Frank Lloyd Wright, the Architect of Fallingwater
An Architectural Appreciation by
Article Four
For the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, Daniel Burnham, dean of the Chicago school of architects, was chosen to head the event. He chose Beaux Arts classic revival as the style for the buildings despite the fact that Chicago architects, following the great fire of ’71, were well on their way to creating a new architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright and his employer of the time, Louis Sullivan, agreed that Burnham’s choice had set American architecture back by fifty years.
At the time of that fair, iron had been used in commercial buildings. There was wrought iron and cast iron. There was Bessemer steel. But it was not fire proof and so its use would not prevent another Great Fire. Cement had been in use since the days of the Romans; but it too had its weaknesses. It occurred to another Chicago architect, William Lebaron Jenney, that if he could unite the two, the cement might make the steel fireproof. And so he invented ferrocement, or reinforced concrete. An engineer turned architect, he erected the first building with reinforced concrete, the Leitier II Building, 1895, on Congress Parkway and State Street. For years it was the Sears store: today it is a university.
Reinforced concrete united the best qualities of both materials and mitigated their weaknesses. The steel frame of a ten-story building could be erected in ten days, compared to the two years it took to erect the Allegheny County Court House. A steel frame building had one-third the weight of a stone building of comparable size. But most importantly, the engineering possibilities of reinforced concrete meant that buildings no longer had to be boxes.
Following the fair, and recognizing Frank Lloyd Wright’s budding natural talents, Daniel Burnham offered him a complete four-year education at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Without hesitation, Wright declined: it was his intention to create an American architecture. Reinforced concrete had now made that possible.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s career is divided into an apprenticeship and development period, and three twenty-year periods of creativity, each capped with a masterpiece. He apprenticed with Louis Sullivan. He worked with him on major Chicago buildings, among them the Auditorium Theatre and the Charnley House. In addition, Sullivan would direct his clients who wanted residential work to Wright, saying that he, Sullivan, would keep an eye on him. But Sullivan was interested only in the commercial projects. It wasn’t until clients began to come to the office requesting the services of Wright, that Sullivan realized the situation had gone beyond his intentions.
During this time Wright lived in suburban Oak Park and had designed and built a house for himself and twenty-seven other houses there in which he brought to full realization the Prairie style. All of those houses can be seen there today. In 1909 he completed Unity Temple, in Oak Park, and The Robie House, now absorbed onto the campus of The University of Chicago. That was his development period. In 1919 Wright capped his early years with The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. In the 1922 earthquake, it was the only building left standing in that city. That building established his international reputation.
In 1935, at the age of 68, Wright completed Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, a house cantilevered off a rock out over a waterfall. Almost all architectural authorities consider this the greatest building erected in the twentieth century. Then, when most men would have retired, Wright entered into his last and most creative twenty-year period. He worked non-stop during these years designing, building, and teaching. In 1959, at the age of 90, he died just before the completion of The Guggenheim Museum in New York City, his final great masterpiece: it appears to rise in defiance of gravity.
Almost 60 of his buildings are listed as National Historic Landmarks. They are authentic historic architecture, innovative in both their techniques and their designs. The American Institute of Architects has identified seventeen of his buildings which it insists must be considered American Treasures.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s achievement lies in his reconceptualizing a building. A home was not a box to be divided into smaller boxes but a place of security, privacy, comfort, and beauty. He first ascertained who would live in the house and what their needs were. He then looked at the building site. He reserved the best of the site as the view from the house.
Where possible, he eliminated post and beam construction, walls, windows, and doors. There were no basements, the houses did not sit up on cement pedestals; they were built on a platform that sat on the ground. Wright viewed man as a creature of the earth and he wanted man not to lose his sense of contact with the nurturing earth. The houses are never at the top of the hill, but below the crest and embraced by the land. They employed natural materials, wood and stone.
The interior space was open and embracing at the same time. There were no blank walls on which to hang pictures or other ornamentation, it was not a space that could be decorated and redecorated: the house was organic; every aspect of it flowed from its concept. Every detail was taken into consideration, carpets, furniture, china, heating and lighting.
In his commercial buildings form followed function. The structure was placed so that those inside had light and air: the building did not cast its shadow on the neighbors and rob them of their share of the light and air. In both his residential and commercial buildings he insisted that the building must stand as an artwork: his buildings are not merely pictorial; they have a sculptural integrity.
Frank Lloyd Wright grew up on his grandfather’s farm near Spring Green, Wisconsin. It became his home, Taliesin. His grandfather had emigrated from Wales. Wright understood first hand the possibilities of the idea of America. He loved this country dearly and felt that it would only be at its best when it would realize its democratic ideals. The American experience was always one of the first considerations of his work. He created a truly American architecture and made modern architecture truly modern.
His influence in the world of architecture has been tremendous: no other American artist in any discipline has ever achieved his stature in the eyes of the world. In March of this year the Pritzger Prize for Architecture, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, was awarded to the British architect, Richard Rodgers. In his statement to the press he included this comment: “Frank Lloyd Wright is my god.” Fifty years after his death, Frank Lloyd Wright continues to strongly influence the modern creative world.
Postscript: There are seven examples of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania PBS video on the designing and making of Fallingwater is available at The Pike County Public Library. The house is open to view, as is the neighboring house, Wright’s Kentuck Knob.
Published in The Pike County Dispatch
Monday, November 5, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Richard Morris Hunt, Architect of Grey Towers
Richard Morris Hunt, Architect of Grey Towers
An Architectural Appreciation
Third Article
Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. In the mid 19th Century the Ecole had the highest esteem of any school in the West teaching the arts. In architecture it offered a rigorous eight-year course in the techniques and aesthetics of the classic Greek and Roman ideal as filtered through the Italian Renaissance. Not only was the course work rigid, but the aesthetics it taught were rigid as well. But there were many artists and architects who felt that it taught students to merely make copies of copies of copies. By the end of the nineteenth century it had fallen out of favor and was considered passé.
Hunt was born in Vermont to a wealthy and socially prominent family. His father, a U.S. Congressman, died when Hunt was six. His mother moved the family to Europe where he developed a love for antique Normandy architecture, a local variation of the Romanesque. That was the style he brought with him when he returned to America. With only one exception he never worked in the Beaux Arts style.
The Normandy style is characterized by large asymmetrical buildings in stone with towers and turrets. Grey Towers, in Milford, built for the James Pinchot family, (in 1886, the same year as The Allegheny County Court House), was an example of a summer country retreat on a domestic scale. A similar building, but on a very grand scale, is his Biltmore Estate in Ashville, N.C.
In essence, Hunt was a society architect, designing homes for the well to do. That is understandable: in those days that was where the money was. Inspired by the work done by Hunt and H.H. Richardson, that generation saw the monumental buildings erected by America’s robber barons to their self glorification. All of those buildings had the requirement that the buildings reflect European models; the most favored being the Beaux arts classic revival and the Gothic. The Woolworth Building in New York City is a Gothic cathedral of commerce. The Pennsylvania State Capitol Building is a masterpiece of Beaux Arts Classic Revival, although that architect never studied there.
Hunt is acknowledged as a good architect. But his work never realized a personal idiom, a signature quality. He is respected because he introduced an aesthetic beyond the prevailing style. By so doing he made it acceptable for others to explore beyond the boundaries of what was the accepted norm. He often worked in partnership with Frederick Olmstead who championed “naturalistic” architecture. We remember Hunt’s name because he was located in the cultural center of 19th Century America, the northeast corridor, Boston to Washington. He was active in arts circles: he opened the first American school for architecture and co-founded The American Institute of Architects.
Before leaving France for the United States, Hunt worked on the extension of the Louvre Museum. In Boston he designed the Fogg Art Museum. He designed the base for the Statue of Liberty and the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unfortunately, as a man of his time, many of the residential buildings he designed have been razed.
Grey Towers is a National Historic Landmark. It is a fine building and it affords a good example of the work of a man who was important in the history of American architecture. It is built of native stone and it has one interesting detail in regard to its setting, Milford. The cut blocks of local bluestone at the corners and around the windows and doors are staggered quoins, alternating short and long sides of the blocks. They do not appear on the original drawings and might have been added by James Pinchot in reference to his French ancestry. The Pinchot buildings subsequent to Grey Towers, Forest Hall and Normandy Cottage, have that same detail.
That detail can also be found on the Penn DOT facility on Bennett Avenue, 1933. If that references the Pinchot buildings, it acknowledges the contribution of the Pinchot family to the history of the State. In architecture, those detail references are called Quotations and it is a common device of Post Modern Architecture. The Pennstar bank on West Harford street references a 19th Century gable end domestic structure: it is a Post Modern building with a pronounced quotation. The beautiful wisteria planted around the building can be understood as quoting the Pinchot’s Finger Bowl.
Hunt’s contribution aside, the Landmark designation is primarily for the work of Gifford Pinchot. It was there that his father, James, encouraged him to give his thoughts to forestry. When that home was built, the surrounding hills had been clear-cut of their chestnut trees. Photographs in the Pike County Historic Society show the house as the area looked at that time.
The Pinchot family’s interest in forestry can be understood as one of the forces for change in America’s relationship to its natural resources and to its environment. It would not be a stretch of the imagination to say that the Pinchot’s reverence for the American landscape contributed to that aspect of the development of an American architecture as well. That, and the earlier American architects, Richard Morris Hunt, H.H.Richardson, Frederick Law Olmstead, and Louis Sullivan, all set the stage for the birth of an American architecture. With the invention of ferrocement in 1895, the year of Hunt’s death, the moment had arrived.
Published in The Pike County Dispatch
An Architectural Appreciation
Third Article
Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. In the mid 19th Century the Ecole had the highest esteem of any school in the West teaching the arts. In architecture it offered a rigorous eight-year course in the techniques and aesthetics of the classic Greek and Roman ideal as filtered through the Italian Renaissance. Not only was the course work rigid, but the aesthetics it taught were rigid as well. But there were many artists and architects who felt that it taught students to merely make copies of copies of copies. By the end of the nineteenth century it had fallen out of favor and was considered passé.
Hunt was born in Vermont to a wealthy and socially prominent family. His father, a U.S. Congressman, died when Hunt was six. His mother moved the family to Europe where he developed a love for antique Normandy architecture, a local variation of the Romanesque. That was the style he brought with him when he returned to America. With only one exception he never worked in the Beaux Arts style.
The Normandy style is characterized by large asymmetrical buildings in stone with towers and turrets. Grey Towers, in Milford, built for the James Pinchot family, (in 1886, the same year as The Allegheny County Court House), was an example of a summer country retreat on a domestic scale. A similar building, but on a very grand scale, is his Biltmore Estate in Ashville, N.C.
In essence, Hunt was a society architect, designing homes for the well to do. That is understandable: in those days that was where the money was. Inspired by the work done by Hunt and H.H. Richardson, that generation saw the monumental buildings erected by America’s robber barons to their self glorification. All of those buildings had the requirement that the buildings reflect European models; the most favored being the Beaux arts classic revival and the Gothic. The Woolworth Building in New York City is a Gothic cathedral of commerce. The Pennsylvania State Capitol Building is a masterpiece of Beaux Arts Classic Revival, although that architect never studied there.
Hunt is acknowledged as a good architect. But his work never realized a personal idiom, a signature quality. He is respected because he introduced an aesthetic beyond the prevailing style. By so doing he made it acceptable for others to explore beyond the boundaries of what was the accepted norm. He often worked in partnership with Frederick Olmstead who championed “naturalistic” architecture. We remember Hunt’s name because he was located in the cultural center of 19th Century America, the northeast corridor, Boston to Washington. He was active in arts circles: he opened the first American school for architecture and co-founded The American Institute of Architects.
Before leaving France for the United States, Hunt worked on the extension of the Louvre Museum. In Boston he designed the Fogg Art Museum. He designed the base for the Statue of Liberty and the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unfortunately, as a man of his time, many of the residential buildings he designed have been razed.
Grey Towers is a National Historic Landmark. It is a fine building and it affords a good example of the work of a man who was important in the history of American architecture. It is built of native stone and it has one interesting detail in regard to its setting, Milford. The cut blocks of local bluestone at the corners and around the windows and doors are staggered quoins, alternating short and long sides of the blocks. They do not appear on the original drawings and might have been added by James Pinchot in reference to his French ancestry. The Pinchot buildings subsequent to Grey Towers, Forest Hall and Normandy Cottage, have that same detail.
That detail can also be found on the Penn DOT facility on Bennett Avenue, 1933. If that references the Pinchot buildings, it acknowledges the contribution of the Pinchot family to the history of the State. In architecture, those detail references are called Quotations and it is a common device of Post Modern Architecture. The Pennstar bank on West Harford street references a 19th Century gable end domestic structure: it is a Post Modern building with a pronounced quotation. The beautiful wisteria planted around the building can be understood as quoting the Pinchot’s Finger Bowl.
Hunt’s contribution aside, the Landmark designation is primarily for the work of Gifford Pinchot. It was there that his father, James, encouraged him to give his thoughts to forestry. When that home was built, the surrounding hills had been clear-cut of their chestnut trees. Photographs in the Pike County Historic Society show the house as the area looked at that time.
The Pinchot family’s interest in forestry can be understood as one of the forces for change in America’s relationship to its natural resources and to its environment. It would not be a stretch of the imagination to say that the Pinchot’s reverence for the American landscape contributed to that aspect of the development of an American architecture as well. That, and the earlier American architects, Richard Morris Hunt, H.H.Richardson, Frederick Law Olmstead, and Louis Sullivan, all set the stage for the birth of an American architecture. With the invention of ferrocement in 1895, the year of Hunt’s death, the moment had arrived.
Published in The Pike County Dispatch
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
H.H. Richardson and The Allegheny County Courthouse
H.H. Richardson and the Allegheny County Court House.
An Architectural Appreciation
Article Two
The Allegheny County Courthouse is one of five Historic Landmarks in Pittsburgh. The building occupies an entire city block, rising majestically from the property line at the sidewalk. It is the seat of Justice and it projects an august presence to the people. It was designed by the American architect, Henry Hobson Richardson, and was completed just after his death in 1886. The style is Romanesque, or more specifically, Richardson Romanesque. Richardson is the only world-class architect whose name has been given to a building style.
He was the second American to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. After completing his studies he spent time in the south of France where he observed the native Romanesque style. Romanesque was the first architectural style in western civilization that did not follow the dictates of the classical order. In the south of France it was in essence a folk style which achieved a cultural identity. Its outstanding characteristics are Roman arches, barrel vaults, and flat walls. An earlier work of Richardson’s Romanesque reference is Trinity Church on Copley Square in Boston, his first major success.
A study of the two buildings, one at the beginning of his career and one at the end, will illustrate how the man used the historic reference to create a personal idiom. In the church, artistic decoration, as dictated by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, was created by John La Farge in murals and stained glass windows. The exterior uses stones of different colors. In the courthouse the fully mature and confident Richardson has used only stone of one color to create surface textures and interest. He has allowed the flatness of the interior to be seen as having interest in and of its own. There is no need in Richardson Romanesque for applied ornamentation. Richardson Romanesque has its own integrity: it is organic.
Incidentally, when in Boston, do not fail to visit Richardson’s Sever Hall in Harvard Yard, a masterpiece in brick.
The Courthouse is six and seven stories high. Above the main block of the building there is a very high tower in the front and two smaller towers in the back. Square towers are at each corner. The construction is load-bearing walls. With load bearing walls, for every floor above the first an additional thickness of approximately six inches must be added to the first floor, thinning toward the top floors. This creates very thick walls on the ground floor and requires massive footings for the supporting piers. (In Boston, the footings for the piers for Trinity Church can be seen in that basement: those supports have a foot print the size of a Milford Mansion: it is a tall church.) One of the great challenges of architecture is to take this massive pile of stone and give it a sense of grace and lightness. Richardson succeeded.
The Courthouse building material is champagne colored granite. On the outside the stones are rough-hewn and on the inside the surfaces are flat but not polished. The floors are unpolished black marble. In early high-rise buildings one of the prime considerations was the need to supply light and air to the workers inside. Here Richardson created an open central courtyard that meets that need and gives him the opportunity to make a masterful display of architectural genius. The stones are varied in size, courses of large blocks alternate with courses of smaller blocks. The top floor is all small blocks, giving the building a sense of gracefulness. This is completed with a steeply pitched gable roof.
The doorways from the courtyard into the building are Romanesque arches, wide arches defined by several courses of stone and springing from low columns. The windows on each floor but the last are arched. On the top floor they are trabeate, with lintels. That, in effect, draws a straight line across the top of the building and indicates that the wall has come to an end. Because of the interplay between scale and proportion, this defined space is so beautiful one can sit in this courtyard and leisurely study this building for hours.
The highlight of the building’s interior is the grand staircase. It begins with a half flight of stairs framed by a Romanesque arch, one-third the width of the large area where it starts. It appears to have a vaulted ceiling, but it does not: it is a series of three arches, one at the bottom, one in the middle, and one at the top of those stairs. On the first landing, arches frame accesses to open hallways at both sides. The next level of stairs is also framed with an arch. At the top a landing directs the visitor to stairs at the left and to the right. There is a view from the windows down into the courtyard. The filtered sunlight is magnificent. The ascent continues through a series of arches, stairs, and landings for three floors. At the top landing one turns for the last half flight and sees a majestic arched doorway framing mahogany doors at the top. There can be no doubt that this is where Justice resides.
This stairway is a veritable symphony of arches, small, medium, and large. Climbing to the top I was reminded of T.S. Eliot’s remark that when poetry becomes music it ceases to be poetry. I will not say that this architecture is music but it does ring with a sustained note of purity.
Filling the city block behind the courthouse is the Allegheny County Jail built of the same stone. It was inspired by the series of etching done by Piranesi, “Imaginary Prisons.” High above the street the two building are connected by a pedestrian bridge. Those just sentenced were escorted over the street to the jail. The bridge is a copy of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. The pun was intended by the architect. Great art works are human; they have their sense of humor.
Richardson grew up in New Orleans. He spent his adult years and did most of his work in the Boston area. But his self acknowledged masterpiece, The Allegheny County Courthouse, is in Pennsylvania. A gourmand, a man with a taste for the good life, Richardson died at the age of forty-six.
Post script: The example of Richardson Romanesque architecture nearest to Milford is The Thrall Library in Downtown Middletown. The original Erie Railroad Station was Richardson Romanesque. Richardson designed many railroad stations. He did not design this one; it merely indicates his influence. When the new library was built, the station was beautifully restored and the new building adjoining it was perfectly married to it in the modern idiom through a very careful match of design and materials. The station is now a reading room. When you step into that room you are immediately captivated by its many charming details. When you turn back to the library you will be awed by the magnificent golden oak, Richardson Romanesque arch way that once lead to the waiting trains. Through his work and his influence, H.H. Richardson continues to make it possible for us to understand why great architecture is our highest art form.
Published in the Pike County Dispatch
An Architectural Appreciation
Article Two
The Allegheny County Courthouse is one of five Historic Landmarks in Pittsburgh. The building occupies an entire city block, rising majestically from the property line at the sidewalk. It is the seat of Justice and it projects an august presence to the people. It was designed by the American architect, Henry Hobson Richardson, and was completed just after his death in 1886. The style is Romanesque, or more specifically, Richardson Romanesque. Richardson is the only world-class architect whose name has been given to a building style.
He was the second American to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. After completing his studies he spent time in the south of France where he observed the native Romanesque style. Romanesque was the first architectural style in western civilization that did not follow the dictates of the classical order. In the south of France it was in essence a folk style which achieved a cultural identity. Its outstanding characteristics are Roman arches, barrel vaults, and flat walls. An earlier work of Richardson’s Romanesque reference is Trinity Church on Copley Square in Boston, his first major success.
A study of the two buildings, one at the beginning of his career and one at the end, will illustrate how the man used the historic reference to create a personal idiom. In the church, artistic decoration, as dictated by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, was created by John La Farge in murals and stained glass windows. The exterior uses stones of different colors. In the courthouse the fully mature and confident Richardson has used only stone of one color to create surface textures and interest. He has allowed the flatness of the interior to be seen as having interest in and of its own. There is no need in Richardson Romanesque for applied ornamentation. Richardson Romanesque has its own integrity: it is organic.
Incidentally, when in Boston, do not fail to visit Richardson’s Sever Hall in Harvard Yard, a masterpiece in brick.
The Courthouse is six and seven stories high. Above the main block of the building there is a very high tower in the front and two smaller towers in the back. Square towers are at each corner. The construction is load-bearing walls. With load bearing walls, for every floor above the first an additional thickness of approximately six inches must be added to the first floor, thinning toward the top floors. This creates very thick walls on the ground floor and requires massive footings for the supporting piers. (In Boston, the footings for the piers for Trinity Church can be seen in that basement: those supports have a foot print the size of a Milford Mansion: it is a tall church.) One of the great challenges of architecture is to take this massive pile of stone and give it a sense of grace and lightness. Richardson succeeded.
The Courthouse building material is champagne colored granite. On the outside the stones are rough-hewn and on the inside the surfaces are flat but not polished. The floors are unpolished black marble. In early high-rise buildings one of the prime considerations was the need to supply light and air to the workers inside. Here Richardson created an open central courtyard that meets that need and gives him the opportunity to make a masterful display of architectural genius. The stones are varied in size, courses of large blocks alternate with courses of smaller blocks. The top floor is all small blocks, giving the building a sense of gracefulness. This is completed with a steeply pitched gable roof.
The doorways from the courtyard into the building are Romanesque arches, wide arches defined by several courses of stone and springing from low columns. The windows on each floor but the last are arched. On the top floor they are trabeate, with lintels. That, in effect, draws a straight line across the top of the building and indicates that the wall has come to an end. Because of the interplay between scale and proportion, this defined space is so beautiful one can sit in this courtyard and leisurely study this building for hours.
The highlight of the building’s interior is the grand staircase. It begins with a half flight of stairs framed by a Romanesque arch, one-third the width of the large area where it starts. It appears to have a vaulted ceiling, but it does not: it is a series of three arches, one at the bottom, one in the middle, and one at the top of those stairs. On the first landing, arches frame accesses to open hallways at both sides. The next level of stairs is also framed with an arch. At the top a landing directs the visitor to stairs at the left and to the right. There is a view from the windows down into the courtyard. The filtered sunlight is magnificent. The ascent continues through a series of arches, stairs, and landings for three floors. At the top landing one turns for the last half flight and sees a majestic arched doorway framing mahogany doors at the top. There can be no doubt that this is where Justice resides.
This stairway is a veritable symphony of arches, small, medium, and large. Climbing to the top I was reminded of T.S. Eliot’s remark that when poetry becomes music it ceases to be poetry. I will not say that this architecture is music but it does ring with a sustained note of purity.
Filling the city block behind the courthouse is the Allegheny County Jail built of the same stone. It was inspired by the series of etching done by Piranesi, “Imaginary Prisons.” High above the street the two building are connected by a pedestrian bridge. Those just sentenced were escorted over the street to the jail. The bridge is a copy of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. The pun was intended by the architect. Great art works are human; they have their sense of humor.
Richardson grew up in New Orleans. He spent his adult years and did most of his work in the Boston area. But his self acknowledged masterpiece, The Allegheny County Courthouse, is in Pennsylvania. A gourmand, a man with a taste for the good life, Richardson died at the age of forty-six.
Post script: The example of Richardson Romanesque architecture nearest to Milford is The Thrall Library in Downtown Middletown. The original Erie Railroad Station was Richardson Romanesque. Richardson designed many railroad stations. He did not design this one; it merely indicates his influence. When the new library was built, the station was beautifully restored and the new building adjoining it was perfectly married to it in the modern idiom through a very careful match of design and materials. The station is now a reading room. When you step into that room you are immediately captivated by its many charming details. When you turn back to the library you will be awed by the magnificent golden oak, Richardson Romanesque arch way that once lead to the waiting trains. Through his work and his influence, H.H. Richardson continues to make it possible for us to understand why great architecture is our highest art form.
Published in the Pike County Dispatch
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Pennsylvania State Capitol Building Designated a National Landmark
Historic Architecture and Modern Architecture.
In the Spring of 2007 the Building Task Force of our Pike County Library unveiled the design they had selected for the new building to be built on land purchased from money left to the library in her will by a local resident, with the stipulation that the building be located inside the Borough of Milford, Pennsylvania. There was an immediate hue and cry: it was widely felt that the library should uphold the architectural style of the community and that the library should erect an “old “ building. I wrote a letter to the editor on this subject and following that the editor asked me to write six articles about Pennsylvania architecture. I decided that I would publish the articles in such order that they would illustrate the history of the rise of modern architecture. The letter and the articles follow.
To the editor;
The responses to the publication of the proposed design for the new Pike County Public Library indicate that the public does not always understand architecture and in specific historic architecture.
To be considered historic architecture an entity must be innovative in its design and structure. A building “…in the style of…” in which there is reference to an historical period is not historic architecture per se. A building in the style of the Victorian period is Period architecture, as is Georgian and Colonial. If a building was the setting for an historic event it is an historic site. By definition there is no historic architecture in Milford. There is in fact only one example of historic architecture in Pike County and that is the Roebling Bridge in Lackawaxen, a precursor to Mr. Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge.
Some writers of Letters to the Editor have suggested that the new library building is not “historic” and that its façade should be, among other styles, colonial, in keeping with the colonial character of Milford village. American colonial architecture is Jacobean (English). There is no example of colonial architecture in Milford. There are no buildings that date from that period (1620-1750). There are one or two buildings in the Federal, or Georgian (also an English), style that might date from that period (1750-1825). There are approximately eight buildings in one or the other of the Victorian styles (1825-1900), most of them in the French or Italian manner, but Milford is not a Victorian village: the majority of buildings in Milford were built after 1900, and most of those after 1950; they are contemporary or adaptations of earlier styles. Milford is best described as a community with an eclectic architectural heritage.
In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed Harvard University in a lecture he titled The American Scholar. (This is available at the Pike County Library in The Collected Works of RWE.) In this lecture Emerson called on American scholars and artists to forego European models and to create a new American idiom in their writings and artworks. Sixty years later, inspired by that address, a young Chicago architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, turned away from the classic revival (European) styles and altered the course of world architecture by creating an American architecture, an architecture that referenced the land and the energy of its people. His work greatly influenced early twentieth century Europeans; it was seminal in the creation of Germany’s Bauhaus which lead to the International Style and Modern Architecture. American architects H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan influenced Wright and he in turn greatly influenced Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and I. M. Pei. Modern Architecture is American Architecture. It is completely appropriate that the new Pike County Library will be in the Modern (American) style.
Architecture is something more than post and beam construction with a historically reminiscent façade, it is an intellectual discipline in which three components, scale, geometry, and proportion, are employed to define a space in harmony with a specific environment. The first consideration for any new structure should be the building’s use, its function. The site must be taken into consideration. On seeing the new library design, I was pleasantly stunned to see that the site has been taken into consideration, that the structure will have a beautiful interplay between volumes and voids, and that reference will be made to local materials and textures. I love Emerson and I love Frank Lloyd Wright: it is so thrilling to see their works recognized on the local level. My compliments to the board for their “Scholarly” and “Wright” decision: it honors the American experience.
With appreciation…
Pennsylvania State Capitol Building Designated A National Historic Landmark.
An Architectural Appreciation
At the dedication ceremonies for the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt stated that the building was “the handsomest building in the United States.” Very likely what was true then is still true today. Recently it has been restored for its centennial: it defines ‘sumptuous’. So unique is this building that it has just received National Historic Landmark Status. Only five other United States capitol buildings have received that designation. Landmark status is distinct from Historic status; it denotes a building with irreplaceable national importance. Only three per cent of the buildings on the National Registry of Historic Places have Landmark status.
The building is faced with Vermont granite. The decorative style is Beaux Arts Classic Revival with an emphasis on the Italian. The dome is copied from the design by Michelangelo for St. Peter’s Basilica in The Vatican.
Upon entering the Rotunda one faces a white Carrara marble staircase inspired by that in the Paris Opera. The open dome soars 272 feet overhead; the 48 porthole windows fill the interior space with light. The walls are white marble with gold leaf trim. But the floor is terracotta tile with 377 mosaic insets in the Arts and Crafts style depicting the history of the state. It is the juxtaposition of these disparate elements that establishes the character of the building and explains its Landmark status: the style of the building is the Arts and Crafts philosophy but on a very grand scale. The architect, Joseph Huston, wanted to create a building that would reflect the achievements of the people of the state as interpreted by Pennsylvania artists. Despite its familiar silhouette, there is no other building like this one.
The tile floor was designed and made by Henry Mercer of the Moravian Tile Works. Mr. Mercer is also known for his collection of early American tools displayed in his home museum in Doylestown. Mercer contributed work to three National Landmark buildings, his museum included.
The building is noted for its murals. Edwin Austin Abbey was commissioned to do those for the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court Chambers, and the Rotunda. But after completing those for the Rotunda and two for the House Chamber, he died. Abbey was a noted painter in the pre-Raphaelite style.
Huston wanted to include a woman in the building’s works and commissioned Violet Oakley to do sixteen murals in the Governor’s office. Prior to that no woman had ever been given such a large commission. Violet Oakley was only 28 and was just establishing her reputation. Upon completion, her work, which took five years, met with such approval that, following Abbey’s death, she was given the balance of his commission. It took her another nineteen years to complete this work. In all she created 43 murals for the building.
Violet Oakley also worked in the pre-Raphaelite style. She was trained at the Philadelphia Academy of Arts and studied privately with the illustrator Howard Pyle. It was he who encouraged her to work on a larger format and to consider becoming a muralist.
William Brantley Van Ingen painted the murals in the House Hallway leading off the Rotunda. But his greater contribution to the building is the twenty-four stained glass windows in the Senate and House chambers. Trained as a muralist Van Ingen became fascinated with stained glass and studied with John La Farge, the man who revived stained glass as an art form in the nineteenth century. Van Ingen was employed by Tiffany Studios. His work in this building reflects the excellence of the work of both those artists.
On each side of the stairway leading into the building is a sculptural grouping with a total of 27 nude figures, each eight feet high. George Gray Barnard, a noted sculptor of his day, was the artist. He was trained at the Chicago Art Institute and worked in the nineteenth century academic style. In addition to his work he was an avid collector of Medieval artworks and amassed a collection so large he had to erect a building on Manhattan’s upper West side to house it. After his death it was purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and it became the core of the Cloisters, the medieval art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Each of the chambers in the building is in classic revival style but with a different emphasis. The Senate Chamber is French. The walls are clad in deep green Connamara Marble. Pilasters and decorative motifs throughout the room are gold leafed.
The House Chamber is decorated in the Italian Renaissance style. The marble here was quarried in the Pyrenees. This is the only building in the Western hemisphere to use that material.
Especially noteworthy are the chandeliers in the House and the Senate. They have a different design in each chamber but in both they are gilt metal armatures with a profusion of both frosted and cut glass globes. Those in the House weigh four and one- half tons each, and those in the Senate two tons each. Suspended from the ceilings, and despite their great weight, they seem to hover in the air. Their massiveness emphasizes the scale of these chambers.
The Supreme Court, at the center back of the building, is English. It has a lower ceiling and a more intimate feel than the other two rooms. In addition there are caucus rooms for the House and Senate and the Governor’s office and reception room.
Classic Revival design and decoration was a common motif in American public buildings of that time. What sets this building above the others is the excellence of the designs and the materials, and the achievements of these artists. But whatever a building’s style and design nothing better gives a building its sense of character than the architect’s love and enthusiasm for his art form. This building is exuberant.
Joseph Huston was the son of a Pennsylvania carpenter. He left school at the age of thirteen and apprenticed to a sign painter. Later, working for an architectural firm, he realized that he had a love of architecture. He studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics and applied for and was accepted for study at Princeton. Later he toured Europe and was very taken with Italian Renaissance art and architecture. After opening his own firm in Philadelphia he designed many private residences.
When the competition for the Capitol project was announced the architectural fraternity boycotted it. (That is another story.) Huston was denounced when he accepted the commission. While the work was in progress he was criticized on a regular basis. When the building was completed, he was charged with having taken bribes from the building contractors. He was tried and found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison. After serving six months he was released and he resumed his architectural practice but never again with commissions or success to equal this. His one masterpiece is the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building, a National Landmark.
Published in The Pike County Dispatch, April 12, 2007.
In the Spring of 2007 the Building Task Force of our Pike County Library unveiled the design they had selected for the new building to be built on land purchased from money left to the library in her will by a local resident, with the stipulation that the building be located inside the Borough of Milford, Pennsylvania. There was an immediate hue and cry: it was widely felt that the library should uphold the architectural style of the community and that the library should erect an “old “ building. I wrote a letter to the editor on this subject and following that the editor asked me to write six articles about Pennsylvania architecture. I decided that I would publish the articles in such order that they would illustrate the history of the rise of modern architecture. The letter and the articles follow.
To the editor;
The responses to the publication of the proposed design for the new Pike County Public Library indicate that the public does not always understand architecture and in specific historic architecture.
To be considered historic architecture an entity must be innovative in its design and structure. A building “…in the style of…” in which there is reference to an historical period is not historic architecture per se. A building in the style of the Victorian period is Period architecture, as is Georgian and Colonial. If a building was the setting for an historic event it is an historic site. By definition there is no historic architecture in Milford. There is in fact only one example of historic architecture in Pike County and that is the Roebling Bridge in Lackawaxen, a precursor to Mr. Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge.
Some writers of Letters to the Editor have suggested that the new library building is not “historic” and that its façade should be, among other styles, colonial, in keeping with the colonial character of Milford village. American colonial architecture is Jacobean (English). There is no example of colonial architecture in Milford. There are no buildings that date from that period (1620-1750). There are one or two buildings in the Federal, or Georgian (also an English), style that might date from that period (1750-1825). There are approximately eight buildings in one or the other of the Victorian styles (1825-1900), most of them in the French or Italian manner, but Milford is not a Victorian village: the majority of buildings in Milford were built after 1900, and most of those after 1950; they are contemporary or adaptations of earlier styles. Milford is best described as a community with an eclectic architectural heritage.
In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed Harvard University in a lecture he titled The American Scholar. (This is available at the Pike County Library in The Collected Works of RWE.) In this lecture Emerson called on American scholars and artists to forego European models and to create a new American idiom in their writings and artworks. Sixty years later, inspired by that address, a young Chicago architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, turned away from the classic revival (European) styles and altered the course of world architecture by creating an American architecture, an architecture that referenced the land and the energy of its people. His work greatly influenced early twentieth century Europeans; it was seminal in the creation of Germany’s Bauhaus which lead to the International Style and Modern Architecture. American architects H.H. Richardson and Louis Sullivan influenced Wright and he in turn greatly influenced Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and I. M. Pei. Modern Architecture is American Architecture. It is completely appropriate that the new Pike County Library will be in the Modern (American) style.
Architecture is something more than post and beam construction with a historically reminiscent façade, it is an intellectual discipline in which three components, scale, geometry, and proportion, are employed to define a space in harmony with a specific environment. The first consideration for any new structure should be the building’s use, its function. The site must be taken into consideration. On seeing the new library design, I was pleasantly stunned to see that the site has been taken into consideration, that the structure will have a beautiful interplay between volumes and voids, and that reference will be made to local materials and textures. I love Emerson and I love Frank Lloyd Wright: it is so thrilling to see their works recognized on the local level. My compliments to the board for their “Scholarly” and “Wright” decision: it honors the American experience.
With appreciation…
Pennsylvania State Capitol Building Designated A National Historic Landmark.
An Architectural Appreciation
At the dedication ceremonies for the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt stated that the building was “the handsomest building in the United States.” Very likely what was true then is still true today. Recently it has been restored for its centennial: it defines ‘sumptuous’. So unique is this building that it has just received National Historic Landmark Status. Only five other United States capitol buildings have received that designation. Landmark status is distinct from Historic status; it denotes a building with irreplaceable national importance. Only three per cent of the buildings on the National Registry of Historic Places have Landmark status.
The building is faced with Vermont granite. The decorative style is Beaux Arts Classic Revival with an emphasis on the Italian. The dome is copied from the design by Michelangelo for St. Peter’s Basilica in The Vatican.
Upon entering the Rotunda one faces a white Carrara marble staircase inspired by that in the Paris Opera. The open dome soars 272 feet overhead; the 48 porthole windows fill the interior space with light. The walls are white marble with gold leaf trim. But the floor is terracotta tile with 377 mosaic insets in the Arts and Crafts style depicting the history of the state. It is the juxtaposition of these disparate elements that establishes the character of the building and explains its Landmark status: the style of the building is the Arts and Crafts philosophy but on a very grand scale. The architect, Joseph Huston, wanted to create a building that would reflect the achievements of the people of the state as interpreted by Pennsylvania artists. Despite its familiar silhouette, there is no other building like this one.
The tile floor was designed and made by Henry Mercer of the Moravian Tile Works. Mr. Mercer is also known for his collection of early American tools displayed in his home museum in Doylestown. Mercer contributed work to three National Landmark buildings, his museum included.
The building is noted for its murals. Edwin Austin Abbey was commissioned to do those for the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court Chambers, and the Rotunda. But after completing those for the Rotunda and two for the House Chamber, he died. Abbey was a noted painter in the pre-Raphaelite style.
Huston wanted to include a woman in the building’s works and commissioned Violet Oakley to do sixteen murals in the Governor’s office. Prior to that no woman had ever been given such a large commission. Violet Oakley was only 28 and was just establishing her reputation. Upon completion, her work, which took five years, met with such approval that, following Abbey’s death, she was given the balance of his commission. It took her another nineteen years to complete this work. In all she created 43 murals for the building.
Violet Oakley also worked in the pre-Raphaelite style. She was trained at the Philadelphia Academy of Arts and studied privately with the illustrator Howard Pyle. It was he who encouraged her to work on a larger format and to consider becoming a muralist.
William Brantley Van Ingen painted the murals in the House Hallway leading off the Rotunda. But his greater contribution to the building is the twenty-four stained glass windows in the Senate and House chambers. Trained as a muralist Van Ingen became fascinated with stained glass and studied with John La Farge, the man who revived stained glass as an art form in the nineteenth century. Van Ingen was employed by Tiffany Studios. His work in this building reflects the excellence of the work of both those artists.
On each side of the stairway leading into the building is a sculptural grouping with a total of 27 nude figures, each eight feet high. George Gray Barnard, a noted sculptor of his day, was the artist. He was trained at the Chicago Art Institute and worked in the nineteenth century academic style. In addition to his work he was an avid collector of Medieval artworks and amassed a collection so large he had to erect a building on Manhattan’s upper West side to house it. After his death it was purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and it became the core of the Cloisters, the medieval art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Each of the chambers in the building is in classic revival style but with a different emphasis. The Senate Chamber is French. The walls are clad in deep green Connamara Marble. Pilasters and decorative motifs throughout the room are gold leafed.
The House Chamber is decorated in the Italian Renaissance style. The marble here was quarried in the Pyrenees. This is the only building in the Western hemisphere to use that material.
Especially noteworthy are the chandeliers in the House and the Senate. They have a different design in each chamber but in both they are gilt metal armatures with a profusion of both frosted and cut glass globes. Those in the House weigh four and one- half tons each, and those in the Senate two tons each. Suspended from the ceilings, and despite their great weight, they seem to hover in the air. Their massiveness emphasizes the scale of these chambers.
The Supreme Court, at the center back of the building, is English. It has a lower ceiling and a more intimate feel than the other two rooms. In addition there are caucus rooms for the House and Senate and the Governor’s office and reception room.
Classic Revival design and decoration was a common motif in American public buildings of that time. What sets this building above the others is the excellence of the designs and the materials, and the achievements of these artists. But whatever a building’s style and design nothing better gives a building its sense of character than the architect’s love and enthusiasm for his art form. This building is exuberant.
Joseph Huston was the son of a Pennsylvania carpenter. He left school at the age of thirteen and apprenticed to a sign painter. Later, working for an architectural firm, he realized that he had a love of architecture. He studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics and applied for and was accepted for study at Princeton. Later he toured Europe and was very taken with Italian Renaissance art and architecture. After opening his own firm in Philadelphia he designed many private residences.
When the competition for the Capitol project was announced the architectural fraternity boycotted it. (That is another story.) Huston was denounced when he accepted the commission. While the work was in progress he was criticized on a regular basis. When the building was completed, he was charged with having taken bribes from the building contractors. He was tried and found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison. After serving six months he was released and he resumed his architectural practice but never again with commissions or success to equal this. His one masterpiece is the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building, a National Landmark.
Published in The Pike County Dispatch, April 12, 2007.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
On Seeing
On Seeing.
Seeing is one of my ongoing interests: there is a difference between looking and seeing. There is perception and there is selective seeing: “No one is so blind as he who will not see”. When we see something, what exactly do we see? What do we allow ourselves to see and what do we not allow ourselves to see? Do we see what is there to be seen?
There are many things to be seen in an artwork. I will begin with the three plastic elements.
Color:
In our earliest school years we learn our letters, our numbers, and our colors: as children we learn three languages simultaneously. Each of those three languages has a unique vocabulary.
Our responses to the value of color might be as lost to us as is our sense of smell. This loss can be accounted for if we realize that painting has come to be considered an intellectual exercise. Too often we confront a painting and ask: What does it mean? A painting is a visual experience. We should experience the painting before we analyze it intellectually. If the artist or the observer needs to intellectualize the work, it has failed to do its job. The analysis of an artwork is an attempt to deepen our understanding of it. I would suggest that as observers of artworks, we need to allow the colors to speak to us
“What is your favorite color?” is one of the most common childhood games. The colors most often chosen are the primaries or green or violet of the secondaries. Rarely have I known anyone to choose orange. Of the six primary and secondary colors, orange seems the most purely chemical and the one with the least symbolic value. Yet I have seen many infants in strollers fixated on the color orange, in fact, their attention seems most arrested by that color. Therapists urge us to reclaim the lost child within: we might be well advised to start that process through getting reacquainted with the color orange.
When I studied set design one of the exercises we were given, to be done on our own time and for our own edification, was to tear pages out of magazines with colors on them that appealed to us. Once we had created an appreciable number of pages we were to arrange the pages according to color. The stack or stacks with the greatest number of pages would reveal to us our color preferences.
Black is an exception to color as a lost symbolic experience. At the Chicago Art Institute I was looking at a very large Ad Reinhardt painting, approximately twelve feet wide by twenty feet high. It was all black. A young couple and their two children walked in front of me across the painting as if before a painted drop on a vaudeville stage. Both the man and his wife were short and both were fairly bursting with the pride of their superior education and their economic attainments. Rather than apologize for blocking the view, they assumed, incorrectly, that they were the view. One of the children was an infant in a stroller; the other child was a girl about three and a half years old.
Suddenly the young girl walked to the center of the painting and bent her neck backwards as she looked up to the top of the work. Then, spinning around and putting her hands on her hips, she stamped her foot and addressed the room: “What is this doing here! This doesn’t belong here!” And raising her left arm and pointing off stage she exclaimed: “Take this away!”
The young father strutted across the full stage, taking a bow for his child’s performance, while his wife stood behind her stroller and, with her head to one side, beamed approvingly, not because the child had become an accomplished art critic, but because she had so completely ingested the young mother’s persona.
We have culturally conditioned responses, (like mother like daughter …for that reason I never trust the judgments of children), and personal responses (a preference for the color orange). That distinction should be made when we look at a painting. Do I see what I see or am I only seeing what others want me to see?
Among suburban housewives the choice of color in the decorating scheme is too often based on what is known as “the color for the season”, a color chosen by some unknown authority in the fashion world. For that reason decorated suburban spaces almost always lack the sense of the personal, they are anonymous spaces, but very much in style.
Most art appreciation courses direct the student to study the color key of a painting…complementary, analogous, split complementary. We are told to ascertain the chromaticity of the colors, the degree of gray or lack of gray.
We should also look at the colors in an artist’s complete body of work: are the colors the same over the years or do they vary and are they different according to his different subjects.
In Marsden Hartley’s early works he used the colors of the European modernists. Later, in the American southwest, he used the palette of the American Impressionists. It was not until his last paintings, made in Maine, that a personal color sense becomes evident in his works.
For most of his career Cézanne worked with a very limited palette; but he worked in a very limited geographical area. Are his colors local colors or have they been heightened to be more expressive? The same can be considered in Corot’s work.
Matisse is very related to Cézanne, yet I cannot think of one color or palette that dominates in his work overall.
Neither do I think of dominant colors in Picasso’s work. In fact, in my response to the first comment on this blog, I mention Picasso’s Guernica and that painting is made in black, white, and gray.
This, in turn, recalls Goya’s comment: “I can suggest all the colors in a black and white drawing.”
In painting after painting I see that Hans Hoffman used only the three primaries and the three secondary colors. They are pure pigments and there is rarely any intermixing.
In his screen prints, Andy Warhol made series of prints from the same screens but each series has a different color key, as if to refute the value of color and to imply that it has no symbolic meaning. It is in his use of color, in fact, that Warhol’s work can be understood as a dialogue about art. He is far more intelligent than he pretended to be.
For a retrospective at the Museum of Modern art, Louise Nevelson created a series of signature works, but in white, purposefully to be very distinct from her works in their signature black.
The colors in an artist’s palette might be unconsciously chosen but I am certain that they are not arbitrarily chosen. The artist uses those colors as a visual and symbolic language. Specific colors are something that an artist “feels”. They are a part of his metabolism. It is our job to sense what that is. We might also ascertain if an artist is merely “using” colors but without feeling. I sense that in the work of many contemporary photographers who seem to be attempting to make their works look “modern”. The personal choice of color gives an artwork authenticity.
I agree: color is the first thing we see when we look at a painting. But what is it we see? Do we see the color used or do we sense that which has been expressed through the use of color? Do we like or dislike a painting, or an artist’s entire works, because we like or dislike his palette. How often have we heard: I don’t like his color sense, or I don’t care for his use of color.
And why does it matter if we take the time to understand what we see? Because just as art begets art, so understanding begets understanding: it is with perception that we gain insight. It is to our advantage to do the work of the observer.
Seeing is one of my ongoing interests: there is a difference between looking and seeing. There is perception and there is selective seeing: “No one is so blind as he who will not see”. When we see something, what exactly do we see? What do we allow ourselves to see and what do we not allow ourselves to see? Do we see what is there to be seen?
There are many things to be seen in an artwork. I will begin with the three plastic elements.
Color:
In our earliest school years we learn our letters, our numbers, and our colors: as children we learn three languages simultaneously. Each of those three languages has a unique vocabulary.
Our responses to the value of color might be as lost to us as is our sense of smell. This loss can be accounted for if we realize that painting has come to be considered an intellectual exercise. Too often we confront a painting and ask: What does it mean? A painting is a visual experience. We should experience the painting before we analyze it intellectually. If the artist or the observer needs to intellectualize the work, it has failed to do its job. The analysis of an artwork is an attempt to deepen our understanding of it. I would suggest that as observers of artworks, we need to allow the colors to speak to us
“What is your favorite color?” is one of the most common childhood games. The colors most often chosen are the primaries or green or violet of the secondaries. Rarely have I known anyone to choose orange. Of the six primary and secondary colors, orange seems the most purely chemical and the one with the least symbolic value. Yet I have seen many infants in strollers fixated on the color orange, in fact, their attention seems most arrested by that color. Therapists urge us to reclaim the lost child within: we might be well advised to start that process through getting reacquainted with the color orange.
When I studied set design one of the exercises we were given, to be done on our own time and for our own edification, was to tear pages out of magazines with colors on them that appealed to us. Once we had created an appreciable number of pages we were to arrange the pages according to color. The stack or stacks with the greatest number of pages would reveal to us our color preferences.
Black is an exception to color as a lost symbolic experience. At the Chicago Art Institute I was looking at a very large Ad Reinhardt painting, approximately twelve feet wide by twenty feet high. It was all black. A young couple and their two children walked in front of me across the painting as if before a painted drop on a vaudeville stage. Both the man and his wife were short and both were fairly bursting with the pride of their superior education and their economic attainments. Rather than apologize for blocking the view, they assumed, incorrectly, that they were the view. One of the children was an infant in a stroller; the other child was a girl about three and a half years old.
Suddenly the young girl walked to the center of the painting and bent her neck backwards as she looked up to the top of the work. Then, spinning around and putting her hands on her hips, she stamped her foot and addressed the room: “What is this doing here! This doesn’t belong here!” And raising her left arm and pointing off stage she exclaimed: “Take this away!”
The young father strutted across the full stage, taking a bow for his child’s performance, while his wife stood behind her stroller and, with her head to one side, beamed approvingly, not because the child had become an accomplished art critic, but because she had so completely ingested the young mother’s persona.
We have culturally conditioned responses, (like mother like daughter …for that reason I never trust the judgments of children), and personal responses (a preference for the color orange). That distinction should be made when we look at a painting. Do I see what I see or am I only seeing what others want me to see?
Among suburban housewives the choice of color in the decorating scheme is too often based on what is known as “the color for the season”, a color chosen by some unknown authority in the fashion world. For that reason decorated suburban spaces almost always lack the sense of the personal, they are anonymous spaces, but very much in style.
Most art appreciation courses direct the student to study the color key of a painting…complementary, analogous, split complementary. We are told to ascertain the chromaticity of the colors, the degree of gray or lack of gray.
We should also look at the colors in an artist’s complete body of work: are the colors the same over the years or do they vary and are they different according to his different subjects.
In Marsden Hartley’s early works he used the colors of the European modernists. Later, in the American southwest, he used the palette of the American Impressionists. It was not until his last paintings, made in Maine, that a personal color sense becomes evident in his works.
For most of his career Cézanne worked with a very limited palette; but he worked in a very limited geographical area. Are his colors local colors or have they been heightened to be more expressive? The same can be considered in Corot’s work.
Matisse is very related to Cézanne, yet I cannot think of one color or palette that dominates in his work overall.
Neither do I think of dominant colors in Picasso’s work. In fact, in my response to the first comment on this blog, I mention Picasso’s Guernica and that painting is made in black, white, and gray.
This, in turn, recalls Goya’s comment: “I can suggest all the colors in a black and white drawing.”
In painting after painting I see that Hans Hoffman used only the three primaries and the three secondary colors. They are pure pigments and there is rarely any intermixing.
In his screen prints, Andy Warhol made series of prints from the same screens but each series has a different color key, as if to refute the value of color and to imply that it has no symbolic meaning. It is in his use of color, in fact, that Warhol’s work can be understood as a dialogue about art. He is far more intelligent than he pretended to be.
For a retrospective at the Museum of Modern art, Louise Nevelson created a series of signature works, but in white, purposefully to be very distinct from her works in their signature black.
The colors in an artist’s palette might be unconsciously chosen but I am certain that they are not arbitrarily chosen. The artist uses those colors as a visual and symbolic language. Specific colors are something that an artist “feels”. They are a part of his metabolism. It is our job to sense what that is. We might also ascertain if an artist is merely “using” colors but without feeling. I sense that in the work of many contemporary photographers who seem to be attempting to make their works look “modern”. The personal choice of color gives an artwork authenticity.
I agree: color is the first thing we see when we look at a painting. But what is it we see? Do we see the color used or do we sense that which has been expressed through the use of color? Do we like or dislike a painting, or an artist’s entire works, because we like or dislike his palette. How often have we heard: I don’t like his color sense, or I don’t care for his use of color.
And why does it matter if we take the time to understand what we see? Because just as art begets art, so understanding begets understanding: it is with perception that we gain insight. It is to our advantage to do the work of the observer.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Dan Flavin Retrospective.
The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, September 2005.
The exhibit is currently on view at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art until August 12, 2007.
I lived in New York City from autumn 1959 until 1990, most of those years in the West Village. It seems to me I have always known the name, Dan Flavin, and, if asked, I could have said at any time that he worked exclusively with fluorescent lighting fixtures. I remember having seen some of those works in various galleries and museums. But the work had never intrigued me and I had never gone out of my way to see any of the retrospectives. I saw this exhibition because I was in Chicago specifically to see museums and this was the current offering at this particular venue.
The Venue.
The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art is a block or so east of Michigan Avenue in an area known as The Miracle Mile, the miracle being, I suppose, that there are so many people who have the money to shop in the expensive shops there. The museum is a rectangular box clad in stone. The center of the front is glass rising to the top of the building and through it one can see down the long central corridor, open from the ground floor to the roof, to the back of the building, through another floor-to-ceiling glass wall and on toward Lake Michigan. Thus the building is a long rectangular box divided inside into two narrower rectangular boxes. The galleries are inside these interior boxes. A lobby across the second floor on the front connects the two interior boxes, as does a smaller pedestrian bridge at the back.
One of the hallmarks of Chicago architecture is its bold use of space: many of the entities there appear to me to be larger than they need to be. This museum is no exception: it is very large indeed. This large size is particularly important in regard to this exhibit: this is concerned with light and space, just as early Chicago architecture was concerned with light and air. In these huge spaces this exhibit seems perfectly at home.
On the landings.
The exhibition occupied the whole of the second floor, the various exhibition rooms and spaces flowing one into the other. On the entry landing to the exhibit there is the first of the Flavin artworks standing against the window wall with the view of Michigan Avenue. It is four feet high and about 75 feet long. It is a grid of overlapping squares each divided into six horizontal rectangles, three beside three. The three of one square overlaps three of the next square. It has the look of a running fence. This design is created with fixtures mounted on the armature and all outlined in green lights. They emit a harsh, garish glow. The entry is flooded in this green light, but the window and the view soften the effect.
On the far side of this lobby and this work, after the center opening into the main galleries, there is a long wall. The wall is the back of the galleries beyond and it faces the running fence and the front of the building. It is a 14-foot high by 75-foot wall of color reflecting the green of the artwork at the end nearest to it and the daylight from an unseen window in another gallery at the far end. This entire 75-foot wall has a perfect blend from bright green to cool white. The wall, painted by a thick industrial roller, has a mottled surface producing subtle color variations, as if the color had been applied and blended by hand. This blended wall is not a part of the work with the green light: it is the collateral result of the ambience of both these light sources and it has been left bare to show the viewer the breadth of the concept when fully realized. The monumentality of the wall and the perfect blend and the texture, its implied reference to the tradition of painting, gives the awareness that we have a tradition and that we cannot escape history, that we share time with the past. On this particular piece, I found the collateral effect far more interesting than the artwork itself.
The bridge at the back of the building has an open view down to the floor below on the interior side and the view through the glass wall to the lake on the other. Except for the openings into the galleries, this is essentially an area in which a solid wall faces a solid wall. A glass and chrome coffee table and two Barcelona chairs are in the center of this space. They sit on a highly polished and reflective floor. On the walls behind the chairs there are art works of fixtures with red, yellow, and blue lights. Daylight is reflected in the polished black marble floor, daylight and the fluorescence wash the walls. The fluorescent design is reflected in the glass tabletop. This design is interrupted by objects on the table…books and magazines. I could alter the designs by moving these objects. All of these components together create a harmonious oneness.
The chairs, the magazines and the books emphasize this area as being a place of respite from the exhibition. But there were two artworks here. The result was to give these art works a sense of minimal importance. Yet, in an exhibit of art works that look to have been designed exclusively with a gallery installation in mind, these two smaller works hanging as if in a living room, might have been placed here to indicate that Flavin’s art was indeed “home worthy”, at least for the high profile collector.
In the galleries.
In a construction that is in essence a room with three walls and a ceiling, there are eight yellow lights, each eight feet long, on the vertical axis creating stripes across the white square of the back wall. The last fixture has been omitted and in its place there is a void of intense green. This installation invites the viewer to come in. Going to the sidewall and looking into the void, it is possible to see that there is more to be seen in the space beyond the back wall. But that partially hidden back sidewall is angled so that the fullness of that space cannot be seen completely. There is more but we are unable to see it: thus; we can only perceive according to our ability to perceive. But what we perceive is not all that there is to know.
Stepping outside that installation and continuing, I saw a passageway beside it. The floor/wall and the ceiling/wall joins were lined with white florescent lights. There was a light that blends from green on one side of the far back wall to mauve gray on the other side. It is dim and forbidding. Passing through this corridor and turning to the green light there is a repeat of the same construction as was seen on the other side of the “box”, but in green and with an orange void. The orange void is disappointing in that it does not have the depth of the other box. In turning to go back through the corridor, the corridor is seen to be, from this end, lavender rose. It is decidedly a different color. Passing through this again and turning to look back again, it is once again a corridor with white fluorescent lights. What is seen? What is perceived? Change. Reassurance. And it is always gentle, always calm and respectful.
An art work with one plastic element. A horizontal bar spans the corner of a room. Where it touches the wall on the left the wall is red. Where it touches the wall on the right the wall is green. These two colors blend with the ambient light from the room creating the suggestion of a form, of a diamond, on the wall in the corner. But it is only a suggestion and the color is only a perception. The only thing that exists is the bar, the line. I found this very pleasing, if only for the suspicion that I understood the artist’s intentions and his accomplishment.
In a gallery with several works the lighting fixtures have only white fluorescent bulbs and they are arranged in patterns suggesting art deco and art moderne motifs. This suggested the persistence of tradition in the here and the now.
In another gallery, two works, each on a different wall, composed of circular fluorescent bulbs arranged on the wall in a large triangle against the corner of the adjoining wall. Each of these uses white bulbs: one is cool white and the other is a warm white. Both are seen in the same room and at the same time but from different perspectives, one face-on and the other obliquely. This raises the question of relationships and of parts, of similarities and differences. Both are also seen in the surface of the polished black floor and that suggests another place. But I can walk on that place and that place is only “there”, the other. It is a virtual reality, and elusively it moves away from me as I near the circular lights. I stand two feet away from the lights and that “other” at my feet disappears. It is illusion; it is inaccessible. But I could touch the lights if I cared to do so.
Two fixtures with the red bulbs span the corner of two walls, one above the other, touching, and face the viewer. A long fixture extends out from that corner directly at the viewer. This reads as “Danger”, “Do not approach”, “Red”. I obey. I move to one of the sidewalls and I discover that I had misread the configuration. There is only one red light spanning the corner of the room. What I had thought was a second tube is a red tube on each of the sidewalls placed lower than the other tube. They had created the illusion of another light spanning the corner. Trompe L’oeil in the illusion of red. Nice.
In a vaulted glass ceiling a squiggled design is the reflection of a work in an unseen gallery. It hovers in the nowhere.
What is hard line on the wall is soft line on the floor.
In this exhibition and in this space, everything is something. Each thing is everything.
Standing at one side of the museum and looking through the whole building, through the openings on the landing at the back of the building, I can see the series of galleries in a perfect one-point linear perspective. It is thrilling to notice that each wall in the receding view is a different, but vibrant color. This reminds me of Luis Barragon’s statement that it is the business of the artist to invent new colors. I suspect he would have loved Dan Flavin’s work.
I love the creation of all the possible variations from the use of one material. I love the variations of the same designs when seen in different colors.
The Pink and Gold Room is in a very long gallery. The two colors are arranged in an alternating sequence all around the room. The room has a vaulted ceiling and flat white walls. This is exquisite: it is very elegant. I see the concept. I see the execution. I see the mastery of craft and the knowledge of the materials. And I also see a commonality…Tiffany/Flavin… two ways of thinking about light; two masters.
Looking across that gallery I see a modern parson’s bench. It is black. The wooden top reflects the pink and gold lights of the installation. It blocks the reflection on the polished black floor creating a shadow on the floor that reads as a black void. The bench appears to float. I am convinced that it is weightless. I believe that it does float. I accept the truth of what my eyes see and of what I perceive.
Throughout this exhibition I saw no wires, no electrical connections. I saw only walls, fixtures, tubes, color, and designs representing manifested concepts. The installation, the museum’s contribution, is an example of superior craftsmanship.
As an artist, Dan Flavin seems to have escaped the tyranny of the painter’s rectangle and the sculptor’s pedestal. Here the entire room is the format. There is an evident mastery of craft and a mastery of materials. A masterful use of the plastic elements. Design. Concept. Color! Liberation. The limited palette is glorious. The colors of the fluorescent tubes, given to garish, have a completely ethereal quality. The fixtures work as bars, as line, and create an insistence on the viewer maintaining an aesthetic distance. There is no attempt to create in the viewer’s mind identification with the light, that he is the light. The art work/viewer divide is respectfully maintained. Yet when Flavin wants to bring you in closer the piece is so constructed that the viewer obeys immediately.
The arrangement of the fixtures has a strong design concept. This is not casual (as I have always suspected that his work might be); this is not “show” (as I have also always suspected). This has no “design by accident” aspect to it. This is an artist exploring his medium, giving us the best of his discoveries, always perfecting his concepts that then engender other concepts. He realizes what he sees and he is able to see more in each realization. What more do I see. What more can I see. What more is there to see?
The work here shows that something have been learned and used by the artist. There is none of the controlled lighting of the film set here, no flags, no shutters, no barn doors, and no snoots. All of the collateral light becomes ambient light and it is used to add something more to the configuration of the fixtures. The light becomes a plastic element and it is used by the artist as yet another tool. But this is never with a sense of manipulating the viewer or the plastic elements. The focus is always on the design configuration, the light and the result of all the elements working together. The audience, the viewer, has only been invited in to share the experience of the man and his work. The viewer is always respected, as the elements are always respected.
Excellent. This is one of the finest and most exciting exhibits I have ever seen.
My fellow viewers.
Sadly, I noticed that in these rooms the visitors come and go, glancing without seeing, without trying to know, looking instead at the incidentals. I saw a man wandering through the galleries who stopped to inspect the thermostat on the wall. I saw a young woman fan through one of the magazines on the glass-topped table as if she was angry and she was using the magazine to disengage herself from her emotional state. Another man traced a skid mark on the floor with disapproval. They come and go with their arms folded tightly across their chests, chewing gum vigorously, talking on their cell phones as they pace the course. Many of them were apprehensive as to what the others think of them. They cast furtive glances at the viewers passing by them. Some saw themselves as museum quality entities: The delusions of vanity.
After some consideration.
Two days after seeing this exhibit I traveled down to the University of Chicago to see the Smart Museum. In the first gallery of the permanent collection I was amused to discover an artwork composed of cutout shapes behind which were fluorescent lighting fixtures. One had a red light, one a yellow, and the third a blue. It was titled #9 New York, 1940, and the artist was Charles Biederman, a name I did not then know. This work had been created when Dan Flavin was seven years old. On seeing this work I shrugged and uttered: “There is nothing new under the sun”.
A week later I was at the Weisman Museum in Minneapolis and in the first gallery there was a brief career retrospective of the work of Charles Biederman, a man, I then learned, who had left Paris and New York and had worked for most of his life in Red Cloud, Minnesota. It was said that he had written extensively, and well, on the arts. Early in his adult life Biederman had studied and was strongly influenced by Cézanne. In Paris he was strongly influenced by Picasso. This influence is easy to discern in his paintings but when he moved into the area of applied materials, on edge, on the rectangular format, that influence had to be intellectually deciphered.
The interpretations tell us that Dan Flavin had studied art history. I have wondered if he knew Charles Biederman’s writings. (So far as I know this particular Biederman work was the only one he made using fluorescent lighting fixtures.) If it can be shown that Dan Flavin was familiar with them, I think we can then understand how the tradition in Western art works as a continuum.
We can also understand the relationship to the tradition if we remember that the French Impressionist painters, notably Renoir and Monet, were specifically interested in using pigment to create the sense of light and air in their paintings. Their reference within the tradition was the Italian Renaissance paintings of the Venetian school.
Many of Dan Flavin’s works are dedicated to other artists. It could be determined if this reference was to their ideas and their iconic styles, or if it was merely a tag used to indicate that this work continues the tradition.
His work, which might seem at first encounter to be “new” and “unusual”, is better understood, when seen in reference to the historic precedents, to be a variation within the tradition.
We should also view his work from the perspective of his association with the minimalists. We know that Matisse was influenced by Cézanne’s use of color…both made the statement that the color is the drawing. Picasso is credited with having taken form from Cézanne and to have developed Cézanne’s planar innovations. Among the minimalists, Agnes Martin concentrated almost exclusively on line, Donald Judd almost exclusively on form, and Dan Flavin on color, or light perceived as color. Each of them created art works that were presented as nothing more than what they are: the artwork is the thing in and of itself. I believe this is the basic assumption of what is now termed contemporary art.
Classic western art was existential in that it depicted the things of this earth: landscapes, figures, portraits, and still lives. There was an historical or anecdotal content that added to those works an experience of “feeling”, with feeling used to create a sense of symbolic experience. The subject of modern art was more nearly metaphysical: it exaggerated the plastic elements to emphasize the character of the emotional experience to be shared. Contemporary art has returned to the existential but the work is not representational or anecdotal, it does not stimulate an emotional response, it does not reference anything other than the materials it uses.
Agnes Martin uses a simple line and creates the sense of a meditative moment. Her work is clean, clearly stated, and pure. Dan Flavin has used color but without its emotional connotations. His works appear to me to be the result of working out intellectual concerns regarding the character of art. He appears to me to be exploring the boundaries of art. I might not understand his specific issues, but I feel that I have shared in what is his profound interest.
While I was in Chicago I also went to the Intuit Museum, a venue devoted to outsider art. That museum defined outsider art as that generally created by those who were experiencing obsessive/compulsive personality disorder. That was evident in the works shown. But what was also evident is that those artists began from a common starting place: they used picture space and relied on anecdote or abstract expressionism to express their sentiments. I have often wondered if artists consider the rectangle, (the picture format), or the pedestal to be obstacles to their expression. I think Dan Flavin shows us that while we might escape those two obstacles, we cannot move away from the plastic elements: color, line and form. He shows us that it is a legitimate endeavor to make art the subject of art: it extends the understanding of the artist and the observer. It also shows us that there can be a symbolic experience within the plastic elements in and of themselves, just as there is symbolic experience for physicists within mathematics.
It remains to be determined what the importance is, to us, in all of this. I found Dan Flavin’s works and this exhibition inspiring, although I missed a “something” akin to Goya’s brightly observed human comedy and his profound compassion for the human experience.
The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, September 2005.
The exhibit is currently on view at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art until August 12, 2007.
I lived in New York City from autumn 1959 until 1990, most of those years in the West Village. It seems to me I have always known the name, Dan Flavin, and, if asked, I could have said at any time that he worked exclusively with fluorescent lighting fixtures. I remember having seen some of those works in various galleries and museums. But the work had never intrigued me and I had never gone out of my way to see any of the retrospectives. I saw this exhibition because I was in Chicago specifically to see museums and this was the current offering at this particular venue.
The Venue.
The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art is a block or so east of Michigan Avenue in an area known as The Miracle Mile, the miracle being, I suppose, that there are so many people who have the money to shop in the expensive shops there. The museum is a rectangular box clad in stone. The center of the front is glass rising to the top of the building and through it one can see down the long central corridor, open from the ground floor to the roof, to the back of the building, through another floor-to-ceiling glass wall and on toward Lake Michigan. Thus the building is a long rectangular box divided inside into two narrower rectangular boxes. The galleries are inside these interior boxes. A lobby across the second floor on the front connects the two interior boxes, as does a smaller pedestrian bridge at the back.
One of the hallmarks of Chicago architecture is its bold use of space: many of the entities there appear to me to be larger than they need to be. This museum is no exception: it is very large indeed. This large size is particularly important in regard to this exhibit: this is concerned with light and space, just as early Chicago architecture was concerned with light and air. In these huge spaces this exhibit seems perfectly at home.
On the landings.
The exhibition occupied the whole of the second floor, the various exhibition rooms and spaces flowing one into the other. On the entry landing to the exhibit there is the first of the Flavin artworks standing against the window wall with the view of Michigan Avenue. It is four feet high and about 75 feet long. It is a grid of overlapping squares each divided into six horizontal rectangles, three beside three. The three of one square overlaps three of the next square. It has the look of a running fence. This design is created with fixtures mounted on the armature and all outlined in green lights. They emit a harsh, garish glow. The entry is flooded in this green light, but the window and the view soften the effect.
On the far side of this lobby and this work, after the center opening into the main galleries, there is a long wall. The wall is the back of the galleries beyond and it faces the running fence and the front of the building. It is a 14-foot high by 75-foot wall of color reflecting the green of the artwork at the end nearest to it and the daylight from an unseen window in another gallery at the far end. This entire 75-foot wall has a perfect blend from bright green to cool white. The wall, painted by a thick industrial roller, has a mottled surface producing subtle color variations, as if the color had been applied and blended by hand. This blended wall is not a part of the work with the green light: it is the collateral result of the ambience of both these light sources and it has been left bare to show the viewer the breadth of the concept when fully realized. The monumentality of the wall and the perfect blend and the texture, its implied reference to the tradition of painting, gives the awareness that we have a tradition and that we cannot escape history, that we share time with the past. On this particular piece, I found the collateral effect far more interesting than the artwork itself.
The bridge at the back of the building has an open view down to the floor below on the interior side and the view through the glass wall to the lake on the other. Except for the openings into the galleries, this is essentially an area in which a solid wall faces a solid wall. A glass and chrome coffee table and two Barcelona chairs are in the center of this space. They sit on a highly polished and reflective floor. On the walls behind the chairs there are art works of fixtures with red, yellow, and blue lights. Daylight is reflected in the polished black marble floor, daylight and the fluorescence wash the walls. The fluorescent design is reflected in the glass tabletop. This design is interrupted by objects on the table…books and magazines. I could alter the designs by moving these objects. All of these components together create a harmonious oneness.
The chairs, the magazines and the books emphasize this area as being a place of respite from the exhibition. But there were two artworks here. The result was to give these art works a sense of minimal importance. Yet, in an exhibit of art works that look to have been designed exclusively with a gallery installation in mind, these two smaller works hanging as if in a living room, might have been placed here to indicate that Flavin’s art was indeed “home worthy”, at least for the high profile collector.
In the galleries.
In a construction that is in essence a room with three walls and a ceiling, there are eight yellow lights, each eight feet long, on the vertical axis creating stripes across the white square of the back wall. The last fixture has been omitted and in its place there is a void of intense green. This installation invites the viewer to come in. Going to the sidewall and looking into the void, it is possible to see that there is more to be seen in the space beyond the back wall. But that partially hidden back sidewall is angled so that the fullness of that space cannot be seen completely. There is more but we are unable to see it: thus; we can only perceive according to our ability to perceive. But what we perceive is not all that there is to know.
Stepping outside that installation and continuing, I saw a passageway beside it. The floor/wall and the ceiling/wall joins were lined with white florescent lights. There was a light that blends from green on one side of the far back wall to mauve gray on the other side. It is dim and forbidding. Passing through this corridor and turning to the green light there is a repeat of the same construction as was seen on the other side of the “box”, but in green and with an orange void. The orange void is disappointing in that it does not have the depth of the other box. In turning to go back through the corridor, the corridor is seen to be, from this end, lavender rose. It is decidedly a different color. Passing through this again and turning to look back again, it is once again a corridor with white fluorescent lights. What is seen? What is perceived? Change. Reassurance. And it is always gentle, always calm and respectful.
An art work with one plastic element. A horizontal bar spans the corner of a room. Where it touches the wall on the left the wall is red. Where it touches the wall on the right the wall is green. These two colors blend with the ambient light from the room creating the suggestion of a form, of a diamond, on the wall in the corner. But it is only a suggestion and the color is only a perception. The only thing that exists is the bar, the line. I found this very pleasing, if only for the suspicion that I understood the artist’s intentions and his accomplishment.
In a gallery with several works the lighting fixtures have only white fluorescent bulbs and they are arranged in patterns suggesting art deco and art moderne motifs. This suggested the persistence of tradition in the here and the now.
In another gallery, two works, each on a different wall, composed of circular fluorescent bulbs arranged on the wall in a large triangle against the corner of the adjoining wall. Each of these uses white bulbs: one is cool white and the other is a warm white. Both are seen in the same room and at the same time but from different perspectives, one face-on and the other obliquely. This raises the question of relationships and of parts, of similarities and differences. Both are also seen in the surface of the polished black floor and that suggests another place. But I can walk on that place and that place is only “there”, the other. It is a virtual reality, and elusively it moves away from me as I near the circular lights. I stand two feet away from the lights and that “other” at my feet disappears. It is illusion; it is inaccessible. But I could touch the lights if I cared to do so.
Two fixtures with the red bulbs span the corner of two walls, one above the other, touching, and face the viewer. A long fixture extends out from that corner directly at the viewer. This reads as “Danger”, “Do not approach”, “Red”. I obey. I move to one of the sidewalls and I discover that I had misread the configuration. There is only one red light spanning the corner of the room. What I had thought was a second tube is a red tube on each of the sidewalls placed lower than the other tube. They had created the illusion of another light spanning the corner. Trompe L’oeil in the illusion of red. Nice.
In a vaulted glass ceiling a squiggled design is the reflection of a work in an unseen gallery. It hovers in the nowhere.
What is hard line on the wall is soft line on the floor.
In this exhibition and in this space, everything is something. Each thing is everything.
Standing at one side of the museum and looking through the whole building, through the openings on the landing at the back of the building, I can see the series of galleries in a perfect one-point linear perspective. It is thrilling to notice that each wall in the receding view is a different, but vibrant color. This reminds me of Luis Barragon’s statement that it is the business of the artist to invent new colors. I suspect he would have loved Dan Flavin’s work.
I love the creation of all the possible variations from the use of one material. I love the variations of the same designs when seen in different colors.
The Pink and Gold Room is in a very long gallery. The two colors are arranged in an alternating sequence all around the room. The room has a vaulted ceiling and flat white walls. This is exquisite: it is very elegant. I see the concept. I see the execution. I see the mastery of craft and the knowledge of the materials. And I also see a commonality…Tiffany/Flavin… two ways of thinking about light; two masters.
Looking across that gallery I see a modern parson’s bench. It is black. The wooden top reflects the pink and gold lights of the installation. It blocks the reflection on the polished black floor creating a shadow on the floor that reads as a black void. The bench appears to float. I am convinced that it is weightless. I believe that it does float. I accept the truth of what my eyes see and of what I perceive.
Throughout this exhibition I saw no wires, no electrical connections. I saw only walls, fixtures, tubes, color, and designs representing manifested concepts. The installation, the museum’s contribution, is an example of superior craftsmanship.
As an artist, Dan Flavin seems to have escaped the tyranny of the painter’s rectangle and the sculptor’s pedestal. Here the entire room is the format. There is an evident mastery of craft and a mastery of materials. A masterful use of the plastic elements. Design. Concept. Color! Liberation. The limited palette is glorious. The colors of the fluorescent tubes, given to garish, have a completely ethereal quality. The fixtures work as bars, as line, and create an insistence on the viewer maintaining an aesthetic distance. There is no attempt to create in the viewer’s mind identification with the light, that he is the light. The art work/viewer divide is respectfully maintained. Yet when Flavin wants to bring you in closer the piece is so constructed that the viewer obeys immediately.
The arrangement of the fixtures has a strong design concept. This is not casual (as I have always suspected that his work might be); this is not “show” (as I have also always suspected). This has no “design by accident” aspect to it. This is an artist exploring his medium, giving us the best of his discoveries, always perfecting his concepts that then engender other concepts. He realizes what he sees and he is able to see more in each realization. What more do I see. What more can I see. What more is there to see?
The work here shows that something have been learned and used by the artist. There is none of the controlled lighting of the film set here, no flags, no shutters, no barn doors, and no snoots. All of the collateral light becomes ambient light and it is used to add something more to the configuration of the fixtures. The light becomes a plastic element and it is used by the artist as yet another tool. But this is never with a sense of manipulating the viewer or the plastic elements. The focus is always on the design configuration, the light and the result of all the elements working together. The audience, the viewer, has only been invited in to share the experience of the man and his work. The viewer is always respected, as the elements are always respected.
Excellent. This is one of the finest and most exciting exhibits I have ever seen.
My fellow viewers.
Sadly, I noticed that in these rooms the visitors come and go, glancing without seeing, without trying to know, looking instead at the incidentals. I saw a man wandering through the galleries who stopped to inspect the thermostat on the wall. I saw a young woman fan through one of the magazines on the glass-topped table as if she was angry and she was using the magazine to disengage herself from her emotional state. Another man traced a skid mark on the floor with disapproval. They come and go with their arms folded tightly across their chests, chewing gum vigorously, talking on their cell phones as they pace the course. Many of them were apprehensive as to what the others think of them. They cast furtive glances at the viewers passing by them. Some saw themselves as museum quality entities: The delusions of vanity.
After some consideration.
Two days after seeing this exhibit I traveled down to the University of Chicago to see the Smart Museum. In the first gallery of the permanent collection I was amused to discover an artwork composed of cutout shapes behind which were fluorescent lighting fixtures. One had a red light, one a yellow, and the third a blue. It was titled #9 New York, 1940, and the artist was Charles Biederman, a name I did not then know. This work had been created when Dan Flavin was seven years old. On seeing this work I shrugged and uttered: “There is nothing new under the sun”.
A week later I was at the Weisman Museum in Minneapolis and in the first gallery there was a brief career retrospective of the work of Charles Biederman, a man, I then learned, who had left Paris and New York and had worked for most of his life in Red Cloud, Minnesota. It was said that he had written extensively, and well, on the arts. Early in his adult life Biederman had studied and was strongly influenced by Cézanne. In Paris he was strongly influenced by Picasso. This influence is easy to discern in his paintings but when he moved into the area of applied materials, on edge, on the rectangular format, that influence had to be intellectually deciphered.
The interpretations tell us that Dan Flavin had studied art history. I have wondered if he knew Charles Biederman’s writings. (So far as I know this particular Biederman work was the only one he made using fluorescent lighting fixtures.) If it can be shown that Dan Flavin was familiar with them, I think we can then understand how the tradition in Western art works as a continuum.
We can also understand the relationship to the tradition if we remember that the French Impressionist painters, notably Renoir and Monet, were specifically interested in using pigment to create the sense of light and air in their paintings. Their reference within the tradition was the Italian Renaissance paintings of the Venetian school.
Many of Dan Flavin’s works are dedicated to other artists. It could be determined if this reference was to their ideas and their iconic styles, or if it was merely a tag used to indicate that this work continues the tradition.
His work, which might seem at first encounter to be “new” and “unusual”, is better understood, when seen in reference to the historic precedents, to be a variation within the tradition.
We should also view his work from the perspective of his association with the minimalists. We know that Matisse was influenced by Cézanne’s use of color…both made the statement that the color is the drawing. Picasso is credited with having taken form from Cézanne and to have developed Cézanne’s planar innovations. Among the minimalists, Agnes Martin concentrated almost exclusively on line, Donald Judd almost exclusively on form, and Dan Flavin on color, or light perceived as color. Each of them created art works that were presented as nothing more than what they are: the artwork is the thing in and of itself. I believe this is the basic assumption of what is now termed contemporary art.
Classic western art was existential in that it depicted the things of this earth: landscapes, figures, portraits, and still lives. There was an historical or anecdotal content that added to those works an experience of “feeling”, with feeling used to create a sense of symbolic experience. The subject of modern art was more nearly metaphysical: it exaggerated the plastic elements to emphasize the character of the emotional experience to be shared. Contemporary art has returned to the existential but the work is not representational or anecdotal, it does not stimulate an emotional response, it does not reference anything other than the materials it uses.
Agnes Martin uses a simple line and creates the sense of a meditative moment. Her work is clean, clearly stated, and pure. Dan Flavin has used color but without its emotional connotations. His works appear to me to be the result of working out intellectual concerns regarding the character of art. He appears to me to be exploring the boundaries of art. I might not understand his specific issues, but I feel that I have shared in what is his profound interest.
While I was in Chicago I also went to the Intuit Museum, a venue devoted to outsider art. That museum defined outsider art as that generally created by those who were experiencing obsessive/compulsive personality disorder. That was evident in the works shown. But what was also evident is that those artists began from a common starting place: they used picture space and relied on anecdote or abstract expressionism to express their sentiments. I have often wondered if artists consider the rectangle, (the picture format), or the pedestal to be obstacles to their expression. I think Dan Flavin shows us that while we might escape those two obstacles, we cannot move away from the plastic elements: color, line and form. He shows us that it is a legitimate endeavor to make art the subject of art: it extends the understanding of the artist and the observer. It also shows us that there can be a symbolic experience within the plastic elements in and of themselves, just as there is symbolic experience for physicists within mathematics.
It remains to be determined what the importance is, to us, in all of this. I found Dan Flavin’s works and this exhibition inspiring, although I missed a “something” akin to Goya’s brightly observed human comedy and his profound compassion for the human experience.
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