Saturday, January 6, 2007

Cultural Myopia

Cultural myopia happens in every country and in every milieu -- in the "cultured" ones more often than not. A few weeks ago, we went to the open studio of a local architect with projects all over the world, including a stunning, flagship creation in Paris. Many people attended. Typical crowd of Westside gauche caviar. The Brits would call them champagne socialists. I call them tofu liberals.
Conversation tidbits:
- Can you believe the French selected an American architect?
- You know: the French.
- Yeah, they must be really bad at architecture.
- They probably have no one who can deal with such a large project.
- Yeah. Name one good French architect, huh? [Chuckles.]