Wright Chat

[DavidC]

New Frank Lloyd Wright Exhibit, and His Influence in Milwaukee


David

[SDR]

Seventy decades ! Now that's a long career . . .


SDR

[Roderick Grant]

From the text:
Brady Roberts is the Chief Curator at the museum. He explains, "Many people have said that when you are in a Frank Lloyd Wright house it's like being in a sculpture."

At the recent Pedro Guerrero event, he said that he approached photographing FLW's work as if it were sculpture.

FLW sharply differentiated architecture from sculpture. I would say it is wrong to blur the line between the two arts. FLW's work is not sculpture.

[Laurie Virr]

'FLW sharply differentiated architecture from sculpture. I would say it is wrong to blur the line between the two arts. FLW's work is not sculpture.[/quote]'

I concur with Roderick. Frank Lloyd Wright's Architecture is the antithesis of sculpture. Taliesin, arguably his greatest work, and that to which he devoted most attention, cannot be considered sculpture, no matter how wide the definition.

Would it be too uncharitable to describe Mr Brady Roberts' remark as a throw away line?

[SDR]

The fact that serious thinkers-about-architecture periodically find it necessary to declare that architecture is not (cannot be ?) sculpture, raises the obvious question, "Why is that so ?"

Of all the arts -- painting, music, poetry, dance, etc -- sculpture and architecture share their unique aspects so plainly: materiality, solid-void relationships, sensitivity to light, and changes of aspect through movement and the passage of time.

What is so dreadful about sculpture, that it shouldn't be mentioned in connection with great architecture ?

I understand and feel the necessity of declaring that architecture is about much more than mere sculpture -- but where is the horror in alluding to architectural form-making (not a subject unknown to any architect, surely) as a kind of sculpture ?

SDR

[peterm]

I suppose that the main reason architects often dislike thinking of their designs as being related to sculpture is that typically sculpture is not perceived from within, but rather as an object in space to be contemplated from a distance. Architecture for Wright was about choreographed experience and the reality of the space contained within the building.

It might have appeared as sculpture to a photographer like Pedro Guerrero; and there is nothing inherently wrong with that, especially when one considers that a photo can never be architecture, only a frozen, documented two dimensional moment contained within that choreography. A photographer needs to "make time stand still". An architect must work with the relationship of time and space.

It is interesting that Wright had no problem comparing architecture to music, but balked at the more obvious connection to sculpture. Music and architecture are both art forms which are directly related to an experience in time. But I suppose that is also the case with poetry and dance...

[Laurie Virr]

Stephen:

There was never any intention of denigrating sculpture. At Taliesin in Wisconsin, the Architecture furnishes the means for the display of sculpture and ceramics, much of it, as you are well aware, of Asian origin. Some of these sites, such as walls and low piers, were deliberately created for the purpose. I have no hesitation in expressing my belief that the presence of such sculpture and ceramics enhances the Architecture, in that it provides emphasis to various terminals.

Frank Lloyd Wright subscribed to the view that Architecture was the Great Mother Art, and that all the ‘minor’ arts were subservient to it. Is not such thinking making a distinction between Architecture and sculpture?

I suggest that the resistance to the acceptance of Architecture as sculpture arises as a consequence of some of those with architectural qualifications have, in recent times, designed buildings in which they expected their clients to radically change their way of life so as to fit into a sculptural form. That is certainly the case in Australia, and it has been one of the causes of alienation between the profession and potential clients in this country.

[DRN]

An interesting discussion, which brings to mind the sculptor Richard Serra and the architect Peter Eisenman. Both have ventured "across the aisle" into each other's profession with what some might term negative results.

Serra's "Tilted Arc" http://minimalissimo.com/2010/11/tilted-arc/ was a plate of CorTen steel that stretched across a plaza in New York such that it diverted movement of passers by, channeled wind, provided a "billboard" for grafitti, and in some rare cases, provided an element of surprise for would be muggers. After much controversy, it was removed in 1989.

Serra's "Carnegie" http://vickyaclark.com/serra_interview.html was erected in Pittsburgh during my years there. As an expression of raw steel it was a triumph. Its four large vertical plates of steel are positioned such that they enclose a narrow, vertical space with a small square opening to the sky creating a powerful place to view the sun or moon at certain times of the year. It was perfect for a controlled sculpture garden, but instead was erected on busy Forbes Avenue, and its interior very quickly started to reek of urine.

In both cases, Serra shaped space, and in the case of "Carnegie" actually created an enclosed room along a city street. He approached both commissions as a sculptor, not an architect. That is to say the sculptor did not take into account the realities of how people inhabit or react to certain elements and built space in the public realm. Granted what I described were the acts of a few sociopaths and not the public at large, but when working in the public realm, these possibilities must be taken into account, and architects, largely since the 1960's, have done so.

Then there is Peter Eisenman and his House VI. http://www.archdaily.com/63267/ad-classics-house-vi-peter-eisenman/

It is a sculpture in a garden. It is not a house. It ignores how people inhabit space. One literally damages it by walking on some of its pristine surfaces.

[Roderick Grant]

"Tilted Arc" barely qualified as art. Not because it lured taggers, but because it neither represented anything in itself nor did it acknowledge the handsome plaza it damaged. Serra says, "The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewers movement. Step by step the perception not only of the sculpture but of the entire environment changes." Well, how about that? The same could be said about any huge object people walk by. Minimalist sculpture can certainly be effective; "Carnegie" is as good as "Tilted Arc" was bad. Louise Nevelson produced great works, some also in steel. But the arc was at best better than the horrid office building in the background.

I would call Eisenman's "house" a sculptural conceit.

As to my original statement, as Laurie Virr points out, it was not meant to denigrate sculpture as art, but to draw a distinction between it and architecture, which two can stand apart or work together. Sculpture can greatly enhance architecture. The lobby of the West Wing of the National Gallery in D. C. (I. M. Pei) would seem incomplete without the Calder mobile. The chapel in St. Peter's Lutheran Church (the Jazz Church) under the Citicorp Tower (Hugh Stubbins) on Lexington in NYC has an entire wall covered by one of Nevelson's typical sculptures that greatly enhances the room. Fireplaces, once functional elements now displaced as such by furnaces, have become major sculptural objects in many homes. And yet, sculpture is not architecture is not sculpture.

[SDR]

Thank you. So, there are a number of ways of approaching the question.

Perhaps it is a matter of semantics. We reserve the term "sculpture" for one sort of form-making, and "architecture" -- in its external aspect, anyway -- for another sort. And we don't want anyone to mistake our earnest architectural form-making for "mere sculpture."

One is reminded of Wright's waggish response to the image of a major European monument-to-antiquity: "Is it hollow ?" In the twentieth century, artists like Calder and Moore opened sculpture, letting the viewer "inside," as it were.

I maintain that it is less than pertinent to insist upon a strict distinction between sculpture and architecture -- as long as we remind ourselves of the many differences between the two disciplines. (The architect who proclaims that all other arts are dependent upon his merely flatters himself, wouldn't you say, Laurie ? What would the host of great painters and composers have to say about that, I wonder . . .)

And it seems futile to claim that Wright's work steered clear of sculpture in its striving for a meaningful search for a new and appropriate form for architecture. From first to last he made of his architecture much more than mere building, at least in part by careful choice of bold exterior form -- did he not ? And if he chose to distinguish that form from "sculpture," must we as well -- in the present discussion ? (Of course a practicing architect will steer his clients away from the idea that the building they are paying for is just Art; the designer reserves for himself the pleasure of making art while constructing shelter !)
























Finally, I would be the last to point to Taliesin as an example of architecture-as-sculpture. Yet even here there is Wright playing sculptor -- isn't there ? What are those elaborate finials (present in Taliesin I and II, though long gone by the time Laurie was shown to his guest room there . . .) ?






Nowhere in the above images do I refer to mere decoration, but to the forms themselves. That magnificent miniature building atop the principal intersection of the plan of Taliesin is a delightful folly, is it not ? Must we deny the architect his "sculpture" -- his art-for-art's sake ?

SDR

[Roderick Grant]

I must also agree with peterm about Guerrero photographing architecture as sculpture. Architecture is reduced by photography to two dimensions. But still, Guerrero ought to know the difference between the two arts, and seemingly he does not.

[SDR]

How would you have had Guerrero improve his photography of Wright's buildings, to make it more responsive to the architect's intent ? If I am not mistaken, the architect himself approved of the work of his young photographer -- didn't he ?

Of course that doesn't mean that we can't criticize it. But we miss the point, I believe; Wright wasn't the only architect to point out that photography can never capture a building's essence. Ezra Stoller and others were aware that they could only present the exterior (or interior) aspect in a (literally) favorable light. Architectural photography emphasizes one aspect of a building's presence because it cannot adequately depict another -- it seems to me.

(The same could be said of drawing -- see the text in my first image, above, quoting H Klumb and Mr Wright.)

SDR

[Roderick Grant]

Mere, mere, mere!! Who said anything about "mere"? Sculpture is an art. Architecture is an art. Often they cross paths each to the other's enhancement.

By the "Mother Art," FLW was referring to the origins of human endeavor. First order of business: shelter, thus architecture evolved as the first visual art form, possibly before music, but probably not. Architecture begat sculpture and painting, just as music begat dance. Story telling, the principal occupation that differentiates humans from other life forms, begat poetry, which begat literature. But none of the begotten is 'mere.'

[SDR]

Indeed not. Then why must we say that sculpture and painting were "begat" by building ? Could they not -- do they not -- exist independently of "mere" shelter ? I know that's the received wisdom, all these years later -- but can't we look at it with fresh eyes ?


SDR

[Roderick Grant]

I did not suggest that Guerrero's photography was in need of improvement. It's great work. He has a good eye (although he has stopped photography and taken up mobiles). Like sculpture and painting, photography is an art form different from architecture, and within the limits of the medium, PEG has acquitted himself admirably.