Architectural qualities of the Guggenheim Museum in New York have an expressional capability of conveying meaning onto its user. William Whyte suggests that this is able to be read as a language, related directly to its spatial features and geometries. This essay attempts to examine the Guggenheim’s meaning in a contextual framework of time, through the medium of photography. Discussing critical interpretation at the time of the Guggenheim’s completion, and how socio-cultural changes have translated different means of understanding the architecture and its language, and importantly, whether this is a good thing or not. Meaningful interpretation of architecture has been suggested by Whyte to be readable, complex across different sets of media, and subject to change throughout time. The contrasts of the photographic medium in the 1950s with today’s era vary greatly in terms of accessibility, abundance, and publishing control. Architectural photography in the 50s was placed in edited sources, Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Journals, Advertisements, whereas today images of architectural photography are largely obtained through online search engines such as Google Images, and Flikr. Some key questions examined in the essay relate to the intent of the photographer, production bias, and the medium in which the photograph is presented and how this has an affect on the way in which the Guggenheim was likely understood at the time of its opening, and how it is read today, by users
As we know, the result of “Art is” is “Art is” which returned in an ephemeral form at the Studio Museum. All forty photographs are on display on the basement level of the galleries, which are supposedly reserved for pieces in their permanent collection. The room just outside, whether coincidentally or not, is filled with photos of students - reflecting personal memories. How the museum decides to play with this, is by missing them with old-timer photos of Harlem from the
All of Richard’s exhibits where of pictures taken of a trip but the most significant of all was that of a portrait 24”x36” which consisted of a modern 25 story building that covered the portrait from top to bottom and edge to edge. The building was the Edificio Focsa in a Varadero Neighborhood in Cuba. In front of this massive modern building was a three story white building in ruins. Here you can see right through it since there were no windows or doors and partial walls standing. This was an impressive view of how modernism overwhelms the original colonial heritage architecture.
1985 (Figure 2) first appeared in 1985 plastered on billboards around New York City. The piece is illustrated in monochrome colours so to not distract viewers from the meaning of the poster. The harsh contrast in colours between the black writing and white background make the piece stand out and draw the attention of bypassers. Written on the artwork is a list of well-known museums in New York City and beside them is a score of how many women artists have had one-person exhibits there in the past year. The results showed that the Guggenheim, Metropolitan and Whitney museums each had zero, whilst the Modern museum had one. These results are supposed to shock the audience and make gallery curators feel a sense of guilt, that it’s clear the art world don’t appreciate women artists like they do men. Whist they are confronting the public with that truth they are also providing another critical message with this piece. The Guerrilla Girls identified these museums by first name, not out of convenience, but to make a statement, that the only museums to allow women artist some form of respect like male artist do was the ‘modern’ museum. Emphasising the fact that gender discrimination and bias nature in the art world should be in the past, and the only museum that realises and recognises this is the modern one. The poster’s main message challenges the patriarchal world of art and confronts art galleries
The author traces the disruption of the museum architecture and the development of the museum as an independent building type. She highlights four key stages of its architectural formation associated with four time periods. They are Arcadia and Antiquity, Metropolis and Modernity, New Century, A New Aesthetic, and Recent Reactions: Fragmentation, Contradiction, expression.
Designing and decorating a room is giving it a sense of purpose and personality. In the sixties, this became about capitalising on the influence of the Space Race, which right from its ‘infancy’ was having an observable impact on culture and art. It brought with it a growing appetite for what was considered to be the cutting edge of technological and human advancement. It is agreed that it was in the architectural landscape of the West’s cities that this shift was most noticeable. They were updated with ‘upswept winglike roofs, domes, satellite shapes and starbursts that became the dominant visual language of motels, diners and gasoline stations’. It is for this reason that Colombo’s apartments were as contained as spacecraft and I feel contextualises something of the general climate that lead to the chrome dipped Factory itself being a rather futuristic ‘spillover from the silvery streamlining of the space program’. For Warhol, for whom the now was paramount, working from somewhere that so greatly embraced innovation would have been integral. (Kennedy, 2007)
Within his book Visual Time, which offers an unorthodox approach to the study of art history, Moxey writes: “The history of art faces the disconcerting possibility that the time it imagines, history’s very architecture, is neither uniform nor linear but rather multivalent and discontinuous (Moxey 1)”. Indeed, though time within the practice of art history may in actuality be anachronic, or without a distinct order, it is not regarded as so at Wellesley’s Davis Museum; here, the architecture of time is as linear as the physical architecture of the museum’s modern exterior.
This essay is derived from the argument made by Benjamin Genocchio’s an art critic and non-fictional writer from Australia, titled “As a Museum, Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris Disappoints.” It’s boring, safe, sanitized -a handbag palace on steroids, on 6 November 2014 for art guide. The author demonstrates his review towards the foundation Louis Vuitton building, Paris at the end of the article Benjamin culminates that ‘’ A heralded reliance on “aerospace technology” and special 3-D software developed by Gehry’s Technologies, which made it possible to model complex shapes imagined for the exterior and is kind of interesting in a science-nerd sort of way, is redundant and irrelevant”. The readers of this essay witness the contradictory
Different architects have different styles because they are trying to get at different things. Architecture is not just about making something beautiful anymore, it is about trying to get across a set of ideas about how we inhabit space. Two of the most famous architects of the twentieth century, one from each side, the early part and the later part up until today each designed a museum with money donated by the Guggenheim foundation. One of these is in New York City, it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The other is in bilbao, Spain, and it was designed by Frank Geary. My purpose of this paper is to interrogate each of these buildings, glorious for different reasons, to show how each architect was expressing their own style.
On his book on Modern Architecture, Curtis writes that modern architecture was faulted for it’s “supposed lack of ‘recognizable imagery’” towards the end of the 1970s. This statement supports the idea of Jencks’ double coding where architects must now make
In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger, an English art critic, argues that images are important for the present-day by saying, “No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times. In this respect images are more precise and richer literature” (10). John Berger allowed others to see the true meaning behind certain art pieces in “Ways of Seeing”. Images and art show what people experienced in the past allowing others to see for themselves rather than be told how an event occurred. There are two images that represent the above claim, Arnold Eagle and David Robbins’ photo of a little boy in New York City, and Dorothea Lange’s image of a migratory family from Texas; both were taken during the Great Depression.
Positioned alongside Central Park within the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museums, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within a museum. By analyzing two separate works on exhibit at the Met, I will pose the argument that museums offer a unique expression of a world view that is dictated through every element of its construction.
“How do you make a building for contemporary art that stays contemporary in the future without stooping to a neutral language? And how do you attract a big public without compromising the selfish, private, exclusive time we all want to have in a museum?” These questions, put forward by Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, represent the urbanistic motivation supporting the construction of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). In such a manner Boston’s ICA engages, not only with the urban citizen, but also the urban landscape in which the site is located. The ICA conveys the idea of architecture as art in itself. As a presenter of art to the urban citizen and because of its open design, the inside allows the citizens to not only appreciate the art within the building but also see the art of the building’s natural environment and setting.
Before the mid-twentieth century, museums in Europe and the United States were generally planned in variations of the neoclassical style. But, the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao moved the heading of gallery outlines, which gave an extensive show venue to twentieth century and modern art, designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry. Architecture is important nowadays to the public, because it offers a physical surrounding environment in where we live in. Moreover, architecture is not only affected by the culture, but also by the economy of the country.
Using the quote by Habermas as a starting point, select up to two buildings designed in the twentieth century and examine what ‘sudden, shocking encounters’ they have encountered, or created. Analyse the building’s meanings as a demonstration of an avant-garde, or potentially arriere-garde, position.
Never before have I seen a museum as grand as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. From its architecture to its massive art collection, The Met has a little bit of everything and one is sure to find something that captures his or her interest. Considering that The Met is the United States' largest art museum, it is easy to get lost within its many corridors and wings. My visit to The Met took place during the last week of July. Despite the almost unbearable heat and humidity that hung in the air, visiting museums under these climate conditions is a welcome respite from a suffocating, yet bright summer afternoon.