Category: visual

As more and more architects gain celebrity status, the buildings they design are becoming decidedly larger than life, and the design of the exterior shell is beginning to overshadow whatever is supposed to be going on inside the walls. In Bellevue, Washington, a museum hailed as an architectural breakthrough closed its doors this past fall, and part of the reason was said to be that the interior was simply ill-suited to house art collections. The disconnect between form and function in Bellevue is being viewed with alarm throughout the industry, and many observers are rethinking the role of the architect in such projects.

When Frank Gehry unveils his plans for the new Art Gallery of Ontario building later this week, the usual debate of form vs. function will surely ensue. “What has the success of the Guggenheim Bilbao done to the discipline of museum design, detractors ask? Has the need for the spectacular rendered the discipline of architecture more superficial, when every urban centre must boast its own curving titanium mothership to feel world class? One can’t help but notice that Gehry has become the architect of someplace wanting to be someplace better.”

“In 16th-century Italy, art was an instrument of faith and Michelangelo its divine master, unassailable until El Greco appeared on the scene. But was he a puritan on a mission to clean up wicked Rome, or simply an arrogant young artist?” Where Michelangelo had begun to stray into vaguely secular realms, (exemplified by his masterpiece, The Last Judgment, based on the themes of Dante,) El Greco represented a calculated and forceful return to faith-based art which strove to keep the public servile to its Christian masters, rather than to encourage independent thought on Christian themes. Today, few would doubt that “El Greco is a great artist – but what kind of a great artist?”

“Officials at the National Museum of American History yesterday announced plans to open a $19 million permanent exhibit exploring an oft-times fervently debated topic: the depiction of the nation’s military history, beginning with the French and Indian War in the 1750s, running through World War II and Vietnam, and culminating with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan… It will be the first time the museum has taken a panoramic view of the U.S. military experience.”

“A recently discovered letter by Vincent van Gogh on display for the first time speaks of a tiny grave and his father’s grief over the loss of his first child — a boy also named Vincent who was stillborn. The letter, the first authenticated one by van Gogh to surface since 1990, is the only known reference by the artist to the family tragedy, said Leo Jansen, a researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, which added the letter to its exhibition yesterday. He and other experts say its passionless tone contradicts theories by some biographers that van Gogh may have suffered from alienation as a ‘replacement child.'”

“Where there was darkness on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the architect Santiago Calatrava would bring a flood of light in the form of a winged railway station, draped in glass, suffused with natural illumination and, on occasion, open to the clear skies above. Mr. Calatrava’s design for the permanent World Trade Center PATH terminal, which was unveiled yesterday, is a soaring, sculptural, steel-and-glass shell covering a cathedral-like concourse.”

The new plan unveiled for the PATH station at Ground Zero seems to have dazzled the New Yorkers who saw it to the point that many are wondering why the design for the skyscraper and memorial at the same site could not have been as grand. “In place of a wedge (in reality, an inglorious traffic intersection), there will arise what Mr. Calatrava envisions as a bird, most likely a dove, released from the hands of a child. No more second-hand Statues of Liberty here, in other words. Rather, a prayer for peace.”

A new era is blossoming in New York’s venerable Chelsea neighborhood, as personified by a slew of new galleries owned and run by “a group of enterprising young dealers who are shaking up a corner of the New York art scene.” The youngsters have a name for themselves – the New Art Dealers Alliance – and they have a mission, as well: to provide a stage for emerging artists who wouldn’t have a prayer of being exhibited at Chelsea’s more established galleries, and to make money doing it. NADA is also a sign of the growing trend towards the reemergence of the artists’ collectives which dominated the 1960s and ’70s.

It all began when the Israeli ambassador to Sweden came across an installation at the National Historical Museum in Stockholm which features a pristine photograph of a recent Palestinian suicide bomber floating freely in a partially frozen sea of blood. Interpreting the work as an endorsement of anti-Israeli terrorism, the ambassador demanded its removal, and then hurled a nearby spotlight into the pool. Shortly thereafter, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the ambassador to congratulate him, and Jerusalem’s leading newspaper editorialized that the ambassador’s vandalism was a greater work of art than the original. The museum director is incensed, and believes the act was premeditated, in response to the director’s criticisms of Israeli policy.

Veteran journalist Larry Defner is exasperated by the outcry against the Swedish artwork seen by some to be an anti-Semitic endorsement of suicide bombings. “Snow White and the Madness of Truth makes Palestinian terrorism – and Israeli repression, too, but mainly Palestinian terrorism – so graphic and immediate as to be nauseating, which is the effect terrorism and repression should, but unfortunately don’t, have on people at large. The Jewish reaction to the artwork and to Ambassador Zvi Mazel’s trashing of it show how… as soon as the cry of anti-Semitism goes up loudly enough, there is no discussion in Israel or the Diaspora about whether or not it was justified.”