Why must architects prove their worth?

You can currently buy two rival sets of Alfred Hitchcock films on DVD. One includes such masterpieces as Strangers on a Train and I Confess; the other boasts Psycho , The Birds and Vertigo . You might ponder why there are two sets, and what principle of selection is involved - but just look at the logos: one box contains films Hitch made for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the other films for Universal. Long after his death and his acceptance into the pantheon of the greatest directors who ever lived, Hitchcock is still at the same time a studio property whose films are assets of today's MGM and Universal.

This brings me to the beautiful Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, designed by Richard Neutra in 1946 and currently up for sale. With its clean low linear form set against desert mountains it actually resembles the modernist house at Mount Rushmore in Hitchcock's North by Northwest. But that's not why I've dragged in the master of suspense. Rather, the way the sale of the Neutra house is being promoted raises the same questions those boxed sets do about art and pragmatism.

Christie's is auctioning the Kaufmann Desert House as a work of art, hoping to redefine what was recently considered a derelict building ripe for demolition into a $25m (£12.4m) aesthetic masterpiece. What's surprising is that anyone should doubt this. The house is an extraordinary achievement from the golden age of American modernism, by a renowned designer. Why does Christie's have to labour the point that it is "art"? Why would anyone mistake it for anything else?

Because it's a house. Architecture is made to be used; it can be art but it isn't always. As a house, the old Kaufmann place has fallen into disuse and doesn't reflect the consumer aspirations of the rich today. Still it is of interest to connoisseurs of design, hope Christie's.

Architects are like film directors, it seems to me, because both have to accept and work within tough commercial realities. An architect's dream house must also be a house to live in. A film director's vision must persuade backers to invest. It's amazing how many trials and tribulations film-makers must endure even when everyone recognises them as serious artists; it doesn't matter how much critics revere you, you still have to bring in your latest project on budget and pitch the next idea. Hitchcock recognised this and even relished it; where other directors let Hollywood destroy them he gleefully walked the line between making art and producing product.

All of this raises the question of what makes art, which is defined as such by art galleries and the art world, so much more privileged? Visual artists are protected by galleries and curators in a way no film director or architect can ever expect. To put it another way, an architect or a film director is less of an artist in the world's eyes than someone whose job description says "artist".

(via The Guardian.)