James Shay

Jim, I haven't read Hockney's book, but I've seen some surprisingly angry responses to it. I think that most people, especially those who get upset about the idea that great artists of the past may have used optical aids, don't grasp how difficult it is to paint even when optical aids are used. They don't realize how much more is involved in painting than tracing a basic outline. Albrecht Dürer heavily promoted this simple device (woodcut by Dürer): An artist would look through a small hole mounted at the end of a staff (which would keep his eye in a single position while drawing), and he would trace onto a framed screen or sheet of glass the view that he saw through it. He would then transfer the drawing to a panel or canvas. (The advantages of using this method, as opposed to a camera obscura, would be that the image isn't upside down and backwards, the device is much easier to set up, the artist doesn't have to be inside a darkened enclosure, and he can very clearly see what he's doing). Other artists used glass or prisms to trace a reflection, much like with the children's toy DigiDraw ( http://www.digidraw.com/ ). I'd suggest that people try Dürer's method for themselves, or a DigiDraw, or trace a photograph or slide projection, and see if they can match Dürer's or Vermeer's level of quality. That could be a part of it. I don't think that Hockney is all that gifted as a draftsman. I'd have to read the book in order to see how much of his theory I think is based on his imposing his own limitations on others. I generally agree. I love Ingres' Bather of Valpinçon and many of his other works. Some of his stuff gets a little too stylized for my tastes, though. Some of his fingers, noses, bridges and foreheads kind of creep me out. They almost have a Tim Burton animation feeling to them. J Jonathon, It's interesting what you say about Ingres, because it is true that there's a creepy aspect to some of his forms. Tim Burton - great! I've thought of them as being somewhat reptilian. Nevertheless, the portraits, especially, are great. There's one of a standing woman with a blue dress on, in which Ingres is telling us about her even in the folds and shimmer of the fabric. Wonderful work. Still, kind of reptilian, though. I have not seen before the device the woodcut illustrates. Thanks for putting it up. The technique, if it worked well, does seem to be an improvement over the camera obscura. There is another famous woodcut, which you may have seen, showing a reclining woman with an artist apparently studying and drawing the area of her privates (which might be covered with a drape - I don't remember!) with the aid of a grid-like device. For those who paint by filling in the outline with color, any device that helps get the image onto a surface is a help. But, one of the many great things about Bonnard, as well as the color field painters of the fifties and sixties, is that they made the initial act of "drawing" the placement of color, rather than the delineating of an outline. I think de Kooning really expanded on the technique with his beautiful "landscapes" of the seventies and his godawful "women" of the fifties. Matisse's cut-outs were the great synthesis of the use of color and shape simultaneously to create an image. I think quite a few painters throughout history actually thought that way, and were not so much world-class outliners. Most of us today are taught the coloring book style of creating paintings. I would still recommend Hockney's book as a kind of discussion of acccuracy and distortion in figure painting. There are many reviews in which the tone seems to be, "well, there goes David being David again, off on another wild goose chase". Respectful, but disagreeing. One of the most overrated artists on Earth. Except for his photocollages - brilliant. When I was in the Quent Cordair Gallery mentioned in the last email the co-owner proudly said that there were very few still-life paintings displayed. It's as though the figurative work in her gallery always has so much more to say about what can be our best qualities. Do you know the flower paintings of Fantin-Latour? He absolutely knocks me out, and his work has plenty to say about the great things we can believe, see and do. It doesn't have to be a chiseled profile or a joyfully dancing nude, in my book anyway. Jim

Jonathon and Dragonfly, The famous painter David Hockney has a recent book out, Secret Knowledge, in which he goes on for many, many pages about his conviction that a large number of painters from the Renaissance on used lenses and the camera obscura. It's a terrific account, whether or not one agrees with him. Although some did use primitive photographic means, I don't think many did. You will see in his analysis of many great painters work a terrific amount of distortion, done in order to make the painting really work. Generally, it's not really noticeable until you know its there. I think Hockney just cannot believe some people could paint so spectacularly well without a camera or Photoshop. Check out the photorealism movement that got going in the sixties. A lot of those paintings could use some distortion! I believe it has seldom been the goal of a great figurative painter to exactly reproduce perspective or proportion. One of the most famous examples of figurative distortion is Ingres' Odalisque, who has 3 extra vertabrae! And one of her arms is way long, and it's pretty noticeable. As a figurative artist, he paints Vermeer completely under the table, for my money. I visited a gallery last weekend some of you might be interested in, and may know, founded on Ayn Rand's principles, according to the co-owner. It is Quent Cordair, in Burlingame, California. It's on the net. She has some excellent paintings in perfect perspective of bridges being built, highrises, and spaceships. She is familiar with this forum and Michael and Kat. I may not have used the quote feature correctly. The top paragraph is obviously yours, Jonathon. (Note from MSK - Sorry to butt in, but I just fixed it for you. A tutorial on how to use the quote feature is on the way and should be up before too long.) Jim

Ellen, Before getting too absorbed in this week's work I want to say thanks for your last email regarding some of the things I put up on this forum, and for the above comments about symbols. I agree with you that there exist deep and evocative symbols that have great unconscious impact on us. I remember that we talked about this a bit with regard to cave art. I had no idea about the link between Caravaggio and Vermeer. It's fascinating, especially since they seem to be coming from such wildly different places. The link you mentioned between Matisse and Picasso is something that they played out their entire lives. I know they greatly respected each other, going so far as to trade work. I believe they corresponded occasionally, and Picasso visited Matisse during his last illnesses. I think objectivism would be well served to admit that good things have come out of some of the mainstreams of 20th Century art. But, instead you get people like Torres and Kamli writing books extolling Ayn Rand's definition of art in which they go on for over 300 pages without mentioning Picasso, Cezanne, Braque or Matisse! As long as objectivism takes this weird - to me, anyway - and arrogant stance toward the founders of much of modern art, and will not even mention their names, apparently, in the same way characters in the Harry Potter series will not speak the name of Lord Voldemort, its ideas about art will stay marginalized. Is the Horse Fair painting you refer to by Rosa Bonheur? Your insight regarding Eastern European attitudes toward the abstract powers of shape, color and so on, seems right on. Especially, since it was the great Russian artist, Kandinsky, who wrote a lot about such things in his Conerning the Spiritual in Art. Lots of so-called mysticism there. Jim

I think the reflection in the glass would have shown in the CO image with that angle and the brightness of the face, but that's just a feeling, I don't have enough data to be sure. For example, how bright was the image? The CO was supposed to have a lens, but what was the diameter of the lens and what was its focal length? I have thought all week about the ongoing discussion about Vermeer and, between periods of work in the studio, have jotted down some notes on it and other topics on this forum. Vermeer isn't one of my favorite artists. I didn't see the retrospective at the National Gallery, but have seen in person 6 or so of his paintings, including Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. Knowing the enthusiasm his paintings create in millions of admirers worldwide, I have stood before them and looked and looked, but never really "gotten" them in the delightful and fulfilling way so many people enjoy. I can see the wonderful light, the stillness, the great thought and mind-boggling technique that went into their creation, the values of Dutch mercantile society, the general, although not complete, lack of religious content, and so on, but Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit gets my blood going more passionately than a Vermeer portrait. For paintings with real people I suggest either of his portraits of Knights Templar he did on Malta. There is seldom barely anyone at home in Vermeer's figures, even in his portraits of women. His people neither breath, nor sweat, nor make love. They rarely experience strong emotions, and when they do, the artist stifles them. Seldom more than compositional devices, they exist as mannequins, like those in a tableax by di Chirico. I also have wondered how to explain to some of you what I wrote a cople of weeks ago about what I get from a Mondrian. When I spoke of his abstractions conveying some recklessness, it's as both a generalist and an artist. At some level he is projecting philosophic values that I love. I wish I could be more specific than that, and have no idea if that is among his goals as a painter. It is more easy to explain some of the recklessness when I look through my painter's eyes. As a comparison; in a Sumi-e brush painting one of the very admirable qualities one may see is the ability of the artist to get it right in one shot on one piece of paper. To me, that often shows some recklessness and great courage, and appreciating those qualities is one of the joys of viewing Sumi-e. When I see Mondrian put lines together so wonderfully and with such uneasy and yet perfect harmony, and when I see the process he went through to get what he realized, I see some of the same recklessness. I also see an absolutely great reductive intellect at work. And the paintings radiate grace, more so to me than Degas' wonderful paintings of young dancers. The difference in this example is, of course, between how the thing was done and the subject matter. I can't stand the little signs next to work in museums trying to tell you what the artists' meanings and messages are, according to some curator. These days they are all along the lines of Marxist political correctness, telling us how the artist is conveying a subtle, but devastating, critique of capitalism or commenting on the nauseatilng hegemony of Rembrandt and other dead white males. Roger Kimball does a great job of eviscerating the pc within the art world in his book, The Rape of the Masters. Most of the junk written on the cards next to paintings today is repulsive social engineering. The lineage of Vermeer is discussed by Hilton Kramer in The Triumph of Modernism. He talks about how the line that extended back through the Renaissance and, in his words, included Giorgione, Watteau, Gauguin and Matisse, among many artists, was derailed in the 20th Century. He wonders how the century would have been different in general and art-wise if Matisse had won the struggle for leadership of the avant-garde in Paris in 1907 and 1908 and prevailed for decades, rather than Picasso. Kramer writes, discussing Matisse's Le Bonheur de Vivre and Picasso's Les Desmoiselles de Avignon, that Matisse "drew upon a long tradition of European painting", while Picasso "turned to the alien traditions of primitive art to create a netherworld of strange gods and violent emotions." He goes on to talk about how Picasso "unleashed a vein of feeling that was to have immense consequences for the art and culture of the modern area", while "Matisse's ambitions were more in the realm of aesthetic pleasure." He says, "there was opened up, in the very first decade of the century and in the work of its two greatest masters, the chasm that has continued to divide the art of the modern era down to our own time." Matisse was aligned with the great western tradition, and Picasso with African art. For some of the connections between Vermeer and Matisse, check out Matisse's figures within rooms. How different things might have been had his spirit prevailed. Here is something amazing that Kramer writes about another subject of this forum, the great Kazimir Malevich. He says the artist compared Lenin to Christ and recommended "that his body be placed 'in a cube, as if in eternity,'" and that every worker should have a cube at home as a constant reminder of the lessons of Leninism. Get this: he believed that the cube in paintings would create patterns that would help build a new Soviet society! Kramer writes that the combining of Communism and the Russian avant-garde created "one of the most bizarre intellectual alliances in the annals of the modern era: an art movement that owed much to the irrationalist, anti-materialist doctrines of the occult [P.D. Ouspensky], and was empowered by the Leninist leaders of the Revolution to create a new culture in the name of dialectical materialism." Kramer says he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, and that Malevich "had a certain nuttiness." No kidding! It's fascinating to think that a beautiful art of triangles, circles and rectangles which, believe it or not, was meant, in part, by its creator to help spread communism, may well have been the art admired by the young Ayn Rand. Perhaps her later vitriolic denunciations of abstract art came after she became aware of the so-called ideological basis of Supremetism. And the early abstract expressionists in New York City were lefties, which she probably knew. Thus, the evils of abstaction! I am glad to have found this forum. I don't have a lot of time for it, but greatly enjoy reading the contents and commenting on them when I can.

Michael, DEFENDER OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND FINE, I have my gun in hand. Your tirade is pasted onto my coffin. Seriously (sort of), in the above you have written many things that, from time to time throughout many years, have wandered through my sometimes irrational mind. I plan to print your words and tack them prominantly in the studio. They are really priceless. Thank you. Instead of remaining in the studio to purposefully ponder the abstract/figurative dilemma, I am wasting precious moments better spent in contemplation as , with my daughter and her friend, I prepare for three mindless days of skiing at Squaw Valley. Jim, NEOPRIMITIVE RUNNING DOG and SUBJECTIVIST PARASITE

Victor, I am not sure what you mean here. Looking at the theories contained within many different kinds of art, you could very well could find something to trash within the intellectual and spiritual content of most of them, if you were so inclined. By the time you finished, where would early Christian Renaissance be? Poor Giotto! I would greatly miss him. And what about the early sculptures of Akhenaten, designed specifically in a distorted perspective to scare the daylights out of the hoi polloi? Shall we rubbish that, as well? And so on. Your last 2 sentences, in particular the last, are only partly intelligible to me. RE: Human figures in caves. Check 'em out. Stick figures at best. One possible shaman in Les Trois Freres. Don't know how that fits into your 'heroic man' theories. Great paintings of animals, lousy depictions of humans. Jim Jim, You are misunderstanding me. I will try, as best I can, to make my position absolutely clear. I am a defender of representational painting—first and foremost. This is a centerpiece point that I wish to drive home. So of course I won't be "trashing early Christian Renaissance." Why would I trash art--any kind of actual art? As I have argued and argued, that art (representational painting in this case) --whatever the subject matter--is the most powerful means of creating embodied abstractions. In art we can experience in a concrete form an astonishing prosperous meaning through the artist’s work. Human cultures have invented countless ways to embody abstractions. Rituals, ceremonies, and holidays help us appreciate the meaning of important events in personal life and social life, such as birth, marriage, death, victories. Art has performed this function in every culture and religion. Ancient Greek culture, for example, placed a high value on physical beauty, grace, and, in men, athletic strength as seen in the sculpture by Polyclitus whose Doryphorus set the classical cannon for the proportions of the male body. Art can impart the most complex, the most precise, the subtlest, the most evocative, the most powerful and effective form of an embodied abstraction. The pioneers of abstract Expressionism, on the other hand, sought to revert and contradict the above approach by focusing on a supernatural realm via the pipe-lines of their emotions. I am speaking of the philosophical origins of abstract art—which is, basically, a theory driven school that has been propagated by various occult beliefs. No, I am not talking about a religious theme found in this or that representational painting. Even Jonathan granted this: “Victor is right about some of the views that drove the artists and theorists who came up with abstract art. Some of their belief systems were pretty loopy, and if you read more of Kandinsky you'll definitely run into it.” So-called “Abstract art” was spawned by an absolute subjectivism. We have here the mind-body dichotomy: The early proponents of abstract art embraced the opposite pole of the mistaken mind-body dichotomy by reacting against the “materialism” that dominated European thought in the late nineteenth century. For them, the material world of perceptible objects in three-dimensional space had no connection to the world of “pure spirit” and must therefore be eliminated. Only through the ‘annihilation’ of objective reality and time and space, could art express the “new consciousness” towards which humanity was evolving. This is a few of the ideas behind abstract art. It is absolute subjectivism that they sought—in metaphysics and epistemology. -Victor Victor, thanks for your thoughtful and spirited reply. I have read back over some of my postings to you. With regard to what I said to you above about the philosophies contained within art and other comments of mine: if I have offended you with the occasionally snarky tone of some of them, I am sorry. But, I have found your continued denigrating of the art I love to be very off-putting, and to me, offensive. I don't know where else to go with this. No amount of wrangling over the internet is going to change my mind about abstract art. Jim

Further, I'm not sure that Malevich is really considered a "constructivist"...more often than not, I see him referenced as a "supremacist" (although the two movements are related). BTW, AHEM-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malevich "When the Stalinist regime turned against modernist "bourgeois" art, Malevich was persecuted. Many of his works were confiscated or destroyed, and he died in poverty and obscurity in Leningrad, Soviet Union (today Saint Petersburg, Russia)." RCR You're right about the suprematist designation. I let that slip through my mind. None of the images up here thus far give an inkling of what it is about Malevich's work that I think she liked. I'll have to look at Kandinsky tonight. Perhaps he's the reference, but offhand, I don't think it's him. HOW can I get my images up on this site? I opened a Photobucket account, which did no good. I've got 3 images here that I believe are perfect. You'll see a lot of laughter. Jim

Thank you, Ellen, for your terrific postings. They are of great interest to me and my wife, as well. I will check out the murals this evening. Jim

Huh...they all come through fine for me. http://www.abcgallery.com/M/malevich/malevich191.jpg http://www.mala.bc.ca/~mcneil/jpg/malevich.jpg http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/pics/Ma...h-snowstorm.jpg http://www.abcgallery.com/M/malevich/malevich101.jpg Also you can browse a good number of his works here http://www.abcgallery.com/M/malevich/malevich.html RCR I'll send this image to see if it comes through from a Photobucket account. Jim

Michael, if we are to talk about Ayn Rand's early regard for abstract art within discussions of abstraction and architecture, we should see the work she admired. I do not know if it's been posted anywhere on your site. If not, I would be glad to put up a few images of the work, if there is interest. It was Russian Constructivism, particularly that of 1914 onwards, and it had an enormous influence on 20th Century art and architecture. The spectacular paintings she admired are by Kazimir Malevich, I believe. He was a wonderful artist and architect who died in 1936. By the time of his death he was reduced by the Soviet government to painting awful, somewhat abstracted images of collective farm workers. His work sounds exactly like her description. If it was someone else that you know of, please let me know. Where are the instructions on OL for inserting Photoshop jpegs into posts, and quoting specific parts of posts? I'm very much in favor of an architecture thread. Jim Shay

Sorry, Victor...I still don't read your posts. I generally only see what is quoted by others (the above being an exception). RCR Christian, about the Venus sculptures: I think you raise a good question regarding what is abstract and what is figurative. It's also interesting to think about the ways in which the totemic, abstract and figurative intersect. I'll have to think about it. Thanks for bringing this up. I love prehistoric and primitive art. My wife does what Michael rightly calls "primitive sculpture". She subscribes to "Raw Vision", which is about modern primitive art, and "Tribal", which is about the entire field of ethnographic art. Recently, she has sculpted a number of iconic female forms, which I hope to get up on the website before too long. Jim Jim

Victor, I am not sure what you mean here. Looking at the theories contained within many different kinds of art, you could very well could find something to trash within the intellectual and spiritual content of most of them, if you were so inclined. By the time you finished, where would early Christian Renaissance be? Poor Giotto! I would greatly miss him. And what about the early sculptures of Akhenaten, designed specifically in a distorted perspective to scare the daylights out of the hoi polloi? Shall we rubbish that, as well? And so on. Your last 2 sentences, in particular the last, are only partly intelligible to me. RE: Human figures in caves. Check 'em out. Stick figures at best. One possible shaman in Les Trois Freres. Don't know how that fits into your 'heroic man' theories. Great paintings of animals, lousy depictions of humans. Jim

I very strongly see the connection, yes. The whole sequence of images entering the caves and the way the images are described as looking -- and behaving even -- in oil light gives credence to the idea. (I speak of the images "behaving" because apparently angles of entrance and perspectives of lighting were taken account of, such that illusions of images moving occur with the progression into the caves using oil light.) The shamanic trance sequence has a documented progression which the images fit. I don't think the thesis can be definitely proven, and I don't know how much certitude Clottes himself places on his thesis. I haven't read the book. But I find the thesis very plausible and in keeping with a great deal of current theory on the evolution of primate->hominid->human consciousness. Ellen ___ Ellen, I would like to believe the shamanistic theory, because it makes particular sense when you look at various spatial sequences of how people apparently moved through the caves. It makes them more architectural for me, in the same sense as movement through a cathedral, mosque, or whatever. The gripe in the prehistory community is that the theory is based on ethnological comparisons, and those comparisons may very well not be valid. But, it sure makes sense. When I went through the Lascaux replica the ordered progression seemed very sensible and orchestrated - especially, when one leaves the Hall of the Bulls through the keyhole opening, over which the stampeding herds seem to meet. At that point, it seems that the artists had definately built up a sense of tension meant to carry forward into the next chamber. Jim

Thanks, Ellen and Victor, for the provocative quotes and commentary about Paleolithic art. I love it and other rock art, and it is great to have it enter the discussion. I have a couple of comments. Jean Clottes is a major figure in cave art studies, but his recent collaboration on the shamanistic theories has not been well received, because when you get down to it, NO ONE KNOWS why the rock art was done. He makes a somewhat irrational leap to suggest that the work is religious. Since its discovery, cave art has been attributed to many different causes, none of them proveable. Ellen, do you see the shamanistic connection? Clottes also suggests a correlation between the motivations for cave art and that of some other known rock art, such as aboriginal. Again, how does he know? Victor, please check your art history and let me know where you get your reference to pottery during the time of Lascaux and Altamira. (I recommend really reading The Cave Painters, rather than quoting its reviews. I can also recommend a number of other books, if you like.) I believe there is no significant pottery. There are clay sculptures, but not vessels. It is conjectured that heating water was done by pouring water over heated rocks held in hide. I also see you know have revised your historical time frame to extend to 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, which I believe is more accurate than your original estimate of 25,000 years. You also write, "Abstract art, my ass." Well, the 20% that is abstract art I refer to IS WELL DOCUMENTED as having been painted on the walls of Lascaux. It is not on some imaginary pottery that really doesn't exist. Curtis writes, "Certain rooms contain rectangular grids. Sometimes these are blank, but other times they are colored in and it looks like a section of a checkerboard or a color chart." Again, READ THE BOOK, rather than the reviews. What is painted, in this case, looks somewhat like 20th Century geometric abstraction. But, what did it mean and how was it perceived? No one knows. Victor, check out how humans were portrayed within the caves. I visited many wonderful mosques when living in Iran. They are filled with abstract art in the form of geometric shapes that are intrinsic to the buildings' conception, and are not applied decoration. The man I worked for, Nader Ardalan, wrote The Sense of Unity, in which he explained how the art was readable to the devout. I believe this would also be true to the cave painters and their society with regard to their abstract art. Jim

Victor, In your mention above of abstract painting I do not understand your reference to 25,000 years of rational principles. I also think you meant "purpose", not "proponants". Are you referring to those principles in art and philosophy that you think began in the art of Gravettian Era, which extended from 27,000 to 22,000 years ago? How and in what art are they manifest? In referring to rational principles, do you mean those of the modern and imaginative mind, which is suppposed to have arisen approximately 45,000 years ago? If you are referring to the beginnings of modern painting, you must go back 32,000 years ago to Chauvet Cave for any significant work. At least, until something older is found. If I were you, I would not hasten to appropriate this art. For example, all of the significant painted caves, as well as many of the engravings on bone and other objects, contain a lot of your nemesis, abstract art In Lascaux approximately 20% of the work is abstract. Among these abstractions are Mondrian-like grids. I refer you to an excellent recent book, The Cave Painters, by Gregory Curtis. Check it out for further explanations of the abstract work within Lascaux. I love a lot of this painting, as many artists do. If I correctly understand the spirit of your remark, perhaps you do, as well. Both Picasso and Balthus have spoken with tremendous admiration about the extraoridnary art of the caves the Dordogne Valley. Are referring to this, or to Altamira? Or what? When you make vague, unsubstantiated, sometimes quite inaccurate, off-the-cuff remarks, and when you misidentify a Fra Angelico Annunciation as being by Raphael, I distrust what you assert so stridently in your posts. With regard to definitions, when you admiringly refer to Aristotle, remember that in The Nichomachean Ethics he admonishes us to remember that "the same exactness must not be expected in all departments of philosophy" and that "it is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness which the nature of the particular subject admits." Jim

Jim: I'm not questioning whether the Mondrian is pretty or not. I am only saying that it is not art. Personally, I would classify these works as studies in certain attributes of art such as balance, proportion, etc., and I would be willing to classify them as decoration, very much like Wright's abstract patterns for stained glass in his buildings. But I am at a loss to see how they are a recreation of reality with some value-based message to convey. Which of course brings us full circle to where this thread started! :-) I'm willing to be educated to see something new, so can you explain a bit more how you read the attributes of bravery, grace, resolution, adventure, and ruthlessness in the painting above? Thanks. Jeff, I'll have to think about that. I'm not sure I have the words for it. It's a little like trying to explain why a piece of music moves me in a particular way. As you know there are debates going on within this webiste about the value of abstract art. As deeply moved as I am by Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Gorky and many others, there is no question to me that it's art. Jim Regards, -- Jeff

Ellen: I don't remember ever seeing any reference to Escher. I don't know if Eisenman invented the idea of the rotated grid (probably not) but his early work was all about manipulating grids; either rotation them or transposing them - sometimes in 3D space. One of his first houses had stairways that went to nowhere or "inverted" stairs on the ceiling; columns that came down in all sorts of places (due to these transformations) that interrupted the ability to successfully use or navigate the building; "slots" that ran through the building that made it impossible for the clients to have a double bed so two twins were required in violation of the original requirements; and so on. The occupants of these buildings certainly were not the driving factor in the designs. These were studies of geometric manipulations and had about as much to do with architecture as Mondrian's red/blue/yellow/black compositions had to do with fine art. Here is the only other view of this building that I could find that shows something of the context, but I have no idea what side of the building we are seeing here. By the way, this is a Tokyo office building. Regards; -- Jeff What a hideous building. Eisenman did a convention center in Cincinnatti with diagonally rotated grids that was so uncomfortable for conventioneers to be in that it was extensively remodeled. His house "10", with the split bed, is quite beautiful in its own way, but unliveable. The Mondrian, however, is sublimely beautiful. It conveys bravery, grace, resolution, adventure, and a degree of ruthlessness. It's a wonderful work of art. The sense of rational intelligence it conveys makes it a good candidate for the art sales link that this forum has. By the way, it pays to ignore Mondrian's writings. Like the great Kandinsky, Wright and many other artists, he did a poor job of explaining in words what he did. But, what a painter. Jim Shay

Jim: It's exciting to think of Calatrava's structures being used in the movie of The Fountainhead instead of the sad buildings that were actually featured. I agree that Calatrava's work has been generally well received, but I wonder if that would have been the case if he had been producing these works in the '30s and '40s which is the time frame for Roark. I think a lot of groundwork has been laid over the past 50+ years to prepare the general public for the expressionism of Calatrava's buildings. And while I think, despite public outcry, that there might have been some brave souls that could have commissioned Calatrava to build these works in those earlier times (just as Wright found his clients), I seriously doubt that Gehry could have gotten anything built in that same period. I think acceptance of much of his work rests upon the public's exposure to the contemporary art scene (cubism, dadaism, surrealism, expressionism, abstract expressionism, deconstructivism) which paved the way for his work. I also think that professional architectural critics were also prepared for Gehry through a more recent chain of architects like Robert Venturi, Michael Graves and Peter Eisenman. I doubt that Gehry's work would have been well received in the 1960's for example. That, in itself, is not a criticism, just an observation on my part. What do you think? Regards, -- Jeff Jeff, I think the art movements you list, with the exception of abstract expressioniism, definitely laid the groundwork for Gehry, as well as for Eisenman - who perhaps did help lay some of the initial groundwork ahead of Gehry as well. I don't see the connection, though with Venturi and Graves. Well, maybe I can see Graves - in his early work the extension of Corbusier's cubist values. Not in his more PoMo work, such as the Humana Building. I know, he's a "sheetrock classicist", but I still like some of it. I don't remember exactly when Nervi practiced, but he was something like a Calatrava in his day, and I do think the American public would have been ready for him, had he practiced more in the States. I think America has always been ready for more "organic" architecture. For example, Goff had no trouble getting clients among the farmers and ranchers of the midwest. Unfortunately, aside from him and a few others there just have not been many "organic" builders. I wish more had become of Herb Green. The academy has preached straight-ahead modernism for decades, pushing everything else far to the sidelines for young students. Perhaps Calatrava's example will lead to more. In your own home you've done a fine job of integrating two and three-dimensional art forms into your work so that they are real parts of the architecture in the best organic sense. Excellent work. Jim

I've sometimes thought that if Rand's description of Halley's Fifth were to be translated into architectural form, it would probably look like something designed by Calatrava. And that makes me wonder about how Objectivists might imagine that Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and We The Living would translate into other art forms. As buildings or musical compositions, would they "soar"? Would they be like bursts of joy with only faint echoes of that from which they escaped, or, considering all of the pain, repression, conflict and struggle within the novels, would they "wriggle and writhe"? J Jonathan, What you say about Calatrava is right on. In an earlier post I mentioned that Roark's buildings might look like Norman Foster's. But, I think Calatrava is a much better comparison. They're more structural. However, unlike Roark's, his structures have been celebrated from the get-go, deservedly. It's hard to imagine Roark doing that work and encountering the kind of opposition he meets in the book. One of the pieces of art that in my imagination correlates with the spirit of her writing is the second movement of Beethovan's Seventh Symphony. It seems to approach victory, but at an enormous effort and price, and reminds me of the middle sections of Atlas Shrugged. I think whatever the assumed forms of her novels, they wouldn't soar, except perhaps as the endings of Atlas or the Fountainhead approached. But, they definitely wouldn't wriggle and writhe. I wonder what the work of the sculptor (Steven Mallory?) in The Fountainhead would look like. Perhaps Rodin, in an earlier age, but not in the 40's when the book was written. I don't at all imagine his work as Grecian or Roman figures, which seem to be obliquely referenced via Dominique. When I read the novels in my twenties I was influenced by Rand's high regard for Rachmaninoff, and I still imagine the beginning chapters of Atlas scored to the beginning of his 3rd Paino Concerto. It feels a bit odd to say that, though, because I'm very leery of the strange pantheon of "approved objectivist artists", including Rachmaninoff and Vermeer, for example. They're praised by many objectivists who don't, in my opinion, really listen to their own hearts and find their own loves in art. But I still see the association. Jim

Definitely no "dread" in Calatrava, Jeff. I also like very much the organic nature of his structure, but miss texture, color, spatial progression, asymmetry. He's an engineer, as you know, not an architect. I think he needs to get up to speed with some more architectural values. Nevertheless, wonderful structures. Some of the values in the work of Wright speak to me, as well. But, I like a little more gravitas in buildings, in general, than many of his have. A few years ago I visited many of the homes in Oak Park. "Too many notes!". A little too jolly for me. At his best, though, there's no one like him. I think both Calatrava's and Gehry's buildings have movement within their forms. Calatrava's buildings soar. Unfortunately, most of Gehry's wriggle and writhe. Jim

All of your questions focus on the physical needs of the occupants. While I do believe that many or most of his buildings fall short of great architecture in that area, what I am primarily focused upon is the spiritual side of the work. What human values do you think his work conveys? How does it mesh with your value system? I find much of his work (and this building is a prime example) to convey messages that are antithetical to my own values. Let's take Frank Lloyd Wright again as a point of contrast. Wright's buildings were unique, sophisticated and complex and when initially presented, I'm sure that uniqueness and complexity puzzled and confused many people who didn't have the skill to "read' the buildings' language. I'm sure many people were horrified and had strong negative responses to his work. Yet, despite this problem, there were people who did respond positively to his early work, and these clients tended to by strongly individualistic entrepreneurs as identified in the book Two Chicago Architects and Their Clients: Frank Lloyd Wright and Howard Van Doren Shaw by Leonard K. Eaton. It is not a mystery to me why this was the case, as Wright's buildings project a message of strong individuality and independence (through their uniqueness), integrity (through the fully integrated nature of the building, its details and the site), strength (through the way the building elements are assembled and the way the structure was anchored to the ground), intelligence (through the originality of the ideas), serenity (through the manner in which spaces were organized, details were integrated and the interior was connected to the exterior natural landscape), intellectual challenge (through the many surprises that await the patient an alert observer - such as the way light interplays with the interior space, to name but one example of many) and seriousness (as all of this was done without any self-referential joking). It seems clear to me that these are all things that a confident, independent business man at the turn of the century would appreciate as it reinforced and honored values he possessed and which guided his life. I too respond to these values and that is what has attracted me to Wright's work. Now, in contrast, I have a completely different reaction to Gehry's work. I do favor the rational over the irrational and I find Ghery's work to be exemplary in projecting the irrational through the disorder and seeming arbitrariness of the many design decisions. This should not to be confused with complexity. As I said, Wright's work is extremely complex and I love the interplay of sophisticated jazz. But in these cases I am able to discern the theme of the work and come to see the complex interplay of components in support of the overall theme. Of course, as I said previously, this takes some time and study to train oneself to be able to read the language. In the case of Fred and Ginger, I don't find the design adding up to anything positive other than a big joke. Now, I like a joke as well as the next guy, but I do get offended when maybe $30-$50 million dollars get spent in service of whimsy and humor. I see structures like this as a huge lost opportunity to be an advocate for those types of values that I find in Wright's work. The overall message I get from this building is that we should laugh at ourselves and our foolish attempts to achieve greatness by applying our rational minds in service of rational goals. Let's let it all hang out - especially our guts, which we will rely upon to design for our infrastructure needs. This is about as far as you can get from the aesthetic goals of Objectivism, and this is why I consider the building to be nihilistic. Unlike Wright's work, it does not command me to rise up to meet its challenge. OK, maybe I'm the uninitiated one this time that hasn't learned to read Gehry's language. So I would like to ask anyone who likes this building to try and enlighten me as to what it's theme is and what messages it conveys with regard to human values. Regards, -- Jeff Jeff, I think your comments about Wright and Gehry are quite well expressed and thought through. Having said that, I cannot agree with your benchmark characteristics for fine architecture listed above not being contained in some of Gehry's work. I think Gehry's Guggenheim/Bilbao is great architecture . To a lesser extent in my opinion, so is the Disney Concert Hall in LA, which I have visited. The rest of his work seems like that of an artist/hobbiest applying forms to functional diagrams. In his office, the assistants create basic volumetric relationships, which he then bends, shapes and decorates with his loops. With regard to Fred and Ginger, I was initially seduced by it's wit. It was an architectural breath of fresh air. As time has gone on I no longer like it, because it is so very out of context with Prague's beautiful streetscapes. Not that he should have aped what was there, by any means, but his building is too far out of place for me. And it's too jokey. Here is my brief reading of the Guggenheim Bilbao, according to your criteria listed in your posting. I believe it meets your criteria. 1. The building has an extraordinary degree of strong individuality and independence, as does Wright's Guggenheim. They are both unique in beautiful ways. Personally, I prefer Bilbao. I think Wright's building is not well massed or shaped. 2 Gehry's building fits its site beautifully. From the initial, large massing of the entry area, it swoops out along the river and ducks under an existing roadway. It absolutely commands its site without destroying the character of the neighborhood. The titanium surfaces sparkle in the greyness of Bilbao and complements the river next to which it sits. Formally, spatially, and materially, the building is quite internally consistent, and, to the extent there are details (which are few and far between, as is the case in Wright's Guggenheim), they are well done and fit into the building's overall grammar. 3. Strength is a trickey one for me to apply to an art object. But, you call for its consideration with regard to how the building meets the ground and and how the elements of the structure are assembled. First of all, the long form stretching between the entry area and the automobile overpass has a beautiful downward arc built into it that masterfully melds it into the ground. That base detail is carried on beautifully throughout the other forms. When you talk about how the elements are assembled, I'm not sure if you mean structurally, aesthetically, or a combination of those and perhaps other characteristics. I think the elements of form fit together quite nicely. And, when you see the interior photographs, the collisions of the shapes create fascinating forms, slices, and skylights. I don't happen to like the mood of the entire ensemble, but it's extraordinarily well thought out and executed. 4. The building is extrairdinarily intelligent in its complete integration of form, function, structure, massing, finishing and so on. No question about it. The ideas in Bilbao are unique without being freakish, and are well articulated. To me it's rational. 5. To the extent any architecture is required to be serene, it seems to meet your requirements for that quality. I'm not sure that serenity is a requirement of good or great architecture. 6. Here we are debating it - it's intellectually challenging. The light inside, to meet one of your requirements, mysteriously floats down from skylights and sculpts the exotic shapes. 7. With regard to seriousness, this is in no way a jokey building in the way that Fred and Ginger is. Many, many kudos to Gehry and his staff, the engineers, contractors and everyone else who got it built. It is an extraordinary achievement. Nihilistic, to me yes, but still extraordinary in the same sense that Fallingwater, medieval cathedrals, and ancient Egyptian temples are extraordinary. It is timeless. I will probably be less clear in answering you with what I think about its theme and human values. To me it's exuberant, yet contains dread. It sparkles, but the forms from which the light leaps are distorted in ways that are almost painful to see. Within the building, the central space leaps up with great audacity to seize daylight and allow it to stream within. And yet, within that joyful set of gestures, a great unease seems to lurk. You're probably going to strongly disagree with me here, but I think the massing of the building, in its asymmetry on the exterior, is quite Wrightian, abstractly, and somewhat like that of the Robie House. The building is surrounded by Bilbao's very rough industrial district, and one its great virtues is that it takes many of the same materials used in the factories next to it and reinvents their usage, so that it says to the surrounding mediocrity, look what can be done with some imagination! I love that about the Guggenheim/Bilbao. That characteristic almost reads as something out of The Fountainhead. Frank Lloyd Wright had his list and rules about what was and was not great architecture, but it was too moralizing for me. But, if you want to say something about a great building commanding you up to meet its challenge, the Bilbao building does that just as well to me as anything by Wright, who is, by the way, my favorite architect, hands down. But, without all the preachiness and moralizing in his books. I think architecture journals would be well served to include commentaries of the sort you write, so that the essence and heart of a building might be discussed. I like what you have to say and look forward to seeing more of your buildings, as well. Jim Shay

In the way that you're using "nihilistic" here, would the term also describe Roark's work? J Jonathan, In my imagination his buildings are far from nihilistic. When I read the book in my twenties I saw them as somewhat Wrightian creations of stone, glass and steel augmented with a lot of landscaping within and without the structures. They sure didn't look like the monstrosities in the movie. I believe I read that the producers wanted Wright to design Roark's work for the movie, but he wanted too much money. Jim

I second Jeff's remarks. Architectural forms do convey beliefs, values, and emotions. He mentions le Corbusier. The critic Charles Jencks has a monograph on him entitled Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture. To me, that tragic view is quite apparent in many of his buildings. He may have been a "non-tragic guy", but the work has definate tragic aspects to it. That's part of his artistry - his ability to evoke strong emotion. Whether or not Gehry is nihilistic, much of his work certainly is. Incidentally, I do agree that the detailing in most of them is really so-so, but he has said, "I am not a detail man". It shows. And much currently fashionable art is thoroughly and totally nihilistic, if I may use that word yet again. Thanks for your comment on my work, Jonathan. Jim Thanks, Michael, and I will pass on your praise to Genevieve. She is now 13 and a bit shy about putting new work on the site, but I'm encouraging her. Jim

I second Jeff's remarks. Architectural forms do convey beliefs, values, and emotions. He mentions le Corbusier. The critic Charles Jencks has a monograph on him entitled Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture. To me, that tragic view is quite apparent in many of his buildings. He may have been a "non-tragic guy", but the work has definate tragic aspects to it. That's part of his artistry - his ability to evoke strong emotion. Whether or not Gehry is nihilistic, much of his work certainly is. Incidentally, I do agree that the detailing in most of them is really so-so, but he has said, "I am not a detail man". It shows. And much currently fashionable art is thoroughly and totally nihilistic, if I may use that word yet again. Thanks for your comment on my work, Jonathan. Jim

Yeah, well that's what people said about Wright as well. I think that a lot of Objectivists who love Wright's architecture, had they been born and raised in pre-Wrightian days, would have had fits of hysteria over his work once it came along. They would have been competing with each other over who could screech the loudest in agreeing with the critics of Wright's time who opined that his work was ugly, monstrous, awkward, unmodeled, rude, unfinished, without grace, bizarre, etc. I agree with you that most people would (and did) find Wright's work shocking upon first encounter. In 1893, William Winslow was Wright's first architectural client as an independent practitioner. (See residence here) He was forced to stop riding public transportation so as to avoid the ridicule that his neighbors extended towards him! I'm afraid that I have to completely disagree with you on this view. Yes, Wright often designed structures around the scale of the average height man of his day. And there is the well-known story of Wright affectionately yelling at Wes Peters (one of the original Taliesin apprentices who was 6'-4" or taller) "Sit down Wes! You're wrecking the scale of my architecture!" :-) But Taliesin wasn't designed for the general public, it was designed for Wright himself and he was correct in selecting his own standards of scale for that project. However, Wright did not hesitate to take the height of his clients into account and happily designed a number of houses with expanded proportions for those that were larger than himself. The idea that Wright forced clients to accept design features that would have made their lives miserable or difficult is a myth. I have books that show all of Wright's built and unbuilt projects and you might be surprised to see how many times he did unique second and third schemes for clients who were not happy with the original design. On the other hand, Wright did fight mightily for the integrity of his designs and would never agree to an arbitrary demand of a client that did not make sense and would undermine the overall result. He would gladly incorporate any suggestion if he judged it to be worthwhile. In many cases of a conflict where a client begrudgingly acquiesced to Wright's views, the clients came to see that Wright was correct, after spending some time in their structures. In the first sentence of your quote above, you get things exactly reversed. As a professional (and a genius at that), Wright actually knew a great deal about what actually constituted the physical and psychological requirements of a heroic man and knew how to achieve those ends through his work. Most people do not come close to understanding these issues, even with regards to themselves. And lacking this understanding, clients would often argue with Wright about issues to which he was unwilling to compromise. Yes, there were disagreements, but who had an objective understanding of what was "best" and who was operating upon "whim". This is the most frustrating thing I find with this profession. Most people would not visit a doctor and presume to diagnose and prescribe treatment for themselves. They go to a doctor for his professional expertise and gladly accept it. However, in the realm of architecture, everyone is an "expert"! Each person's functional planning or aesthetic views are actually more valid than that of the lowly architect, whose skill set simply resides in generating construction documents to the clients design specifications and running the regulatory gauntlet of the various building departments and other agencies. It is the great failure of this profession that we have allowed it to be defined in these terms in the publics' mind. So please don't think I'm attacking you for your views, Jonathan. I'm simply trying to correct what I see as a serious and widely held misunderstanding that exists about the proper role that an architect can play - but rarely does. It is not the function of a true architect to simply execute the suggestions of a client. His job is not to just listen to what clients say they want, but to discover what clients actually need and then determine the best way to go about fulfilling those requirements. How successfully they do this will depend upon how well they function as part historian, psychologist, communicator, teacher, logician, engineer, artist and promoter! Having said everything above, I completely understand that Wright's work is not for everyone. It is heroic, value-based and quite demanding of it's occupants in terms of maintaining a higher state of consciousness. Some clients have described the experience of living in one of Wright's houses as demanding that they become better people and I completely understand what they are saying. This type of environment would drive people of a certain psychology nuts. Maybe people who would be uncomfortable in a Wright building might respond more positively to Gehry's work. More power to them! But this does not mean that architectural evaluation is a subjective process. Both Wright's and Gehry's work embody and communicate values which can be objectively identified and analyzed. But this is a rational process that few people are willing to perform. Many humans seem to have a fear of change and experience an immediate emotional reaction when confronted by things that are different. This might be either Wright's or Gehry's work when first encountered. Other people seem to have a predilection for the new and unusual and experience a positive emotional response to that which challenges them. Neither response is necessarily wrong, but both are subjective. An objective person must go beyond these automatic reactions and discover the underlying value and meaning in the new. Only then can an objective evaluation be formulated. Regards, -- Jeff I must also take strong exception to the characterization of Wright as not caring greatly about his clients. The great architect Bruce Goff, who once worked for him, has written about how accommodating Wright really was, as has Bart Prince. Also, his work was not greeted as shocking. It was generally accepted as adventurous without being strange. If you want strange at the beginning of the 20th Century you should check out Russian Constructivist work. I think Philip Johnson and the NY MOMA derailed a lot of the impact Wright could have had. He did give us the open plan and other innovations, but there is much more there. I liked the statement Roger quoted regarding how Wright worked with and through nature. There is much there for architects and other creatives to learn. You work looks excellent, Jeff. If you would like to see mine, check out JamesShay.com. Jim