 64.17), occasioned by Mailer's August 1963 'Big Bite' column (63.9) on the 'architectural plague.' Scully's last word on the debate, offered by Village Voice editors: 'I feel that I have had the last word already.'
Vincent Scully was Yale’s Sterling Professor Emeritus of Art History (1947–2009) — the architectural historian and critic whose advocacy of Robert Venturi and Robert A. M. Stern shaped American postmodernist architectural thinking, and whose books (The Shingle Style, 1955; Modern Architecture, 1961; American Architecture and Urbanism, 1969; Pueblo: Mountain, Village, Dance, 1975) defined the field for two generations of architects and historians.
Scully and Mailer’s published debate on modern architecture spans three Lennon Works entries:
- “Mailer vs. Scully” (64.10), Architectural Forum, April 1964 — a three-part exchange: (1) excerpts from Mailer’s August 1963 Big Bite column (63.9, on the “architectural plague”); (2) Scully’s response, which appears almost simultaneously in the Village Voice on 16 April 1964; (3) Mailer’s rebuttal, here for the first time. Lennon notes that Architectural Forum’s editors mischaracterized the first part as a condensation of two of Mailer’s Esquire columns; in fact it is all from the August 1963 column.
- “Architects: Blindness Is the Fruit of Your Design” (64.16), Village Voice, 18 June 1964 — essay consisting of part three of 64.10, slightly revised. The Voice editors offered Scully the last word; Scully replied: “I feel that I have had the last word already.”
- “Gargoyle, Guignol, False Closet” (64.17), Dublin: Dolmen Press, July 1964 — a 2-page pamphlet, limited edition of 100, consisting of the rebuttal portion of 64.10 slightly revised.
Stub; to be expanded as the Mailer–Scully recurrences appear.
Related pages
- 1964 | Mailer vs. Scully | Architects: Blindness Is the Fruit of Your Design | Gargoyle, Guignol, False Closet | The "Big Bite"