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Art Museum anoints Frank Gehry
Patrick D. Hazard
Burying Frank Gehry
(would that we could)
PATRICK D. HAZARD
The bad news is that the Philadelphia Museum of Art will spend $500 millions over the next ten years to get Frank Gehry to increase the exhibition space of its Parthenon on the Parkway. The good news is that it will be underground. While he's at his subterranean wiles, Gehry will give the extant spaces makeovers as well.
Museum Director Anne d'Harnoncourt says that the starchitect was chosen partly for his respect for art. "Any architect," she philosophizes, "who creates spaces for the art to be within—it's important that they love the art itself." Ahem! Seems obvious, except that I've palavered with not a few artists (and many architects as well) who chide, even deride, Gehry on precisely this point.
Gehry is such an egotist that he thinks the only ART that matters is the ART he's CADged in titanium, or some other eternal material it's futile to try to destroy. Remember, this is the guy who achieved notoriety in spectacle-happy L.A. when he "made over" his nondescript residence by making it more nondescribable with weird techno materials like galvanized fencing. It's his Jesus complex: like turning water into wine.
What’s tackier than plywood?
In Gehry’s most recent museum (MARTa in the northwestern German town of Herford), he uses scrofulous sheets of plywood to clad the walls of the main staircase! I mean, plywood proper, so to speak, is tacky enough. But Gehry appears to crave oddities. It's his sticky shtick. Yuck.
New York Times art critic Robin Pogrebin reports (Oct. 19) a phone interview that suggests Frank may have converted: "To be under the covers and to try to make architecture that way is a fascinating thought. All architects are intrigued by subterranean things; I don't think I'm alone in that."
"There is a kind of modesty thing," Frank went on. "Most of us, we don't set out to do the Bilbao effect, as it's being called. It's a real challenge to do something that's virtually hidden, that could become spectacular." Gehry concludes that he came to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Parthenon with respect. The 1928 structure "is an old war horse— it has character, and I like the setting of it. So I like the idea of having to treat it delicately."
Underground artists, and architects. And the nearby Rocky statue— alas, above ground. Plans include a landscaped sculpture garden with the Olin Partnership, a local firm with a lot of good esthetic sense. Maybe they could plant a Balboa tree to hide it.
Cocktail banter yes, architecture no
Frank is clearly dumbstruck without his Computer Aided design. The only time I've chattered with him was at a Berlin cocktail party in Mies's failed copy of his 1929 Barcelona Pavilion called the New National Gallery, after Lord Foster had just been Pritzkerized at Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum. (Now, there were two architects who never fool around with titanium or plywood.) I spied a gaggle of former Pritzkers bored silly, so I decided to find out what such honored folks talked about on such solemn occasions. "We're trying to steal each other's commissions," Gehry tartly replied, demonstrating that he possesses a better party wit than an architectural eye. Sadly, for us.
Of course, the Art Museum’s announcement seems to imply that the Barnes and Calder deals are on ice: After all, our Phillyanthropoids can only do one biggie at a time. Meanwhile, we can expect subsidized housing and public schools to be ignored. Heh, with Philadelphia’s homicide rate heading skyward, underground is the place to be. It's the Modesty Thing again. Stay out of the limelight. Right?
(would that we could)
PATRICK D. HAZARD
The bad news is that the Philadelphia Museum of Art will spend $500 millions over the next ten years to get Frank Gehry to increase the exhibition space of its Parthenon on the Parkway. The good news is that it will be underground. While he's at his subterranean wiles, Gehry will give the extant spaces makeovers as well.
Museum Director Anne d'Harnoncourt says that the starchitect was chosen partly for his respect for art. "Any architect," she philosophizes, "who creates spaces for the art to be within—it's important that they love the art itself." Ahem! Seems obvious, except that I've palavered with not a few artists (and many architects as well) who chide, even deride, Gehry on precisely this point.
Gehry is such an egotist that he thinks the only ART that matters is the ART he's CADged in titanium, or some other eternal material it's futile to try to destroy. Remember, this is the guy who achieved notoriety in spectacle-happy L.A. when he "made over" his nondescript residence by making it more nondescribable with weird techno materials like galvanized fencing. It's his Jesus complex: like turning water into wine.
What’s tackier than plywood?
In Gehry’s most recent museum (MARTa in the northwestern German town of Herford), he uses scrofulous sheets of plywood to clad the walls of the main staircase! I mean, plywood proper, so to speak, is tacky enough. But Gehry appears to crave oddities. It's his sticky shtick. Yuck.
New York Times art critic Robin Pogrebin reports (Oct. 19) a phone interview that suggests Frank may have converted: "To be under the covers and to try to make architecture that way is a fascinating thought. All architects are intrigued by subterranean things; I don't think I'm alone in that."
"There is a kind of modesty thing," Frank went on. "Most of us, we don't set out to do the Bilbao effect, as it's being called. It's a real challenge to do something that's virtually hidden, that could become spectacular." Gehry concludes that he came to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Parthenon with respect. The 1928 structure "is an old war horse— it has character, and I like the setting of it. So I like the idea of having to treat it delicately."
Underground artists, and architects. And the nearby Rocky statue— alas, above ground. Plans include a landscaped sculpture garden with the Olin Partnership, a local firm with a lot of good esthetic sense. Maybe they could plant a Balboa tree to hide it.
Cocktail banter yes, architecture no
Frank is clearly dumbstruck without his Computer Aided design. The only time I've chattered with him was at a Berlin cocktail party in Mies's failed copy of his 1929 Barcelona Pavilion called the New National Gallery, after Lord Foster had just been Pritzkerized at Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum. (Now, there were two architects who never fool around with titanium or plywood.) I spied a gaggle of former Pritzkers bored silly, so I decided to find out what such honored folks talked about on such solemn occasions. "We're trying to steal each other's commissions," Gehry tartly replied, demonstrating that he possesses a better party wit than an architectural eye. Sadly, for us.
Of course, the Art Museum’s announcement seems to imply that the Barnes and Calder deals are on ice: After all, our Phillyanthropoids can only do one biggie at a time. Meanwhile, we can expect subsidized housing and public schools to be ignored. Heh, with Philadelphia’s homicide rate heading skyward, underground is the place to be. It's the Modesty Thing again. Stay out of the limelight. Right?
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