cover photo



blog archive

main site

artwork

bio






Schwarz



View current page
...more recent posts

Modern Ironies: Notes on Losing the Bunshaft's Travertine House (1963)


For me, a Californian who grew up in a builder ranch house, the floor plan of the Bunshaft house, as it appeared in Architectural Record Houses of 1966, challenged the whole concept of what a house was. A rectangle with a living room at the center, only two bedrooms, few internal doors, and no windows on the front elevation? How could this be a house?

Its beauty was its daring simplicity; I was captivated by the rhythms and abstract composition. Sensitively, instead of turning all the views to the water, Bunshaft had oriented the two bedrooms out to the landscape, because all water all the time would have been too much. He had masterfully translated the large scale of his experience as design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill into a house of less than 3,000 square feet.

................................................................................................................................................

It is ironic that Maharam would tear down a mid-century modern landmark, when the textile company that bears his family name owes its recent revival to mid-century modern design. Maharam’s sons have reissued fabric designs by icons such as Anni Albers, Ray and Charles Eames, Alexander Girard, Arne Jacobsen, Vernon Panton, and Gio Ponti, and they have been honored by the Russel Wright Design Center for their “Textiles of the 20th Century.”

...............................................................................................................................................

Certainly the Museum of Modern Art, which received the house as a gift from the Bunshafts, knew who they were selling the house to. Might MoMA be the real villain because it sold the property without concern for its cultural value? Isn’t the museum in the business of cultural values? Why didn’t it preserve the home or make preservation a condition of sale? Or, one hates to say it, why didn’t the Bunshafts give the house to the museum with more restrictions?
not to mention vulture martha stewarts stewardship :
And the August issue of Vanity Fair reports that much of the house’s former travertine floor now paves the kitchen of Martha Stewart’s new home in Bedford New York, a clapboard compound that also features an Amish-built barn and a century-old fence brought from Canada.
they're letting vulture martha skate!? "Perhaps there are no individual villains, just a sequence of unfortunate or misguided decisions." b.s., me thinks theres too much punch pulling in this story but well keep it for the neato photos. and as record of this despicible patch of architecturaly historical record.


[link] [1 comment]

nice thread on toms page engaging the subject of artistic quotation. in sum, the beatsie boys raise the status of a whole bunch of found licks to maxims of universal truth though a (now) illegal practice on their under appreciated paul's boutique album. burn a copy for a friend.


[link] [4 comments]

i have serious concerns with the likelihood of a federal agency declaring vast poor new orleans neighborhoods toxic superfund-sites and commandering them under eminent domain. then bulldozing historic (the whole damn place is historic) neighborhoods and turning them over to developer buddies for [social] redevelopment.

from pandagon :

Two shaky House incumbents, Democrat Melancon and Republican Boustany, hope response to hurricane rallies voters behind them. House Republican campaign chief Reynolds touts chance to market conservative social-policy solutions; Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
.............................................................................................................................................................

Who knew the GOP listened to the Dead Kennedys?

The sun beams down on a brand new day,
No more welfare tax to pay,
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light!
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play!
All systems go to kill the poor tonight!





[link] [7 comments]

m-ch


[link] [add a comment]

kusama

Kusama’s theme is repetition. Her ‘Air Mail Stickers’ [1962], consists of over 1,000 of the post office seals pasted onto a 181.6 x 171.5cm canvas. The inexactly-executed rows and columns in the piece - which forms part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s permanent collection - create a dizzying trompe d’oeil. Like Kusama’s ‘Infinity Net’ and polka-dot-field work, ‘Air Mail Stickers’ anticipates Andy Warhol’s use of repetition.

"After Warhol came to my ‘1,000 Boat’ show, he called to ask permission to use my patterns in his silkscreens," recounts Kusama from her Tokyo studio. "But I refused. I had been working with repetition for years by that time, ever since my 1959 exhibition at the Brata gallery." Kusama leans forward and smiles, "Warhol’s repetitions came from me - But my repetitions came from my childhood."
Yayoi Kusama with Robert Murdock: Audio Interview, 12/22/66 Location: New York, New York at Kusama's studio.


[link] [add a comment]