At Taki Mag, Dalrymple takes aim at the posthumous canonisation of Frank Gehry, arguing that the torrent of uncritical praise of his work confuses novelty with merit and egotism with genius.
…he could not possibly have built his buildings from his own resources; he required patrons. His real talent, his real mastery, then, was in finding them. One of the things that he, and other architects of his ilk, succeeded in doing is insinuating the idea into the minds of patrons that they, the architects, were party to an arcane but advanced form of knowledge, appreciation, and understanding that the patrons could demonstrate only by employing them—which if they failed to do would only reveal their ignorance.