More Randiana. I found it amusing that the cover of a catalog of books and tapes I recently received from The Objectivist Center featured pictures of the Atlas sculptures at Rockefeller Center. The reason I found it amusing is that Rand seems to have disliked those sculptures. The context is, again, her journals (which I'm slowly working through), specifically a discussion of architect Raymond Hood, whom she thought was a faux-modernist who was cashing in on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright in a second-hand manner. Supposedly Hood originally drew up some Gothic plans for Rockefeller Center (Rockefeller loved Gothic architecture). Rand writes as follows:
Hood was the guiding hand among the eight or ten architects of Rockefeller Center. (Any wonder he got in? Would Wright draw up Gothic plans and then "talk" Rockefeller out of it? Where is the great integrity and "modern" convictions of Mr. Hood? And Rockefeller Center is a mess, compared to what it could have been. As to its sculpture -- I wonder if Hood had a hand in the giving out of that commision?) [152]