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When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art.

Philip Johnson

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Philip Johnson
Age: 98 †
Born: 1906
Born: July 8
Died: 2005
Died: January 25
Architect
Art Historian
Cleveland
Ohio
Philip Cortelyou Johnson
Phillip Johnson
Architecture
Building
Art
Good

More quotes by Philip Johnson

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Pick very few objects and place them exactly.
Philip Johnson
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I think the collectors have made an enormous contribution, not only to the market but to painters themselves... These people that buy, that set standards, make everyone else itch to emulate.
Philip Johnson
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Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.
Philip Johnson
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I wouldn't build a building if it wasn't of interest to me as a potential work of art. Why should I?
Philip Johnson
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Architects are pretty much high-class whores. We can turn down projects the way they can turn down some clients, but we've both got to say yes to someone if we want to stay in business.
Philip Johnson
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Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.
Philip Johnson
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Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.
Philip Johnson
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So now the floodgates are open to the delight of pure form, whatever its origin. Anything goes.
Philip Johnson
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Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
Philip Johnson
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Architecture is art, nothing else.
Philip Johnson
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I got everything from someone. Nobody can be original.
Philip Johnson
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Faith? Haven't any. I'm not a nihilist or a relativist. I don't believe in anything but change. I'm a Heraclitean - you can't step in the same river twice.
Philip Johnson
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I hate the celebrity architect thing. I just do my work. The press comes up with this stuff and it sticks. I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists. It's demeaning.
Philip Johnson
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[Evolution] doesn't mean God-guided, gradual creation. It means unguided, purposeless change. The Darwinian theory doesn't say that God created slowly. It says that naturalistic evolution is the creator, and so God had nothing to do with it.
Philip Johnson
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I get between nine and ten hours of sleep. Go to bed at 8:30 and get up at 6:00 or 6:30 if I oversleep.
Philip Johnson
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Purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful.
Philip Johnson
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Naturalism and materialism mean essentially the same thing.
Philip Johnson
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I guess I want to make money just like other people, perhaps more than most people.
Philip Johnson
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I guess I can't be a great architect. Great architects have a recognizable style. But if every building I did were the same, it would be pretty boring.
Philip Johnson
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I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it to make something new of it not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.
Philip Johnson