Architecture, perhaps more than other professions in the arts, is shaped by its era. There are times when societies build, and times when they don’t. And Michael Graves, who was recently inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame and probably has been the best-known architect in the state for decades, is living in an era when very little that is very major is built.

“There can be no great architecture without government support,” Graves says in the studio building of his office compound on Nassau Street in Princeton. “And you can’t have that without consensus. There is no consensus today about architecture, or about much of anything else.”

Graves, 80, has a 50-year retrospective at Grounds for Sculpture, “Past is Prologue,” that explores just about every aspect of his remarkably varied career, from the early urban design concepts and explorations of neoclassical architecture through his domestic appliance and utensil designs. Graves’ serious interest in painting in the past few years, is represented by a group of easel-sized landscapes. Graves says he is inspired by the dry pre-Impressionist Jean-Baptste-Camille Corot and severe Modernist still-life painter Giorgio Morandi .

Graves, who uses a wheelchair since a 2003 illness, has pursued his practice around the world, most recently in a large resorts project in Singapore. He’s also designing an English-speaking architecture school in China, a satellite project for Kean University; he’d just returned from a visit there when he met with The Star-Ledger last week.

“The Chinese think Westerners know all there is to know about architecture,” Graves says, “but then, they don’t listen to us. They just go out and build, faster and faster.