Stanley Tigerman
Chicago, Illinois, born 1930
The Titanic
1978
Photomontage
28 x 35.7 cm
Gift of Stanley Tigerman, 1984.802
© Stanley Tigerman

The architect Tigerman has merged two different photographs—one of Lake Michigan, the other of Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a famous building designed by another architect, Mies van der Rohe (1886­1969). Tigerman has tilted Crown Hall so that it seems to be sinking into Lake Michigan, like the liner “Titanic,” which sank into the Atlantic Ocean. In this comical way, Tigerman suggests the death in the 1970s of “modern” architecture as practiced by Mies Van der Rohe, who followed the rule “less is more,” in his unornamented steel and glass buildings.