You know when someone wants the best for you when you send him an e-mail of support and the first thing he does is to correct your grammar. Such was the meticulousness of historian and writer (and regular contributor to The Critic) Professor James Stevens Curl, who has just passed away, surrounded by his close family in Holywood in County Down.
For many years he co-wrote and edited (with Susan Wilson) The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, a work of pure reference. But in 2018 he came off the fence on the question of style when his Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism was published. James’ support for traditional architecture and urbanism instantly made him friends with ordinary people across the globe. However, the Modernist camp strenuously ignored the book in the hope it would go away, or else greeted it with malicious vituperation.
Typical of Curl’s forensic research for Making Dystopia, he uncovered a letter written by Mies van der Rohe, one of the holy trinity of modernism and who has been presented for decades by the architectural establishment as a pioneer of post-War democratic design, in which he resigned from the Prussian Academy of Arts with “Heil Hitler!” typed below his signature.
Join Britain’s most civilised publication.
Challenge the consensus. Access rigorous analysis.
In the book, Curl debunked the Modernist lie that German National Socialism adopted classicism for all new buildings, and that because of this classicism must forever more be a taboo style for architects. He calmly demonstrated by numerous built examples that the Nazis actually adopted both styles: modernism for autobahn petrol stations, factories, and the like; and classicism for public buildings.
Another big Modernist pin-up, Le Corbusier (or “Le Courvoisier” as Curl jokingly called him), did not escape the writer’s scrutiny. The French architect’s megalomaniac plans for central Paris and Algiers led the way ideologically for post-War reconstruction. This had a truly malign influence over the British architectural profession in the creation of what quickly became mass housing slums. For example, in Curl’s home town, Belfast, the sprawling Turf Lodge flats development lasted only 20 years or so before they had to be demolished and replaced with conventional family houses with gardens. So much for sustainability!
Curl also rumbled Pevsner — or “caught him on”, as they say in Ulster. Making Dystopia demolishes the latter’s argument that Modernism was a natural outcome of the Arts and Crafts movement. No, he argued, Modernism was in reality the exact opposite, a deliberate and violent rupture with 4,000 years of architectural refinement and that there’s no soft-soaping the fact.
That architecture schools continue to this day to peddle these myths frustrated Curl more than anything. Design is taught like a religion, he concluded, where the natural and innate appreciation of beauty is knocked out of students from day one and replaced with an ideology that elevates abstraction and novelty. Young people are plied with a particular received wisdom and made to “look with their ears”.
He understood that great architecture must move the spirit
His professional institute, the Royal Institute of British Architects, came in for criticism with what he saw as an obsession with words, concepts and, latterly, identity politics — with everything, in other words, but the creation of actual beauty. He continued his membership for the sole purpose of using the RIBA Library Drawings and Archives Collections for his research.
One of Curl’s greatest bugbears with the modern world was, as he saw it, the trend towards the ditching of religion in favour of a wholly secular society. Making Dystopia mourns the loss in Western society of a sense of the presence of a higher good, and its replacement by the unapologetic worship of the self. During our last meeting (or “moot”, as the Professor preferred to call our chinwags over a bottle of red) in August of this year I asked the man directly if he believed in God. I was surprised, but at the same time wasn’t, when he shook his head and said “no”. Curl explained that he had no interest in any and all of the man-made religions per se, but in the power of the transcendental that certain religions can summon up, such as the Anglican High Mass or the Roman Catholic Latin Mass. Truly beautiful architecture and music, he knew, could also have the same numinous effect.
He had no time for tiresome, iconoclastic so-called “art” that promotes ugliness
So what actually is beautiful architecture according to Professor Curl? Well, for a start, he understood that great architecture must move the spirit without the need for an accompanying A4 sheet of jargon-ridden text. Proper architecture is made up of stone upon stone and the awesome tectonic quality of this alone is all that is needed to elevate the senses. That these stones are crafted and decorated by the human hand was vital to the Professor. For him, this was not just representation, but a form of transubstantiation — the conversion of a natural material into a prayer of thanksgiving for being part of that higher good.
These experiences are what Curl lived for and promoted and why he had no time for tiresome, iconoclastic so-called “art” that promotes ugliness in order to shock, and that tries to distract from its lack of skill with obfuscation and cant.
This is why Curl’s writings, including his numerous book reviews, are so naturally witty. He was like a modern-day Dickens; he knew that all he had to do, through hours and hours of incisive and meticulous research, was lay bare the beliefs and actions of today’s pretentious and self-serving classes and they would ridicule themselves. It sounds easy, but few contemporary historians and writers have such a gift.
Professor James Stevens Curl, who was a most convivial man, is survived by his wife Dorota and his two daughters Astrid and Ingrid.
