Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
And architecture had Eliel and Eero Saarinen, the Finnish father-son duo who revolutionized the way people thought about buildings in the Modernist boom after World War II. Their plans for nine buildings at Drake University, which borrowed more elements from boxy factories than columned academia, identified the school as "a forward-looking, modern university that was committed to innovative design," according to Maura Lyons, who curated a new show about the architects that opens next weekend in the Anderson Gallery.
The first time I met Enzo Mari, he was giving a talk at the Serpentine Gallery in London. It turned out to be more of a rant, as the great Italian designer railed scornfully against his pet hates. Design - dead. Architecture - dead too. Western civilization - ditto. Spotting the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas among the audience, he denounced him as "a pornographic window dresser."
Afterward I asked Mari if there was any aspect of contemporary life that pleased him. A lengthy silence followed, until he said: "Bread and terrorism." Why terrorism? "Why not?" snorted Mari. "People think it's bad, but if they thought about it, they'd realize it isn't all bad. It changes things."
If Brad Cloepfil's new Museum of Arts and Design were simply another white box for art, it would be just plain mean not to give it a decent grade. It's humanly scaled, nicely detailed, and allows light to flutter into the galleries through strategically placed horizontal and vertical slits. Visitors get intimate bird's-eye views of Central Park and Columbus Circle, along with congenial spaces to contemplate art. It's a conscientious if unspectacular effort.
Yet it's impossible to forget that this decorous little tower was once something flamboyant, fun, and maybe even a little foolish, a swinging '60s art museum designed by Edward Durell Stone for the eccentric heir to the A&P fortune, Huntington Hartford.
Cloepfil and his team at Allied Works Architecture literally wrapped their new museum around the concrete bones of Stone's white marble folly. But they failed to exorcise its ghosts, and now they hover in eternal reproach. It feels as if all the idiosyncrasies were focus-grouped out of the place.
barny is a nasty little shit. just like his dad
Thirty years ago photography was art if it was black and white. Color pictures were tacky and cheap, the stuff of cigarette ads and snapshot albums. So in 1976, when William Eggleston had a solo show of full-color snapshotlike photographs at the august Museum of Modern Art, critics squawked.you know there are two schools of thought on this.
Shirley concurs. “He calls me up every now and then, asks how I’m doing, and I say, ‘Good,’” she says, fond but firm. She is pleased to own an Eggleston photograph at home and proud of his success, but, like the Lamp’s regulars, her feelings for her famous neighbor are complicated. “I like Bill, but he can’t come in here. Will you be sure and tell him I said hello?”his "pub crawl" documentary stranded in canton is excerpted here on you tube.
enjoy more of his work at eggleston trust website
.
As I made my way through the 152 booths, I thought about the moment in Titanic when the designer of the doomed luxury liner warns Kate Winslet to find a lifeboat because "all this will be at the bottom of the Atlantic." When I tried this idea out on attendees, several said I was "a buzzkill." I asked, "Isn’t the buzz already beginning to disappear?"moo moo >squeeeek clank< (sound of barn door closing)
If the art economy is as bad as it looks -- if worse comes to worst -- 40 to 50 New York galleries will close. Around the same number of European galleries will, too. An art magazine will cease publishing. A major fair will call it quits -- possibly the Armory Show, because so many dealers hate the conditions on the piers, or maybe Art Basel Miami Beach, because although it’s fun, it’s also ridiculous. Museums will cancel shows because they can’t raise funds. Art advisers will be out of work. Alternative spaces will become more important for shaping the discourse, although they’ll have a hard time making ends meet.
As for artists, too many have been getting away with murder, making questionable or derivative work and selling it for inflated prices. They will either lower their prices or stop selling. Many younger artists who made a killing will be forgotten quickly. Others will be seen mainly as relics of a time when marketability equaled likability. Many of the hot Chinese artists, most of whom are only nth-generation photo-realists, will fall by the wayside, having stuck collectors with a lot of junk.