Shirin Neshat Magic Realism Without Smiles

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Shirin Neshat is a great artist. She captures depth from the subjects of her photographic portraits, and she creates fiction in her films and videos at a quality level comparable to some of the works of Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Their uniqueness also derives from her feminine sensitivity and her understanding of ancient cultures. In doing so, she opens for the Western World a window to look at the other, beyond itself.

Shirin Neshat at her studio

Photography by Shirin Neshat
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
At The Broad
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
Photography by Shirin Neshat
The exhibition at The Broad is named “I Will Bring the Sun Again,” from the title of a poem by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad. It presents over 230 photographs and eight video installations, curated by Ed Schad. The images take us to ancient cultures that include not only Persia’s ancient history and traditions but also to Morocco, Mexico, Egypt, and Azerbaijan, not as tourists, but as observers of displacement, alienation, and political oppression.
Venice Film Festival 2009
Filming
Directing
From the film “Women Without Men”
From film
From film
From the film “Passage,” 2001
From “Looking for Oum Kulthum” film, 2017

The exhibition inspired me to produce a short documentary as an homage to Shirin Neshat’s work.

Venice Art Walk 2019 – As We Saw It Eight Artists' Studios - The Artists, Their Work

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Venice is the hometown of many artists.  Once a year, the Venice Family Clinic organizes the Venice Art Walk. It is a fund-raising event that includes a silent auction and artists studios open to the public. After checking on the thirty-four artists having open studios, we shortlisted eight:  Laddy John Dill (with whom Ruth had […]

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Black Power Art From "Soul of a Nation" to African American Art Now

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Black Power Art was inspired by The Broad’s new exhibition in Los Angeles, “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983.” It is intended to be an eye-opener, not just to the work of African-American artists during a crucial period of self-assertion, but also to echo African American art today. The timing is right. When bigotry is, once again, raising its head, consciousness of who we are as humans are critical.

Sophia Nahli Allison’s “Portrait of my Mother” film.
What’s Going On, 1974, by Barkley Hendricks.
Homage to Malcolm X, 1970, by Jack Whitten.
Jack Johnson, 1971, by Raymond Saunders.
Unite, 1971, by Barbara Jones-Hogu.
The Flag is Bleeding, 1967, by Faith Ringgold.
Bag Lady in Flight, 1975, by David Hammons.
Revolutionary, 1971, by Wadsworth Jarrell.
Los Angeles International Airport, 1961. Architect: Paul R. Williams.
La Concha Motel, Las Vegas, 1961. Architect: paul R. Williams.
National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Jihad Nation, 1970, by Nelson Stevens.
Trane, 1969, by William T. Willams.

The exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, murals, and photography of 60 artists. It proclaims intellectual power vis-à-vis a little-aware public. However, the implication of the show is much broader. It brings the past as shown in the National Museum of African American History and Culture,  the eloquence of James Baldwin, and the biting humor of Spike Lee.

James Baldwin, Novelist, Activist, Poet.
Angela Davis, Political Activist, Author.
William T. Williams, Painter.
Jack Whitten, Painter.
Sophia Nahli Allison, Filmmaker.
Barbara Jones-Hogu, Painter.
Sir David Adjaye, Architect.
Nelson Stevens, Artist, Educator.
Spike Lee, Filmmaker.
Mark Bradford, Artist.

Good art is good art, or it is not good art, whether the artist is African-American, Latino, Asian or white. Many of the themes in the exhibition are thematic, expressing the black condition at the time. However, abstract examples such as Jack Whitten’s fierce, frontal black triangle, “Homage to Martin,” and William T. Williams’ homage to John Coltrane, “Trane,” with its slashing spectrum of diagonal bands of color intersecting and overlaying each other, join the work of great artists, irrespectively of their ethnical background.

Photo © R&R Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

As We Saw It – Coda: Israel Vignettes Architecture, Urban Growth, Stories from the Holocaust, a Raw Beach, Friends and a Reenacting of a First Meeting

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Following filming in Paris, Berlin and Rome, our focus in Israel, other than spending good time with our daughter, was to document some of the country’s mushrooming residential construction, to record the new Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl, to interview Aaron Krumholtz, Ruth father’s eldest brother, 94, and to see some friends. For Ruth’s birthday, Gabby suggested reenacting our first meeting as students at the Technion in Haifa.

Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl
Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl
Natanya
Natanya
Natanya
Hadera
Hadera
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Sarona Market, Tel Aviv
Gallery
Gallery
Tel Aviv Museum
Tel Aviv Museum
Lower Level
Tel Aviv Museum
Tel Aviv Museum
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem – Children’s Memorial

Work in Progress

Absent in the media recording of Israel’s complexities is Israel’s urban growth besides Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the West Bank. As a sample, we chose Netanya and Hadera in the coastal area.

Memorial Hall of Israel’s Fallen at Mount Herzl

This memorial, designed by Kimmel Eshkolot Architects, was completed during 2018 and is dedicated to commemorating the country’s fallen soldiers. It includes a 250 meter-long continuous ‘wall of names’ that wraps around the central sculptural brick structure. This comprises more than 23,000 concrete bricks each individually engraved with the name of a soldier and their date of decease.  The architects developed the scheme as an interior project where the ground was excavated to allow daylight to enter through an overhead oculus.

Yad Vashem’s Children’s Memorial

Designed by architect Moshe Safdie, this unique memorial is a tribute to the approximately 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered during the Holocaust. Memorial candles are reflected infinitely in the dark, and the names of murdered children, their ages and countries of origin, can be heard in the background.

Aaron Krumholtz
Ruth’s Birthday.
Hadera Beach
Hadera Beach
Hadera Beach
Hadera Beach
First Meeting – Old Technion, Haifa
Meeting at a Haifa alley

Aaron

Aaron Krumholtz, 94, spoke about his experience in Transnistria during the Holocaust. The documentary shows some stories out of an hour-long interview.

First Encounter

We celebrated Ruth’s birthday by the sea. Gabby suggested revisiting the location of our first encounter in Haifa, five decades ago. We decided to reenact it.

As We Saw It – Part 7: Emotional Rome Streets, People, Architecture: A Personal Journey

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Coming back to Rome is always emotional. It triggers pleasant memories of our days as students of architecture, of lifelong friendships, of great teachers, of great art, architecture, lifestyle.

To link the central theme of “As We Saw It,” ‘what makes a city great,’ with what we chose to document through film and photography, we focused on ‘the city’s emotional intelligence’ and its connection to our own emotions. To do that, we decided to record streets and piazzas rather than buildings, with few exceptions, such as the Pantheon, the MAXXI and the church of Sant’Andrea Della Valle.

View of Rome – Piazza di Spagna

Piazza navona

Campo De’ Fiori
Piazza Farnese
Piazza di Spagna
Pantheon
Michelangelo’s Campidoglio
Bernini’s The Rape of Prosperina
Bernini’s The Elephant and the Obelisk
Pasta
Campo De’ Fiori
Campo De’ Fiori
Campo De’ Fiori
Shop Window
Piazza
Street with Bridge
Green Facade
Reflection – Sant’Andrea della Valle
Selfie – Sant’Andrea della Valle
The Maghidovich – Trevi Fountain, 1956

Formative Past: Architecture and Cinema

We were “adopted” by Bruno Zevi soon after we joined his History of Architecture class. Besides tutoring our theses, he also invited us to his home to have lunch with Carlo Scarpa and connected us with Edgar Kaufmann Jr. in New York, who opened for us the gates of Wright’s Fallingwater.

Our relationship with Pellegrin was also unique. He co-tutored our theses, and we worked for him on important projects: many competitions for schools, the University of Barcelona, Goree Island’s master plan in Senegal, Palazzo Aldobrandini’s restoration in Rome, and research on futuristic habitats.

Professor Bruno Zevi – Photo: Elisabeth Catalano

Architect Luigi Pellegrin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pellegrin’s House, 1964
Pellegrin’s House, 1964
Pellegrin and Soleri
Drawing – Luigi Pellegrin
Drawing – Luigi Pellegrin
Pellegrin and Rick, 1998

When we moved to Rome to continue our studies in architecture, going to the movies was an essential way of learning Italian fast. We were also lucky. In the vicinity of where we first lived, in the Parioli neighborhood, there was a cinema club at a church that showed every week movies followed by a Q&A with the directors. Among many others, we treasure having listened to Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City; Paisan; Stromboli ) and Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers; Kapò; Burn!)

After graduation, we moved to Rome’s Historic Center, minutes away from the Trevi Fountain and from Pellegrin’s studio. Our same-floor neighbor was Adriana Chiesa, who, at the time worked at La Medusa, one of Italy’s leading film distributors. We were friends when Adriana met and fell in love with cinematographer Carlo Di Palma (Divorce Italian Style, Red Desert, Blow-Up, Hanna and her Sisters, Radio Days.)

Carlo had a rich experience with directors like Michelangelo Antonioni (he shot Antonioni’s first color film, Red Desert) and with Woody Allen. He also worked for Bernardo Bertolucci, Lucchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, Francesco Rosi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. I remember his comments about Igmar Bergman (“he worked like a scientist”) and about Federico Fellini (“a magician; he ‘hypnotized’ his actors, shooting without sound and talking to them while shooting.”)

Rossellini’s Rome, Open City
Film Posters
La Dolce Vita
Carlo Di Palma – Posters
Antonioni’s Red Desert
Monica Vitti
Carlo Di Palma, Adriana Chiesa Di Palma, Woody Allen

The MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo

Coincidentally with our visit, Zaha Hadid’s-designed MAXXI held two exhibitions that we wanted to see: one dedicated to Zevi’s 100th birthday, titled “Zevi’s Architects. History and Counter-History of Italian Architecture 1944-2000.” The other, “Tel Aviv the White City,” dedicated to the Bauhaus architecture in the city.

As a historian and critic of architecture, Zevi’s influence in Italy during the second half of the 20th Century was impacting. He published several pivotal books, such as Architecture as Space, The Language of Modern Architecture, A History of Modern Architecture, Erich Mendelsohn, was the editor of the magazine L’Architettura for over fifty years, taught history of architecture in Venice and in Rome, and was militant in the Radical Party, which he represented in the Chamber of Deputies from 1987 to 1992.

Zevi brought Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas of Organic Architecture to the Italian peninsula, which influenced many architects, such as Carlo Scarpa, Luigi Pellegrin, Paolo Soleri, Marcello D’Olivo, Giovanni Michelucci and Aldo Loris Rossi, to name just a few.

The exhibition on Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus architecture, although very compact, provided an idea of the city’s rich past, which includes over 1500 buildings of the period.

MAXXI – Architect: Zaha Hadid
MAXXI – Ceiling
MAXXI – Lobby
MAXXI
MAXXI – Shop
MAXXI – Projection
MAXXI – Projection with collage
Asse Attrezzato – Model
Lucio Passarelli – Mixed Use
Italian Pavilion, Montreal, 1967
Italian Pavilion, Montreal 1967 – Plan
Arnaldo Pomodoro: Sphere within a Sphere
Bauhaus in tel Aviv Exhibition
Tel Aviv – Floor Aerial Photo

Rome’s beauty is the ultimate urban beauty because it has been shaped by time, uninterruptedly, over more than two thousand years.

Photo © R&R Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

As We Saw It – Part 6: Berlin 2 – Shifting Art Bits Fragments of Berlin's Contemporary Art Scene

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Berlin is today “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” for thousands of artists from all over the world. It is estimated 20,000 artists are living and working in the city. Why? Berlin is home to hundreds of galleries and art museums that boast unparalleled collections. For the ambitious artist, this city is overflowing […]

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Photo © R&R Meghiddo, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

As We Saw It – Part 5: Berlin 1 – Architecture Contemporary Architecture Landmarks in Berlin

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Berlin is regarded as one of the most exciting architectural experiments in the world, with a cultural life second to none. On our first visit to Berlin since its reunification, our goal was to try to understand why the city has become a mecca for artists, a place of attraction to architects and filmmakers, internationally […]

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As We Saw It – Part 4: Brushing Art in Paris Art as Integral to Urban Life Quality

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Paris without art is inconceivable. The art world permeates the city at all levels. It impacts people’s lifestyle, what they eat and its aesthetics, their fashion, their filmmaking, their architecture.

As We Saw It – Part 4: Brushing Art in Paris is a potpourri of art seen during the summer of 2018. The focus was on alternatives to traditional tourist art-sites such as the Louvre and the Orsay museums.

The biggest surprise was the Palais de Tokyo. Sitting next door to Paris’ Museum of Modern Art, this place it has an intense program of avant-garde contemporary art that includes all media. In spite of its name, the artists – many women – shown are from many countries. We found remarkable the works of Anita Molinero, Caroline Achaintre, and Laure Prouvost. 

Anita Molinero, Palais de Tokyo
Caroline Achaintre, Palais de Tokyo
Laure Prouvost, Palais de Tokyo

The Museum of Modern Art, besides its own collection, also has periodical shows. During our visit we so a retrospective of Judit Reigl’s fantastic work. She continues to be productive at age ninety-five!

Judit Reigl, Homme (1966)
Judit Reigl, Explosion
Judit Reigl Abstraction

The Centre Pompidou had a large exhibition on the Russian avant-garde in Vitebsk during the 1918-1922 period. Very well curated, it showed artworks by Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich.

Lissitzky and Malevich, 1920
Marc Chagall, Over the Village (1918)
Marc Chagall at the Pompidou Center
El Lissitzky, Pompidou Center
El Lissitzky, Pompidou Center
Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism (1915)
Kazimir Malevich (1923)
Kazimir Malevich, Arkhitektons (1923)
Pompidou Center, 2018

The Picasso Museum was a surprise, not so much for the collection of the master’s work – that can’t match those shown at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona – but of Picasso’s own collection of other artists works, such as Miro and Modigliani.

Crying Woman (1937)
Joan Miro, Portrait of a Spanish Dancer (1921) bought by Picasso
Joan Miro, Autoportrait (1919) bought by Picasso
Modigliani (1915) bought by Picasso
Guard, Museum Picasso. Photo Rick Meghiddo.
Museum Picasso. Photo Rick Meghiddo.

We found the relatively small Musée de l’Orangerie collection exquisite for the quality of the works exhibited. Besides Claude Monet’s large paintings of water lilies, the show included first-rate works by Matisse, Soutine, Picasso, Modigliani, Renoir, Utrillo, and Pollock, to name some.

Musee de l’Orangerie. Photo: Rick Meghiddo.
Musee de l’Orangerie. Photo: Rick Meghiddo.
Pablo Picasso, Woman with a White Hat (1921)
Chaïm Soutine, Le Garçon d’étage (~1927)
Sam Francis, Round the World (1959)
Mark Rothko, Untitled ((1948)
Jackson Pollock, The Deep (1953)
Helen Frankenthaler (1963)

The Guimet Museum of Asian Arts has an extraordinary collection of Chinese, Cambodian, and Indian art. On both the Orangerie and the Guimet, the presence of children being taught about art was uplifting. Its renovation was sensibly designed by architects Henri and Bruno Gaudin. 

Guimet Museum, Cambodian Art
Guimet Museum, Storytelling
Guimet Museum, Storytelling
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Guimet Museum
Sarcophage, 2nd Century BCE
Guimet Museum.Architects for the renovation:Henri and Bruno Gaudin
Guimet Museum.Architects for the renovation:Henri and Bruno Gaudin

Other visits included the Grand Palais‘ retrospective on the work of František Kupka, the Petit Palais with great art from the late 1800s, and the new Louis Vuitton Foundation, by Frank Gehry, shown in Part 2: Paris Builds.

Frantisek Kupka, Family portrait (1910)
Frantisek Kupka, Traits n
Frantisek Kupka, Mademe Kupka dans les veticales (1911)
Takashi Murakami, Louis Vuitton Foundation
Auguste Clesinger, Bachante Couchee (1848) Petit Palais
Gustave Coubet, The Sleepers (1866) Petit Palais
Gerges Clarin, Sarah Bernhardt Portrait (1888) Petit Palais
Andre Derain, Andre Derain, Portrait de Madame Paul Guillaume au grand chapeau (1929)
Léon Lhermitte, Les Halles (1895)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888)
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888) Detail
Fernand Pelez, Grimaces et misères: les Saltimbanques (1888) Detail

Street art in Paris has become part of the urban components, as in many other cities. Some are very good, like the works of JR.

JR, Louvre
Jef Aerosol, Chuuuttt! (2011)
L’Atlas
Levalet
Artur Bordalo

 

Muhamad Bourouissa, Urban Riders, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2018)

From Six Million to Seventy Years Shoah, Israel, Anti-Semitic Leprosy and Architecture

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Within a week difference, Jews around the world commemorate Yom HaShoah, commonly known as the Holocaust; Yom Hazikaron – Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism; and Yom Haatzmaut, Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948. In parallel, we witness a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe and in Islamic countries. In view of these, I decided to produce a short documentary as a reminder that visualizes aspects of these conflicting forces, brings personal stories and testimonials, and shows Israel’s life and architecture today as an extraordinary “human laboratory” to change the world for the better. To set this reality within a global context, I include here a Humanistic Agenda for the 21st. Century. 

1. Shoah and “Leprosy of the Spirit”

On April 11, I assisted to a commemoration of the Shoah at the Congregation Ner Tamid of South Bay in Rancho Palos Verdes. The mass murder of six million Jews by the German Nazi regime and its collaborators during 1941-45 was  reminded through the lighting of six candles and the presentation of the documentary, “Never Again is Now,” about Evelyn Marcus’ family journey in her native Netherlands, and her personal confrontation with the current rise of anti-Semitism in Europe.
Evelyn Markus is a psychologist expert on managing resistance and conflict at work, and emotional self-control. When asked during the Q & A “how one confronts xenophobia and hatred,” her answer was: “you first show that it is wrong and that should not be rewarded.” Sure, but that is not enough. Bernard Henry-Levi defined anti-Semitism as the leprosy of the spirit. In an article published four years ago,“A 100-Year Cease-Fire,” I proposed a “carrot and the stick method” to solve Israel-Arab/Palestinian conflict.

2. Dreaming + Will vs. Xenophobia

Theodor Herzl, considered to be the father of political Zionism, believed that antisemitism could not be defeated or cured, only avoided, and that the only way to avoid it was by the establishment of a Jewish state. Today we all know that even the Jewish State, which this year celebrates its seventieth anniversary, is not a cure for the leprosy of antisemitism, yet it offers a strong “antibiotic” through a combination of creativity and military strength.
Architecture and planning in Israel played a vital role in Israel’s development, from the foundation of Tel Aviv in 1909 as a modern city on the sand dunes North of Jaffa, to the absorption of Bauhaus and Le Corbusier’s ideas into a social agenda, to many examples on forefront architecture today. If and when the many xenophobic Islamic countries that surround Israel will realize how much their own development could benefit through collaboration rather than hatred, Israel’s know-how can help the Middle East to become a new Renaissance.
Auschwitz
Israel flag seen from the Supreme Court
Jerusalem: multi-culturalism in a every ride
Tel Aviv Cinematheque Plaza
Tel Aviv beach
Mount Hertzl Memorial to Fallen
Mount Hertzl Memorial to Fallen
Mount Hertzl Memorial to Fallen
Design Museum, Holon
Supreme Court, Jerusalem
Tel Aviv Museum of Art

3. A humanistic Agenda with a Vision

Whether the world’s population will be 10,000,000,000 in 2050, 2044 (my 100-year birthday!) or 2060, is not important. We’ll get there and far beyond. At a global level of a social agenda, the priorities are:
  • Universal Physical and Mental Healthcare
  • Universal Income-producing Jobs
  • Universal Shelter
  • Universal Education
  • Sustainable Food Production
In this context, architecture has a moral responsibility. The social agenda is part and parcel of the architectural agenda and of the sustainability agenda.
In a world where the speed of growth of human needs exceeds the speed of production to satisfy those needs, SPEED OF CONSTRUCTION and AFFORDABILITY are critical.
Also critical is the QUALITY OF THE HUMAN HABITAT. It starts with the DWELLING UNIT, it expands to the URBAN ENVIRONMENT, and it touches every single aspect of human life: the quality of the working space, of the learning space, of the social space.
SUSTAINABILITY brings GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS to the realm of architecture.
ARCHITECTURE AS ART is critical to integrate the physical and the emotional human needs.
 MIXED-USE AND MULTI-FUNCTIONALITY are integral components of the sustainability agenda. While mixed-use juxtapose multiple functions (housing, commerce, education)  multi-functionality makes possible the multiple uses of the same space, and the multiple-use of the same component: a stairway as structure, a column or beam as a container of ducts, a wall as a container of storage, a roof as an edible garden.
PROXIMITY BETWEEN LIVING SPACE AND WORKING SPACE are part of the sustainability agenda. It can be a. Within the dwelling unit; b. Adjacent to the dwelling unit (price Tower); c. Within walking or bike distance from the dwelling.
MOBILITY is integral to both human needs and to sustainability, yet it demands a total revision of how it works. It consists of three categories. A. Emergency access (firemen, ambulances, police, rescue from disasters.) b. Public use: air mobility and public transportation of multiple kinds: trains, tramways, air tram cable cars, moving conveyors, buses, taxis (with drivers or driverless;) Pc. Private: bikes, skateboards, cars, trucks (private or rented.)
ART, together with nature, remain an important source of inspiration and, as in the case of nature, it must be read in the context of time and place, and it must be reinterpreted. The sources could be many: the Caves of Altamira, the graphics of mud huts in Africa or of American Indian tents, and the works of Western and Eastern high-art through the millennia.

In all these areas, Israel is likely to play a vital role. Its success is as an antibiotic against anti-Semitic leprosy as one can get.

 

Jasper Johns in L.A. and Vanguard Art Today Who are today's Jasper Johns? What is really 'avant-garde' today in art and architecture?

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Jasper Johns’ exhibition at The Broad, titled “Something Resembling Truth,” is revealing. It illustrates the integrity of a life-long research and provides a stimulant example to the young generation. At a time when art flows in all directions without clear distinction and criteria between serious or trivial, committed or casual, Johns shows us how one can be an explorer of meaning and forms of expression without falling into platitude. The documentary tries to establish a link between one of the most important artists of the 1960s avant-garde, and some of today’s avant-garde artists in multiple disciplines and media: painting, sculpture, film, video-art, choreography, architecture. 

White Flag, 1955
Target with Plastic Casts, 1955
Green Target, 1955
Jasper Johns – Flags, 1958
False Start, 1959
Painting with Two Balls, 1962
Diver, 1962

The show raises some questions: What is really ‘avant-garde’ today? Who are today’s Jasper Johns? Are there any ‘Leo Castelli-like” art dealers around? Are today’s architects connected to the art scene, and artists connected to architecture?

JR, Kibera Slum, Kenya
Natasa Prosec Stearns, Mud
Janet Echelman, Urban Sculpture
Janet Echelman, Urban Sculpture
Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence, 1994
Tamara Kostianovsky, The Persistence of Agony, New York
Emmanuelle Moreaux, Forest of Numbers
Emmanuelle Moreaux, Installation
Mark Bradford, Hirschhorn Museum
Florentijn Hofman, kraken, Shenzhen
Barke Ingels, VIA W57, New York
Barke Ingels, VIA W57, New York
Frank Gehry, Art Gallery, Alberta
Frank Gehry, Hotel Marques de Riscal, Elciego, Spain

Fast backward: the display triggered some memories. During the late 1960s we were students of architecture in Rome. Since the National Academy of Modern Art was next door to our school, we visited it frequently. The Gallery’s director, Palma Bucarelli, was a strenuous promoter of Abstract Expressionists as well as Neo-Dada, Pop, Minimalist and Conceptualist artists. It was during that time when we first came across some of Jasper Johns’ paintings.

In parallel, while working as apprentices at the studio of architect Luigi Pellegrin, we listened to time and again his insights on the new American art. Opening a publication illustrating contemporary American art, he would say “Look at this well: it is acid, it is crude, it is purposefully not-finished. It reflects our time.” The design of his house in via Aurelia carried some of these attributes.

Bruce Goff, Bevinger House, Oklahoma, 1955
Luigi Pellegrin, Residence, Rome, 1964
John Johansen, Mummers Theater, Oklahoma City, 1971
Mummers Theater Plan
Herb Green, Prairie Chicken House, Oklahoma, 1961
On the road to New York, 1971

When we traveled to the United States to visit and photograph Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture across the country, we started our trip in New York. It was 1971, and we were in our twenties. At the time, Soho was the epicenter of contemporary art. Leo Castelli had just opened two branches of his gallery on 77th street, one on the second floor of 420 West Broadway, and an even larger one at 142 Greene Street. It was there we saw newer works of Jasper Johns, along with those of several vanguard artists of the time: Frank Stella, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Sol LeWitt.

A month later, when having a private stopover at Phillip Johnson’s glass house in New Canaan, we visited, within his estate, Johnson’s ‘buried’ panting gallery and his underground sculpture gallery. They both contained multiple masterpieces of contemporary art.

Did we see any reflection of the art-of-the-times in architecture? Wright was out of all trends. The architecture of the establishment  “didn’t talk” to the on-going art vanguard. A rare exception was John Johansen’s Mummers Theater in Oklahoma City, built in 1970, outrageously demolished in 2014. Bruce Goff and Herb Green’s architecture were in-between organic and dissonant.

Fast forward to the present. The Broad exhibition of over one hundred Jasper Johns’ works, spanning sixty years of his career, is not a retrospective.  Works from different decades and in various media have been curated thematically, to demonstrate Johns’ career-long preoccupations.

And today? Art is breaking away from the confines of museums and art galleries. Perhaps the more strident example street art is the work of JR, which surpasses in scope that of Christo. He is not alone. There is a good number of forefront artists breaking new ground in film, video art, dance, sculpture, painting, music.

Medal of Freedom, 2011
Leo Castelli
Leo Castelli by Andy Warhol
Jasper John – Photo: John Lund

And in architecture? It is a tough call. Gehry led the way to liberate architects’ forms of expression, but the results come with many question marks about their social content. There seems to be an infatuation with the endless possibilities offered by new 3-D technology, but is… are these result also socially responsible?

Something Resembling Truth -Cover
Something Resembling Truth 1
Something Resembling Truth 2
Something Resembling Truth 3
Something Resembling Truth 4
Something Resembling Truth 5
Something Resembling Truth 6
Renzo Piano and Kerry Brougher at theThe Samuel Goldwyn Theater

Architecture + Cinema + Hollywood Work-in-Progress: The Academy Museum of Motion pictures in Context

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Rendering of Academy Museum. Courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop

The work-in-progress of the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, designed by architect Renzo Piano, is scheduled for opening in 2019. In “Architecture + Cinema + Hollywood”, the three are connected through images of the museum’s construction at the present time, historic and contemporary examples of architecture, mementos from classic movies, metaphors of Hollywood, and segments from my previous films.

We live immersed in architectural spaces throughout our lives. Filmmaking tells us stories through space, light, motion and human scale. The Acadamy Museum of Motion Pictures offers an opportunity to make tangible the connection between the two sisters’ arts.

 Both crafts have many things in common. They both are realized with the help of a team guided by a creator. On both disciplines, a spatial sequence is critical. In architecture, we perceive space as we move. In cinema, the spatial movement comes to us linearly, as may have been defined through editing.
Both disciplines interact with the other arts. Both must control sound, operate at different scales and deal with significant costs for their realization. Both create stages, one for everyday life, the other as a background for a story.
Architecture’s fundamental difference lays in its materiality. It deals with the law of gravity and with the nature of materials: strength, weight, texture, color, shape, durability. Yet the thinking process of architectural design and filmmaking is the same: we first dream, then we program/script, then we design/shoot, then we build/edit and finally we occupy/distribute. Criticism follows!

Architect Renzo Piano

Prof. Bruno Zevi

What does the museum’s “program/script” tell us? There are two main components: exhibitions and movie screenings. The exhibitions will be housed within the 1939 May Co. building, at the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard. The main screenings will be presented in the new 1,000-seat state of the art theater.
To emphasize the contrast between the existing building and the theater, Piano chose to formalize the later with a sort of molded sphere “suspended in space,” mostly cantilevered, standing on mayor pillars. This approach reminds me both Michelangelo’s structural support of Saint Peter’s dome and John Johansen’s Mummers Theater in Oklahoma City, more than Bucky Fuller’s dome.
The overall context couldn’t be more eclectic. Within the LACMA campus, old and new “connect” only by adjacency. Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” , reminding us that we are still standing on the Earth, is in total contrast with everything else. The Petersen Automotive Museum, at the opposite corner of the intersection, wraps around with metal ribbons a Bernard Tschumi-like red box, bringing to the scene a sort of caricature of adaptive-reuse. In a way, the whole area represents ultimate Los Angeles’ exiting disjunctions.

Using filmmaking techniques to communicate architecture, short of providing the physical experience of moving through space, can bring to the viewer much more than a succession of single frames. It can create associations with other places or stories, it allows for multiple perceptions in seconds, it can use drawings, photography, and art to illustrate a point. The film at the top of this blog tries to express that.

Central St. Giles Court, London
Weltstadthaus Köln
Metropolis Poster
The Shard, London
The Shard, London
The Shard, London
Marilyn Monroe, “Some Like It Hot” (1959)
Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, “La Dolce Vita” (1960)
Marina Abramovic Scene at “The Great Beauty.” (2014)

Tangoing with Paul & Amigos A personal spinoff of Paul McCarthy's exhibition at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in LA's downtown Art District

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“Impacting” is what first comes to mind when visiting Paul McCarthy’s wood sculpture exhibition at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in LA’s downtown Arts District.

The combination of crafted wood at a large scale and the integration of a Baroque language speaking a surrealistic critique of the contemporary world signals an art mutation
McCarthy titled his works “WS Spinoffs,” ”Wood Statues” and “Brown Rothkos.” The word “spinoff” is precise. In media, a spinoff is a radio or television program, film, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses in more detail on one aspect of an original work. In this case, the Snow White tale and Rothko’s paintings.
The gallery’s website includes a well-written description of McCarthy’s show, and also an 8-minute video presentation by Donatien Grau. See: https://www.hauserwirthlosangeles.com/exhibitions/paul-mccarthy-20170701
My reaction to the exhibition was more visceral than intellectual and so is my short documentary, “Tangoing with Paul & Amigos.” I made a sort of non-scripted “spinoff” that includes free association with like-minded artists and some memories from my Argentinean upbringing. The tango music is a metaphor of a dynamic nonlinear fluidity.
I tried to imagine the statues made out of white marble. The conflicts, sarcasms and subtleties they contain would become more evident, such as Bernini’s positioning the “Rio de la Plata River” sculpture in Piazza Navona as fearing that the facade of Borromini’s church of Sant’Agnese would crumble over him. Yet McCarthy’s choice of dark walnut wood is intentional. It makes harder to see the thematic at first sight. The eye is caught first by the craftsmanship and by the large scale as macro-layers of a complex composition.
Four Rivers Fountain, Piazza Navona, Rome

Bernini’s Four Rivers Fountain, Piazza Navona, Rome

The abstraction of the hanging Brown Rothkos, made of foam and sprayable polyurethane coating, resemble melting lava and brings a powerful contrast to the statues. They are both at an architectural scale.
Bown Rothkos

Brown Rothkos with Rothkos

Snow White Sculpture

Snow White Sculpture

Paul McCarthty

Paul McCarthy