So: it is perfectly true that contemporary traditional architecture tends to be structurally dishonest. But traditional architecture has always tended to be structurally dishonest. So if this is what makes contemporary traditional architecture pastiche, then most traditional architecture has been pastiche since the faux timbering of the Parthenon. Contemporary traditional architects have most of the great builders of our history as their companions in guilt.
What has emerged here is that although survivorship bias probably does contribute to that to some extent, it is not the main explanation: premodern buildings may on average have been a bit less beautiful than those that have survived, but they still seem to have been ugly far less often than recent buildings are.
The survivorship theory sought to explain the apparent rise of ugliness in terms of a bias in the sample of buildings we are observing. There is another kind of bias theory, which seeks to explain it in terms of a bias in the observer, saying for instance that every generation is disposed to find recent buildings uglier than older ones, and that this is why recent buildings seem so to us. This is a complex and interesting idea, which I am not going to assess on this occasion. Suppose, though, that our eyes are to be trusted. If this is so, strange and eerie truths rise before us: that ugly buildings were once rare, that the ‘uglification of the world’ is real and that it is happening all around us.
A key transitional work for Wheeler is his untitled "light canvas" from 1965. The canvas was primed white, then over-sprayed..., but with no emblems or polished elements. The contrast in the light canvas is provided not by any imagery within the painting but by back-lighting; the canvas is backlit with neon light, which is embedded in a reverse bevel Plexiglass frame that projects the piece about five inches from the wall. The effect suggests an eclipse, or some other spectral occlusion of a bright light source.
On an autumn night in 2009, I experienced a version of this piece installed in a stone barn in rural France. The evening was moonless and cold; I stood with two friends inside the piece for the better part of an hour, as our eyes adjusted to almost total darkness, before any of us could begin to see one another. It was the definition of a liminal, or barely perceptible, experience. Eric Orr, who died in 1998, was involved with Zen Buddhism and considered these pieces to be spaces for meditation. Experiencing them as intended requires the visitor to focus quietly on the mechanics of their own perception.
As a student at Chouinard, Larry Bell also started as a painter. His early canvases features simple shapes rendered in gestural strokes...From there he started eliminating the texture of the strokes, applying opaque color (thin Liquitex paint) to unprimed canvas, masking off shapes to create straight-edged parallelograms. An example of these works is Little Blank Riding Hood, whose top left and bottom right corners are clipped, suggesting an isometric projection of a three-dimensional form.
The entire box is suspended from the ceiling by only four evenly spaced monofilaments, so that it seems to float with no physical connection to the wall or to a power source. Behind the wall (which must be purpose-built and is quite thin) is a cabinet containing four Tesla coils. The coils emit a high-frequency energy that passes through the wall and lights the tubes. The energy pulses a bit, making the tubes flicker at times both vertically and horizontally. The Tesla coils make a crackling static sound that is mostly muffled by the barrier wall, while the neon tubes emit a low hum that is audible close to the work. The work is elegant and slightly menacing, evoking something of a mad scientist's experiment.
One of the most extraordinary examples of McCracken's illusory surfaces occurs with Five Paintings IV, 1974. This wall-mounted work has a black polyester resin finish. From some angles the surface is opaque, from others highly reflective, and from still others it seems to reveal great depth. A happy accident in the creation of the work sealed many tiny air bubbles or particulates in the piece. When these catch the light, they suggest a galaxy of stars on a moonless night.