Frank Lloyd Wright

Sarah Sze & Frank Lloyd Wright: A Match For The Ages

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

Show seen: Sarah Sze: Timelapse @ The Guggenheim Museum. This is Part 1, an overview. Part 2 looks at details from the show here.

Written on my soul. Frank Lloyd Wright’s signature adorning his trademark red square “cornerstone” on his round building. The dates attest to how long it took to get this building approved & completed, which every other of his many NYC projects weren’t. Seen September 5, 2023. Click any image for full size.

Those who have seen elements of Architectural design in some of the fantastic structures Sarah Sze includes in her impossible to categorize shows over the past few decades might be left with a sneaking suspicion the Artist has a desire to be an Architect. She would actually come by that honestly. Her father was an Architect, and Sarah, who began as a Painter, studied Painting & Architecture in school before graduating with degrees in both from Yale in 1991. After shows and Public Art installations all over the world, this past summer she met her match. To create work that holds its own in Frank Loyd Wright’s iconic Guggenheim Museum has been a standing challenge for Artists since it opened 65 years ago.

“It’s really a building that frames a void….How do you take on the most incredible void created in recent time in Architecture and talk to it in the slightest way?” Sarah Sze.

Installation view of 4 of the 8 Bays that made up the main section of Timelapse on the 6th (top) floor, September 5, 2023. Extra points if you see the very faint black string running from right to left against Wright’s Oculus (the skylight). It’s a unifying element of the show, though I’m not sure how many visitors spotted it as such. I’ll explain.

In Timelapse, Sarah Sze’s Art was installed outside and inside Wright’s masterpiece, the last major work of the Architect’s 7-decade career, and one that stands completely apart from everything else the he created, at least to my eyes. In it, she “dialogues” with Wright in the most innovative ways I’ve seen mounted in the Guggenheim, at least since Danh Vo’s spectacular show in 2018. Though the show “only” consists of projections on the building’s exterior, an installation in the ground-floor pool, 8 more installations in as many Bays on the Rotunda’s top floor, the freight elevator ramp, and the large rear gallery, I was told by a Guggenheim Staff Member it took five and a half weeks to install! That’s a long time for a significant part of the Museum to be closed. I can’t imagine the deinstallation was all that much quicker. Though it was up for only as many months (March 31 through September 10, 2023), it’s a show that’s hard to stop thinking about. Hence, it’s taken this long to complete this piece, which marks where I’m at in pondering it to this point.

“What I love myself about the experience of art is the sense of this moment of discovery when I’m seeing a work of art. And actually, that can happen a year after you see a work of art. You don’t always know how good a work of art is until you see it and you remember it in retrospect.” Sarah Sze.

Time is a river that flows on and on, through our lives. It may be that for most of us images mark time in our lives in any number of ways. We may remember our childhood & youth through a handful of images taken in the distant past, as we do so many significant events in our lives since. As time goes on, the pile of internal images gets edited down to those we feel are most significant. In a sense, this is something akin to “timelapse” Photography or Film/Video by which a succession of images are taken at intervals to record change over a given period, resulting in a simultaneously accelerated and collapsed sense of time. Timelapse considers “how we mark and measure time- constructing our own personal timelines of memory through images and fragments of experiences that are constantly evolving…a contemplation on how we mark time and how time marks us.” Sarah Sze (quoted in the press kit).

Media Lab, 1998, Mixed Media, installed along the wall adjacent to the freight elevator.

As such, it’s a show of Art that is focused on images. That marks an extraordinary transformation in the Art of Sarah Sze over her career. Early on, her work was object based and seemed to qualify as “Sculpture” to many people. Gradually, beginning with Media Lab, 1998, now in the Guggenheim’s collection, and almost hidden here in a corridor for the freight elevator, her work has come to include and feature images more and more, as I saw in her last NYC gallery show in 2019. The images start right away.

Cards without walls. The “wall card” for the video projections on the outside of the Guggenheim.

Timelapse begins with 2 video projections on the Museum’s exterior walls which I missed because the Museum closed at 6 and the sun wasn’t setting until 8 at the time. So, Timelapse started for me inside on the ground floor. The exterior projections turned out to be the first sign that images flow continually through all of Timelapse, showing how central they are to Sarah Sze’s work today. “Sculptor?” Good luck boxing her now!

  “The Renaissance, the Baroque, everyone was doing painting, architecture, sculpture that was Bernini, Michelangelo, that was par for the course,” Sarah Sze1.

“When is there water in a museum?,” the Artist asks on the audio guide. Inside, Timelapse begins in Wright’s pea-pod shaped ground level pool. Diver, 2023, First of two parts, Multimedia installation, and The Night Sky is Dark Despite the Vast Number of Stars in the Universe, 2023, First of two parts, Acrylic paint, string, paracord, and wood. A pendulum hovers over the hammock & the pool with a video projected onto it of Sarah Sze’s finger stroking water (in blue above). Note the string extending up from the pendulum extending into the void. (Gego: Measuring Infinity filled the rest of the Rotunda.)

Installed over Wright’s pool, the “hammock” looks like a restful place from which to ponder the river of images playing continually in your mind. The first video inside is a projection on the pool of Sarah Sze’s hand stroking water, taking “dialoguing” with Frank Lloyd Wright literally and with sublime subtlety! A pendulum “points” to this area, beckoning the viewer to look at it.  The pendulum is attached to a black string that extends up into the void, all the way to the top! Using this simple means of measuring with a plumb line, Sarah Sze at once measures the void, interacts with it, and leads the viewer to the main part of the show.

Sarah Sze, Guggenheim as a Ruin(!), 2009, Ink, string, collage on paper, 50 x 32 inches. (Exclamation mark mine.) An indication that Sarah Sze has been thinking about the Guggenheim for a long time. Notice the red string coming down from the top! It splits in two, and the right part seems to wind up over the ground floor pool, which has spilled on to the floor. Seen in the book Sarah Sze: Infinite Line. Not in the show.

“There is fragility in drawing a line through space; with this one simple powerful gesture, you can occupy an entire space.” Sarah Sze on the wall card.

The more I thought about it, though a mere speck compared to Wright’s huge open space, the string has come to “occupy” it in my mind.

While you’re lying on your back in the hammock, here’s your (approximated) view of Wright’s Oculus. See that small speck just south of 5 o’clock on the white glass (and the faint line running down from it to the right)? That’s the hub where the black string’s rise culminates before sending it off across the void to the main installation of Timelapse on the other side, (as shown in the 2nd picture). There are countless amazing details everywhere you look in the show. Therefore, I’ve decided to present an overview of the show in this piece and show details in a Part 2.

Taking Wright’s unique elevator to the top (as he intended visitors to do) and walking down, (usually, actually up in this case), visitors find the black string already there waiting in front of them. Following it still higher, I noticed it was anchored to a hub that sent it to multiple points all the way across the void to the other side of the 6th floor.

Bay 1. The Night Sky is Dark Despite the Vast Number of Stars in the Universe, 2023, Second of two parts, Acrylic paint, string, paracord, and wood and River of Images, Part two (white circle on the left). The near string holding the hammock is the continuation, and terminus, of the black string from the pea pod pool.

Walking to the beginning of Timelapse on 6, I had the deja vu experience of seeing another blue hammock, one end of which was anchored to the black string. Though dated 2023, the hammock and the one in the pea-pod pool are very similar to one she created in 2015 titled Hammock, down to the “confetti” on top of it (and similar to the one installed on the pool as we saw). Along side is a pile of A/V equipment, “enhanced” with torn analog Photographs, and a wide range of objects that make the viewer think, “Ah, this is not just A/V equipment, it’s part of the piece.” These equipment installations are to be seen at the beginning and end of each Bay, in varying degrees of complexity, and typically, with an inventory of a staggering number of items- generally her trademark common items, seen in most of her pieces, but also small, often very complex “Sculptures.” Since every Bay has a variety of these, they add a sense of unity and continuity to the entire floor as the viewer moves from Bay to Bay. 

Bay 2, Travelers Among Streams and Cascades, 2023, Oil paint, acrylic paint, inkjet prints, acrylic polymers, string, and ink on Dibond, aluminum, wood and paper on 6 panels, 114 x 245 inches. All the pieces on the 6th floor are dated 2023- including the Paintings! Since the show started going in around April, that means Ms. Sze must have been unimaginably busy earlier this year. More than likely, the show was in the works during the pandemic.

In an interview, Ms. Sze hoped that Timelapse would inspire a “I didn’t know you could do that in a museum,” reaction in viewers (especially young Artists)1. Meanwhile, River of Images (Part two), a continuation of the exterior projection, moved along each wall on 6, flowing from Bay to Bay and across all the Art as you stood and looked at it.

Closer to the extraordinary 20 1/2 foot Travelers Among Streams and Cascades, “mounted” on shims and a level, further reinforcing the “off-balance” experience of seeing Art in the Guggenheim. I wondered- Would Wright smile at this, or be offended?

Speaking of its focus on images, one thing I was extremely happy to see was that Sarah Sze has included four of her remarkable Paintings in Timelapse, each of which was dated 2023. Her style seems to have evolved since those seen in her landmark 400-page book, Sarah Sze: Paintings (a NighthawkNYC NoteWorthy Art Book of 2023). Though each Painting in Timelapse was quite strong, Travelers Among Streams and Cascades, in particular, struck me of attaining yet another level.

“The paintings for me are more about how I actually see in my head.” Sarah Sze1.

I was stunned when I heard her say that. In another interview, the Artist spoke of having them be a portal to the world beyond the walls. Given each piece in the show is newly created and site specific, it’s fascinating to ponder that when looking at the Paintings and how they’re installed. Each Painting is displayed in an exceptionally unique way. In fact, over the countless Paintings that have been exhibited in the entire, 65-year, exhibition history of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim I seriously doubt that ANY of these installation scenarios have been seen before.  

Bay 3. “Elements of Architectural design,” as I wondered in the first sentence? The massive and incredibly intricate Slice, approached from what turned out to be the back. In Timelapse, Ms. Sze continually plays on the “off-balance” feeling viewers have walking up and down Wright’s angled ramp. Here, notice the “shims” she’s placed under Slice to level it, which she’s chosen to leave visible for emphasis. Another way of dialoguing with Wright. Elsewhere, actual levels are seen are various points in the show. As in the prior picture, and as I show in Part 2.

Speaking of the installation, in spite of the numerous delicate assemblages and many small items installed on the floor, Sarah Sze reported during the run of the show that nothing had been broken, even after a weekend of 15,000 visitors. She attributed this to viewers moving slowly through the show.

Ms. Sze’s Art dialogues with Wright in numerous fascinating ways, while advancing her themes of time and memory in images. For one thing, as anyone who has been to the Guggenheim knows, the Rotunda’s Ramp is on a continual slope. Upward going up, and downward going down, creating a sense of being off-balance. “Tripping and catching yourself-a central idea of the Baroque1,” she said. Sarah Sze makes a point of showing the viewer how this affects her work, adding shims under parts of the huge Slice, or filling a large tank part way, making the fairly steep angle of the floor’s slope obvious . She equates this with creating a sense of being “off-balance” for the viewer who also often can’t tell if an image is digital or analog. “Equilibrium” is also reinforced by her use of 3 pendulums hanging from the black string at various points along its journey.

 

Slice, from its “front,” in dialogue with Wright’s Oculus. Barely visible behind the first step of the near ladder is her model of Slice in this Bay (which I show close-up in Part 2). I found the piece transcendent, and it wasn’t the only one that was. Timekeeper, 2016, installed in the large rear gallery, and displayed for the first time in NYC, seems to mark time on a grand scale. Here, the Artist dialogues with the building while giving us a “slice of time.”

As she has done in a number of recent works (like Crescent (Timekeeper), in her 2019 Tanya Bonakdar show), many of the images in Slice were actually miniature video screens so many of the images changed independently(!) as you watched. As for the images themselves, nowhere in the exhibition catalog, the check list, or the accompanying materials does it specify whose Photography we’re looking at. I’m assuming they’re by Sarah Sze.  

Bay 4, Diver, Second of two parts and Images That Images Beget on the back wall. In this work, there is a torn Photograph of the Sun, attached to the oscillating fan (shown close-up in Part 2). This image is followed by other images of the Sun on a a string  that make a trail to Images That Images Beget, which has a Sun in its center, as you can see below. Note the slope of the water in the tank. “Water in a museum,” part deus. In her Drawing for this piece, the Artist had the water in the tank right up to the top on the right.

All four Paintings were installed uniquely in my experience of 43 years of going to Painting shows. Bay 6 was one of two Bays that used strings with Photos mounted on them as a compositional device that either led to the Painting on the back wall, or referenced it. Installing them this way created an entirely new way of experiencing a Painting as you can see here-

Following the Suns. Images That Images Beget, 2023, 129 x 103 inches, Oil paint, acrylic paint, inkjet prints, acrylic polymers, and ink on Dibond, aluminum, wood and paper, on 4 panels, with a string, containing Photos, leading to it from the tank.

I found this a fascinating way of drawing the viewer into the space and making him or her consider individual elements, like the Sun, and countless small objects installed on the floor, along the way to seeing the Painting. It also occurred to me that it’s a way of both measuring the space, occupying the space, as she said, and dialoguing with Wright. The whole idea of installing objects on the floor, which has been done many times, is taken to a new level here with countless small, even tiny, objects lying on the floor, some you can see in this picture (and more in Part 2). I wonder if that’s been done here before.

Bay 5, Times Zero, 2023, Oil paint, acrylic paint, inkjet prints, acrylic polymers, and ink on Dibond, aluminum, wood and paper, on three panels. Total dimensions, 97 × 120 1/2 × 3 inches.

Regarding the Paintings in Timelapse, and specifically about Times Zero, the exhibition catalog says, “The paintings in this exhibition were created in Sze’s studio in New York, where the artist meticulously replicated the museum’s Bays in 1:1 scale, allowing her to work quasi-in situ. In the case of Times Zero, Sze was struck by the angle at which paint dripped on the sloping shelf that runs from the wall to the floor (familiarly referred to as the “apron”).”

Here the Painting itself is destabilized by having its mirror likeness begin to come apart. The catalog continues, “She later photographed the work and digitally manipulated it in perspective to the incline of the apron. The resulting full-scale print was then ripped and the shards arranged below the painting itself, like a reflection in water or an imprint; the debris was left to overflow at the edge like liquid5.” She will revisit this “overflowing” effect in a subsequent Bay.

Bay 6, A Certain Slant, 2023, Multimedia installation, including two-channel color video projection, with sound, various durations; video projectors; inkjet prints; and metal pendulum. A number of the torn analog Photos lying around the circle are of hands and forearms, as I show close-up in Part 2. Hands being a running theme.

A Certain Slant reminded me of Sarah Sze’s piece Triple Point, which I saw at MoMA a few years back, in that it has a center pendulum suspended over a pile of unspecified material. In Triple Point, however, the pendulum makes a much wider arc seeming to threaten the surrounding objects. In A Certain Slant, it confines its arc to the area of the salt mound.

Sarah Sze, Triple Point, Multimedia, 2013, seen at the opening of the latest “new” MoMA, October 21, 2018. A work that represented the U.S. at the Venice Biennale that year. The title is a reference to the “triple point of water,” a state where it exists simultaneously as steam, ice and a liquid.

Seeing Triple Point at MoMA left me amazed that Sarah Sze’s work can be installed (in Venice in the case of Triple Point), disassembled and reassembled (at MoMA and elsewhere). Given that Timelapse is site-specific for the Guggenheim, however, it would seem extremely unlikely it will ever be reassembled in full again.

Bay 7. Last Impression (on the back wall), 2023, Oil paint, acrylic paint, inkjet prints, acrylic polymers, and ink on Dibond, aluminum, wood and paper
84 × 56 1/4 × 2 inches.

In Bay 7, one of the highlights of the show for me, the strings were installed across the Bay, preventing the viewer from moving past a certain point, as seen below. Along the series of strings, numerous empty frames were hung, which is interesting since the Painting is not framed. This continued on a unique installation on the large blue ladder nearby to the right, which I show in detail in Part 2.

Closer. The strings strung across the bay limit how close the viewer can get to the Painting, which looks like it could contain an enlarged fingerprint. I’ve also never seen a Painting installed on/lying on the ramp, as the small one to the left is.

The Painting, installed on the back wall, was also accompanied by numerous drips and marks that appear to be on the wall, again mimicking a studio situation as in Bay 6. Unlike the “overflow” seen in Bay 5, Times Zero, this time it appears paint runs down the apron and on to the floor. It made me wonder if Ms. Sze was allowed to Paint on the walls and apron, or if this is part of the installation as well, though that is paint on the floor.

The final Bay, 8, Things Caused to Happen (Oculus), 2023, Multimedia installation, including color video projection, with sound, various durations; video projectors; wood; stainless steel; inkjet prints; toothpicks; clamps; ruler; and tripods. The natural light obscures the light from the projection which shines on the central structure then leaks on to the wall on the left, with strings running to it, indicating the breaking up of digital images. I show this in Part 2.

The showstopper was Things Caused to Happen (Oculus), installed in Bay 8, the final Bay on the 6th floor. Seen from a distance, above, it looked like an alien craft hovering in the space surrounded by cameras.

Close up. Each little square and rectangle appears to be a screen with images projected on each independently! How, I don’t know. I show a short video clip of this in Part 2.

Closer up, it seemed to mimic a human head, possibly imitating a number of images continually playing inside of one. I don’t know about you, but I only have one screen playing in my head at any given time. Once again, as in Slice, somehow, these tiny images changed as you watched- independently. Some appeared to be slide shows, some appeared to be video.

In the large rear gallery, which became a gallery as part of the non-Frank Lloyd Wright expansion, Sarah Sze’s monumental and monumentally complex Timekeeper, 2016, was on view.

Also included in the show were two older pieces; Media Lab, the Artist’s first piece to include video was kind of hidden on the ramp of the freight elevator, shown earlier, and the large Timekeeper, 2016, making its NYC debut. It was installed in the large rear gallery off the 6th floor, a space not designed by Wright to be a gallery, and like all the other spaces added in the controversial expansion (which I fought at the time, resulting in my first published Art writing in The New York Times, and which I remain no fan of), I find seriously lacking as gallery spaces. Her huge Timekeeper, now a part of the Guggenheim’s collection, was installed in the center of the darkened room and its video projections moved across all four walls. Between Media Lab, 1998, to Timekeeper, 2017, to Timelapse, 2023, the viewer can trace how long Sarah Sze has been interested in time, how images mark time, and memories, how long she has featured images in her work, and how her work has evolved.

Timekeeper, detail.

When Timekeeper was installed in Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum in 2016, their Press Release said that it, “blurs the line between organic and mechanical structure, its lifecycle marked by clicking and whirring and flickering images. It keeps a form of eccentric time that is entirely its own, remembering moments over and over again as time slips by. In this sense, Timekeeper has no relationship to the mechanical devices we use to mark the literal passing of time, but instead to the way we recall and replay our lives, in selected fragments that, strung together, account for the passage of years.”

In my February, 2020 piece on her most recent NYC gallery show, I called Sarah Sze a “genius,” the only time I’ve used that term on a living Artist in the 8 1/2 years of NighthawkNYC.com. I should point out that this was BEFORE I saw the Sarah Sze: Paintings book, OR her spectacular recent Laguardia Airport installation. Exactly 4 years since I wrote that, I’ve seen nothing to change my mind.

“I didn’t know you could do that in a museum,” she said, thinking of how viewers, particularly young Artists, might react to Timelapse, before adding, “now you take that ball and run.”

Part 2 of my look at Timelapse looks at some of the countless details in the show, here. 

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “I’ve Seen It All” by Bjork, another of the world’s most gifted Artists. If I were to use that “g” word on a living Musician, she might well be the one I use it on. She performs it here in Dancer in the Dark–

For Lana, whose favorite is building the Guggenheim Museum, and for Ben, a passionate lover & student of Wright’s Art.

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  1. from her interview with Great Women Artists Podcast ↩
  2. from her interview with Great Women Artists Podcast ↩
  3. from her interview with Great Women Artists Podcast ↩
  4. from her interview with Great Women Artists Podcast ↩
  5. Guggenheim Museum, Timelapse Exhibition Catalog, P.129 ↩

Draw!

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

 For The Record #4.

Is Drawing becoming a lost skill in today’s world?

Michelangelo, Archers Shooting at a Herm, Red chalk, seen at The Met’s unforgettable Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer in 2018.

That would be tragic. For any number of reasons, perhaps the foremost being that I believe Drawing is an essential life skill. The cellphone camera seems to be replacing Drawing for many people, and I think this is shortsighted1. Drawing is a fundamental way that humans have communicated and expressed themselves for many tens of thousands of years. No doubt, even before the advent of writing and language. Its value to Art and Artists over the centuries can be seen in any museum. Beyond Art, Drawing is an important way of putting ideas down, or mapping out your thoughts. It’s an important means of thinking visually that nothing known to me can replace.

An Artist who Draws almost exclusively, Chris Ware’s fold-out cover for the hardcover edition of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth took Drawing in entirely new directions in 2000. It’s part map, part story, part Art, part mind map, yet somehow, it all holds together. And, it also gives one an idea of what the amazing 380 pages inside are like. Is it any wonder the book was seven years in the making?

When I first tried to paint, I immediately realized I needed to work on my drawing, first, to paint the way I wanted to paint (yes, small letters. No Art with a capital A in this case). I proceeded to draw, daily, for the next decade. I still haven’t gone back to painting. Drawing became an obsession for me, both doing it and studying it’s amazing history in Art.

Ingres, Portrait of a Lady, 1815-17, seen at The Met in 2012 in very low light to protect it. I spent the better part of a decade trying to figure out HOW Mr. Ingres created incredible Drawings like this. In Secret Knowledge, David Hockney surmises that he may have used a camera lucida to draw the head from life, then sketched the rest fairly quickly. Regardless, it borders on the miraculous.

As time has gone on, particularly over the past decade, though there have been some monumental museum Drawing shows of work by the masters, I’ve seen fewer and fewer Drawing shows by Contemporary Artists.

An exception. Raymond Pettibon, No Title (It sounds powerful…), Ink, acrylic and collage on paper, 60.5 x 101 inches, seen at Zwiner in 2017.

Along with really looking, and learning to see, Drawing is invaluable in developing an eye. Try drawing anything. It forces you to really see and to really be clear about what you see so you can render it. I spent a few years drawing Sculpture in The American Wing Courtyard in The Met three times a week. One of the great things about that space is that it is faced and covered with glass. The light constantly changes, and if you sat there long enough, which I did countless times, day changed to evening and then to night. This is a real challenge to anyone trying to render an object with a pencil, like it would be to someone Painting outdoors. It forced me to learn how to look hard and fast, before the light I was trying to render changed. Of course, I could have drawn from a Photograph, but I found I learned much more trying to draw a Sculpture on the spot. 

Vincent Van Gogh, Harvest in Provence, 1888, Reed pen, quill and ink over graphite on wove paper, from Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings. Vincent was one of the first Artists to fascinate me in my early teens when I discovered him in an early visit to MoMA. As time has gone on, I’m still amazed at how he saw the world, which you can really see in his incredible Drawings. Here, he almost Draws in shorthand. Look at the sky, and the way he renders most of the scene using lines and dots. There’s so much to look at, the figures almost disappear. The only thing he’s darkened is the cart in the center. Once you compare this with  the Painting he did of this scene, it might be apparent why.

When I’m first exploring an Artist, I want to see their Drawings. If they haven’t created any, I look into why not. Maybe they can’t Draw? Many Painters, like Richard Estes and Rod Penner, Draw their work directly on their canvases, creating an “Underdrawing,” as have countless Painters for centuries before them, and so don’t make standalone Drawings. If they have created Drawings, I want to see what role Drawing plays in their work, and I want to see what their Drawings reveal about it. Yes, there are Artists I admire who either don’t make separate Drawings or don’t Draw per se, but I’ve come to realize that they are in the minority. 

 

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Drawing of the Winslow House, 1893-7. The actual house may still be seen in Chicago. Drawing seen at MoMA in 2017.

Any number of Architects have made Drawings, often to present their ideas to their clients- Presentation Drawings, like the one above by Frank Lloyd Wright, that are now considered Art. Beyond their beauty, these Drawings serve any number of other purposes from showing an idea to a client, to helping engineers, landscape designers and urban planners understand the project.

Nasreen Mohamedi used Drawing both as the primary discipline of her Art and also for other reasons in other ways, as in her diary, two pages of which appear above, seen at The Met Breuer’s landmark, opening, show of her work in 2016. She, apparently, went back and colored out most of the lined pages but left words or sentences here and there legible. Did she do this for Artistic reasons? As a reminder of things left undone or to be remembered? Or…?

David Byrne, Tree Drawing, from Arboretum.

In 2003, the Musican & Artist David Byrne published his book of “tree drawings,” Arboretum. The fascinating Drawings inside show other ways in which Drawing can be used. He discussed them here. Three are shown here.

David Byrne, Drawing, from Arboretum.

Some border on graphs.

David Byrne, Music Tree, 2002, from Arboretum.

Others on maps.

Three iPad Drawings by David Hockney, seen at The Met’s David Hockney show in 2018.

On the positive side, Technology has brought new ways one can Draw into the world. David Hockney is among the many using the iPad to create museum level Art.

Nasreen Mohamedi Untitled, circa 1970, seen at The Met Breuer in 2016.

In some ways, it’s akin to her Drawings, her primary medium after her early work, and in other ways, it’s not. When I first saw “Untitled,” circa 1970, above, I thought it was a piece of fabric. I stood in front of it for almost 30 minutes in utter disbelief that it was a Drawing, and one of THE most amazing I’ve ever seen. I subsequently christened the late Ms. Mohamedi, “The Goddess of Line.” It was said that “She was one person who was always in tune- life, work, the way she dressed, how she talked, behaved- each always totally in tune with the other, one straight line2.” During her lifetime, she was largely unknown, and so she gave many of her pieces away as gifts. Eventually, a crippling illness robbed her of her ability to Draw, before tragically taking her life at just 53 in 1990.

Ms. Mohamedi taught, and those she came in contact with have continued to spread her name and influence. Thankfully, currently and in the recent past, there are other Artists, like Mr. Hockney, William Kentridge, Raymond Pettibon, Marcel Dzama, Kara Walker, Jean-Michel Basquiat, R. Crumb and Chris Ware for whom Drawing is central to their Art. My hope is they, and all the other Artists who Draw, inspire the next generations of Artists to continue Drawing, if schools continue to stop teaching it. The Met, MoMA and many other museums have Drawing workshops, but beyond Art, institutions in other realms, and businesses, benefit from Drawings to no end. They have a stake in this, too. It’s going to take many people and organizations from all walks of life who realize what’s at stake take action to reverse the direction things seem to be taking. Human creativity has always found ways to express itself. I’m hoping that continues to find popular expression in Drawings. The time is NOW! to make sure. Before it’s too late.

Today, there are infinitely more Drawing tools, and ways to Draw, available than ever before. So, pick up a pencil, or use whatever device you’re reading this on, express yourself, nurture your creativity and ideas, and Draw!

For The Record is a series of pieces that are about key/core subjects & beliefs that underly everything else I’ve written here. The first three parts are here. 

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  1. David Hockney, the legendary Artist who has Painted, Drawn and Photographed, has spoken at length about the shortcomings of the camera. Over the past three years, I’ve come to agree with him. ↩
  2. Here ↩

Chris Ware-“The World’s Smartest Cartoonist”

Chris Ware stands in front of the original Art for the covers of his new book, Monograph, at the opening for the show of the same title at Adam Baumgold Gallery on November 10, 2017. Click any Photo for full size.

Chris Ware has been universally respected among his fellow Cartoonists & Graphic Novelists for quite some time. At this point, it’s becoming relevant to consider his place among ALL his peers, including the all-time legends. Now, he has made that a much easier thing to assess with the release of his new book, Monograph, a gorgeous, and, (typically) meticulously well-done, Rizzoli mid-career autobiography and retrospective in one. But before anyone else can begin to assess his accomplishment through it, no less than Art Speigelman, one of those enduring masters of Cartons & Graphic Novels in that pantheon of legends, calls him “the World’s Smartest Cartoonist,” in his Introduction to it. After he, his wife, Francoise Mouly, the Art Editor of the New Yorker & an Independent Publisher, and Ira Glass have their say up top, the rest of it is so well done, I don’t think there’s a better case to be made for his accomplishment. Take that, future biographers/monographers! For the rest of us, no matter how closely you’ve followed Chris Ware, you’ll find known favorites alongside much that is previously unknown, including a surprising amount of detail about Mr. Ware’s life along the way.

“Good cartoon drawing is good design.” Charles M. Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” said in 1997. The published covers from the Drawings, above, for  Monograph, 2017. Front cover, right side, and back cover, left. Their “meaning?” Perhaps, that there’s a lot going on in that head…Inside (between the covers).

Speaking of what might be going on in that head, along the way, Monograph’s 280 pages also provides the best evidence that Chris Ware is a bit of a throw-back in his tastes in Art, Cartooning, Music & Architecture, a side that co-exists with, and informs, the visionary that is given to flights of fantasy, usually involving the past or the future, often without notice. They all coalesce in Art that, at times, could be mistaken at a distance for an Architect’s plans, as seen above.

An echo? Speaking of Architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, “Madison Civic Center (Monona Terrace)” Night View, 1955, Ink on paper presentation drawing. When I first saw Monograph, this drawing by Wright, recently on view at MoMA, came to mind. Chris Ware lives near the early Frank Lloyd Wright houses in the Chicago suburbs.

By now, none of this is news to anyone who has seen his work over what is already 30…Can it be? Yes, it is…30 years! What’s lesser known is that, personally, he’s also an enigma. I’m only 15 years in myself, yet, what I still have trouble getting used to is that along with all the things Chris Ware is, he is, on top of it all, endlessly self-effacing.

I don’t think it’s an act.

Take a look at his expressions and body language during his first national television appearance, November 13th, on one of the last episodes of Charlie Rose, which is, also, a good introduction to him. Note the 5:07 mark, for instance-

For the past 15 years he’s been telling me off and on that his original Art, which now sells for upwards of many thousands of dollars per in galleries, “is easily disposable.” First, he said it in 2002, after Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth came out. Just this past week, he said it again. Standing in the middle of the opening of his newest show at Adam Baumgold’s East 66th Street gallery. I had commented on the fact that he is his best and most astute collector, and asked if he was planning to open a museum. He replied by talking about disposing of it.

From left to right- Art for “Hold Still,” an iconic 2005 New Yorker cover, Art for the Acme Novelty Lunchbox, a page of Rusty Brown, subject of his next book, a very early “Jimmy Corrigan” page from Acme #1, two Self-Portraits, and a page that appeared in the New York Times Book Review in October, 2015, far right. Mr. Ware’s Original is titled “Why I O Comics.” I heard he wasn’t pleased that the Times published this with the heading “Why I Love Comics.” All of this Art is, or was, part of the collection of Chris Ware.

All I could do was shake my head and nervously smile when he said it, again, because he can’t be serious. CAN HE? Taking no chances, I did the only responsible thing I could. I told him to call me first. Then, I looked for “answers” in the show, and in Monograph, itself.

The museums will, also, come calling one of these days. I have no doubt of that. In my opinion, they should have, already. I’m referring to his work being in the permanent collection of MoMA, The Met and The Whitney, and the other big museums around the world. To be fair, the Whitney Museum did include Chris Ware in their 2002 Biennial, when he was the first cartoonist ever invited, and was given an entire gallery where about 48 works, by my count, were on view. They even commissioned him to create the poster for the show. He has, also, been included in important shows at other museums, at NYC’s Jewish Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, both in 2006, and elsewhere.

During this latest encounter, we stood in the midst of the opening for his newest show with Mr. Baumgold, for Monograph. The rooms were filled with original Drawings by Mr. Ware going back to the late 1980’s, when he was 20 or 21 years old, works that even his most avid readers have not seen, or probably even knew about.

“The Sunville Daily,” 1987, Ink and red pencil on paper. By Chris Ware at about age 20. Looking very closely, you’ll find elements of his later work, but, overall, this is shockingly different from everything that came after.

The fact that he’s kept a good number of his earliest work that those long time readers have never seen, proves that he attaches at least some value to them, himself, and I have a hard time believing it’s only sentimental. Chris Ware has a professor’s level knowledge of the history of cartooning (as seen here), as well as an acute awareness of its current state, witness the expert (yes, expert) contributions he’s made to books on George Herriman and Daniel Clowes, as well as the astute quotes bearing his name that appear on many new and notable graphic novels, including being front and center on the front cover of, perhaps, the most auspicious debut of 2017, Emil Ferris’ “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters,” which I wrote about here. Of course that eye is applied first, foremost, and probably, most critically, to his own work.

Athletically challenged. “Gym Class,” 1987, Ink and red pencil on paper, depicts some of the dread, and possibly, the bullying, he dealt with in school. One of the earliest works in “Monograph,” elements of his now “classic” graphic style appear, and are already confidently rendered. A key point in Chris Ware finding his direction. (That’s a reflection from across the gallery above the center character’s head. Sorry.)

Mr. Ware came to fame with the release of his first full length book, the graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid Alive, in 2000. It won the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, an award that considers not only graphic novels, but ALL books released during the year. The glowing reviews served to highlight the fact that there had, literally, been nothing like it to that point. The graphic novel had seen its first big breakthrough in underground and non-superhero comics, perhaps, since Art Spiegleman’s Maus, the Pulizer Prize winner in 1992. Seven years in the making, it’s possible to watch his style solidify over its 380 unnumbered pages. Almost as soon as it was released, Chris Ware’s name had been made. When I first saw it, I knew from the one of a kind dust jacket that opened out into an amazingly intricate double sided poster that here was a truly unique book. 16 years later? A well worn copy is still near to hand. It’s a book that doesn’t reveal all its secrets in one reading. Every time I pick it up I still find new things, new threads, I’d previously missed. I’m not alone. “Jimmy Corrigan” has given rise to a continuing stream of critical examination, theorizing, analysis and speculation.

The original cover Drawing for the front of the remarkable folded book jacket/double sided poster for Jimmy Corrigan as seen in Monograph.

“Reading him, I always have the feeling that the pages aren’t big enough for everything he’s trying to squeeze into those orderly rectangular panels.” Ira Glass, Monograph Preface.

A flat of the whole, double sided cover, in color. The Drawing reproduced above is the left half of this image. Little discussed (perhaps because it’s the back of the cover/poster), the right half contains the story of Jimmy’s ancestors, including his African-American ancestors (one seen being sold as a slave), which were unknown to him. Some see commentary on the “imperialistic” nature of American colonization and the idealism of the “American dream” in the story of Jimmy’s ancestors as well.

Jimmy Corrigan turned out to be semi-autobiographical. In it, Jimmy gets a letter and phone call out of the blue from the father he’s never met suggesting they meet over Thanksgiving. Before going, he tries to imagine him and what impact knowing him would have on his life. When he finally meets him, he discovers he’s nothing like he imagined him to be. He also meets his dad’s adopted African-American daugther, Amy, who Jimmy had no knowledge of.

Some time after it was published we learned that Chris Ware, himself, never knew his father growing up, until finally meeting him, once, mid-way through writing Jimmy Corrigan. Sadly, the elder Mr. Ware passed away shortly before the book was finished, without ever having seen his son’s close-to- home masterpiece. Later, Chris Ware said that “I didn’t spend that much time with him. I added it all up once…I knew my father for just about five hours1.” That’s about as long as it takes to read it, something that is on my mind when I re-read it now, which I prefer to do in a single sitting to really feel that length of time pass. Through the mastery of his creativity, and the unique ways the characters are depicted, the work becomes more than a story, “more,” even, than Art. It’s also a record of the moment to moment thoughts, hopes and dreams of 4 generations of the Corrigans, and their reactions to events as their lives unfold before our eyes, across time. Reactions that most often include little, even no, inter-action. Almost every character in it is, mostly, cut off from every one else. In that sense, it’s also a classic of isolation, a meditation on its eternal nature (across generations)- Every character in Jimmy Corrigan suffers from extreme isolation and loneliness. Unlike the hard-core lonely, who have given up on the human race, every character longs for it to end. At least in Chris Ware’s work, life always happens in spectacular rendering, in color that speaks its own language, and with gorgeous, ever-surprising design.

Back at the show, increasingly sought after, only one Jimmy Corrigan original page, (from the Acme Novelty Library #1, which predates the book), was on display, but it was a good one, that succinctly sums up what I said about the book, itself.

“Jimmy Corrigan, Calling Mom,” Acme #1, 1993, Ink and blue pencil on paper. This page, from the first year he drew Jimmy  didn’t make it into the final “Jimmy Corrigan” book, though it captures much of the poignancy of it.

While Chris Ware is well-known as an admirer of the great George Herriman and his “Krazy Kat” strip, having done the cover art for the 13 volume reissue of what many, including he, consider the greatest comic strip of all time, his influence lives on in Mr. Ware’s own ground-breaking graphic design, which builds on “Krazy Kat’s” Sunday full pages, that Mr. Herriman treated freely, like a blank canvas, when it came to laying out his stories. Over the past 30 years, it’s been taken to the point that it has become one of his trademarks. Along with George Herriman, Charles Schulz and his “Peanuts” cartoon strip that ran for 50 years are another major influence on Chris Ware. “Charles Schulz is the only writer I’ve continually read through childhood and into college2.” Charlie Brown, who Mr. Ware calls “the first sympathetic cartoon character3,” is the predecessor of Jimmy Corrigan. Interestingly, the final Peanuts strip ran on February 13, 2000. After serializing the story in the early 1990’s, the first edition of the completed and collected Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth was published on September 12, 2000.

Learning at the elbow of the master. Chris Ware included this self-portrait in his “Tribute” to Peanuts after their final strip in 2000,  ending by paraphrasing Mr. Schulz final panel- “How could I ever forget them?” The complete strip is reproduced in Monograph.

In the years before and after Jimmy Corrigan, Mr. Ware developed a whole slew of characters, that appear sporadically, only some of them “human.” They range from “Quimby the Mouse,” and “Branford the Bee” to “Rusty Brown,” and “Rocket Sam.” But, in the end? It seems to me whatever lifeforms they are doesn’t matter a bit. It only serves to make them seem “uncannily human” to the reader.

“Quimbies the Mouse,” 1990, Ink and red pencil on paper. Later, he would lose the “siamese” aspect and it would just be “Quimby the Mouse.”

These appeared in the (shorter) installments of the Acme Novelty Library, released sporadically over the years. Mr. Ware’s full length books take him so long to create we’re lucky to get one per decade. There must be something in the water in the Chicago burbs because Monograph is second for this decade. And? At the show, he was speaking about ANOTHER book, to be released in 2018, “Rusty Brown, Part 1.” And though Zadie Smith commented “There’s no writer alive I love more than Chris. Ware. The only problem is it takes him ten years to draw these things and then I read them in a day and have to wait another ten years for the next one4.” it may take even Mr. Ware’s most devoted reader more than a day to work their way through Monograph 280 pages that are jam-packed with almost as many details as this image of the Milky Way.

Monograph’s surprises include this six page story including the red pencil underdrawing on paper he was using at the time. “I Guess, (from RAW Volume 2, No. 3, 1991),” 1990, Ink on mylar, red pencil on paper.

Over the years, Mr Ware has created books that range in size from miniatures to the gigantic, even one with a multitude of sizes (14) in one (the award winning Building Stories, 2012). Now? He has outdone himself. Weighing in at over 9 pounds and measuring 18 by 13 inches, it’s fitting that this mid-career Autobiographical Retrospective is large enough to mirror his achievement. In this case, Monograph needs to be this big. Trying to read the detail in something like the folded book jacket for Jimmy Corrigan, above, would be neigh impossible in a smaller size.

Speaking of gigantic. “Sparky’s Sparky Is Best Comics and Stories (I Am a Sickness That Infects my Friends.),” 1991, Ink, red pencil on paper, 50 inches tall(!) by 30 wide.

As for what else Monograph contains, Mr. Ware’s work has appeared on 23 New Yorker Magazine covers, almost every one of which eschews his “intricate” graphic design (the most recent one, in September, 2017, I wrote about, here), while also holding the distinction of being the very first “cartoonist” to have his work serialized in the New York Times.

The devil is in the details. Chris Ware is, also, endlessly fascinated with stand alone characters, especially hand-made mechanical examples. “Quimby the Mouse,” was incarnated as a wooden toy a while back. Unfortunately, the manufacturer painted every one of his eyes wrong. So? Mr. Ware grabbed the 14 of them in the vitrine and correctly hand painted each eye. Shown with the original Art for their box cover.

After Jimmy he continued to release regular installments of his “Acme Novelty Library,” along with smaller books, including “Lint,” two volumes of excerpts from his sketchbooks, a “Quimby the Mouse” collection, forays into mechanical figures, products and toys, book covers for others and the Ragtime Ephemeralist, an “infrequently appearing” volume devoted to you guessed it- ephemera, and scholarly articles, related to Ragtime, edited, designed and published by Chris Ware. The latest issue, from 1995, totals 256 pages! In 2011, he even broke out of the medium of print, for the first time, digitally publishing “Touch Sensitive” an interactive story from Building Stories that is still available for free download on iOS, here. In 2015, he debuted an actual internet-only work, serializing “The Last Saturday” online, here, on The Guardian’s website. Though he wasn’t a fan of technology early on, as the digital forays “Touch Sensitive” and  “The Last Saturday” show, Chris Ware is a man with one foot in the past who is, surprisingly, open to selectively dipping a toe in the future, though he is an avowed lover of the print medium.

3 Views of a Secret. A rare Chris Ware Painting, bottom, the Drawing for its appearance on an Acme cover, and a version of the same piece, as a New Yorker cover mock up, all featuring Jimmy Corrigan- with, and without, Super-man.

The next milestone was Building Stories, which had been partially serialized in the New York Times, released in 2012 in a large box containing 14 publications of varying size and bindings. The order which the reader read it was up to them, thereby creating countless ways its tales could be told. Five years later, almost to the month, now comes Monograph. Its huge size is, no doubt, daunting to many. After seeing his original Art, I realized that Monograph mirrors the size of the illustration board Mr. Ware favors to draw his Art on. So, the book will provide an experience as close as is possible to seeing the actual original Art in person. As the ultimate Chris Ware (Auto)biography, it’s chocked full of historical Photos of Mr. Ware, his family, friends and associates, while its running commentary sheds new light on the path he and his Art has taken, an invaluable resource to those studying his Artistic development.

As we chatted this time, he drew two small self portraits in my copies of the Acme Novelty Datebook (his Sketchbooks), Vol 1 & 2. He seemed pleased to see them when I produced them for his signature, sketchbooks being near and dear to my heart (I made my own for many years). He mentioned that there would be a Volume 3! Later, I looked at the Drawings he did. Wow.

Sketch by Chris Ware in my copy of the Acme Novelty Date Book, Volume 1.

A bit reminiscent of this, which was on view in a corner across the room- Acme #4 (Sparky’s Best Comics and Stories) Cover, 1994, Ink and blue pencil on paper. What was I saying about all his characters acting “human?”

“The accolades he got he felt weren’t his, for some reason. He didn’t feel they were…deserved. And I think he didn’t feel particularly connected to the world.
He was appreciative and very, very loving about all of the good things that came his way but I think he was always mildly surprised.” Whoopi Goldberg on Charles Schulz 5

As with Charles Schulz, the creator of the most famous comic strip in history, I don’t know what lies at the heart of Mr. Ware’s self-effacement, but  I hope it won’t take another 30 years for him to accept the compliments his work receives. If he continues producing the kind of work he has over the past 30 years, then, he might not have any choice but to get used to people saying nice things about his work.

Back from the show, with this question on my mind, I began to re-read Jimmy Corrigan for the umpteenth time, this time in its paperback incarnation (which has a few significant differences from the hardcover), I happened upon this beauty on the lower right back cover.

A-ha! Chris Ware dumpster diving to SAVE copies of his work that have been discarded! Jimmy Corrigan, Paperback edition, back cover detail.

I get it! I FINALLY found the answer to his self-affacement. He WANTS me to throw out his work so he can save it and re-sell it!

They’re right. He IS smart! ; )

**********************************************************************
Collector’s Note- This is something I’ve yet to see anyone point out. While I suspect that many/most of Chris Ware’s fans already have Monograph, for those that don’t, I’ve discovered something that you might want to keep in mind.

There are TWO editions of Monograph.

When I discovered it, I called the publisher, Rizzoli, and even they didn’t know what the differences were! So, I took it on myself to find out. The “regular edition,” ISBN 978-0847860883, is the one most commonly available. However, there’s also the “Bookplate Edition,” ISBN 978-0847858125, which I’ve almost always seen selling for the same list price ($60.00) as the “regular” edition. However, it contains 2 major differences. First, it comes with a small double-sided “errata” sheet that is SIGNED by Chris Ware. Second, the “errata” sheet comes tucked inside of a folded reproduction of the original Drawing for his quite rare 2002 Whitney Biennial Poster, “The Whitney Prevaricator.”

Top of the inside of the inserted Reproduction of the Drawing for the Whitney Biennial Poster. If you collect Chris Ware, I recommend you get the “Bookplate Edition,” which is signed TWICE by Mr. Ware, and includes this.

On the top of the verso of this sheet is text noting that this is the “Fine Art Edition,(referred to as the “Bookplate Edition” in the trade) of Monograph, which Chris Ware has ALSO signed, and numbered out of an edition of 550. Buyer? Be Ware. (Sorry.)

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “In The Future When All’s Well,” by Morrissey from Ringleaders of the Tormentors. Another Artist who’s work is deemed “depressing” by some.

“On the Fence, #16, The Smartest Birdies…on this Fence…on April 1st…at 3pm” Edition.

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  1. http://edition.cnn.com/2000/books/news/10/03/chris.ware.qanda/index.html ↩
  2. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6329/chris-ware-the-art-of-comics-no-2-chris-ware ↩
  3. http://classic.tcj.com/alternative/interview-with-chris-ware-part-1-of-2/ ↩
  4. Quoted on a sticker on the shrink-wrap for Monograph. ↩
  5. in “The Complete Peanuts, Volume 5 1959-1960, p.xi. ↩

Up All Night With Frank Lloyd Wright

“Architects may come
Architects may go
and never change your point of view.
When I run dry
I stop awhile
and think of you.”*

Once, back in the day, I came home from work on a Friday evening and put that Simon & Garfunkel song on. Then, I hit the repeat button. “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” played all weekend, non-stop, until I had to go to work on Monday. Even while I slept.

Such was my life under the spell of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The mark of genius. Frank Lloyd Wright’s “symbol” (the red square) and his signature on the corner of one of his Drawings. “The color red is invincible. It is the color not only of blood-it is the color of creation. It is the only life-giving color in nature…1“

I guess I hoped that playing this unique song from Bridge Over Troubled Water, with its unusual marriage of Brazilian rhythm and a string quartet under the ethereal vocals, would lend a different perspective on Wright and his work.

In the years after my father passed, Wright, became an all encompassing figure to me, something I didn’t realize until a German Architect I was dating pointed it out to me. She might have been (W)right. Looking back, though, I think it was the discovery of, and the falling in to, the seemingly bottomless pit of creativity that was Frank Lloyd Wright, and the enigma and charisma of the man, his ideas and his accomplishments (including the countless buildings he designed that were never built, or that were built and since lost). This passion took many forms in my life at the time. Along the way, I learned that the man was a great Artist in other ways beyond Architecture- as a Draughtsman and, in my opinion, as a writer. His writings often marry Art & Architecture and philosophy. He was, also, something of a “teacher,” or model, later in his life at his Taliesen Fellowship. His “teaching” seems to have greatly influenced some, and left others unhappy. Beyond all of this work, his personal life? Well…as I’ve said previously about others…is not for me to judge. My interest in is the Art, his creative ideas and the work.

Speaking of teaching & learning…Just outside MoMA’s show, in “The People’s Study,” the public was invited to create and experiment with a range of materials, including blocks, which Wright, himself, created with as a child. Along the windows, they were invited to design their own “Broadacre City,” Wright’s concept for urban/suburban development.

MoMA’s show, Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive is a major event, honoring two major events.  First, it opened on June 12th, four days after Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th Birthday. Second, it marks the joint acquisition by MoMA and the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library of Columbia University of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Archives. It’s a fascinating show, though, of course, it’s a mere sliver of the massive Archive that will keep scholars busy for decades Some of the early fruits of their labors were on view, particularly in short videos on display in each gallery where curators spoke of some of the highlights they’ve found so far. Parts of Wright’s Archives have been known to me through earlier shows at MoMA and the Guggenheim, and through books, most notably In His Renderings, the final volume of  the landmark 12 volume box set published by A.D.A Edita Tokyo in 1984, right in the middle of my Wright obsession2. The 200 Drawings In His Renderings included made the case for Wright’s Drawings being works of Art in themselves, and a good many of them are in MoMA’s show, which totals about 450 items. Indeed, they are right at home on the walls of the great museum.

The show is made up of galleries devoted to individual projects and galleries devoted to aspects of his work. Of course, given his career lasted over 60 years, only selected Wright projects are here and they range from key buildings, like the Imperial Hotel, 1923, to some much less well known, like his design for the Rosenwald School for Negro Children, 1928, as it was labelled, as well as galleries devoted to Wright’s Ornamentation (an almost completely lost art in today’s Architecture), Urban projects, the role of landscaping in his projects, and built, and (mostly) unbuilt projects for NYC. There is also a gallery showing 2 rare videos of Frank Lloyd Wright- one an infamous interview with Mike Wallace in 1957, the other an appearance on the game show, “What’s My Line.” The long central, first gallery includes a range of Drawings, many masterpieces- both as Architecture and as Artworks, from a wide range of periods of Wright’s career, including the Winslow House, 1893, Unity Temple, 1908, Fallingwater, 1935, and the Marin County Civic Center, which opened in 1962.

Frank Lloyd Wright seen at the end of the first gallery as he’s interviewed by Mike Wallace in 1957, at age 90. Still sharp as a tack.

When Wright burst on the scene, after leaving his employer & mentor, the great Louis Sullivan3, the “Father of the Skyscraper,” (who he held in such high esteem, he referred to him as “Lieber Meister,” German for “Dear Master”), and began his own practice, there was no such thing as a truly “American” style of Architecture.

Louis Sullivan’s Bayard-Condict Building, 1898, on Bleecker & Crosby Streets, his only NYC building, was one of the first steel skeleton skyscrapers in NYC. As the columns between the windows rise, they lead to the parapet decorated with angels.

Even half-hidden by scaffolding the genius of Louis Sullivan’s ornament is impossible to miss, here on the entrance.

While Henry Hobson Richardson and Sullivan (both a bit under appreciated today), had taken steps towards creating an American style, Wright completed it with the introduction of his Prairie Style in the first decade of the 20th Century, like the “Unity Temple,” 1908, in Oak Park, IL, below.

Rendering of Unity Temple, Oak Park, IL, 1908, which still stands, an example of his “Prairie Style,” with its low, land-hugging profile. Wright, who’s church was “Nature,” went on to design churches for many religions.

Off the central gallery, the first side gallery is devoted to Wright’s Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. Incredibly, it was dedicated on September 1, 1923, the very day of the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake that killed 100,000 people and leveled almost every other structure in Tokyo, except for Wright’s Masterpiece, which he had designed to withstand such an event. Instant world-wide fame followed. The genius in its floating concrete foundation below was also abundant in the superhuman amount of creativity above it.

Imperial Hotel, 1923, cross section.

Wright designed the furniture, the windows, the lamps, the dishes- all of it. He created a massive building that was one unified composition from top to bottom, down to the smallest detail. I couldn’t get over it. Yet the Imperial Hotel was far from the only building he did this for. No other Wright structure has captured my fascination, and awe, more than the Imperial Hotel (which is saying something), perhaps because, though it was gigantic, so little of it remains- even in photographs, film or books (An amazing online collection of photos and relics of the “Imperial Hotel” I’ve seen is to be found here.). What is left teases the viewer to imagine the rest. I’ve tried to imagine walking around in it…what that must have looked like and felt like. It withstood what Nature (Wright capitalized it, since he said it was his “religion,” my inspiration for capitalizing “Art,” “Music,” “Painting,”etc., since Art is my religion) threw at it, and World War II, but it couldn’t withstand the rising value of Tokyo real estate leading to its tragic demolition in 1958 after standing for a mere 45 years! The facade was saved and reconstructed at Japan’s Meiji Mura Outdoor Architectural Museum, a few pieces of furniture are in The Met (which also has one of the Urns that was out in front of the entrance), and other items are in collections elsewhere.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s First Symphony. The Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. Imagine designing this, AND all the furniture, dishes, windows, lamps, and on an on. For my money, one of mankind’s supreme creative achievements. It’s so large it extends off the frame from across the street. Part of the entrance is barely visible to the right, center.

Fragments of the Imperial Hotel,  The two side chairs are on loan from The Met. The dishes are reproductions.

Wright’s other huge early masterpiece was Chicago’s Midway Gardens, 1914, an indoor/outdoor entertainment complex in the Hyde Park section. Again, Wright designed all of it, and once again, almost nothing remains. Either one of these two buildings would have been enough to secure his name, and his legend. Midway Gardens, stood for FIFTEEN years. The loss of both is a cultural tragedy that will echo on through centuries to come.

Like a vision of the past through a misty glass. Rendering of Midway Gardens, 1913, Chicago. Another early lost masterpiece.

Represented in MoMA’s show by this “Block for Midway Gardens,” 1914. Remnants of it are extremely rare. Photos of, and more about Midway Gardens, can be found here. (Scroll down.)

Gone forever was the chance for young Artists & Architects to experience and be directly influenced by them the way you only can from seeing Architecture, or Art, in person. Wright’s buildings require your presence in their space to fully appreciate them. He was fond of low corridors giving way to large open spaces, and this is just one of the experiences you can’t get from a book. Speaking of books, after one of my visits, I wandered into MoMA’s bookstore. A young couple next to me picked up a book on Wright and one said, “What did he build? Oh! He did the Guggenheim.” I thought everyone knew who Frank Lloyd Wright was. I don’t know if they went up to see the show or not, but I decided then and there to write this Post.

After these early masterpieces, Wright’s style evolved from the Prairie style, through the Mayan and Japanese influence seen in the Imperial Hotel and a number of houses he designed at the time, to his “Usonian”style of the mid-1930’s, to buildings beyond style, like the Johnson Wax Headquarters, Fallingwater, and eventually, The Guggenheim Museum. They would all fall under the umbrella of “Organic Architecture.” The “Usonian” houses began around 1936, and have a style which brings these houses even closer to the land than the “Prairie Style” houses, being almost universally a single storey, while featuring simpler materials, which, Wright believed, would make them more affordable. Though more “popularly priced”, he still designed all the furniture for them as well, and the chair I once owned came from a “Usonain” house. These “Usonian” houses, along with his “Broadacre City,” were part of his vision for urban and suburban landscape design, called “Usonia,” as in “U.S.-onia.”

Rendering of the Johnson Wax Headquarters, 1936. Its innovations are everywhere from the dendriform columns in the great workspace that rise from 9 inch bases to 15 foot “lily-pad” tops (see below), to the design of the furniture to expedite cleaning, to the use of glass tubes to block out the “urban blight” outside while creating a soft light inside. A sideshow of Photos of this incredibly beautiful building are here.

No one believed Wright’s slender columns for the Johnson Wax Headquarters could support enough weight to be practical. So, he staged this demonstration and piled 60 TONS on top of one! Photographer unknown. 81 years later? They’re still standing tall.

The later masterpieces while unique to themselves, still remain true to Wright’s core beliefs. Herbert F. Johnson, president of the S.C. Johnson Company hired Wright to build his company’s corporate headquarters in 1936 in Racine, Wisconsin. The resulting landmark, above, is a sheer wonder- a cathedral of capitalism. Though they encountered some problems, Mr. Johnson was so pleased with Wright that he contracted him to build a research tower on the property and then to design a large house for himself, known as Wingspread.

Within the year, he, also, created what may be the most famous private house ever built. Fallingwater, for Edgar J. Kaufmann, owner of Kaufmann’s department store.

Rendering of Fallingwater, 1935. Legend has it that Wright had put nothing on paper though his client, Edgar Kaufman, was on his way from the airport to see the design of his house. Wright had it all in his head and put it down on paper in time for Mr. Kaufman’s arrival. This is probably not that Drawing.

Perhaps nowhere in Art is there greater harmony of Art & Nature than there is in Fallingwater, which may make it Wright’s ultimate expression of his “Organic Architecture.” In it, the Artist strives to achieve the ultimate- create something worthy of a spectacular natural site, a work that seems to grow out of it, and be integral to it. Mr. Kaufmann was expecting the house to be sited across from the waterfall so he could enjoy looking at it. Instead, Wright put the house directly on top of it, centering the living room on a rock the family liked to picnic on.

As a result of all of this, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that later in his career he spoke defiantly about the Architects of the new “International Style,” with their bland, impersonal boxes of steel and glass, that are about as far from “Nature” as anything could be. Here in NYC, as in many other places, a casual look around reveals they’re already dated, and many (most? All?) are plain eyesores. One thing MoMA’s show reinforces is that Wright’s work has a way of not going out of fashion. Perhaps it’s because it’s so tightly integrated with its surroundings- with nature. It also helps that most of what he built and remains is out in nature, i.e. not in a City. Then again, perhaps it’s because his endless, unique, creativity serves to constantly inspire. Like the song says. For myself, my now long-standing passion for the work of Frank Lloyd Wright leaves me wondering if he is not the greatest Architect who ever lived. I’m lucky. I don’t believe in qualitatively comparing Art or Artists. But if I did? That’s one statement I might actually make. Now, I’m content wondering.

“The tree that escaped the forest.” Like a tree, it looks different from every angle. Originally designed for Astor Place in Manhattan, after it was rejected, it was redesigned and became the only “skyscraper” Wright built during his lifetime, the Price Tower in, you guessed it- Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Speaking of “not being in the City,” though Wright has only one building in NYC, that’s not because he didn’t try. Though he loathed cities, particularly this one, he did. He designed many structures that he wanted to have built here but he was shot down by the powers that be every single time4! Only when he had a client powerful enough to push through his project did the Guggenheim get built. MoMA’s show serves as a reminder of this nightmare as it shows us some of the projects he envisioned for the City, along with an in-depth look at the Guggenheim’s coming to be. It, therefore, serves to remind us that the travails of that other brilliant Architect named “Frank,”…Gehry, has had getting projects built here are nothing new. To date. Mr. Gehry, who has tried to get countless plans built that would have transformed the City, to date has only two. Between Wright & Gehry? Ohhhh…the City we should have had.

Rendering of the New York Sports Pavilion, for Belmont Park, 1956 , another of the countless structures Wright designed for Manhattan that were never built.

As his only NYC building, the Guggenheim Museum it is still able to inspire with its incredibly bold vision almost 60 years on. It echoes the trees across 5th Avenue in Central Park as a way of bringing a hint of Nature across the street into the City. But, lesser known is the building as we see it now went through quite a metamorphosis on the way. Take a look at this-

The Guggenheim Museum underwent extensive design modifications between this model and the finished building. Looking at it from the 5th Avenue side, very little is the same besides the ramp/rotunda (though here it’s located on the East 89th Street corner, instead of the East 88th Street corner, to the right, as it was built), and the lower overhanging floor. Everything else is different.

This detail fascinates me. It shows Wright’s rarely seen original design for the roof, most notably the skylight over the famous rotunda. The variously sized circles make much more sense to the overall composition than the grid that’s up there now, since so much of the composition involves circles (right down to circles being etched on the sidewalk out front). Of course, the Guggenheim chose to ignore all of this when they put a square building behind it. I wonder why this design was not used. Nor were the surrounding small domes.

The rotunda is now on the right in this rendering, done to demonstrate how it would look in pink. Yes…pink! Still, along with the final color, so much about the building remained to be finalized even here.

The Guggenheim didn’t follow through on all of Wright’s ideas when completing the building (which may, or may not explain the current skylight). So, perhaps, it shouldn’t be a surprise when the Guggenheim was altered in the early 1990’s, terribly in my opinion. I was actively involved in trying to prevent it, and the modification of the Breuer Whitney Museum (now, unmodified, it’s The Met Breuer). To that end, in June, 1987, my letter was published in the New York Times-

My letter in the NY Times Op-Ed page opposing the & Guggenheim & Whitney modifications, June, 1987. I love the very fitting Drawing they added.

“So long, Frank Lloyd Wright.
All of the nights we’d harmonize till dawn.
I never laughed so long.
So long.”*

Today, are there ANY Architects who are also designing the dishes, rugs, windows, lamps & furniture for their buildings on a regular basis? Having owned an original Frank Lloyd Wright chair I can attest to both the ingenuity of the design (though “impractical” most people who saw it said, its 3 legs required you to sit with both feet on the floor, or fall off. Wright teaching proper posture), and to the fact that it was in itself a miniature work of Architecture. When I thought of Wright, I thought of Brahms, Mahler or Anton Bruckner (all of whom were alive during Wright’s lifetime) or his beloved Bach & Beethoven. Wright was building symphonies in the physical world. The extraordinary attention to detail in his work- down to even designing the napkin rings at “Midway Gardens,” is something akin to the musical structure of any of those Composer’s compositions, where every note plays a role in the whole. Wright creates a unified physical structure that is hard to find in any other Architect’s work- before or after. Music was the only analogy I could think of for what he had done. At least for me. I think he may have agreed- music was always central to him, particularly chamber music, which he would have weekly performances of at his Taliesin homes. It was hard for me to understand my fascination & obsession with all things Frank Lloyd Wright until I realized what he was doing was creating buildings the way Bach, Mahler or Bruckner created “edifices in sound.” Wright loved music and the connection is something that needs closer study.

Like Picasso, or Miles Davis, he was not one to stay in the same place for long. They are the only two other 20th Century Masters who had multiple unique “periods.” Wright’s style continually evolved, but it were always true to his principles- using nature as the supreme guide, building in harmony with the site, and building “organically.”

Approaching age 90, Wright unveiled one of his most daring ideas yet- “The Illinois,” perhaps better known as the “Mile High Skyscraper,” because that’s what it was- a mile tall. A number of Drawings related to it were on view at MoMA, five about 8 feet high each.

8 foot tall rendering of The Illinois, 1956. Wright’s “Mile High Skyscraper.” Designed to be made of concrete, some doubt its feasibility. It would have been FOUR times the height of the Empire State Building!

Interestingly, in one Drawing, the “Mile High” shares the sheet with extensive text. The curator’s video in the gallery says this Drawing is his second “Autobiography,” to the book of that title. On it, Wright pays tribute to his influences, and proceeds to list some of his accomplishments. As a result, it’s perhaps the most fascinating Drawing in the show. Its something of a testament. It’s hard for me to look at the “Burj Khalifa” in Dubai and not think its Architect, Adrian Smith of S.O.M., owes a serious debt to The Illinois. It’s “only” 2,722 feet tall, though, half of the proposed height of The Illinois.

Wright’s “salutations,” list of accomplishments, and building stats on the top half of another 8 foot tall Drawing of the “Mile High.”

One striking thing about Frank Lloyd Wright is that at the time of his death on April 9, 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright was exactly half as old as his country. (He was 91, the country was 182 years old.) Remarkable. When Wright started in Architecture, working for Joseph Silsbee in 1872, he did so in a Chicago that was still digging out from the Great Fire the previous year. There were no skyscrapers until his “Lieber Meister” Sullivan began to create them 20 years later. When he passed away in 1959, one of his final masterpieces, the Guggenheim Museum was about to open. Much had changed in the 87 years between. But, given that he stayed true to his core belief in “Organic Architecture,” (“building as nature builds,” he said), I’m not sure that Wright changed all that much as much as he evolved. As a result, in the final analysis, he showed us that his idea was infinitely pliable, and that creativity and imagination had a central role in it, something that seemed to go out of Architecture, increasingly, during that same period. While some of his greatest works are gone, his Archives contain an enormous wealth of materials that can bear witness to them, and the thousand or so projects he undertook (about 400 or so still stand). It was a lot for one life- even one that lasted 91 years.

Frank Lloyd Wright during the “Mike Wallace Interview,” 1957, near the age of 90, two years before he passed away.

“So long, Frank Lloyd Wright.
I can’t believe your song is gone so soon
I barely learned the tune
So soon, so soon”*

As I left this show, filled with that same, familiar, head-shaking amazement, I was reminded of a quote of Wright’s- “The scientist has marched in and taken the place of the poet. But one day somebody will find the solution to the problems of the world and remember, it will be a poet, not a scientist5.” Whether the world will listen to the next poet is a question that remains to be answered. In the meantime, with regard to this poet, there is much still to learn.

“Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive” is my NoteWorthy Show for September.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright,” by Paul Simon, which is, also, something of his farewell to Art Garfunkel as Garfunkel was about to leave to go to Mexico to shoot Catch 22, which marked the end of Simon & Garfunkel. Garfunkel majored in Architecture at Columbia, admired Wright, and suggested to Simon that he write a song about the Architect. Published by Universal Music Publishing Group.

“On The Fence, #14,” the Stair way to Heaven Edition.

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  1. Kliment Timiriazev ↩
  2. Eight of the other eleven volumes are monographs dedicated to period of Wright’s career, the remaining 3 volumes contain preliminary studies, which I assume are part of his Archives. These books were the only way most of us could see these pieces of the Archives, except for occasional shows, until now. ↩
  3. Controversy still surrounds whether he left or was fired by Sullivan for taking freelance commissions on the side. ↩
  4. To read this very sorry tale, in detail, I highly recommend the book “Man About Town,” by Herbert Muschamp, who details Wright’s plans for Manhattan and efforts to overcome the powers that be. i.e Robert Moses. ↩
  5.  As quoted in “The Star,” 1959, and “Morrow’s International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations,” 1982, by Jonathon Green. ↩

The New Whitney Museum- The Roofdeck of American Art

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

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“American Tune”
“We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune”*

Looking west on the 6th Floor Roof deck, Spring, 2016.

Looking west on the 6th Floor Roof deck, Spring, 2016.

Part 1- The New Whitney Museum…And I

We actually go way back…

All the way back to June, 1987 when I had a letter published in the New York Times in opposition to the proposed expansion plans of the Guggenheim & Whitney Museums, after it was announced that both Museums wanted to modify & expand their existing buildings. I was outraged. How could you change these two singular masterworks without ruining them? I closed saying that “branch museums were the obvious answer” to modifying these Artworks of Architecture, in the Guggenheim’s case, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece was, perhaps, the greatest work of Art it owns. I went to the Community Board Meetings, but wasn’t directly involved beyond this letter. Mine was apparently chosen over the head of the opposition committee’s letter, much to his displeasure, I heard.

My letter in the NY Times Op-Ed page opposing the & Guggenheim & Whitney modifications, June, 1987. I love the very fitting drawing they added.

Almost 30 years later (wow…really?), how did “we” do?

Well, BOTH Museums took my “advice” and opened branch museums. The Whitney had a few around town, one across from Grand Central, another in Soho, while the Guggenheim opened what is, perhaps, the greatest Museum building since Wright’s enduring 5th Avenue masterpiece…by Frank Gehry in Bilbao, Spain of all places. It’s a “place” now, a true destination for culture vultures. They showed a model of another Gehry masterpiece they wanted to build downtown in the East River at the Guggenheim Gehry Retrospective in 2000. I bought a poster of it but, after 9/11, it was never mentioned again. ? They went ahead and remodeled Wright’s masterpiece, anyway, which I will never accept, AND continue to open branch Museums around the world as we speak. The Whitney, on the other hand, did not renovate Breuer’s unique original. Instead, we got something I never saw coming- They moved out and built an entirely new Museum.

Wow!

So? On my scorecard? I am one and a half out of 2.

The New Whitney opened in May, 2015 in the Meatpacking District, right at the southern end of the High Line. I’ve made frequent trips there so far studying the building from every angle I could, at night, and yes, even in day light. (Oh, the sacrifices I will make in the pursuit of Art.) The inaugural, and as I’ve said very good, show, in the new Renzo Piano building, “American Is Hard To See,” came and went. I also wrote about both the Frank Stella Retrospective and a show by filmmaker Laura Poitras that came and went, too, along with quite a few smaller shows. So, a few months after the 1 year Anniversary, I think I’ve finally had enough time and experience with the new place, over 45 visits, to have some thoughts coalesce. As always, I have not read any reviews of either the building or the shows mentioned.

Part 2- Renzo Piano’s Whitney Museum Building

U.S.S. Indianapolis. US Navy Photo

The U.S.S. Indianapolis, Why is this picture here? (U.S. Navy Photo.)

It’s only a year or so old, but I don’t think many will fall in love with the exterior of the building. I must say that in all my trips there so far, I have yet to see anyone else take a picture of it. Maybe (more) time will tell. In this City where location isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing, the new Whitney sits on a rather unique lot. How many places in Manhattan can you think of that have BOTH a River view AND a Park view? Situated directly across the West Side Highway from the Hudson River, to the west, and the southern end of the High Line to the immediate east, the Museum hit on a very rare Daily Double. Unfortunately for long time Whitney architect Piano, who came on board during the Museum’s “expansion” days, this lot has 4 sides. To the north, the rest of the block is occupied by one of the few remaining Meat Packing businesses that actually pack meat in what really was The Meatpacking District.1 Yes, trucks of raw meat park within inches of the Museum’s north wall every weekday.

Yes, meat is still packed in the "Meatpacking District." Whitney's north side seen from West Street.

Yes, meat is still packed in the “Meatpacking District.” Whitney’s north side seen from West Street.

And, seen from the High Line.

And, seen from the High Line.

The two story meat complex provides a nearly unobstructed view of most of the north face of the Museum, from West Street or the High Line. I wonder what people who don’t know it’s the Museum think it is. I wonder how many of them will look at it and say, “Ah. A Museum.” My guess is not many. Maybe it’s an office building with not enough windows and a couple of long smoke stacks? A prison? It’s pretty non-descrip, making the stair cases that protrude from the rear of the building seem, well, odd. For myself, and probably countless others approaching the New Whit from the north, this is the first view they’ll get of it. The one defining feature of this side of the building is the exterior staircases. A cascade of them.

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Outdoor stairs as seen on the 7th Floor

To the south, across Gansevoort Street is a large, renovated apartment building, that also has Hudson River views on it’s western side. To put it mildly, this is a classic “high rent” district. Facing Gansevoort Street, the Museum presents visitors with an almost unbroken face of grey steel. Upon closer inspection, it also includes the Museum’s almost hidden entrance, which, until a sign was added recently, was only marked “Whitney Museum” on a glass window. Still, I can’t help wonder how the residents of that building across Gansevoort feel about paying those very high rents to look out their windows and see-

This, is their view.

This, is their view.

In fact, seen from the south, the building is so large that none of my cameras were able to get the whole thing in a shot from Gansevoort, including using an iPhone in Panorama mode. I had to go out into West Street to get one, which I don’t advise doing due to traffic coming randomly from 3 directions, not to mention my back being literally on the flimsy chain link fence bordering the West Side Highway with cars & trucks zipping around the bend at 60mph. Not a smart place to be standing with a camera. But this points out something interesting- there is no place where one can easily stand to get a good shot of the Museum- except, possibly, from a substantial distance. In fact, most of the shots of the building on the Whitney www site were taken from the rooftops of adjacent buildings. Maybe this is why no one takes pictures of it. Or? Maybe they don’t like it. ?

The closest I've come do death this year. The West Side Highway is inches behind me.

NOT to die for. I risked my life getting this shot. Southwest corner.

As we move to the western facade, with the large windows seen above (which reminds me of Zaha Hadid’s Library in Vienna), the upper one juts out at an angle seen from the north that vaguely reminds of the Breuer building’s Madison Avenue upper window.

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But more problematically, is a large Department of Sanitation complex smack dab right in front of it! “Holy Refuse Pile, Artman!” Garbage trucks coming and going all day and evening are not exactly what gives a “Riv View” it’s cache. (Feel free to insert your own wry joke about contemporary art here. I’ll wait…)

View of the Department of Sanitation from the 7th Floor stairs, 2015.

Riv View. Looking out at the Department of Sanitation from the 7th Floor stairs, 2015.

Mr. Piano has done his best to “minimize” the damage from the “offending” Department of Sanitation, and eternally busy West Side Highway, by opting to minimize the exposure of the western facade leaving a very narrow patio where, typically, only a few chairs usually are to be seen. It sits a few scant feet from the West Side Highway, after all, so it’s hard to imagine many people wanting to sit there for long. 3 trees have been planted along the curb in hope that one day they will provide some camouflage.

View from in front of the western facade, July, 2015, Being a tree in NYC is one helluva hard job.

View from in front of the western facade, July, 2016, Being a tree in NYC is one helluva hard job.

Regardless of the difficulties in seeing the building close up, it can be seen, for many blocks, both, to the north and south along the West Side Highway, and from across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Thanks(?) to the High Line there has been a boon in building in the area, with some very big name Starchitects (including, as I’ve written, the late Zaha Hadid’s only NYC Building going up at 520 West 28th Street, among many others) having new or recent projects in the area- some successful, some eyesores already. No less than Frank Gehry, the greatest architect of his time, in my book, himself, has a fairly new building about 6 blocks to the north of the New Whitney along the Highway, the gorgeous IAC Headquarters at 18th Street.

Like a sailboat on the Hudson, Frank Gehry's IAC Building is a gorgeous vision.

Like a sailboat on the Hudson it faces, Frank Gehry’s IAC Building is a shining example of the visionary architecture NYC needs more of, IMHO.

But, say what you want about this new Museum (don’t worry…I will), one thing that must be said is that the building isn’t obsessed with competing with it’s spectacular neighbor. Well? Not that spectacular neighbor, anyway. If anything, it sure feels to me like it’s competing with it’s OTHER “spectacular neighbor”- the High Line.

Southern terminus of the High Line, circa 2009. The new Whitney now occupies the space directly behind the left side.

Southern terminus of the High Line, circa 2010, early in the construction of the new Whitney directly behind on the left side. And today, and tonite…

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That brings us to the east side of the building, the side that abuts the High Line. Renzo Piano also designed the High Line Maintenance & Operations Building,

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High Line Maintenance & Operations Building on the lot’s northeast corner.

which looks like it’s part of the Whitney, occupying the north eastern corner of the lot. Next to that are a rectangular bank of windows of the 5th Floor Galleries. The lowest rectangle is cleverly cantilevered over the lower floors in a way that vaguely reminds of Wright’s Fallingwater. Above it are more rectangular rows of windows on the other gallery floors, which are accompanied by roof decks and outdoor stairs between floors.

Eastern face with 1st floor restaurant seen from the High Line.

Cantilevered lower eastern face with 1st floor restaurant seen from the High Line.

And, these are what raise my suspicion about purpose. So much outdoor space, and outdoor stairs in a place with the climate of Manhattan could be seen as highly questionable design. They are going to be unusable a good part of the year, so why do them? Aesthetically, to my eyes, the stairs look uncannily similar to the High Line’s access stairs. I wondered- Is this a case of “art snobbery” by an expensive to build, expensive to enter Museum trying to “upstage” a free & public park- a poorly thought out game of oneupmanship? An attempt to “blend in” with the High Line? Or?

Whitney Museum Eastern Facade Exterior Stairs close up

High Line Stairs at West 20th Street

High Line Stairs at West 20th Street

Other questions festered. Back along the south face. I spent a long time trying to think of what the shape of this building reminded me of. Hmmmm…Then one day, it hit me- From the south it looks like one of the US Navy’s newest ships- the USS Independence. From this side, it looks like it’s ready to go out to sea, well, out to the Hudson River. This feeling is hard to shake when you are looking at the few windows that look a bit like portholes, the “military—like” grey coloring, and the slightly sloping (i.e. “stealthy”) look of the upper floors. Add the rear decks and stairs to the Independence and the effect is so similar, it’s down right eerie.

Ok, flip the cantilever to the rear, and...? Eerily uncanny, no?

U.S.S. Indianapolis, again, with my highlighting. Ok, flip the cantilever to the rear, and…? Eerily uncanny, no?

Photo from Renzo Piano Building Workshop website.

Photo from Renzo Piano Building Workshop website. Note that all of the “neighbors” have been removed, except for the High Line.

Part 3- The Roofdeck of American Art

Bring sunscreen.

Want a tan with your art? 6th Floor deck, Spring, 2016.

Yes, that is what I’m calling the New Whitney- “The Roofdeck of American Art.” I think the decks are what people will remember most about the building. I only hope it’s not what they remember most about their visit. That will be up to the Museum’s curators and staff. But? As I will get to, I think other forces are at work, too.

With 4 roof decks, I bet some will come only to enjoy the view and get some sun. The Museum turns the face the vast majority of visitors will experience most to it’s “rear,” to it’s east side facing the High Line. Doing so gives Mr. Piano a very convenient out of his Sanitation Department dilemma, “Riv View” notwithstanding, and allows a wonderful panorama of Manhattan, from Chelsea Piers to the north, the Empire State in the center and the Statue of Liberty, distantly, to the south. The decks allow space for dining (8th floor), sculpture (5th floor and the others), seating, and that 21st Century phenomenon- selfie sticks.

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8th Floor Deck.

It’s very nice. You’ll like it. Bring sunscreen.

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I promise that top ramp won’t be bent when you visit the 7th Floor Deck.

Part 4- Inside. “Hey look! They have art here…too!”

Inside, the first floor is the lobby, the most unsuccessful part of the entire interior- it’s an open space. The message here is “keep moving.” It’s about as unwelcoming a space as Moma’s lobby. (Actually, ALL of Moma, which for me stands for what it feels like- the “Mall of Modern Art,” feels unwelcoming!)

Welcome? No one will ever mistake the lobby for the Great Hall at The Met. Front door is opposite, where the black mat is.

Welcome? No one will ever mistake the lobby for the Great Hall at The Met. Front door is to the right of the nearest exposed column. Engineering made visible abounds. The free 1st floor gallery is to the immediate right, outside of the rope fence, which denotes you are in the Museum.

Once inside, here’s the routine I’ve settled upon, which probably sounds confusing- After entering as quickly as possible to minimize the time spent in the “lobby,” a short trip downstairs (don’t take the elevators- the wait is too long) brings you to the coatroom and the rest rooms (there are others restrooms on 3, 5, 7 and 8). The feeling here is 180 degrees from the lobby. This is completely designed. It makes you wonder what the hell happened upstairs. Take the stairs back to 1 and walk out past the rope line (keep your admission ticket handy) and visit the first floor gallery, which is free all the time. (Or, yes, you could visit the 1st floor gallery before paying to get in. I prefer to get my admission ticket first, which means I have to show it twice.) After that, show your ticket and get back in the Museum proper then take an elevator to the whatever floor you wish to see first- 3 (where the theater is for concerts, dance performances, etc), 5,6,7 or 8 (where the galleries are). Bear in mind there is no 2nd or 4th floor- they didn’t pay enough money to get those. No, at 422 million dollars, they did, but those floors are reserved for Museum staff and functions, so they’ve disappeared from the public elevator buttons.

5th Floor seen during the Frank Stella Retrospective, Feb, 2016. The smaller walls can be moved to provide countless configuration possibilities.

5th Floor seen during the Frank Stella Retrospective, Feb, 2016. The smaller walls can be moved to provide countless configuration possibilities.

00Inside, the building is very sharp, clean and neat with natural wood floors and new, white walls all around. As the rectangular shape belies, form mostly follows function, and 4 of the floors are given over to large, rectangular galleries. The open space allows for movable walls can be easily repositioned to allow an extremely wide range of configurations. Each floor is very well lit, (something that is continually a problem at The Met). With 3 sets of stair cases, there are plenty of stairs . None go all the way from 1-8, however. On the western wall, as seen below, stairs go from the 3rd floor to the 8th. To the east of the elevators, stairs run from 5 to the 1st floor. And, there are the exterior stairs on 6,7 and 8. The stairs are good to familiarize yourself with, since there is almost always a wait, the elevators are best used for going from 1 to 8 or from 5 to 1. The entire building, inside and out, is wheelchair accessible.

Western stairs, Spring, 2016. They seem to be dismantling the Sanitation complex. The Whit might be hoping a tower doesn’t go up in it’s stead.

Renzo Piano strikes me as a Master Engineer more than as a brilliant Architect. I got that feeling when I first saw the Pompidou Centre in Paris, with it’s engineering on the outside, and again with his New York Times Building (which he inherited from Gehry). Yes, he has done some beautiful buildings, but I repeatedly get the feeling of Piano, the Engineer, when I look at his work, and that shouldn’t be the primary feeling I’m left with. There is quite a bit of engineering being shown off, here too, much of it on the first floor, some in the exposed gallery ceilings, and some on the roof decks.

The 8th floor gallery lets in ambient sky light.

The 8th floor gallery lets in ambient sky light.

Now for the “nitty gritty.”

Given the luxury of having over a year to assess it, I’ve begun to wonder about the adequacy of the 50,000 square feet of indoor exhibition space, as nice as it is. “America Is Hard To See,” fit the whole Museum well, and showed it off to fine effect. Then, while the Frank Stella Retrospective was excellent, it only included 5 of his prints, and only 1 of his “Moby Dick” works. Was this because of hard decisions due to a prolific, 50+ year career, or due to a lack of space on the 5th floor? Currently, the otherwise excellent “Stuart Davis: In Full Swing” show feels unmistakably truncated. It shares the 5th floor with the “Danny Lyon: Message To The Future” show, (which may be overambitious). By comparison, The Met’s Stuart Davis show in 1991-92 had almost twice as many works, including over 30 that dated before the earliest work in the Whit’s show, like some from his “Van Gogh” period. While these have been going on indoors, I’ve been underwhelmed by what’s been installed thus far on the outdoor 5th Floor exhibition space. As time goes on, I’m starting to feel the 5th Floor may turn out to be a design mistake. Part of it is cut off to allow an entrance and exit corridor for the outdoor space, which is generally in shadow, and results in leaving a small indoor gallery on the other side of the outdoor gallery access corridor, which feels lost, and most importantly cuts down the size of the congruent 5th floor space. The other floors with outdoor decks run right up to the door leading outside with no corridor, etc.

The 5th Floor is cut to allow this exit corridor to the Roof Deck Gallery, leaving a small gallery to the left that feels lost.

The eastern end of the 5th Floor gallery is cut to allow this exit corridor to the Roof Deck, which leaves the small gallery to the left that feels lost.

The Whitney says there is 13,000 square feet of outdoor space, over 25% of the amount of indoor space. I’m left to ask the age old question…”Did they create enough INDOOR space to display Art?,” the prime purpose of a Museum. Time will tell, BUT? If they didn’t? This will be a disaster reminiscent of Moma’s inexcusably horrible current/new building, where they somehow managed to create a massive multistory hole right in the middle of some of THE most expensive real estate on Earth, then claim they “need more space,” 10 years later!

You can’t make this stuff up!!!

5th Floor Deck.

5th Floor Deck with installation. Yes, the colored seats are the Art work.

If the Whit needs more indoor space, well, the roof decks seem easy to enclose, and voila, 13,000 square feet more gallery space.

Or? PLEASE don’t tell me they’d have to expand this new building north, or up. I’m done writing letters. Besides, as much as I admire and respect Mrs. Gertrude V. Whitney and the collection built on hers, I have no attachment to this building.

And that brings me to this- Through it all, one thought stayed on my mind more than any other. I wonder what she would have thought of the place…

Part 5 – Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

“And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying”*

Portrait of Gertrude V. Whitney, 1917 by Robert Henri. Study for a Head for the Titanic Memorial by Mrs. Gertrude V. Whitney, in the background from "America Is Hard To See," 2015

Portrait of Gertrude V. Whitney, 1917 by Robert Henri. Study for a Head for the Titanic Memorial by Mrs. Gertrude V. Whitney, in the right background from “America Is Hard To See,” 2015

The founder of the Whitney Museum, as was beautifully demonstrated, remembered and honored in the first floor free to enter at all times gallery, where “America Is Hard To See” began was, also, a very accomplished sculptor2, in addition to being the greatest champion of American Art, perhaps ever. Immediately upon entering the first floor gallery, the first thing you saw was, fittingly, the wonderful portrait of her by Robert Henri that was perfectly placed facing the door, which also enabled it to be seen from outside the building, the only artwork that was. I wish it had been left right there. It wasn’t. As I write this, it’s upstairs as part of the “Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection” show. One of my pet peeves in Museum re-designs is how often they fail to answer this, seemingly basic, question- “Where are we going to put such and such major masterpiece?” Moma failed this miserably- How many times have they moved Monet’s “Waterlillies”, or Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, in a vain attempt to find the right spot for each? This is unforgivable. While the Whitney has found a great spot for Calder’s Circus,

Calder's ingenious "Circus." When you go, be sure to see the accompanying video!

Home… at last. Calder’s ingenious “Circus.” When you go, be sure to see the accompanying video.

which was lost in the Breuer Building’s mezzanine, I’m left to wonder about Mrs. Whitney’s Portrait. Will it become their Waterlillies?

One of the very greatest figures in American Art History looks out on her domain, Portrait by Robert Henri, 1917. 1st Floor Gallery, seen from outside the building during "America is Hard to See," 2015. After? They should have left it right there.

One of the greatest figures in American Art History looks out on her domain. 1st Floor Gallery, during “America is Hard to See,” 2015. After? They should have left it right there.

Beyond her portrait’s place in the Museum, I wonder what she’d think of it. It’s still “her” Museum. They even, recently, put the name “Whitney Museum of American Art” on the southern facade. The new place is located a stone’s throw from the site of the first Whitney Museum that she opened in 1931 at 8 West 8th Street, and equally close to where Edward Hopper lived and worked on Washington Square. Edward & Josephine Hopper left their artistic estate to the Whitney, in honor of their long relationship with Mrs. Whitney. When the new Museum opened, there was a selection of Edward Hopper drawings from 1925 that he did at the Whitney Studio Club, which preceded the founding of the Museum, in the first floor gallery, adjacent to Henri’s Portrait of Mrs. Whitney, seen above. As time goes on, I think this gift will be seen as one of the greatest Art gifts of the 20th Century, even though it didn’t consist of many of Edward’s paintings. That’s when I try and forget the fact that the Whitney, tragically and unforgivably, discarded almost all of Josephine Hopper’s work that was included with it!

While we’ll never know what Mrs. Whitney would think of the new home of her collection, I know what I think.

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Oneupsmanship? “Hey you down there on the High Line- You think you’re high up? Ha!”

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I’ve spent a year wondering- Why put 13,000 square feet of outdoor space in a building in a place with a climate like NYC?

5th Floor roof deck with a Frank Stella Sculpture & reflection, Feb, 2016

5th Floor roof deck with a Frank Stella Sculpture & reflection, in the snow, Feb, 2016

Part 6- 5,000,000 Reasons

As I said, real estate in NYC is all about location. That applies to the Art world, too. The Met & The Guggenheim are in, or near, Central Park, and there is now talk of The Met creating a Central Park entrance as part of their Contemporary Art Galleries reconstruction3. Moma has the heart of midtown, and now the Whitney has the High Line. In my opinion, the location was selected, and the New Whitney is designed, to be a destination for High Line visitors- It’s roof decks are meant to beckon High Liners with an even better view since they are higher. That’s one explanation for the stair designs looking similar- imitation that’s designed to make High Liners feel the Museum is part of the High Line. And so? Location also pays off by providing a potential mass audience delivered right to your door. How much is that worth to a Museum? Given that the High Line currently draws over 5,000,000 visitors a year, it’s hard not to see this as a conscious decision designed to attract visitors for an even better view, and oh yeah, some Art. Once inside? I’ve already come to feel that the gallery size is limiting. As the collection grows (do Museum collections ever shrink?), I am left to wonder how quickly they’re going to wish they had some of that 13,000 square feet that’s sitting outside, inside.

But? If I’m correct about their motivation, the outdoors stairs & decks exist to beckon people from the High Line, which, is open year round, come rain, snow, or shine.

DSC09546PNH

“We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed”*

Overall? I’m displeased by the outward appearance of the new Whitney. Over a  year of trying to warm to it, of giving it yet another chance to speak to me later, I still find it downright strange. As an Art Museum, the inside is nice, with the above caveats. As far as the Art is concerned? I’m glad to have the Whitney’s pre-eminient collection of American Art back, and “America Is Hard To See” was a wonderful “Welcome Back” celebration of it’s return after the move Downtown. The Whitney is, also, to be congratulated for the guts they’e displayed in the choices of their early shows- giving Laura Poitras her first Museum show, featuring the great Cecil Taylor for a week, and having the retrospectives of modern master Frank Stella and the vastly underrated Stuart Davis (who Mrs. Whitney, herself, believed in and financially supported early on), among others, all have made the first year of the New Whitney Museum’s exhibitions quite memorable, and yes, very Artistically successful.

Yet? How long will the waters stay calm for the U.S.S. New Whitney Museum? The big question of long term success and long term viability remain to be answered.

Epilogue – The Whitney’s 422 Million Dollar Gamble

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The Whitney’s move downtown isn’t about moving nearer the “New” Art neighborhood of Chelsea or the “Older” Art neighborhood of Soho. It strikes me as being a a case of seeing an opportunity and taking it. They found a lot at one of the 2 ends of the High Line and saw their opportunity to move to a potential audience- the 5,000,000 current visitors to the High Line, and they took it. I believe that’s why their stairs look like the High Line’s, as I said.

For the Whitney, this is a $430,000,000.00 (the cost of the new building) gamble that the High Line is not a flash in the pan and it’s popularity is here to stay. If the High Line fails? Well? The City was about to tear it down anyway before it was turned into a Park.

But, if the High Line does fail (which seems unlikely at the moment), or visitors come in substantially lower numbers (much more likely), the Whitney may find themselves stranded, with an out of the way Museum that is not easily accessible by either bus or subway in a neighborhood that has a history of being “the wild west,” home to meat packing, prostitution, cutting edge music, and sex clubs (Madonna’s notorious book “Sex” was photographed almost 25 years ago at one 3 blocks away) not all that long ago, that has been remade with extra glitz and top of the market rents. And what about that neighborhood? What if the new glitz doesn’t stick? What if it all turns out to be wishful thinking on the part of landlords looking to make a killing after years of squalor? Walking around the past few months, the area seems to be having a bit of trouble supporting many of it’s ritzy new tenants at these prices. And? This is over a year after the Whitney added even more oomph to the now completed High Line being here.

Empty storefronts on Gansevoort, one block east of the Whitney, August, 2016

Empty storefronts on Gansevoort fill 3/4 of the block, one block east of the Whitney, August, 2016

Is the “Meatpacking District” a fad destination that is about to fade? If so, what effect will this have on the new Whitney? Can it survive in a “not so fab” neighborhood?

La Perla joins Alexander McQueen & Stella McCartney as former tenants of the Meatpacking District

Is the buzz over? La Perla joins Alexander McQueen & Stella McCartney as former tenants of the Meatpacking District who have moved elsewhere.

While collectors and investors throw unheard of sums at Contemporary Art these days (which strike me as “bets” given the largely unproven nature of the Art itself), here is a case of one of NYC’s “Big 4 Museums” placing an even bigger bet on a Park, that while it certainly is Contemporary Urban Art, hasn’t even been fully opened for TWO YEARS yet,. The Whitney placed their bet when the High Line was in it’s first of 3 phases. Phase 3, the final part, of the now completed High Line opened on September 20, 2014. This is not to mention that they bought in at the top of the market in a real estate market that (like the Art market) hasn’t seen a correction in over 25 years. Both will see corrections one of these days.

But when? This, is the 422 million dollar question.

“Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest”*

Around the corner on Washington Street, 4 now empty storefronts, one of which was the famous Hogs & Heifers Saloon (corner). August, 2016

In the Whitney’s shadow. Around the corner on Washington Street, 4 now empty storefronts in a row, one of which was the notorious Hogs & Heifers Saloon (where the white sign hangs). August, 2016

Well? If all of this goes south? They still stand a very good chance of being able to move back uptown in 8 years when The Met’s lease of the Breuer, their former home, is up. Given The Met’s own problems, it seems highly unlikely they’ll be extending that lease.

If the Whitney then wants to renovate it? It’ll be someone else’s problem.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “American Tune” by Paul Simon. Published by Universal Music Publishing Group.

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  1. In fact, the new Whit, itself, sits where one was. ↩
  2. When will they have a show of HER work? ↩
  3. Speaking of his vision in January, Met Director Thomas Campbell told the LA Times that “We are looking at an entrance, at terraces, at the roof garden.” Sounds like he’s visited the New Whitney. ↩

Zaha Hadid, And The “Rule Of One”

“I was taught to go
Where the wind would blow
And it blows away – away
Well, my eyes are full of stars
But I just can’t reach ’em… oh, how high they are”*

Once again this year, I’m very saddened to learn of the very premature passing of a visionary Artist, in this case, the great Architect, Zaha Hadid, who passed on Thursday. Rare are architects who marry vision with a unique syle in this world and create Art in the process. Rarer still when they are female. I happened to date one in the 90’s, who found it very hard to get work as an Architect because she was a woman and had to rely on work she got as an Engineer to suvive. Sometimes they had her do work which was really Architecture in the guise of Engineering because they couldn’t use the name of a woman as the Architect, and because, she said, they could pay her less. I’ll never forget going with her to a nightclub she designed near Dusseldorf, Germany that had a dance floor that could be raised and lowered using a system of locks, yes, with water, (like those used on the Panama Canal in miniature). The floor was clear so you could actually watch the water coming and going as you danced. As the water flowed in, the slowly floor rose until you were a few feet in the air. Amazing. She even designed the furniture in the place. As for Zaha Hadid, to this point, in New York, I have only been able to experience the terrific 30 year Retrospective of her work at the Guggenheim in 2006. It was a rare chance (along with the Frank Gehry Show there in 2000) to see the work of one great Architect inside that of another, Frank Lloyd Wright, of course.

While their work is very different, I have a feeling Wright wouldn’t have been too hard on Ms. Hadid. There is a futuristic organic-ness to her work that surprises at first glance, then seems to, somehow magically, fit her sites surprisingly & uniquely well. Plus, I think he would have gotten a kick out of the paintings she did for her design proposals. I know I did, having never seen them prior. I bought a set of two of them on refrigerator magnets to add to my extensive collection, and for inspiration!

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The white painting on the left echoes Wright’s Guggenheim Ramp’s Spiral!

Now, sadly, however, upon hearing the news of her passing, I was struck by a feeling I don’t like at all- It seems to me that this is another instance of what I hate to call, “The Rule of One.”

Meaning, it sure seems like great Architects only get to build one building, each, in NYC.

Witness-

Louis Sullivan, the “inventor” of the skyscraper, only built one in NYC, the beautiful Bayard Building in 1899 at 65 Bleecker Street.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Sullivan’s great student, and, perhaps, the greatest Architect ever (per Frank Lloyd Wright, himself), has only the Guggenheim Museum (I’m not counting the Mercedz Benz Showroom on Park Avenue he designed because it’s a showroom, not a whole building, nor the pre-fab house he designed that was built on Staten Island). He lived to be 91, and it took that long to get a project approved, and past Robert Moses, who succeeded in blocking all the rest of his amazing NYC projects, like these. Eerily similar to Ms. Hadid’s contribution (see below), he didn’t live to see it completed, passing 6 months before it opened.

Wright, in my favorite picture of him, on the balcony of the Guggenheim, under construction, that he would not live to see open. Guggenheim postcard from my collection.

“If I can make it here…” Wright, in my favorite picture of him, on the balcony of the Guggenheim, under construction, 1959. Guggenheim postcard from my collection.

Daniel Liebeskind- Won the competition for the World Trade Center master plan, but so far, he hasn’t had anything of his own actually constructed. (I have no idea where things stand with his “Green Tower” for 1 Madison Avenue, proposed in 2008. Looks pretty wild to me!)

Santiago Calatrava- The infamous World Trade Center Transit Hub. (Like Liebeskind’s Tower, I have no idea what happened to Calatrava’s, too.)

Frank Gehry has, thankfully, outlived the Rule of One, with his gleaming tower downtown at 8 Spruce (nee Beekman) Street, (a work that includes Public Elementary School 397 that I don’t believe he designed), joining his beautiful IAC Headquarters Building at 555 West 18th Street.

Gehry's IAC Building- like sails on the adjacent Hudson River. Seen from the HighLine.

Gehry’s IAC Building- like sails on the adjacent Hudson River. Seen from the HighLine.

Though, like Wright, all of his most visionary works for NYC were never built. Mr Gerhy is still creating, and I hope he will still grace us with more projects, soon.

And now, Zaha Hadid, who’s only NYC building, she didn’t live to see completed. Well, here it is, 520 West 28th Street, about 10 blocks north of Frank Gehry’s gorgeous IAC Building, above, and right smack dab on the High Line.

It's scheduled to open in the Fall.

Rendering. It’s scheduled to open in the Fall.

From the rendering, above, it looks like a beautiful, surprisingly almost conventional design, yet one that will leave us appreciative of what it adds to our lives (even just walking past it), and of her amazing talents.

April 1, 2016. No work taking place today out of respect for Ms. Hadid's passing. A compilation from the HighLine.

April 1, 2016. No work taking place today out of respect for Ms. Hadid’s passing. From the HighLine.

“All I believe in is a dream
I haunt the Earth though I am fully seen
In all my years I’ve never felt more sure than now”*

Yet, everytime I see it, as it’s completed, and after it’s finished, I’ll be left with this overriding thought-

WHY is it that so many mediocre Architects get to build project after project here (I’m not naming names but just look around. They’re easy to spot.) and the best get ONE…IF THEY’RE LUCKY!, AND have to move figurative heaven and earth to get it? They’d much rather be moving real earth.1

While I’ll be eternally grateful we have it, as I am the others I just listed, in this City where we have the second most tall buildings (over 150 meters) in the world (236 to Hong Kong’s 380. Chicago has 118, the only other US City in the worldwide top 20), nowhere is the need for great architecture more desperate.

It does, also, make a real point for any struggling Artist in this City, if not beyond- It’s not easy to get your work done, seen, heard, or built here. Even being a world famous Master of the Art is not an Ezy Pass to opportunity here.

It also points out that our loss is all the more in that we don’t know what might have been, and therefore, what we might have lost.

I’ll say it, again…before it’s, god forbid, too late- let’s get Frank Gehry to give us the masterpiece the City needs to define it for the 21st Century. PLEASE?2

*Soundtrack for this post is “Rise To The Sun” by Alabama Shakes, from their album “Boys & Girls,” written by Steven William Johnson, Zachary Riley Cockrell, Brittany Amber Howard, Heath Allen Fogg, and published by Alabama Shakes Publishing.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full length pieces have been published!
If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below.
Thank you, Kenn.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. I mentioned this here, not all that long ago. ↩
  2. Yes, I notice that his 8 Spruce Street Tower is being used more and more in skyline shots behind the Brooklyn Bridge as seen from the Brooklyn East River shore, and that’s nice, but that darn Freedom Tower thing is in the background. The need remains! ↩