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Two Centuries: An Architectural Evolution
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Sir Mathew Digby Wyatt
Johnson/Burgee |
January 8, 2010 – May 29, 2010 Architecture’s evolution from the Ecole-des-Beaux-Arts to Modernism was not always a smooth transition. The profession of "gentlemen architect" often transformed itself into "aesthetic designer," "scientific builder," and "modern artist" in no particular order. It also became a metaphor for the sweeping changes that transformed the world, evolving from traditional European hierarchies to a very American individual expressionism whose only rule is that "there are no rules."
From D.H. Burnham to Frank Lloyd Wright to the originators of Art Deco and Streamlining, the invention of modern architecture was a completely different language from the Classical tradition. "Two Centuries: An Architectural Evolution" opens in a commercial exhibitof original drawings, prints and photographs from the mid-Nineteenth to the mid-Twentieth Centuries: Friday, January 8th extended through May 29, 2010.
Notes on the Exhibition: Well, it’s a shiny, new year. Hope it’s better than the last one as the previous show’s "roll of the dice" seems to have been loaded. My cupboard is never bare, though, and while I was raiding the larder it struck me that the changeover from the drawing style of the 19th Century to that of the 20th was as monumental as the changes to society and culture. There was a story there.
The "Drawings" essay I had written for the previous Wright show had touched on the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and its stress on learning the formalities of drawing as opposed to the techniques of designing. That little detail was left to the students’ later apprenticeships. It would prove to be a wasteful use of the students’ and the profession’s time. But what a beautiful waste! A century later, those elaborate elevations assumed the status of fine art and, through their use of subtly applied Japanese wash, wondrous craft. Wright, of course, did his own thing but at the beginning started working "The Chicago Way" (Chicago School) with casual, practical tectonic drawings that avoided that Beaux-Arts approach he so despised.
The system instituted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), more of a "vocational" curriculum, was the logical successor to that French system and was adopted worldwide. It also distilled design drawings to their essence and turned them into intellectual, conceptual art. Equally beautiful to the "left brain." Enough with the lecture.
The back wall of the gallery was going to be left as "Frank Lloyd Wright Land" to accommodate the photographs from the last show. It was also important to my livelihood to keep the "Wasmuth corner," as clients have learned that Wright’s Berlin lithographs are more affordable than his drawings but just about as rare. This new show would just be two opposing walls dueling between the right brain and the left. Now all we need is an economy with a pulse. |
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