God's Own Junkyard
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"[God's Own Junkyard] is a deliberate attack upon all those who have already befouled a large portion of this country for private gain and are engaged in befouling the rest." --God's Own Junkyard (1964) by Peter Blake, preface "Our towns and cities boast many isolated handsome buildings-but very, very few handsome streets, squares, civic centers, or neighborhoods. (Even such rare exceptions as Rockefeller Center in New York, now twenty-five years old, have become disfigured as they have expanded beyond their original limits.) Our suburbs are interminable wastelands dotted with millions of monotonous little houses on monotonous little lots and crisscrossed by highways lined with billboards, jazzed-up diners, used-car lots, drive-in movies, beflagged gas stations, and garish motels." --God's Own Junkyard (1964) by Peter Blake "It is a deliberate attack upon all those who have already befouled a large portion of this country for private gain and are engaged in befouling the rest." --God's Own Junkyard (1964) by Peter Blake "At present, these should-be leaders are, instead, performing for Mr. Ripley's "Believe It or Not" circus: architects, painters, and sculptors are outdoing one another in acrobatics, in hot pursuit of novelty; taste makers are busy watching the box office and the circulation figures, instead of making taste; and the public (which includes the public uglifiers) simply follows the lead of our supposed "intellectual elite."--God's Own Junkyard (1964) by Peter Blake "For the truth is that the mess that is man-made America is merely a caricature of the mess that is art in America — and a very mild caricature at that. The inscription on Sir Christopher Wren's tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral contains the famous words:"If thou seek his monument, look about thee." God forbid that this should ever become our epitaph."--God's Own Junkyard (1964) by Peter Blake |
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God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape (1964) is a book by German-American architect Peter Blake.
Blurb:
- "Contains many black and white photos of the desecration of the U.S. landscape in the late 50's/early 60's."
Cover image
A white background. Title "God's Own Junkyard" in red letters. Subtitle "The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape" in black letters. Collage of black and white photos of telephone poles, a cloverleaf interchange, sightseeing glass top bus advert, "highest standard of living" billboard poster depicted in At the Time of the Louisville Flood by Margaret Bourke-White, a junk yard and trees.
Excerpts
"It may be possible to create some degree of order in America - and, with it, a chance for civilization - by demanding such things as more stringent zoning laws, by taking the profit out of land speculation, by using taxing policy to encourage good building and to discourage bad building, by riddling the country of the bureaucrats who have strait-jacket most government-subsidized architecture, and by getting rid of their moribund agencies."
"But if we intend to do more - to create a great urban civilization in America, for example - then we need something in addition to more stringent laws and more effective controls over bureaucrats. We need creative acts; we need genuine leadership on the part of those capable of creating a new kind of city and a new kind of country."
See also
- American urban planning
- Planned deterioration
- American architecture
- Junkyard
- Big Duck
- Bibliography of suburbs
- Cultural pessimism
- God's Own Country
- The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) by Jane Jacobs
