Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass by Trenton Doyle Hancock
MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA
September 1st, 2019
Tag: design
The Guest House at Field Farm
Home away from home
A Bauhaus-inspired house designed by Edwin Goodell, Jr. in 1948 for Lawrence and Eleanor Bloedel, avid modern art and furniture collectors of the time, it still is adorned by original artwork inside and out. But the best feature of this most remarkable Bed & Breakfast, is the tranquility it exudes: the gardens with a pond, the walking trails through pastures, a forest, the unobstructed views of Mt. Greylock in the background, everything about it seems to have been designed for calmness, a state of mind that anyone living in Midtown Manhattan so desperately seeks!
The Guest House, Williamstown, MA
August 31st, 2019
A Crack in Everything
A visit to the Jewish Museum on the occasion of an exhibition devoted to the bard of Montreal; poetic and emotional, a little happy, a little sad and bittersweet, bringing back memories to some and bouts of nostalgia to others. It was suitably unphotographable but, luckily, there were more works by other Jewish artists around to ”save the day”.
Claire Fontaine is a pseudonym that translates literally as ”clear fountain”. It may refer to Marcel Duchamp’s iconic 1917 Readymade sculpture Fountain, an inverted, signed urinal that is one of the founding works of radical modernism. ”Tears” is inspired by recorded memories of Ellis Island, which, beginning in 1892, welcomed (and also rejected) millions of people.
The Jewish Museum, Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, April through September 2019
August 17th, 2019
Manitoga || The House
Manitoga || The Woodland
”Over 70 years ago, Russel and Mary Wright acquired an abandoned quarry and surrounding hillside in the Lower Hudson Valley, and he slowly restored this land to a place of extraordinary beauty. Inspired by the legacy of the Wappinger people, the ancestral residents of the area, Wright called the emerging vision for these 75 acres “Manitoga” or Place of Great Spirit.”
Although the many elements of the garden are familiar—house, terraces, parking lot, trellis, and paths—nothing is conventional. Wright’s integrating vision changed all the familiar components, blending the built elements and the natural landscape together so that each was enriched, enhanced, and transformed by the other. Just as the house is interwoven with the site, the hillside is connected by views to its larger context of the Hudson River Valley, and the visitors themselves are involved in an intimate and unfolding relationship to the place.” [source]
The Russel Wright Design Center
Garrison, N.Y.
July 28th, 2019
StarDome
From star gazers at the Griffith Observatory, to space age travelers at LAX airport, time to head back East.
May 11th, 2019
Giant Binoculars
Keep going, nothing to see here…
Giant Binoculars is a 1991 sculpture by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen. The building that surrounds them, known – you guessed it – as the ”Binoculars Building”, is a Frank Gehry design.
Venice, Los Angeles
May 8th, 2019
The Face of Anxiety
No, not me mate, take the next one…
Designed by Ray Komai
Manufactured by J.G. Furniture Co., Inc. in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Molded walnut plywood, chromed metal, rubber
From The Value of Good Design, an exhibition at MoMA (Feb 10-Jun 15, 2019).
April 4th, 2019
The Glass House || The Art
The Painting Gallery
A Frank Stella dominion.
Frank Stella
Effingham II, 1966
Fluorescent alkyd and epoxy on canvas
Frank Stella
Brzozdowce I, 1973
Mixed media: felt, fabric, and acrylic on panel and plywood
Frank Stella
Hagmatana III, 1967
Fluorescent acrylic on canvas
Frank Stella
Averroes, 1960
Aluminum paint on canvas
Frank Stella
Tetuan II, 1964
Fluorescent alkyd on canvas
We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the Painting Gallery is built as a tomb, its exterior very much resembling that of the Royal Tomb of Philip II in Aigai, Greece. Philip II (382–336 BC) was the king of Macedonia from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC, and father of Alexander the Great. Our guide confirmed the design was, indeed, inspired by Kind Philip’s tomb.
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The Sculpture Gallery
While the Painting Gallery was inspired by an ancient Greek Tomb, Johnson looked to modern Greece for the design of his Sculpture Gallery. His inspiration came partly from the Greek islands and their many villages marked by stairways. Johnson remarked that in these villages, “every street is a staircase to somewhere.” He liked it so much that he seriously considered moving his residence from the Glass House to the Sculpture Gallery. But then, he thought again: “Where would I have put the sculpture?”
Robert Morris
Untitled, 1965-70
Three L-shaped units of stainless steel
John Chamberlain
The Archbishop, The Golfer, and Ralph, 1982-83
Painted and chromium plated steel
George Segal
Lovers on a Bed II, 1970
Plaster, iron bed frame, paint
Frank Stella
Raft of Medusa, Part I, 1990
Oil and enamel on etched honeycomb aluminum with steel pipes, beams, and other metal elements
Michael Heizer
Prismatic Flake #4, 1990
Modified concrete, steel base
Julian Schnabel
Ozymandias, 1986-90
It looks so much like wood that it was hard to believe it is made of cast bronze, patina and paint
An exterior view of the Sculpture Gallery
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The Studio
The Studio, a one-room workspace and library, was referred to by Johnson as an ”event on the landscape”. When first completed, the Studio’s stucco exterior was bright white, but later Johnson painted it a soft brown color, described by colorist Donald Kaufman as ”stone greige.”
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Da Monsta
This building, constructed of modified gunnite, is the closest to Johnson’s thinking about sculpture and form at the end of his life – what he called the ”structured warp.”
The name of the building is an adaptation of the “monster”, a phrase for the building that resulted from a conversation with architecture critic Herbert Muschamp. Johnson felt the building had the quality of a living thing.
I thought Frank Gehry would have felt at home here.
The Glass House
“In the case of the Glass House, the stylistic approach is perfectly clear. Mies van der Rohe and I had discussed how you could build a glass house and each of us built one. Mies’ was, of course, primary and mine was an adoption from the master, although it’s quite a different approach. In my case, there were a lot of historical influences at work. The Glass House stylistically is a mixture of Mies van der Rohe, Malevich, the Parthenon, the English garden, the whole Romantic Movement, the asymmetry of the 19th century. In other words, all these things are mixed up in it but basically it is the last of the modern, in the sense of the historic way we treat modern architecture today, the simple cube.” – Philip Johnson, 1991
And so it was that Johnson’s famed masterpiece came to be. But it’s not just the house: a Studio, a Painting Gallery, a Sculpture Gallery, Da Monsta, a Brick House and a Pavillion in the Pond complete the picture.
But first things first:
The Gate
A standalone structure with no fence, so anyone can just walk by. Still, quite impressive in size and mechanics, with the bar sliding up to let our shuttle bus enter, and down again behind it. It was a sailboat boom in a previous life.
The Brick House
In contrast to the diaphanous Glass House, it was conceived as a guest house offering total privacy – light pours in from skylights and the only windows were placed at the rear.
The Glass House
Although there are no walls separating them, Philip Johnson referred to areas within the space as “rooms.” So we have the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom and an entrance area – their limits defined by furniture or objects.
And, yes, it gets really hot when the sun shines. In order to avoid suffocation from the greenhouse effect, Johnson had special modular wooden panels placed on the glass ones for shade; they would be moved according to the hour of day or season.
The painting in the ”living room” is ”Burial of Phocion” ca. 1648-49, by Nicolas Poussin. It was selected specifically for the house by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the first director of the Museum of Modern Art.
The only really private room is the bathroom enclosed in a rounded brick structure that holds the fireplace on the other side.
View to the Pavillion in the Pond and the Monument to Lincoln Kirstein, 1985 – a 30 feet high tower, which Johnson frequently climbed, describing it “a staircase to nowhere.”
The Grounds
Artwork by Donald Judd, Untitled (1971).
Concrete
Rear view of the Brick House and its round windows.
Let’s take a breath here because, next, we’ll take a look at the art.
New Canaan, CT
November 18th, 2018
The Humble Fabulist 