Robert Hughes Recalls His Afternoon With Albert Speer

“Who was Roosevelt’s architect? Nobody we can remember. Stalin’s? No one cares. Churchill’s? Silly question. But there is no doubt who Hitler’s architect was: Albert Speer. Almost nothing of his buildings survives, either because they were not built or because they were demolished after 1945. Modern art has never had much political power, but modern architecture is a different matter. Architecture is the only art that moulds the world directly. Of all the arts, it is the supreme expression of politics and ideology. It marshals resources and organises substance in a way that music, painting and literature cannot. It is an art that lives from power.”