A pile of unassembled building materials rotting in the rain?
Dystopianism!
I would use Brutalism as the style to describe the monolithic, one tone, wines a la Rolland.
Phillip Johnson is one of the most profoundly influential modern architects in American history.
His Glass House from 1949 is transcendent. Arguably one of the greatest pieces of residential architecture in this country. Stunningly pure, simple, elegant, not a thing out of place, not a thing wasted. It’s superb. If I had a mountain top piece of land with no neighbors, this would be my house.
Johnson also went on to partner with legendary modernist, from the Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, on the elegant Seagram high-rise in Manhattan.
His transition and foray into post-modernism gave us the AT&T Tower.
Frankly, I’ve not as bothered by this building as you are. I look at it like a Leoville Poyferre. It ventured to the dark side, but isn’t really ostentatious or over the top, it’s just without soul. I’ll drink it if it is before me, or snap a pic of the Tower, but would neither buy the wine or move into that building. Compare that to the monstrosities of Michael Graves. That’s like Troplong Mondot, Bellevue Mondot, Perse Pavie, et al.
Oh, I know who Johnson is, and I know he just got lost.
I’ve given this much thought and came up with the following timeline.
Traditionalists: Robert Mondavi, Brad Webb, André Tchelistcheff, Jeffrey Patterson and Paul Draper. All embraced traditional French winemaking styles while each leaving their unique mark on their wines.
Modern: Rolland, Cambie, Derenoncourt, Wagner Family etc. These are the winemakers who pushed for the “International Style.” Higher alcohol, higher oak, cleanly-made, and homogeneous.
After the modernist movement, (1980’s-Early 2000’s) we see two different schools emerge simultaneously.
Neo-Traditionalists: Tegan Passalacqua, Morgan Twain-Peterson, John Raytek, Duncan Arnot Meyers. All embraced a return Traditionalist winemaking techniques while experimenting with lesser-known regions and grapes.
Post/Anti-Modernists: RAW Wine/No SO2 Movement. These winemakers rejected both the manipulated, high-alcohol wines of the Modernists and the classicist approach of the Neo-Traditionalists. This group embraces an utter rejection of all previous rules of wine making. Most believe in little/no sulfur, no intervention and are willing to accept unclean/flawed wines in their pursuit.
I second this categorization, first because it sets out clear categories without ersatz comparisons to literature and art (the claim in a post above that the opening sentence of Finnegans Wake is traditional is mind blowing)and second because it almost avoids the problem of confusing “modern” as a period designation with “modern” as a style designation. I would still rather see some term other than postmodern for the last group because it continues the root problem with the term: having used a term which means up to date (modern) and then finding that it was a period and something comes after it, you start multiplying posts. Moreover, if postmodern is meant to be even more modern, it doesns’t fit the final group. If we insist on importing aesthetic terms, why not call them primitivists. The term, in aesthestics at least, is more or less descriptive and not pejorative.
Robert
Thanks for classing this place up on a Sunday morning.
Before Professor Ente responds with his own highbrow stuff I would like you to define Modernism and Post Modernism on a general level.
I think The Fountainhead does a good job in describing Modernism in architecture.
I worked in the kitchens of one of the founders of “Nouvelle Cuisine” as that concept was emerging and I clearly see how it corresponds to Modernism on a culinary level. Not sure about the parallels in wine.
We party with Derenoncourt (the guy seated on the right) and I suspect he does not think in these terms, but then we get into very heavy issues because I do not think my former bosses, Jean and Pierre Troisgros realized that they were bringing cuisine into the Modernist era
Thanks Jonathan! I’ve was actually trying to decide as to whether Post-Modernist or Anti-Modernist would be a better descriptor. I’ll add Anti-Modernist to my original post.
Hmmm . . . .
And yet there often is a direct correlation between movements in forms of art, whether it be architecture, music, cuisine, painting, sculpting, literature, etc. Indeed, wasn’t that the very foundation of Bauhaus?
A yurt?
Cuisine like wine isn’t art and because neither is a meaning bearing discourse, the matchup won’t work. And, if you don’t agree with the conceptual distinction, just look at the connections being offered above. Even architecture, which is clearly an art form, presents difficulties when one moves beyond modernism, since any definition of postmodernism that adequately captured say David Foster Wallace, Andy Warhol, and John Cage, would surely not capture whatever came after Wright and Corbusier if for no other reason than because buildings can’t just embody. They also have to serve the purpose of sheltering.
I’m guessing that a lot of winemakers here will categorically reject this notion.
“the claim in a post above that the opening sentence of Finnegans Wake is traditional is mind blowing”
I didn’t say it was traditional, I said it was “natural” wine. Joyce was pointing out how we are recapitulating ancient ways, but this time “awake”. (or woke, as they say now)
You could say that this started in the wine world with Steiner and his confused Theosophist interjection into the world of agriculture. As loopy as his is, it is an attempt to reconcile the ancient and modern. The visual arts were much more successful in that endeavor, and as you say, much more easily compared to architecture than wine making.
Numbers of people on this board also won’t agree. Numbers of people also would disagree that the world is round, that human beings have caused climate change, that the species have evolved. There are some aesthetic theories that deny that meaning-bearing is constitutive of art, though, if it matters, I can rehearse the reasons why I think such an element is necessary. There is no definition of art that considers it in terms of only appealing to the senses. Thus they usually exclude things that appeal by being pleasing to the senses from the category (for Kant, famously, food and wine). Winemakers can think what they please, though. It’s a democracy after all. Levi Dalton, whose podcasts are wonderully informative, has, on another board, regularly argued that wine is meaning-bearing and that it literally talks to him. I suppose for him, it could be an art form. All I can say is that it hasn’t ever literally talked to me.
You’re right about what Joyce was saying, so I concede your point. I stlll find the notion that there was anything naturalist about Joyce, at the very least, disconcerting.
Excellent thread, thank you Robert. And certainly not over-thinking, merely thinking 
!
I’ve been pondering these questions a lot myself, as I see many parallel and over-lapping trends in the wild world of wine. Piedmont is a fascinating mini case study for these ‘movements’ with the wine makers taking two different tracks in parallel. Some went ‘internationalist’ in terms of barrel regime and manipulation. I guess we’d call that modernist. And others modernized in terms of sorting, cleanliness, single vineyard vs. blending, equipment, etc. but still called themselves traditionalist. But we’d call them post-modern. And these two movements happened simultaneously! Kind of like Manet and Picasso sharing a studio 
.
In the 2010s I’m really struck by two competing forces - one is a desire for simplicity and is minimal in intervention. The other is a reaching for experimentation and variation. These wine makers are always trying lots of new techniques (concrete eggs! no lees stirring! 10 pump overs per day! None! All with grapes from the same vineyard). Minimalism vs Experimentalism?
I’m not really concerned with the specifics of the labels, but I see this discussion as a great way to think about and understand wine. Fun!
Even though wine may not have vocal chords I’ve had glasses of wine that were singing.
IMO plenty of buildings made in the mid century modernist style were both aesthetically unappealing and functionally impractical (flat roofs in rainy Florida). Not pointing to Le Corbusier or the great standards found in textbooks, but rather their derivatives.
Not to say I am a fan of the overwrought mishmash morning of ornamentation found in the example Alfie shows by Graves, far from it - that particular example seems particularly soulless.
My approach to evaluating built objects meant to last for decades is to ask: how will this object appear and be appreciated decades hence?
As for wine, as Jonathan and others have said, different fields can use the same terms to refer to different times and to different things.
Perhaps the syntax of reference in wine discussion could be wine industry benchmarks who themselves embody an approach - e.g., “in the style of Joseph Swan” (here referring to the house as much as the man), or, “contra Rolland.” As opposed to more generic culture reference points which themselves can get turned around - e.g., the meaning of liberal.
Different point the description of natural wine as rotting unassembled ingredients (knowing there are fine natural wines) is humorous.
Educational and sometimes amusing thread, though I also frequently heard the sound of “whoosh” above my head. This architecture talk and metaphor got me thinking of one of the all time “brute” buildings - Boston city hall (c 1968). I believe the style is also known a “béton brut” - a term that would fit well in the wine lexicon I think.
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