The Obama Presidential Center is an Abomination

Let’s not beat around the bush. The Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, Chicago, is an eyesore. It follows the totalitarian aesthetic of Modernism, which is summed up in the expression “Form follows function.” The architectural wunderkinds of the early 20th century who gave birth to this abomination couldn’t be bothered with ornamental decoration, and instead obsessed over the practical value of a structure. Compared to the Gothic, Victorian, and Baroque styles of bygone eras, this is a tremendously sterile, dismal, and monotonous approach.

Why bother wasting time and materials on ornamental decorations? The Modernists understood that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if you remove beauty from sight, it’s easier to psychologically dominate the unwashed masses. Remove beauty and eventually people will forget what it is and it becomes that much easier to re-educate them on what your collectivist ideology wants them to believe beauty should be. Cover the cities under the shadows of grim and ugly ziggurats to accentuate the smallness and insignificance of the individual. Ugly up the skyline with steel and glass megaliths, each devoid of character and artistic value. Wouldn’t want to inspire the onlooker, would we? Best they keep their eyes on the sidewalk while they wait in a breadline.

Form is meant to be a secondary consideration to function, or perhaps even further down the list. What is the function? Schools—that look like prisons. Tenement housing projects—that look like prisons. And factories, restaurants, shopping centers, homeless shelters, and hospitals that all look like prisons, etc. The function is oppression regardless of the inhabitants and their occupations.

It may be a genuine matter of efficiency. Time, materials, and the experts necessary to craft inspirational works of architectural wonder are incredibly expensive. That’s not a meritless consideration. Why expend the time, money, and energy under the guidance of a master craftsman to create something magnificent and awe-inspiring when you can browbeat the public with a deliberate celebration of gargantuan ugliness and mediocrity instead?

Beauty and talent inspire. They show the rest of us the heights of excellence human beings are capable of, and they stir the imagination to curiosity: What excellent wonder might I be able to achieve? Modernists and collectivist statists like Obama don’t want us thinking that way, and frankly, I don’t believe they want us thinking much at all. They don’t want us thinking much further than our next paycheck, next meal, next car payment, and so on. They don’t want us to marvel at the marvelous when we turn our eyes upward to a vast cityscape. They want us to be intimidated by their terrible towers and turn our eyes downward.

It’s ironic that a president who was all sizzle and no steak would also be one to embrace an aesthetic philosophy of “form follows function.” As Commander-in-Chief, Obama was mediocre on his best day in office, and mediocrity is about as high an aspiration as he and his ilk want any of us to contemplate in our wildest dreams. He spent eight years reminding us of our worst national sins and admonishing us to embrace his agenda of fundamentally transforming our country into something deliberately hideous. And he did so with his trademark soaring oratory. But it was all form and zero function, unless the function was merely beating us down. It’s fitting that the monument to his legacy is something of such tremendous ugliness and sinister intent.