Gutzon Borglum Quotes

I was writing a chapter of Beautiful Evidence on the subject of the sculptural pedestal, which led to my thinking about what's up on the pedestal - the great leader.

The Pyramids are perfect, but you can't put the Pyramids in the middle of Manhattan. In the desert, the combination of light and form makes it perfect.

I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.

I would have loved to be the designer of the Capitol of the United States. I would love to do some important major public building.

The statues are no big issue. They are only objects made of mud or stone.

There will never be great architects or architecture without great patrons.

The Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio comes from afar. Our land has a millennial history of emigrations: master masons, architects, builders, decorators, plasterers, artists from the world of building.

It's fun to be a part of pop history. Anytime you can be referenced in that respect it can be cool.

I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal.

The Eisenhower Memorial competition and project have stirred a remarkable polemic, the center of which is not President Eisenhower or Washington, D.C. but Mr. Gehry and the values he promulgates.

Because for me, '60s pop music is amongst the most complicated or complex music because it has so many resonances which strike you. The music itself is often simple, but the way that I interpret it, or the way I think it's interpreted culturally, is very complex.

Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials - all six at once?

I love the Capitol rotunda. It's just so big and so grand, and I love being in the Capitol at night when it's empty, and you can go stand in the Capitol rotunda and bask in the silence of history. You can sort of imagine all of the things that have happened inside that Rotunda from presidents lying in state to other important events.

I think it's good that we're sometimes reminded of important events in history.

Zaha Hadid's Maxxi Museum is proof that Rome and contemporary architecture are no longer a paradox. The building is characteristic Hadid - with curving lines and organic shapes - and the permanent collection already boasts works by Francesco Clemente, William Kentridge, and Gerhard Richter.

From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.

Surely every band wants to be a pivotal point in history.

It is not architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs.

Against expectations I was charmed by Gehry's Edgemar development, which housed the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and positively awed by the Bilbao Guggenheim. That Gehry is a great artist I have no doubt, but talent and determination are no warrant against confusion, nor are they a guaranty to produce great art.

'Clothespin' was the first city monument on a large scale that could compete with the architecture around it.

I love California. It has such a strong contribution to the history of culture, and popular culture. For better and worse, of course. Even the worst can be interesting to some degree sometimes for somebody creative.

Architecture aims at Eternity.

Monuments are for the living, not the dead.

As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14 or December 25, September 11 may seem full of significance to some people, while to other people it is just another day.

World history is the history of the great cultures.