![]() The rest of our conversation focused on a vain attempt on my part to identify the course of events that led to the destruction of the academy and the classical tradition, the rise of modernism and its spawn, postmodernism. It never occurred to me that a scholar of Reed’s capabilities and knowledge would confess ignorance about such an important topic, but he was serious. ![]() At some point, he exploded with frustration, asking “Where did all this awful modernism come from?” Frankly, I was surprised. Several years ago, I was having lunch with Henry Hope Reed, the author of The Golden City, one of the most important books of twentieth-century architecture criticism. There was a time in America when virtually all intellectual activity was derived in one way or another from the Communist Party… resulting in a disastrous vulgarization of intellectual life, in which the character of American liberalism and radicalism was decisively – and perhaps permanently – corrupted. It first appeared in their journal American Arts Quarterly, Fall 2014, Volume 31, Number 4. EDITOR’S NOTE: This essay is reprinted here with the gracious permission of the Newington-Cropsey Cultural Studies Center.
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