41 Quotes by Charles Jencks

In 1979, postmodernism lost its understanding of the meaning of ornament. It degenerated into kitsch applique.

You know, Darwin said through natural selection things go gradually, and he was talking about pigeon's evolution or horses evolving, getting faster. But in fact if you look at evolution on a bigger scale, cosmic evolution and you look at culture evolution you see it jumps, it goes through phase changes, and that's very exciting.

You have to believe in a placebo or it won't work, but if it works, it's obviously working in some indirect way, through feedback in the immune system, let us say, or in the willpower of the patient to take a more strenuous exercise in their own therapy.

A placebo is a phony cure that works. This is very hard for the medical profession to get their teeth around because they hate placebos, but scientifically, placebos work in about 30% of cases that are psychogenic diseases.

The singular point of beautiful objects, and people, is that they are experienced not as parts, or ratios between cheekbones and chin, but as wholes. The experience of beauty is a perception, but it is one that mixes up various other sensations and makes them converge in a particular way.

I do believe architecture, and all art, should be content-driven. It should have something to say beyond the sensational.

It's a mark of any icon that it should be open to iconoclasm.

If you can't take the kitsch, get out of the kitchen.

Cant you see, we are in a dialogue with the universe?