I woke up this morning to Julian Marshall’s post referring to a wine that I commented on, Domaine Roche Nueve’s Les Memoires, a very old vine Cabernet Franc, as “post-modern”. I assume it was meant to characterize a wine that had traditional roots but modern fruit, without venturing into the spoof that we have found in some more modern styles. I clearly have fallen prey to calling wines like those made by Rolland or Cambie, as “modern”. And I definitely have used the term “modern” as a pejorative.
I occasionally cringe when I use that term. I am a modernist. I grew up in a universe of mid-century thought, influenced so heavily by my amazingly talented and artistic mother, who introduced me to the beauty of art and architecture. I was also influenced by my father, an aerospace engineer, who like many engineers, believe that the beauty of a creation is in the form following function without any necessary adornment. Minimalism, really.
I entered architecture school in 1983, without knowing what I called it, as devout modernist. My artistic ideals then, and which remain now, were the cubists and modernists, think Mondrian, Picasso, Braque. The art in my house is mostly Cuban modernism from the 1950s-70s. My architectural reference point started and literally still ends with the genius of Le Corbusier. Mies van der Rohe and Gropius, from the Bauhaus movement, would be in the mix as well. I guess we now call that mid-century modernism, and what evolved from these visionaries, think Palm Springs, California, in particular the historic gas station that is now a welcome center to the city. From that, we evolved into the modernistic styles of Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, and at that time, Michael Graves.
Le Corbusier, Villa Savoy (1931)
Richard Meier, Smith House (1967)
Albert Frey, Palm Springs Gas Station (1965)
And then modernism devolved. It devolved into a gross characterization of something called architecture, the post-modern generation. This style developed in the 1970s but really gained prevalence in the 1980s, with Michael Graves transforming himself from a modernist, to something where “more is more” became the motto. This style and era is characterized by a professed devotion to traditionalism but with what they called modern thought. It was Franken-architecture. Think out of proportion, collosally-scaled buildings with over-adornment of decoration. While in my architecture college, there was a clash between those of us that thought of ourselves as Howard Roark types - yes we were likely arrogant snobs for sure - and those that we thought adopted this post-modern movement because it was contemporary, easy to understand, perhaps superficially appealing to some eyes. It was the new vogue.
Michael Graves
Phillip Johnson, AT&T Building (1982)
See a parallel? And therein lies my conflict.
Should we not be calling the wines of Rolland, Cambie, Derenoncourt, Heidi Barrett, et al, these newer style wines, “post-modern” rather than “modern”? And you may know where I fall on my appreciation of this style, especially after my comments above, but this is really meant to be non-judgmental. I acknowledge that people like this style of wine just like they appreciate that style of architecture. My post is more on what, if anything, we call these stylistic movements. Assuming they are even styles.
Of course, to have post-modernism we must have modernism. I’m thinking Emile Peynaud, Mondavi, Baron Phillipe de Rothschild. Clearly these revolutionary thinkers broke from the orthodoxy of the past to advance wine-making practices and philosophies to a new generation. Certainly others here can wax more philosophically on their advancements better than I can. Ironically, Rolland was a pupil of Peynaud. And like Michael Graves transforming his modernist to the next generation, Rolland took Peynaud’s precepts perhaps several steps too far. This is post-modernism to me.
It’s a bit early for all this rambling. I just had this stuff in my head. I’ll circle back to add more clarity of thought, but perhaps you can help me refine, or just debunk, what I am thinking now. Maybe I’m drawing a connection to art, architecture and wine that does not exist. I think it does, I just have not been calling it correctly.