C

Closing out the business day, the city’s workers would file out to swarm I-95, or head for the Amtrak station or DART stop, and report in again the next day. Wilmington was another city whose ebb and flow ran in twelve hour tides. Little by little, restaurants and bars have begun to reclaim the shoreline that is the downtown. And now, World Café Live has opened at the renovated Queen Theater on North Market Street, delivering world class music to these revitalized corridors.

One tip-off that Wilmington was destined to become a musical epicenter is the musicians who have lived below the radar here. Resident, David Bromberg performed resoundingly at the Light up the Queen Foundation benefit in 2010, while New Orleans native Trombone Shorty played outrageous saxophone on the roof of the nearby Shop Rite! The Peoples’ Festival held annually on the riverfront honors one time Wilmington resident Bob Marley. But nothing exactly prepares you for the full on architectural overhaul at the Queen Theater or the radiance of its performance stage. Once a repository for fetid rain water falling through its roof, and an aromatic blend of rubble, pigeon droppings and mold below, this thoughtful renovation has brilliantly revived the stylized ceiling medallions, three ten-by-ten foot frescoed murals, and ornately-gilded surrounds beside the organ pipes. The restoration process has also unearthed a fiercely burning, but dormant underground love from the Wilmington community.

Originally conceived in 1789 as the Indian Queen Hotel, and then operated as the luxurious Clayton House, the Queen Theater morphed into a movie palace in 1916. By April 1959, it shuttered its once-beloved doors, following a showing of House on Haunted Hill perhaps presciently, and remained dark for the next five decades. Enter Hal Real and his Real Entertainment Group, a dynamic consortium of music club developers who collaborated with WXPN radio station on its maiden enterprise, World Café Live, in Philadelphia. Seeing the possibilities with imperturbability required Wilmington based real estate developers Buccini/Pollin Group and city officials to join the initiative to restore the Queen Theater. With straight faces, a Spring 2011 opening date was announced in October of 2009 on the 45,000 square foot project.

The finished building comprises great paradox; predictably dramatic spaces – the proscenium stage – combined with textured balcony seating and open plan for approximately 900 persons. The acoustics, both structural and mechanically-enhanced, are precise, clear, yet luminous and effective in a variety of ranges. Witness the intense complexity of opening act, Sonny Landreth, on April 1, followed by the intimate and personal renditions of Ingrid Michaelson’s sold-out performance.

The Queen serves all.

Telescoping from the spectacular to the specific is also the hallmark of its interior configurations. Generous spaces create a sensory time sequence that satisfies both a taste for imposing public domains and an appreciation for surface detail. Many of the oldest paint layers have been conserved in their naturally eroding state and preserved into collage like patterns. The bars are eco-friendly strokes of genius. Reclaimed from other, funky locations, they highlight the knots of pine or diagonal herringbone one expects to find in a Pocono lodge, or a shack at the beach. This familiarity of time-worn material and the surprise casualness of natural wood in a beaux arts environment is a welcoming and warming touch. In this building of somewhat grand volume, one makes small discoveries; ancient movie projectors found with their film reels still in place, a whiplash of time and space.

One might desire a parallel alternative to the rich vibrancy of the stage: Upstairs Live now serves lunch, happy hour and dinner. Or, take a break to the smaller downstairs bar, pop into the palladium windowed Olympia Room – sometimes used for private parties – or the witty gift shop, and you will have changed the gestalt completely and primed yourself for the dance floor. The Queen’s relationship to the street outside is direct and harmonious, if what you crave is simply air. Another passerby may spontaneously stop in, provided the evening’s musical act has not already had its tickets swallowed up. Reservations are recommended.

Wilmington’s many banks now advertise in the sponsor pages of the Queen Theater’s program. They too understand the importance of continuity and re-invention. Projecting civic pride to the Light up the Queen Foundation – the ongoing non-profit that brings talent, illustriousness, and history to their home base – makes banks seem almost human again. A crowd gathers on the sidewalk outside the Queen’s doors at night. For Wilmington, whose motto is A Place to Be Somebody, those words may finally ring true.

By Diane Dewey, Contributing Writer

World Café Life at:

The Queen Theater

500 North Market Street

Wilmington, DE 19801

Tel: 302 994 1400

www.queen.worldcafelive.com

www.lightupthequeen.org

Alice Ball House, New Canaan, CT. Design by Philip Johnson (c.1950); Interior Design, Victoria Lyon; sculpture, Matthias Alfen; Photo, Eric Roth.

 “I shall confess to you that I have only had one teacher: the past; only one education: the study of the past.”  - LeCorbusier (1929)  

Moored like sleek Cigarette boats in a harbor full of luxury yachts, the growing number of New Canaan ‘moderns’ (more than 75 exist today), offer an unexpected visual respite in a small New England town where, for generations, tradition has ruled supreme. Their sleek, simple façades, flat roof lines, and ample, oversized windows will either shock or delight the observer today, much as they did more than a half century ago, when they were first constructed. Just like an overpowered speedboat, these bad boys of the harbor (and the men who conceived them) were out to make a point—and they succeeded. fine arts magazine  

Walter Gropius, Director of Bauhaus School, Germany; then Harvard's Architecture School director, inspired the 'Harvard Five'

These distinguished New Canaan architects, known as ‘the Harvard Five’ (Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson and Eliot Noyes), introduced a novel design sensibility on the American scene, beginning in the late 1940s. Their designs were shaped by an unexpected post-war prosperity and honed by a desire to upend the notion of “traditional house and home.” Clean angles, open floor plans, efficient space utilization and an unencumbered connection with nature and the materials of construction were foremost in their minds. Many critics found the structural solutions they applied to these design goals cold and uninviting. However, a handful of visionaries saw in modern homes the promise of an exciting, open lifestyle—a setting in which the American dream of luxury living could finally be realized.  

The visual language of modernism is an acquired skill; it requires that the viewer be ready to open his or her eyes to the possibility of elegance in its simplest form. The pristine architectural gems that dot our landscape symbolize another time in our history, a time when life promised to be carefree and filled with leisure hours. These rare creations—extant now in just a few locations throughout the world and constantly threatened with destruction—stand as symbols of a belief that innovative architecture could somehow point the way to making our world a better place to be. For that reason alone, the mid-20th-century moderns, living monuments to that conviction, deserve to be appreciated, preserved, and cherished.  

50s Look magazine life-of-ease ad, with caption,"Go, Robo-mower, and bring me the shapely form of my next-door neighbor's sunbathing wife!"

Modernism—the cultural shift that led, in the early 20th century, to radical changes in art, design, literature, architecture, and political expression—carried with it the idea of, ‘a break from old ways of thinking.’ This is the accepted sense in which the term modern is often used today, on issues ranging from child-rearing to space travel to religious beliefs—that is, meaning new, different, or non-traditional. But for most of its brief history, modern also meant controversial! With that in mind, we will be tracing modernism from its earliest European origins to a warm spring day in Berlin when, in 1933, a dedicated group of architects, artists and weavers were led away at gunpoint for their radical views about modern design.  

'White City' Chicago International Exposition 1893

It is one of the accidents of history that an unlikely Midwest American city first became the laboratory for modernist experimentation. The Columbian Exhibition in 1893 (held in Chicago in honor of Columbus’ journey 400 years earlier) featured an exhibition called ‘The White City’ —a classical Beaux Arts showcase of American industrial engineering, designed by D. H. Burnham. Appalled by his excessive use of decorative detailing, Chicago resident-architect Louis Sullivan fulminated that “it would set American architecture back for half a century.”  

Sullivan, like some of his European counterparts at the time, was decidedly anti-ornamentation. Extensive decorative embellishments had been a feature of many architectural styles of the 19th century, including Victorianism- and for some it had run its course. In 1892, Sullivan declared that, “We should refrain from the use of ornamentation for several years and concentrate entirely upon the production of buildings well-formed and comely in the nude.” Listening well and carefully watching Sullivan’s every move was a young assistant in his Chicago firm—Frank Lloyd Wright.  

Frank Lloyd Wright (c.1900)

Soon on his own, Wright was just 34 when he introduced his design for a ‘Prairie House’ in 1901. His answer to a concern of the day about the deleterious impact of industry on artisanship was to advocate for the use of the machine to bring out the beauty in natural construction materials. Wright’s vision for residential living was uniquely American and unlike anything seen before. The “prairie look” featured a cruciform footprint; asymmetrical wings; deep, overhanging roof lines that floated above bands of transom windows or glazed walls, forming deep shadows that emphasized the horizontality of the structure. His “organic architecture” took full advantage of its natural setting, both settling into it and appearing to float above it at the same time.  

Wright saw the space within the building as the “reality” of that building, and he avoided the sensation of being walled in through the ample use of glass and open-floor planning. He advocated for “…the destruction of the box—in the corners and at the junction of the walls and ceiling—where windows would let light flow in and create light play in the room.” Thus, the simple geometrics that often served as a starting-point for a design were soon softened and redefined by the creative use of light, space and interior appointments. Eschewing the past, architects like Wright would apply a range of new building materials along with carte blanche from their forward-looking clients, willing to pay for that experimentation, to create something truly unusual on the American landscape.  

Wright-designed Robie House, Chicago, 1907-09

Wright was not the only one responding to the changing social climate around him. Europe, too in the early years of the 20th century was in flux. A call for modernization could be heard in industrialized countries on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to this call for ‘the new’, the first two decades of the 20th century saw a profound and dramatic increase in creative output by the architectural, artistic, literary and musical communities. An extraordinarily concentrated burst of creative energy occurred during this time, unlike anything seen since the Renaissance. The culture of change had reached a tipping point—perhaps because of the steady and irrevocable march of industrialization, or the rise of nationalist fervor among certain European nations, or maybe because the reality of the new flying machine and the speed and excitement of the automobile had managed to grip the human imagination– It could now be said that the Modern Era was officially underway!  

Villa Stein de Monzie, by Le Corbusier, Garches, FR, 1928, featuring an early garage

In France, architect, Charles Edouard Jeanneret, who adopted the name Le Corbusier was particularly taken by the purity of line and form extolled by the modernist movement. His designs from the period of the 1920s were reductionistic in the extreme, celebrating the virtues of simple geometric forms. Like other European designers, Corbusier extended his belief in the purity of basic shapes to other endeavors, including painting and industrial design. His aesthetic that, “a house is a machine for living in”, spoke as much to his belief in the universal order of simplicity in design as it did to the firm hold that science and engineered solutions for everyday problems had on the imagination of his contemporaries.  

While elsewhere in Europe, a group of artisans banded together in Weimar, Germany in 1919, determined to revitalize the charter of the defunct Berlin-based Arts and Crafts School of the previous century. They called themselves the Bauhaus School. Given that the country was gripped by social unrest, monetary inflation, and political instability after World War I, the mere fact of the creation of such an ambitious project in light of the times was remarkable. Headed by architect Walter Gropius (who had viewed the American architectural scene around Chicago in the 1890s and called it “the look of the future”), the school attracted the best and brightest of the time, including furniture designer Marcel Breuer, artist László Moholy-Nagy, and architects Josef Albers and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, among others.  

Bauhaus School exhibition flier during Weimar location years

For the next 14 years, the staff and students of the Bauhaus School redefined modern design in everything from apartment buildings to serving spoons. The creative energy at the school was fueled by a belief that design should not be defined by tradition, but by a constantly renewing and critical analysis of society’s needs and values. Open to more eclectic influences than the American modernist movement, Bauhaus faculty regularly included some of the best-known abstract painters, photographers, surrealist writers, fabric artists, muralists and actors of the day. Underlying all their efforts was the now-famous dictum put forth by faculty member Mies van der Rohe, “Less is more.”  

Soon, though, the winds of war began to blow again in Germany. The radical views about social change and the experimental art forms they supported soon brought the school to the attention of Hitler’s ultra-right National Socialist Party. Deemed degenerate by the state, the Bauhaus School (staff and students alike) were soon functioning under the watchful eye of the Gestapo. On April 11, 1933, the school was closed by Nazi police, who arrived with weapons drawn.  

This unfortunate turn of events impacted directly on the core members of the Bauhaus faculty—Gropius, Breuer, van der Rohe, Albers, and Moholy-Nagy, who eventually immigrated to America. Consistent with the axiom that “every time a door shuts, another opens,” these masters of the modern would soon imprint a new generation of architects and designer much closer to us here in the United States.  

St Georges Hall, Liverpool (1854). Fine example of Neo-Classical architecture

History teaches us that no important cultural shift occurs spontaneously, without the emergence of novel and sometimes hotly-debated ideas that spark the imagination. The seeds of Modernism that eventually flowered in the 20th century were, in fact, planted three centuries earlier, during a period in the late 17th century that later came to be known as, The Enlightenment. During that period, European philosophers first wrote about the power of the individual to determine his own fate. This was a revolutionary—possibly even heretical—idea in the 1600s, when the power of religion and superstition largely held sway over public behavior and beliefs. In 1689, John Locke, an English intellectual, declared that “every man is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” (borrowing from these sentiments, “Happiness” came later, thanks to Thomas Jefferson.) Locke was not alone in his thinking. The emergence of scientific inquiry, the printed book, industrialization, the growth of cities, the loss of political influence of the church, the challenge to the divine right of kings to rule unconditionally, and the new concept of “free will and self-determinism” all had the effect of defining a new way of thinking for the average 18th-century man-in-the-street.  

Thomas Jefferson-designed Montecello (late 18th c.) Mathematical perfection in American Classical-inspired design

This reformist wave was accompanied by some new ways of thinking about architecture, too . . . or, rather, some new old ways of thinking. With the emergence of enlightened thought, which placed a premium on the wisdom of once-idyllic and grand civilizations, came a renewed interest in ancient Greco-Roman style. The search for perfection and balance in nature and design was to be rediscovered in the works of Greek and Roman philosophers, architects, and mathematicians. Eighteen-century exploration and colonization of, and trade with, increasingly far-flung, exotic locales triggered further interest in non-European cultures. Egyptian, other North African destinations and Eurasian and Japanese design elements soon worked their way into architectural motifs, creating a blizzard of building styles and rampant eclecticism in design…with names like federalism (Neoclassical with certain American influences, such as the eagle motif); Greek Revival; Gothic Revival; Romanesque Revival; Colonial Revival; Tudor Revival; Spanish Revival; Beaux Arts; Arts & Craft; and Victorianism, to cite just a few.  

Haute Victorian design- Carson Mansion, Eureka, CA (1895)

Throughout most of the 19th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, the architectural agenda was being defined by nobility and the aristocracy. Design was the pursuit of the privileged and those favored with the money and time to indulge. The vast disparity in wealth found in all of Western Europe and in the newly-formed United States, for that matter, meant that a handful of powerful and influential individuals (and those employed to express their vision in bricks and mortar) set the stage for architectural fashion. And for them, there was a shared belief that historical hindsight held the key to enlightened reasoning.  

It took the flowering of the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s and the emergence of a newly-created middle class, demanding realistic and affordable housing near the city-centers where they were increasingly employed, to finally move the design and construction of mass housing into the realm of the realistic and practical. Here, we can finally say that American initiatives in factory and residential design led the way; and by the late 1880s, Europe was looking to us for inspiration and direction in innovative architectural design.  

Invention of standard 2'x4', balloon frame made mass production housing possible in late 19th c.

It was at this critical juncture that the term modern was first used to describe the shift in values away from established, traditional ways of thinking and toward the search for solutions for the rapidly emerging class of workers and their families. The term cut across class boundaries and touched every aspect of human behavior; but when it came to architecture, modern soon took on the meaning of fast, practical and affordable (milled 2”x4” lumber in various lengths and the ‘balloon frame’ of standardized home construction used even today made their appearance at that time). The class-conscious posturing of previous generations, given expression through their elaborate homes and buildings, gave way to the new reality of a melding of culture and class at the urban neighborhood level–meaning that the expression of wealth and influence through adornment and embellishment became less important than the rapid and practical accommodation of families, workers and the wide range of facilities needed to support them. These pressures to produce on the part of designers and builders, alike, first gave rise to the axiom that, “form follows function”, clearing the way on the eve of the 20th century for a new of thinking about architecture, for which the term modern was soon appropriated.  

Along with the emergence of a new, residential middle class in both Europe and the U.S., innovative commercial building materials were being introduced—materials that could serve the growing space and performance demands of industrial, and retail construction: fireproof steel beams, cast-iron façades, reinforced concrete, and plate glass. With these products, architects were being increasingly called upon to design large, well-lit, utilitarian spaces for large-scale production, where efficiency and unimpaired performance were the main requirements. These newly-developed construction materials, along with the mechanical lift and the telephone, made the creation of the first multi-story building (meaning over three or four stories) possible in the 1880s. The Flatiron Building, NYC (1902), left, was an example of a structure that took advantage of diminishing land resources in the city and the invention of the Otis ‘Lift’, which meant buildings go be taller than four stories.  

Jacques Henri Llartigue, Grand Prix de Circuit de la Seine (1912)

Due to rapid innovations in both science and industry, society was gripped by a desire for the changes in life style that these improvements promised. A call for modernization could be heard in most industrialized countries. Harking this call for ‘the new’, the first two decades of the 20th century saw a profound and dramatic increase in creative output by the architectural, artistic, literary and musical communities on both sides of the Atlantic. An extraordinarily concentrated burst of creative output occurred during this time, unlike anything seen since the Renaissance. The culture of change had reached a tipping point—perhaps because of the steady and irrevocable march of industrialization, or because of the call-to-arms by sociopolitical activists like Marx, Baudelaire and Nietzsche, or maybe because the reality of the new flying machine and the speed and excitement of the automobile had managed to grip the human imagination– It could now be said that the Modern Era was officially underway!  

By Richard J. Friswell, Managing Editor  

Editor’s Note: The vital role of architect, Philip Johnson, a protégé of Gropius and his impact on the growth of American Modernism, will be the subject of Part IV in our series.

I

Slung around the harbor and plaza side of the structure is a bulging swath of glass that cuts across the concrete mantel like a 3-D sash that terminates in geodesic knots, a nod to Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, Spain. Inside, this is the place to meet, a gathering spot for the photo op, perhaps the podium, or the bar, depending on the occasion. This cool windshield-like fixture admits as much light as it permits the gaze of the crowds to float outward onto the harbor, the airfield next door and the Verde Gris of Tampa Bay – a compelling vista.

Welcome to interior museum planning as of 1.11.11, when the Dali Museum opened: 68,000 square feet divided into public space, offices and last but not least, galleries. The Dali brand gift shop, where one arrives, is a surrealist chotztke paradise. Save for a greeter to point the way, one could wander there endlessly, perhaps taking a Catalonian bean soup and alighting in the adjacent open café for a glass of Rioja. If you remember why you came here, you may now buy your admission ticket.

With deference to Frank Lloyd Wright, you start at the top floor, awash in natural light. Ascending via elevator or a single helix stairwell – tight, when up and down visitors employ it simultaneously – one enters gallery spaces that may be cavernous or confined or both. The installation sweetly begins with the narrative of mega-benefactors A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, who befriended Dali, and their first acquisition Daddy Longlegs of the Evening – Hope! Arranged chronologically, the early impressionist still life work, nudes, (particularly Femme Couche, 1928), as well as landscapes notable for their oyster white light, are installed in close quarters that suggest nothing more than a high ceilinged storage area.

In 1925, Dali read Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams which catapulted his imagination, style and subject matter in new directions. At this point, the gallery space likewise opens up. Un Chien Andalou, 1929, an absurdist film made with Luis Bunuel is projected large-scale onto one wall of a vast rectangular space. So enjoyable is the phenomenon of viewing video in situ, that one never wants to enter a small darkened place segmented behind a curtain again. Sculptural objects co-mingle, like Venus de Milo with Drawers, 1936, (having white fur knobs), extending the cathartic relief of Surrealist humor to previously unrealized dimensions.

Augured by the seminal Nature Morte Vivante (Still Life – Fast Moving), 1956 the next paintings gallery heralds several key works, including the oft reproduced Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln – Homage to Rothko (Second Version), 1976 – which is also the collection catalogue cover, (by Robert Lubar); and the image adorning, for example, a hotel corridor at the Hilton in Pinellas Park, Florida.

The hauntingly powerful works, Old Age Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages), 1940, through The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, 1 952-54 – here the iconic melting watches; and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, 1958-59 articulate Dali’s breadth of artistic concerns. But although there is breadth, there is not necessarily breathing. This installation does not permit the depth of perspective, the arc one of the peripheral walk, or the generosity of space that allowed one to absorb, much less luxuriate in, each work in the previous building. That generosity might now be called wasted space. Or perhaps, interest in this collection is simply greater than expected, and so one jostles for space.

The installation’s last progression – there are a total of over 2,100 phantasmagorical Dali holdings, so exhibitions revolve – is the “Nuclear Mysticism” period, the artist’s response to a perceived lack of spiritualism in Abstract Expressionism. (He felt a computer could generate a Mondrian or Pollock.) Monumental canvases like The Hallucinogenic Toreador, 1969-1970, which seems to hale Jim Dine’s Venuses, document the classicism, supernatural aura and transcendental concerns of Salvador Dali. What painter working today is consumed with reconciling the metaphysical with the political, scientific and the psychological?

Having broken early on from Andre Breton, Dali’s sweeping, alchemic worldview ultimately became self-referential, and simultaneously validated. When the artist consolidated his works in the Teatro-Museo Dali in 1974, diametrically opposed events unfolded: his beloved wife and muse Gala died; King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia became honorary patrons of The Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali; and Dali was honored with the Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III, the State’s highest award, all in 1982 – the same year the Salvador Dai Museum first opened in St. Petersburg Florida.

Beyond the kitsch, the caricature and the reputed 400 blank pieces of paper Dali signed – or because of it – this prolific artist’s oeuvre is accessible. Diverse mediums such as holograms, jewelry, film, sculpture, painting and works on paper, represents exactly what the artist sought—an amalgam, a holistic view and a way of seeing things. Take a look at the influence in fashion, personified by the apparition Daphne Guinness. Such creative whimsy filled the crowds on opening day at The Dali Museum, when a Dali impersonator and a Salsa band sizzled on the outdoor plaza with rhythm and beat beneath this latest signature piece. The ingrained dance steps of well-dressed patrons patterned the sunlight and suggested that it’s this composite that will likely succeed – and outstrip its predecessor – not solely as a museum with a great biographical collection, but as a fascinating cultural destination. Does the building become as iconic as the artist?

The artist and building converge into a seamless whole, a Dali universe. 40,000 visitors have toured the museum since it’s opening last month. One Saturday alone recorded 2,300 guests. With over a $1,000,000 in revenue since 1.11.11, this Dali Museum generated a quarter of the annual revenue above its previous location. Surrealism is getting real; its imagination and lofty ideals got packaged here with zest and panache, without the pretense, and coalesced into the intuitive experience one craves.

By Diane Dewey, Contributing Writer

A mid-20th century architectural rendering for urban renewal

“E xcept man, nobody lies. A rosebush cannot lie. It has to produce roses; it cannot produce marigolds — it cannot deceive. It is not possible for it to be otherwise than it is. Except man the whole existence lives in truth. Truth is the religion of the whole existence — except man. And the moment a man also decides to become part of existence, truth becomes his religion.”   -Indian Mystic, Osho

Architectural Forensics is a term to describe how it is that the ‘built environment’ perfectly expresses the intrinsic quality of any society’s sociological, economic, and political nature. In the search for truth, the parsing of concepts, deliberation of ideas, or the use rhetorical analysis to glean the essence of our reality pales in comparison to the truth at it is revealed by the world which we have wrought; and with this fact, there can be no mistake or equivocation. fine arts magazine

Boston City Hall (KM&K Arch.,1962-67). Blocks of Boston's West End neighborhoods were torn down to make way for sprawling plazas and Brutalist-style I.M. Pei-inspired architecture

Architects and urban designers are renowned for their ability to define concepts by employing formal constructs and then to argue the merits of their design as is expedient to gain favor for their proposal. The completed projects however are rarely given the proper scrutiny to gauge the product against the initial arguments upon which the physical expressions are based; and when they are, it is clear that the idea rarely matches reality. Western Civilization’s fundamental philosophical postulation to reason can readily facilitate the contamination of the truth by infusing ulterior motives into its meaning; whether or not consciously intended in order to advocate a pre-conceived objective; the resulting built-landscape purveyed as a litany of conjecture in which we continually bear the consequences of real structures and places.

Once clear about our intent, there can be no equivocation about our perception. If the discovery of truth is our objective, then it exists all around us; ready to reveal the unassailable reality that will guide our course of action and indicate the direction of our pursuit. For example, one may argue the merits of permitting a modern glass and steel tower to occupy an infill site within the context of early 20th century, pre-war masonry apartment buildings on Park Avenue in New York City. The architect or developer may cite the benefits of infusing a contemporary architectural expressions to an otherwise tired streetscape; the visual benefits of contrasting transparent forms to masonry facades; the wonderful addition of a brutally honest structure to the dated historical formalism so prevalent in the neighborhood; and even argue the merits of including modern and ‘relevant’ forms of expression within an historic context… all which sound like cogent arguments at the front end of the process when the project strives to gain approval. Yet the simple reality of such an experiment has indicated quite a different legacy; one that has only served to erode a wholesome identity often caused by economic initiatives that are conveyed by architectural seductions. We know this to be true not as a consequence of clarity derived from the initial conceptual debate, but we know this truth to be evident because we can walk the streets and see and feel the physical evidence of our actions as one misguided seduction leads to others until integrity of the place has been thoroughly compromised.

Rendering of Le Corbusier's 'Ville Radieuse', his concept of 'machines for living' (1923).

When the initial arguments were made for the ‘Urban Renewal’ of the lower east side in Manhattan as the dereliction of these neighborhoods was considered to be unsustainable, theory usurped observation and the consequences were swift and dramatic. A wave of gentrification prompted the previous generation of immigrants to move further uptown and to occupy larger homes and more spacious neighborhoods. As soon as the migration had gained momentum degradation was swift even though the urban fabric remained in-tact and might have been resurrected. Concepts abounded for what to do with the tenement structures that lined the lower east side of downtown Manhattan. The prevailing notion that won favor conveniently employed Le Corbusier’s concepts of urbanism as described in his diatribe Toward an Architecture (1923). The concept that large, densely-populated towers, these ‘machines for living’, would be set within rectangular park-like green spaces and permit its residents a gasp of nature if they so dared to venture onto that barren land seemed like quite a good idea. Unfortunately for idealism; reality presented a far different picture; stark in its contrast where crime followed the anonymity of these faceless towers, while the utter segregation of an impoverished socio-economic class of the population was clearly defined by these piles of masonry blight. Traditional neighborhoods where migrants flowed into this nation and then graduated to another existence gave way to these new, urbanly-renewed ghettoes that held its inhabitants largely captive to the now very familiar architectural stereotype that defines public housing. We know this to be true because we see and witness the effects of this reality. There can be no argument to the expression of the world that we’ve built as is indicated by the construction as it exists, and the effects that are consequential to our built environment.

A typical New England 18th c. era village center- church, commerce and homes facing the town green

The truth as revealed by architectural forensics. We are the detectives who observe, investigate, and reveal unassailable realities as expressed by the physical world. The aim: to provide clarity as to the purpose and understanding of the consequences for that which we’ve created. What does the ‘village green’ tell us about 18th Century New England colonial society? That the church dominates the essential position of power, authority, and honor is no accident. Other homes that surround the ‘green’ are generally of similar if not identical shape, size, materials, and coloring to each other and they surround a very regular and ordered pastoral setting around which the townsfolk gather, share, provide, and protect one another from the threats of savages and secularism. The yearning for freedom, for equality amongst one’s brethren; to conform, to live humbly and yet with determination; to control their environment and yet with a clear respect that society persists or perishes at the whim of what nature issues forth, as conveyed by God’s will… All of these attributes are qualities gleaned from observation with just a modicum of written history that serves to temper the inclination one might have to go too far astray. The truth about this society, as immortalized by the wood frames and clapboards of their construction—what remains in our time and that which has long since disappeared due to our delinquency, obstinacy, ignorance, and willful intent—are quite simply more evidence that provides clarity of the society as conveyed by its architecture.

Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (1591)

Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (1591), serene, powerful, perfectly symmetrical in plan, the rotunda and cupola elements that terminate the center of the Greek cross plan; the point of focus to the entire composition, the universe where man is at its center, controlling of his destiny as expressed by this creation… the art which adorns the walls, ceiling, each and every nook and crevasse of this palatial home; the saturation of form and attention to each surface whether it be adorned or left spare as an intended repose; the owner’s clarity of purpose, no hesitation, willful, wonton, desirous, thoroughly committed in its expression of erudition; that art is the consummate expression of beauty; that beauty is both the point of departure and realization to what mankind can aspire in this life, perhaps the only life; as if that remains the sole vestige of his paradise and salvation. To observe any subject building; allowing it to speak through its form is a certitude upon which we can rely, because it is unassailable. We are witness to these realities; and only that awareness can provide clarity and meaning.

If Charles Darwin spent months on the Beagle floating up the Hudson River instead of off the coast of the Galapagos Islands, having sequestered his observations in an investigation entitled Conclusions of our Civilization instead of The Origin of Species, would we be any less impressed with the veracity of what he’d witnessed and assessments drawn accordingly? Society is, in fact, the expression of the environment that it has inherited coupled with the built environment that it has created. Our society has become overly seduced with the “what-ifs”, and no longer cares to acknowledge the “has-beens”; and yet we live in a world that we’ve made; there can be no dispute about that.

I’ve often thought that it is a fool’s errand that architectural publications and journals evaluate built projects shortly after their completion. There is hardly a message to be conveyed about a newly minted project that couldn’t be have already been reviewed when it was merely a conception on either the drawing board or in the fancy of one’s mind. A building or urban landscape can only be truly evaluated after it has existed for some substantial period of time; after when it has been burnished by the elements; trodden upon; been used and abused; becomes part of a fabric or recognized as a carcinogen that has assaulted the world already extant.

My position is quite simply to observe that which we’ve created in order to know the truth. The built environment is the perfect mirror in that it tells us everything about ourselves and perfectly expresses who we are; with utter disregard for propaganda or innuendo.

Architectural forensics is the tool to gain this understanding. They are clear and ingenuous; forensics discover the reality that gives birth to form and makes eminently clear the choices that may not have been initially understood because they were not yet expressed physically and could have been subject to willful or even unintended deception. We as employers of this powerful tool need know nothing about architecture or urban planning in order to draw our conclusions. In fact, we will no longer be seduced by the critical experts of architectural proposals as we become more confident that words cannot be used as a substitution for the reality of what buildings tells us through their forms and physical presence. We now possess the tools to have a clear understanding to the meaning of that which was destroyed in order to make way for the existence of a new structure; or even how a street, city, or forest may have benefited or suffered as a consequence of the new physical landscape . Truth gained in this manner of observation and description is unassailable.

Thus is the power and potential of Architectural Forensics- a force for truth and meaning.

By William Green, Contributing Writer

William Green holds a fine arts degree from Tufts University.  He continued his studies with a year at the University of Copenhagen, Royal Academy of Architecture; proceeding to the University of Colorado in pursuit of his Master of Architecture degree. This was followed by an internship at the prestigious Studio Coppola in Milan, Italy. After several years of practice and a number of awards, the opportunity to design offices for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Inc., in New York City, provided the impetus to establish his own firm in 1986.

William has served on the faculty of the New York School of Interior Design and has lectured at various universities and numerous design symposiums.

His firm can be reached at: www.wgaarchitects.net

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J&S: The Juvet Landscape Hotel is located at Valldal, near the town of Åndalsnes in north-western Norway. Passing tourists are attracted by a spectacular waterfall, in a deep gorge near the road in Gudbrandsjuvet. The client, Knut Slinning, is a local resident. The idea emerged as an opportunity to exploit breathtaking scenery with minimal intervention, allowing locations which would otherwise be prohibited for reasons of conservation. fine arts magazine

ARTES: How did the client, Knut Slinning, and your firm come to work together?

J&S: The client, Knut Slinning, comes from the coastal town Ålesund, about 100 km west of Gudbrandsjuvet. He is a property developer. He has owned a cottage in Gudbrandsjuvet since late 1980′s. He listened to our first presentation of ideas for the site (part of a national tourist road project Gudbrandsjuvet viewing platform, http://www.jsa.no/galleries_index_2.html) where we, amongst other things, proposed a ‘landscape hotel’. This idea originally came from another project we did, in the Aurland valley further south, in the Sognefjord, but it is still not realized there. About two years after our presentation in Gudbrandsjuvet, Knut Slinning bought a farm with a river, close to the waterfalls in Gudbrandsjuvet, and he asked us to help him realize the landscape hotel idea. We did the zoning plan (he is allowed to build 28 rooms on his property) and have now realized the first seven rooms. A small spa will be completed this summer as well, very close to the river, with one wall just in glass in each of the saunas, relax rooms and massage rooms.

ARTES: Of course, the green theme is on everyone’s mind right now, but what inspired you for this particular design?

J&S: We wanted to create rooms that does not have the conventional borders (the walls), but which offer an experience that is as large as the landscape—a mountainous gorge three-to-four miles wide in this case. To create this, we worked a lot with the windows so that as much as possible of the “bordering” or “enclosing” effect that a window and its framing usually gives were eliminated, or made as small as possible. This is intended to give an effect of being in a large and grand landscape (not merely looking at it), but maintaining absolutely private, while also being protected and warm.

Instead of the conventional hotel, with guest rooms stacked together in one large building, the Landscape Hotel distributes the rooms throughout the terrain as small individual houses. Every house has one or two walls that are entirely built in glass, making the experience of being in the space truly breathtaking. Through careful orientation, every room gets its own exclusive view of a beautiful and unique piece of the landscape, always changing with the season, the weather, and the time of day. No room looks out at another, so the rooms offer the ultimate in privacy, even though curtains are not used.

At the moment there are seven units completed, but with the possibility of adding 21 additional, according to the master plan. All the rooms have slightly differing designs, as a result of local topographical needs and vegetation, as well as to maximize the requirements for privacy and the best possible views. Construction was carefully planned to eliminate the necessity of blasting of rock or altering the terrain in any way. In this way, the rooms become the least invasive addition to the existing topography.

ARTES: Each room seems to have its own character. Why are the rooms laid out differently?

J&S: We did not want to use dynamite, we wanted a project that could be removed without leaving scars in the landscape, and therefore we regarded the houses as guests on the site. Basically we discussed a lot what each single room should contain. All the rooms are slightly different because of the typography and conditions on each plot, but with same basic services.

ARTES: The construction and interior design considerations must have been a challenge, given the rough terrain and harsh winter conditions. How did you solve those problems?

J&S: The units are over-engineered for harsh winter conditions, built with massive spruce construction (85mm in the walls, 120mm in the roof and the floor), as a finished reveal on the interior (roof and walls). On the outside there is pine panel, treated with iron vitriol, which creates a chemical process on the surface of the wood that resembles ageing; the wood turns grey in a couple of months because of a reaction with the daylight.

The modular units are intended for summer occupancy only. Each building rests on a set of 40mm massive steel rods drilled into the rock, with existing topography and vegetation left largely untouched. The glass walls are set against slim frames of wood, locked with standard steel profiles, using stepped edges to extend the exterior layer of the main glass surfaces all the way to the corners.

The interiors are treated with transparent oil with black pigments, so that reflections from the inner surface of the glass wall are minimized. Shelves, benches and a small table are all built by the same massive wooden elements to maintain a certain degree of deliberate monotony, serving as a visual counterpoint to the complex nature views outside and to keep the visual presence of the interior at a minimum.

ARTES: Tel me a bit more about J&S’s commitment to green design and how you optimized those guidelines in this project?

J&S: Today’s concern for sustainability in architecture focuses almost exclusively on reduced energy consumption in production and operation. At Jensen and Slodvin, we think that conservation of topography is another aspect of sustainability deserving of attention. Standard building procedure requires the general destruction of the site to accommodate foundations and infrastructure before building can commence. Conserving the site is a way to respect the fact that nature precedes and succeeds man. Also, dutiful observation of existing topography produces a visual ‘reading’, where the geometry of the intervention highlights the irregularities of the natural site, thus explaining both itself and its context in a more powerful way. In this way, a sustainable connection is established between structure and site.

The hotel had a planned opening for summer, 2009. A small spa is being built very close to the river, with two saunas and a massage room. It is inserted into the ground, but with glass walls facing the view of the river and the mountains.

ARTES: Thank you for your time. The photographs themselves were breath-taking. I hope I can get to see the finished project someday soon.

Client: Knut Slinning; Project Architects JSA: Jan Olav Jensen (pl), Børre Skodvin, Torunn Golberg, Helge Lunder, Torstein Koch, Thomas Knigge; Landscape Architect: Jensen & Skodvin; Static Consultant: Siv. Ing. Finn Erik Nilsen; Year Planned: 2004 – 2009; Year Built: 2007 – 2009; Status: Under realization;  Area: 800m2; Cost: 2 Million Euro

All photographs courtesy of Jensen & Skodvin Architects. For more information, see: The Juvet Landscape Hotel website at: www.juvet.com

or contact Jensen & Skodvin at: www.jsa.no

(Jensen & Skodvin Arkitektkontor AS, Sinsenveien 4D, 0572 Oslo, Norway)

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Left: John Andrew Rice. Courtesy NCSA, BMC Papers.  

Robert E. Lee Hall porch. Courtesy NCSA, BMC Papers

At the center of the Rollins controversy was John Andrew Rice, Professor of Classics. A gadfly with an ingrained dissatisfaction with the status quo and authority figures, Rice, along with others, had challenged President Hamilton Holt’s progressive educational program. In April 1933, Rice was fired. Soon thereafter, Ralph Reed Lounsbury and Frederick Raymond Georgia, who had objected to Rollins’s violation of Rice’s academic freedom, were also fired. [1] These three along with Theodore Dreier, who had resigned, found themselves unemployed in the depths of the Great Depression. It seemed an opportune time to create the ideal college that had long been the subject of late-night discussions. They had two months in which to locate a ready-made campus, write a charter and obtain a certificate of incorporation, hire faculty and recruit students, and organize their ideas into a coherent philosophy. Literature teacher Joseph Martin recalled that the informal opening ceremony on the porch of Robert E. Lee Hall was similar to a “pick-up game of football,” an occasion “happily terminated by lunch.” [2]  By the end of the first quarter there were twelve teachers and twenty-two students. 

John Rice had been at odds with administrations at all colleges and universities where he had taught, and the experience at Rollins had only enhanced his discontent. Black Mountain College would be owned and administered by the faculty. There would be a Board of Fellows composed of several faculty elected by their peers and one student elected by students. The Board of Fellows would manage financial matters and the hiring and firing of faculty. Faculty would control all academic matters. An Advisory Board, with only the power of persuasion, was primarily a list of prominent individuals who believed in the college’s ideals and generously lent their names to increase the college’s credibility to a skeptical public. Among its members were John Dewey, Walter Gropius, and Alfred Einstein. There was to be no endowment, and donations were accepted only if they came with no effort to influence the college’s educational program. 

Woodworking shop. Photo by Josef Breitenbach. Courtesy, Center for Creative Photography, U. Arizona, Tucson; Josef & Yaye Breitenbach Charitable Foundation, N.Y.

Essentially the founders’ intention was to educate students for productive, participatory life in a democratic society. This was to be achieved through a curriculum which encouraged independent, critical thinking and life in a community where students would mature emotionally into responsible adults. At the center of the educational program was a close relationship between faculty and students and responsibility by the students for many aspects of their educational experience. Students entered in the Junior Division, a period of general study, and after passing a two-day examination covering all aspects of the curriculum, moved to the Senior Division, a period of specialization. Graduation was achieved by oral and written examinations by an outside examiner who was an authority in the student’s area of study. It was a rigorous process and only about sixty students graduated in the college’s twenty-four year history. Although term-end grades were recorded in the office for transfer purposes, the student did not know what grades were given. Of great significance for the college’s history and influence, the practice of the arts would be at the center of the learning experience. 

 The Black Mountain lifestyle and traditions evolved in the first years and were essential to the creative, unstructured environment. In its idealism, the college resembled a small religious community; in its reliance on limited means, a pioneering village; in its intense and experimental arts activity, a Bohemian arts colony; in its informal life style and woodland setting, a summer camp. Strongly influenced by the personalities of those who taught and studied at the college, the tenor of the community changed year by year. National and international events such as the Great Depression, World War II, and McCarthyism altered its history and were a catalyst for new programs and possibilities. 

Robert E. Lee Hall and Dining Hall. North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, North Carolina

 The Blue Ridge Assembly buildings provided the college with an ideal campus. Robert E. Lee Hall with its three-story high wooden columns was an imposing structure. One entered into a large lobby that extended through to the back of the building. On either side and on the second and third floors were rows of dormitory-style rooms used by YMCA guests at summer conferences. Faculty without children and students lived in Lee Hall, and those with children, in nearby cottages on the property. There were so many rooms that each student and faculty member had a study although students shared rooms for sleeping. The dining hall in which students, faculty and families shared meals was located behind Lee Hall and joined by a covered walkway. 

There were classes in the mornings and evenings. In the afternoons everyone took part in a work program that included general maintenance, work on the college farm which was started the first year, and office and administrative work. Dress was informal with most wearing jeans during the daytime and casual clothes for dinner. Isolated in the Blue Ridge Mountains, far from any major metropolitan center, energies were focused inward on study and college activities 

Danse Macabre directed by Xanti Schawinsky (1938). George Hendrickson Papers, BMC Project.

There were no bells to announce the beginning or end of classes and no students rushing with books from one class to another. Limited financial means encouraged innovation, and the students and faculty provided their own entertainment in the form of weekend concerts and drama productions, hikes in the mountains, parties (either simple or with elaborate decorations), after dinner dancing or community sings, or hikes in the mountains. For students such as Sewell ‘Si’ Sillman, it was the not the “highlights” – the luminaries and intense summer sessions in the arts – but the “day-to-day routine that was really Black Mountain.” [3] It was the interaction among individuals and the integration of learning with work, community, and recreation that had a profound effect on students.  With considerable effort the college managed to achieve publicity in national publications, and visitors, both the curious and the committed, arrived to observe the college, among them John Dewey, Aldous Huxley, Henry Miller, May Sarton, and Thornton Wilder. Visitors were frequently called on for group discussions, concerts and lectures to the community. 

John Rice’s class. NCSA, BMC Papers.

In the first semester the college brought Josef Albers, abstract artist and former teacher of the fundamental course at the recently-closed Bauhaus, from Germany to teach art. At Black Mountain, he adapted these courses, formulated to train professional designers, to general education. His wife Anni Albers, eminent weaver, taught weaving and textile design. From their arrival, Black Mountain College was to be the setting for a dynamic fusion of American Progressivism and European Modernism, and the college was to be associated with modern art and innovative teaching in the visual arts. 

Josef Albers and Robert de Niro, Sr. NCSA, BMC Papers

John Rice and Josef Albers, both born in 1888, were charismatic teachers and most in the community took their courses. In appearance and personality they were polar opposites. Rice was a Southerner, short and rotund, with a wink in his eye and a quick wit. Albers was slim and ascetic, disciplined and focused. Rice prided himself on his ability to assess and reveal the foibles of others, a practice that was to be a source of controversy in the community. Among Rice’s courses were creative writing and a class called Plato in which students examined concepts and questioned assumptions. Albers taught classes in design, color, painting, and drawing. Born in Brooklyn in 1902, Theodore Dreier, who taught mathematics and physics, was tall, athletic, and idealistic. His family was well-to-do and had close connections to the art world. He immediately assumed the role of fund-raiser, and for sixteen years, his dedicated efforts and endless proselytizing were responsible for the college’s survival. John Evarts, a young musician with a gift for improvisation, taught music. He was able through his piano playing after dinner and on weekends to bring the often-divided college together for dance and song, and when he left to join the war effort in 1942, he was irreplaceable. Other faculty in the 1930s included Rhodes scholar Joseph Walford Martin in literature, Robert Wunsch in theater, and Frederick Georgia in chemistry. 

Theodore Dreier (left). NCSA, BMC Papers.

Josef and Anni Albers were the first of many refugee artists and scholars hired by the college. Some had already arrived in the United States; others the college brought directly from Europe. Among those teaching in the 1930s were Fritz Moellenhoff, former student of Hans Sachs who had been assistant director of the Kuranstalten Westend in Berlin, and Erwin Straus, a neurologist and a noted phenomenologist in the field of psychology who had been editor of Der Nervenartz and a member of the faculty at the University of Berlin; Alexander ‘Xanti’ Schawinsky, artist and theater director who had studied with Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus; and Heinrich Jalowetz, along with Anton Webern and Alban Berg among Schoenberg’s first students, who had been director of the Cologne Opera before he lost his position when Hitler came to power in 1933. Jalowetz was one of the most beloved teachers at Black Mountain and died and was buried there in 1946. These accomplished individuals had been leaders in their fields, and their respect for disciplined study provided a critical balance to the college’s informal structure. They both changed and were changed by the college. 

John Evarts and Heinrich Jalowetz. NCSA, BMC Papers

Although in the beginning – largely at the urging of John Rice – there was an attempt to determine what were acceptable Black Mountain teaching methods, this critical assessment was eventually abandoned, and teachers were left to decide how to run their classes. Some lectured and required regular papers; others did not. Generally, a completed assignment was a ticket to class. There were tests in some classes but no scheduled school-wide end of the term examinations. An attempt to teach an interdisciplinary class in the first year was not repeated. Essentially the unending conversation in the dining hall and informal gatherings was a far more effective form of interdisciplinary education that a formal class. In the cases where there was more than one teacher in a field, faculty worked together on the curriculum, but there were no formal departments. 

The administration of the college was a time-consuming responsibility for the faculty. Generally, decisions were arrived at by consensus, and Board of Fellows, faculty, student and community meetings were endless. There were committees to handle all aspects of college life. Without a separate administration to settle disputes, all too often differences in opinion became explosive conflicts and ended with a group of faculty and a coterie of their student supporters leaving, a loss the college could ill afford. 

Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, Designs for a Lake Eden Campus. Photograph Ezra Stoller © Esto

The 1930s ended with the resignation of John Rice in 1940 after a long leave-of-absence and the move in June 1941 by the college to its own property Lake Eden. The Blue Ridge owners were constantly in search of a more lucrative tenant, and in 1937 the college had purchased the Lake Eden property north of the Village of Black Mountain as a hedge against a sudden ouster. In 1939 Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer were commissioned to design a modern, unified campus which would provide for music and art studios and workshops, classrooms, common rooms for community gatherings, a dining hall, faculty housing and other facilities.  In the spring of 1940, when the faculty began to raise funds for the buildings, they discovered that, while donors would make small contributions for the annual running of the college, they would require an administrative structure with a guarantee of longevity and continuity of purpose to make large contributions. The situation was further complicated by the buildup of wartime production and the fact that Weatherford had found a new tenant and had given the college notice that they would have to vacate the property at the end of the 1941 spring semester. 

Lawrence Kocher, former editor of the Architectural Record and a long-time advocate for the college, was hired to design simpler, modern buildings which could be constructed by faculty and students working with a contractor.  The property had been developed as a summer camp and inn, and there were two lodges which could be used for dormitories, a dining hall, and a number of cottages, all in a rustic mountain style. The year 1940-41 was the most cohesive in the college’s history as everyone pulled together to construct the Studies Building, to winterize existing buildings, to construct a house for the kitchen staff, and to begin work on a barn and additional faculty cottages. [4] 

Studies Building. NCSA, BMC Papers

Black Mountain College was able to survive the war years only by taking out a second mortgage on the college property. Most of the men students and younger faculty were drafted or left to join the war effort, and those who remained were largely European refugees and women students. Despite travel and building restrictions, the college had a vibrant academic program. Among the new faculty were Eric Bentley, a young Englishman and Brechtian scholar who had graduated from Yale University and taught at UCLA. Two new music teachers, both refugees, were Fritz Cohen, cofounder of the Jooss Ballet and composer of the score for the dance, The Green Table, and Edward Lowinsky, a young scholar of Early Music. The college farm thrived and provided essential food when wartime rationing was in effect. 

Studies Building construction. NCSA, BMC Papers

At Blue Ridge, the college had to vacate the buildings in the summers when the YMCA held its summer assemblies. In 1940, 1941 and 1942 at Lake Eden it held a regular summer session and a work camp to help with the construction of new buildings and to provide the farm with workers. In 1943 it sponsored a Seminar on America for Foreign Scholars, Teachers, and Artists. In 1944, in addition to the summer session and work camp, it sponsored music and art institutes. These intense summer programs in the arts which attracted a large number of students, some of whom remained as fulltime students, were ultimately to alter the history and influence of the college. In the summer of 1944 the Music Institute was a celebration of Arnold Schoenberg’s seventieth birthday. Although Schoenberg was unable due to failing health to travel from California, the Institute brought together leading performers and interpreters of his music for an intense series of concerts and lectures. The Art Institute had as its faculty muralist Jean Charlot, sculptor José de Creeft, painter Amédée Ozenfant, and photographers Barbara Morgan and Josef Breitenbach. The college had to rent rooms across the valley at Blue Ridge to accommodate the students. Faculty in the summers of 1945 and 1946 included Will Burtin, Lyonel Feininger, Fannie Hillsmith, Jacob Lawrence, Leo Lionni, Robert Motherwell, Beaumont Newhall and Ossip Zadkine in art, and in music, Erwin Bodky, Alfred Einstein, Eva Heinetz, Hugo Kauder, and Josef Marx, among others. 

As the college was enveloped in an intense round of classes, concerts, and lectures in the summer of 1944, it was simultaneously embroiled in what was without question the most vituperative internal conflict in its history. The previous year a number of fractious issues had torn the college, the most difficult being that of integration. North Carolina was a segregated state, and there were those who feared for the college’s safety if it were to integrate. Finally, the issue was resolved with a decision to permit two black women students to enroll for the summer. Nerves were still raw over the integration debate when in the middle of the summer session, two women students who had hitchhiked to visit Eric Bentley, who was teaching at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, were arrested in Chattanooga on their return to the college and jailed. The crisis culminated in the resignations of Bentley, Cohen and his wife dancer Elsa Kahl, Clark Forman, and languages teacher Frances de Graaff, along with a large coterie of students. 

College farm. NCSA, BMC Papers

As the international conflict came to an end in the summer of 1945, a critically wounded Black Mountain College began slowly to rebuild. Black students were admitted for the regular sessions. Recruitment was not easy, and the college found that few were able to attend a college that did not offer an accredited degree. New faculty members were hired including M.C. Richards, a young scholar from the University of Chicago, to teach writing and literature, and her husband Albert William Levi in social sciences and philosophy. Max Wilhelm Dehn, eminent Frankfurt geometer, taught mathematics and philosophy, and Fritz Hansgirg, metallurgist who had been hired during the war, remained to teach chemistry. Theodore Rondthaler, a North Carolinian from an esteemed Moravian family, arrived to teach Latin, history and literature. John Wallen, who was exploring methods of group dynamics, taught psychology, and David Corkran, former headmaster at the North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, Illinois, taught history. When the Alberses were on sabbatical, Ilya Bolotowksy taught art, and Trude Guermonprez Elsesser and Franziska Mayer, weaving and textile design. 

Summer Session String Quartet. Nikolai Graudan, Lorna Freedman Kolisch, Rudolph Kolisch, Marcel Dick. Photograph by Maja Apelman. Courtesy BMC Project

Approval under the GI Bill of Rights was essential to the college’s survival after the war, and with that approval a number of students, attracted both by the arts curriculum and by the opportunity to study in an unregimented environment, enrolled. As the student body swelled to almost a hundred students, there was concern that it was becoming too large.  The GIs who were older and who had experienced the discipline of military life and the horrors of conflict were eager to pursue a delayed education. Among those enrolled during this period, both GIs and recent high school graduates, were filmmaker Arthur Penn, writer James Leo Herlihy, and artists Ruth Asawa, Joseph Fiore, Lorna Blaine Halper, Ray Johnson, Lore Kadden Lindenfeld, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Sewell Sillman, Kenneth Snelson, John Urbain, and Susan Weil. 

Robert Motherwell (Summer 1945). Photo by Margaret W. Peterson. Elaine Schmitt Urbain Papers, BMC Project.

In the summer of 1948, Josef Albers organized a Summer Session in the Arts which was be a pivotal moment in the college’s arts programs. Although previously both the regular sessions and the special summer sessions had brought together American-born and refugee faculty, the Europeans, far more accomplished than the younger American teachers, had been dominant. The 1948 summer faculty included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, and Buckminster Fuller, all at the time unrecognized, but artists who would become seminal figures in the arts in the United States during the second half of the Twentieth Century. Buckminster Fuller, who was a last minute replacement, attempted to erect his first geodesic dome that summer. When it failed, it was dubbed the “supine” dome, and everyone cheerfully dismissed the “failure” as part of the process of experimental and a step on the way to success. Cage and Cunningham captivated the imagination of the community. They were to remain a presence at Black Mountain through 1953 as visitors and as summer faculty. 

During the 1948-49 school year, the college once again was split into opposing camps. At issue was an effort to find a way to provide for the college’s survival. GI Bill revenues were declining, and it was nearly impossible to raise the funds annually to keep the college open. Many plans were considered. One was to have the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill adopt Black Mountain as an experimental school. Another was to narrow the curriculum to focus on the arts with limited offerings in other areas. The crisis ended with the resignations in the spring of 1949 of Theodore Dreier, Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Charlotte Schlesinger, and Trude Guermonprez. 

Lunch on the dining hall porch. Photo by Felix Krowinski, Sr. © BMC Project

During the 1950s, even as the college began to sell land to survive, it experienced an explosion of creative activity. Poet and historian Charles Olson, who had taught one long weekend a month during the 1948-49 school year, returned to teach fulltime in 1951. Students Joseph Fiore and Pete Jennerjahn were hired to teach art, and Hazel Larsen Archer, to teach photography. M.C. Richards remained to teach “reading and writing.” Katherine Litz taught dance, and composers Stefan Wolpe and Lou Harrison, music. Wesley Huss taught theater. In the last years, in addition to Olson, writers Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Robert Hellman taught writing. Creeley, who was living in Mallorca, edited the Black Mountain Review, which gave a coherent means of publication for Olson, Creeley, Duncan and their associates. Pete Jennerjahn taught a Light, Sound, Movement Workshop which explored non-literary multimedia performance. The press, which previously had been used primarily to print college forms and concert and drama programs, was used by the students and faculty to print their own writing. Students during the 1950s included John Chamberlain, Edward Dorn, Francine du Plessix Gray, Joel Oppenheimer, Robert Rauschenberg, Michael Rumaker, Cy Twombly, and Jonathan Williams. 

Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Supine Dome’ (Summer 1948). Photo, Beaumont Newhall. Courtesy Beaumont & Nancy Newhall Estate. Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., Santa Fe, N.M. © 2010, Beaumont & Nancy Newhall Estate

Through the summer of 1953 the college continued to sponsor summer sessions which attracted exceptional faculty, including John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Paul Goodman, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Ben Shahn, Theodoros Stamos, and Jack Tworkov. In 1952, faced with an ever smaller student body, Charles Olson proposed a radical change in the college program. Already, through attrition, the college had become a college of the arts. Under Olson’s plan the college would abandon any remaining vestiges of progressive education such as the work program, the farm, and community in education in favor of a series of year-round institutes which would bring together major figures in the arts, the sciences and the humanities.  The Pottery Institute in the fall of 1952 had as its faculty Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach, Soestsu Yanagi, and Marguerite Wildenhain. An Institute in the New Sciences of Man had Marie-Louise von Franz and Robert Braidwood as guest speakers. The 1953 summer institute, the last of the major summer programs, featured potters Peter Voulkos, Warren MacKenzie, and Daniel Rhodes along with a general faculty in art, dance, theater and music. At summer’s end, faced with a greatly diminished student body and faculty, the lower campus with the Studies Building and Dining Hall were closed, and students and faculty moved up the hill into faculty cottages. It was impossible for the small coterie to keep up the property or to manage the farm. 

Charles Olson and daughter Kate, Black Mountain College. Photo by Mary Ann Giusti. Courtesy Mary Ann Giusti

By the fall of 1956 there were three teachers: Charles Olson, Wesley Huss, and Joseph Fiore, and Fiore was taking a year’s sabbatical. Olson and Huss decided that the time had come to close the Lake Eden campus. Students, including a group who had worked that summer with Robert Duncan on Medea: The Maidenhead, the first of his Medea triology, returned with him to San Francisco to continue their studies as part of Olson’s “dispersed” university. Olson remained at Lake Eden to formulate other programs and deal with legal issues. Since 1951, the faculty had been paid half-salaries in money (and at times beef from the farm) and the other half had been listed as a debt against the college. Three sued the college for the unpaid salaries, both because they were seniors and badly in need of income and because they, along with others, felt the time had come for the college to close. Olson traveled to San Francisco to deliver his, Special View of History lectures as part of the Black Mountain curriculum. In March a judge ordered that academic programs cease until debts were paid and legal issues resolved. The final issue of the Black Mountain Review appeared in the fall of 1957. Olson, the last rector, had arranged in advance for its printing costs. On January 9, 1962, the Final Account was approved and the college books were closed respectably with all debts paid and a balance of zero. 

Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada. Mary Emma Harris Papers

The influence of Black Mountain College and the productivity of its faculty and students has been extensive and diverse. Many have had stellar careers; others have achieved significant recognition as university professors, early childhood educators, artists, musicians, writers, and scientists. Institutions as diverse as Marlboro College in Vermont, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and Catlin Gable School in Portland, Oregon have been influenced by Black Mountain. The “Black Mountain Poets” include both poets and prose writers who published in the Black Mountain Review, some of whom were never at the college. The designation excludes other Black Mountain writers who were at the college but did not publish in the Review. Among the artists, there is no identifiable Black Mountain style. This diversity, rather than a limitation, is a tribute to the college’s fostering of independent thinking and working. 

Essential to the success of Black Mountain College was its administration by the faculty; this also was the root of many of its problems. In the instances when the college sought the assistance of a professional administrator, inevitably there was talk of a standard curriculum, predictable results, and a conventional appearance. In each case, the college refused to exchange the open, receptive, flexible atmosphere for the possibility of longevity. A critical part of the college program was its willingness to let things happen, not to create a circumscribed program with a predictable result. Fuller’s “Supine Dome,” the founding of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, John Cage’s first “happening,” and Josef Albers’s design and color curriculum which he later taught at Yale University were not planned outcomes. 

More than five decades have passed since Black Mountain College closed. Still, its story continues to have an impact in the arts and education worldwide. Biographies are being written, documentaries filmed, and exhibitions organized. The energy and ideas engendered are a continuing catalyst for new beginnings in the arts and education. 

 by Mary Emma Harris ©, 2010, Contributing Writer 

Mary Emma Harris is an independent scholar and author of, The Arts at Black Mountain College (The MIT Press, 1987). She is Chair of the Black Mountain College Project, Inc. ( www.bmcproject.org), a not-for-profit organization devoted to the documentation of the history and influence of Black Mountain College.

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Legend 

BMC Project. Black Mountain College Project, Inc., New York, New York. 

NCSA, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina. 

BMC Papers, Black Mountain College Papers. 

BMC Research Project Papers. Black Mountain College Research Project Papers. 

References: 

[1]  The American Association of University Professors investigated. Their report essentially vindicated Rice and his followers. See Arthur O. Lovejoy and Austin S. Edwards, “Academic Freedom and Tenure: Rollins College Report,” Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors, 19 (November 1933):416-39. 

 [2] [Joseph Walford Martin], “Black Mountain College: 1933,” NCSA, BMC Papers. 

 [3] Interview with Sewell Sillman by Mary Emma Harris, 7 March 1971, NCSA, BMC Research Project Papers. Permission Sewell Sillman Foundation. 

 [4] For a detailed description of the architectural program at the college, see www.bmcproject.org – architecture. 

See a related article on Black Mountain College alumnus, Sewell Sillman at:  http://www.artesmagazine.com/2010/03/griswold-museum%e2%80%99s-krieble-gallery-features-modern-art-of-sewell-sillman/

A

Above: Alex Maclean, Las Vegas, Housing subdivision built out in the desert, from his solo exhibition, ‘Vegas-Venice’  

Alex Maclean's, 'Vegas-Venice' at ERES-Stiftung, Munich, Germany

  Having traveled through much of the United States and parts of Europe, Maclean documents the changing landscape with stunning aerial images, traversing historical, as well as physical boundaries. He has earned a reputation by perceptively documenting the changing nature of the landscapes below him—from agricultural rows to city grids. The images he gathers serve as symbols for a larger matrix of ideas. On a superficial level, Maclean’s photos are spell-binding studies in geometric shapes and patterns. They might be initially dismissed as studies in form over context. But the power of the image and a more detailed analysis of his subjects draws the viewer back to read, inquire, and interpret the altered landscape more carefully. Only then does the viewer encounter the leit motif of Maclean’s work: the impact of the hand of man on his three-dimensional surroundings over the course of a fourth dimension, time.  

Alex Maclean, 'Vegas-Venice', Dense island settlement inside the lagoon is connected to the mainland by causeways

  Using the sun to cast light and shadow, Maclean captures the changes brought about by both human intervention and natural events, far below him. While hovering over a site in his fuel efficient Flight Design CT light sport aircraft, Maclean says his methodology is actually circular, rather than a linear approach to history. “My strategy with a subject is to rotate around it, while taking in the regional and cultural context. I then shoot at four different angles—vertical, oblique, horizontal and bird’s eye view,” says Maclean. “Different angles and shifting lighting can produce very different results when shooting the same subject, exposing years of stories.”  

It is human nature to take a chance; the American dream was built on it. Today, under the ominous cloud of global economic crisis and a wide range of environmental disasters, the dream seems more a mirage, not only in the U.S., but in every corner of the world. Maclean asks us to consider whether las Vegas and Venice, cities built by serendipity in unlikely and hospitable environments, (and staking their reputations on the game of chance), are destined to collapse in much the same way?  

Alex Maclean, 'Vegas-Venice', Las Vegas, single-use residential subdivision block devoid of any urban amenities

 The oldest casino in the world was established in Venice, the city of masks. Casinos once served as centers of gambling, dance, and decadence–a perpetual carnivale, as it were, where aristocrats and merchant classes alike were known to mingle. A similar portrait can now be painted of America’s, Las Vegas, the city of sin. Removed from reality, whether by desert or lagoon, both Venice and Vegas are suffering the consequences of excess and neglect of precious resources. Climate change is causing sea levels to rise world-wide, while Venice, sitting for centuries on its crumbling sub-structure of ancient foundations and pilings, is slowly sagging into the Adriatic Sea. Preservationists are taking measures to preserve the protective wetlands that surround the city, as well as to conserve some of the most beautiful art and architecture in the world. Vegas’ lights, too, are dimming, as real estate markets go bust and excessive water use to irrigate golf courses and maintain green lawns in a desert climate, is literally drying up the most precious of the city’s resources.  

File photo of debris at an abandoned Las Vegas construction site after economic down-turn

After photographing Las Vegas and Venice from the air, Maclean discovered in his studio that he had difficulty sorting the photos, noting that, “there were some images where even I had difficulty distinguishing which city was which. I started to see how the cities were coming undone. Side-by-side, I saw ‘waves’ of water and sand, serpentine canals and paved roadways, all emerging from fragmented lands. How can two such distant landscapes and cultures seem practically identical? I love land and am witnessing how history makes things valuable; how places are becoming memories; how we’ve become environmental refugees seeking shelter. I can’t walk away without taking a chance and hoping that what I do matters.”  

Maclean’s solo exhibit, Vegas-Venice, set to open at ERES-Stiftung in Munich, Germany, on September 7th, 2010, is an exploration of two very distinct landscapes in distress, the similar patterns that emerge, and how time changes our perception of what truly exists.  ERES-Stiftung is a non-profit organization that encourages a collaboration of the arts and sciences to better understand and communicate in an increasingly complex world. Rather than simply asking questions, ERES-Stiftung emboldens society to be part of the solution. www.eres-stiftung.de  

by Michelina Docimo, CSBA, Contributing Writer  

Michelina Docimo is a certified sustainable building advisor and writer. Her focus is on sustainable or “green” architecture, landscape, design, and the representation of nature in art. Her writings have appeared in ARTES Magazine, CT Green Scene, D’Art International, and other industry publications.  

Visit her blog http://michelinadocimo.com/myartobiography  

Over the past 33 years, Alex Maclean has exhibited his work in galleries all over the United States, as well as Canada, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. He has been the recipient of: the CORINE International Book Award: For OVER: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point, 2009; Boston Society of Landscape Architects: Award of Excellence, 2006; American Academy in Rome: Awarded the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture for 2003-2004; The American Institute of Architects: Citation for Excellence awarded to “Taking Measures Across the American Landscape,” 1997; The American Society of Landscape Architects: Honor Award in Communications bestowed upon “Taking Measures Across the American Landscape,” 1997; National Endowment for the Arts: Design Grant, 1990-1992; among a host of other honors. Some of his public collectors include: Banque Nationale de Paris, Centre Pompidou, DeCordova Museum, Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and J.P. Morgan.  

Alex Maclean  

www.alexmaclean.com

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt (circ.1910)

This is a tale of two historic homes in a beautiful seaside, New England town, and of how visionary zeal and coincidence braided history, friendship and a passion for things beautiful together in a most unusual way…

On May 1, 1915 Alfred Vanderbilt boarded the Lusitania bound for Liverpool as a first class passenger. It was a business trip, and he traveled with only his valet, leaving his family at home in New York. On May 7th, off the coast of County Cork, Ireland, the German submarine, U-20, torpedoed the ship, triggering a secondary explosion, sinking the giant ocean liner within eighteen minutes. Vanderbilt and his valet, Ronald Denyer, helped others into lifeboats, and then Vanderbilt gave his own lifejacket to save a female passenger, even tying it onto her himself, since she was holding an infant child in her arms. His selfless actions cost him, and those of 1197 other passengers, their lives. Fine Arts Magazine

WW I recruiting poster, following the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania, which killed Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt’s fate was ironic, as three years earlier he had made a last minute decision not to return to the United States…on the Titanic.

Thus, ended the life and colorful saga of one of America’s wealthiest men. He was of a generation of Americans who rose attained power and prestige, born of family legacy. The privileged class at the end of the 19th century had made their money in industry: steel, oil, railroads and manufacturing. And many of these families fled the crush of New York City for the fresh ocean breezes and genteel lifestyle of in Newport, Rhode Island. There, they planned and constructed great stone, seaside fin-de-siècle ‘cottages’; elaborate and massive homes in the classical European style, still standing today, emblematic of an era in American history, sometimes called the Gilded Age.

Vanderbilt Hall, Newport, RI, built be Vanderbilt for his mistress in 1909

In 1909, when Alfred Vanderbilt was still very much part of the Newport scene, with his family’s homes, The Breakers and Marble House, on prominent bluffs overlooking the Atlantic, fate dramatically altered the course of his life. A chance encounter in Central Park with a beautiful woman would provide Newport with an architectural treasure, standing today in a restored setting—the vision of yet another wealthy businessman—this time in 21st century style. Vanderbilt Hall, in the heart of Newport, was originally erected by Alfred for Agnes O’Brien Ruiz, wife of the Cuban attaché, who became his mistress after one day managing to bring her unruly horse under control in the city’s park. This fervent affair drew the wrath and indignation of the Vanderbilt family and it soon came to an end. Tragically, Ruiz was disowned by her husband and committed suicide a few years later.

Over the decades, Vanderbilt Hall has found many uses, principally as a hotel. But time and neglect took their toll on the building and much of its inherent charm was lost to expedience. Then, in 2007, the property was purchased by Peter de Savary, an English businessman with global property holdings and a vision for what Vanderbilt Hall might once again become.

Vernon Court, Newport, RI, home of the National Museum of American Illustration

Just as the Alfred Vanderbilt saga played out, another wealthy individual had taken up residence at nearby, Vernon Court, on prestigious Bellevue Avenue. Constructed in 1898 by architects, Carrère and Hastings (NY Public Library, U.S. House and Senate Office Building, Flagler Museum, Frick Museum), in the style of an 18th century French country chateau, Vernon Court served as a summer cottage for the young widow of wealthy businessman, Richard A. Gambrill. Surrounded by beautiful gardens, inspired by those of Henry VIII for his ill-fated queen, Anne Boleyn, and adjacent to Stoneacre, a park conceived by Frederick Law Olmstead (New York’s Central Park, Boston’s ‘Emerald Necklace’), it was a showpiece in many ways. It remained occupied by descendants of the family until 1956 and filled many uses over the decades since, until purchased in 1998 by Laurence and Judy Cutler, founders of the National Museum of American Illustration (NMAI).

It is here that the story of two historic properties and the divergent objectives of their two owners intersect.

Englishman, Peter de Savary is known internationally as a businessman, luxury hospitality property developer and a 1983 America’s Cup competitor for Britain. He is also an avid art collector. Various homes throughout the world house hundreds of his period works from Old Masters to the Romantic Era. It was not until he decided to undertake the renovation of the then-closed Vanderbilt Hall property in 2008 that he contacted New York City art dealer and 20th century American illustration art expert, Judy Cutler. They had met before, in 1998, when the Cutler’s purchased the property that was to become their museum from its current owner, Peter de Savary, befriending one another in the course of the transaction. Her art gallery was, as they had discovered, directly across the street from de Savary’s New York City apartment!

Vanderbilt Hall, now a luxury masion hotel and spa, owned by Peter de Savary

De Savary’s vision for Vanderbilt Hall, which he was then converting into an exclusive, membership-based resort hotel, was to capture a certain feel—of optimism and good times, of hope and a sense of home. With just 33 suites, it would make a glittering statement about a time long-past, when Newport thrived as a destination for the rich and very rich, and America enjoyed a period of prosperity. The ‘Roaring ‘20s’ were called the Jazz Age, the Age of Intolerance, and the Age of Wonderful Nonsense. But, under any moniker, the era embodied the beginning of modern America. Numerous Americans felt buoyed up following World War I (1914-18). The period of a deadly worldwide influenza epidemic (1918) had also abated. The new decade would be a time of change for everyone —only to be brought to an abrupt end by the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great depression that followed.

But, the spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of optimism associated with modernity—and a break with tradition. Everything seemed possible through modern technology. New inventions, especially automobiles, moving pictures and radio, proliferated, bringing ‘modern times’ to a many Americans. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality in daily life and architecture. At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity, in reaction to the mood that gripped the country during the ‘war to end all wars’. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, captured the tenor of the times best when he wrote:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning– So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” - The Great Gatsby, Ch. 9

Howard Chandler Christy, Stephen Foster Composing, ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’, originally painted as a 3-part panel.

Peter de Savary wanted to capture Fitzgerald’s mood of unbridled optimism when it came time to install art at Vanderbilt Hall. For this, he contacted Judy Cutler to learn more about how early 20th century illustration art might help set that very mood. Collabortating as a team, each room, from the 24-karat gold leaf dining room, to the area surrounding the many restored, working fireplaces, to the most intimate corner of the property, was hung with authentic, rare and strikingly dramatic examples of illustration art for a period-appropriate touch of elegance.

John Lagatta, The Bather (circ. 1935)

The artistic centerpiece near the lobby is a three-panel screen, by Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952), now hung like a painting. It is densely embellished, in a modern variation of Rococo styling, titled, Stephen Foster Composing, ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair’. In it, the alluring young woman of the song’s title languishes on a sofa, gazing directly at the viewer, while among the many naked figures, Christy’s mistress dances on the far left. It is spicy and suggestive—much less saccharine than hasty perusal would suggest. Vanderbilt Hall is filled to overflowing with brilliantly-colored, familiar works like this and those by other noted illustration artists, including Pruett Carter, William Soare, Earl Steffa Moran, Julian De Miskey, Earl Bergey and Elbert McGran Jackson. If these artists’ names are unfamiliar to aficionados, it should be noted that they worked largely for the booming magazine and advertising trades in the 1920s and’30s. Their images graced the covers of such cultural icons as Vogue, Colliers, The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, American Weekly Magazine and the New York Herald Tribune Sunday Supplement. Deliberately evocative and sexually suggestive in ways that would never do today, these skillfully-executed works conjure a time that we would like to believe was simpler and social issues were more easily navigated.

Rico Tomaso, Center of Attention (1934)

By far, my favorite pieces in the Vanderbilt Hall Collection include one hung in the breakfast café by John Lagatta entitled, Bather (circ. 1935). For anyone who has not viewed illustration art ‘up close and personal’, the lessons that this painting teach are important. First, the technical merits of the work, including pronounced and skillful brushwork, image composition and color layering that would be the envy of any artist; the sentimental theme, while contrived, conveys a specific, unstated tension between the two figures and a charming period-specific flavor that gains in aesthetic appeal over time; and lastly, the use of light to dramatize the interaction and heighten the illusion of depth and surface planes with merely a few well-chosen brush strokes are just short of masterful.

Another favorite hangs in the dining room and it just might be everyone’s favorite work. It is a sultry portrait of a 20’s socialite, by Rico Tomaso, titled, Center of Attention. She sits on a bar stool, surrounded by men, draped in silk and gazing over her shoulder at something or someone of interest in the distance. Seductive, childlike, sophisticated, bored, calculating, manipulative, naive, unnaturally beautiful are all terms that come to mind, simultaneously, when considering this painting. A 20’s version of Paris Hilton, this mystery woman is clearly in command of the scene. Tomaso’s subtle portrayal of this inscrutable, physically-appealing individual, who sits idly by, as the men surround her competing for attention, is all captured in this small, but elegant painting.

The works were, of course, all purchased by Peter de Savary from Judy Cutler’s, American Illustrators Gallery, in New York City . For anyone interested in an expanded, dramatically-more comprehensive tour of illustration art, the Cutler’s, National Museum of American Illustration, is a short distance away at Vernon Court.

Charles Dana Gibson, The Market Basket (circ. 1900)

A suitably elegant setting, the mansion currently houses the museum’s extensive collection of American illustration; the Gilded Age in architecture is contemporaneous with the “Golden Age of American Illustration”, and is a theme on which the collection focuses. Over a period of more than forty years, the Cutler’s collection has grown to become remarkably comprehensive. Anchoring the collection are some of the iconic drawings of Charles Dana Gibson (the Gibson Girls), paintings by Howard Pyle, the father of illustration art, his students, Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth and J.C. Leyendecker , who in turn influenced many others, like Norman Rockwell. The NMAI has the second largest collection of Norman Rockwell paintings, next to the Rockwell Museum, itself, in Stockbridge, MA.

The museum also includes the work of J.M. Flagg, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Frederick Remington, to name a few. Hung in abundance throughout elegantly-appointed rooms in the house, the exhibition presents more like a salon than museum. Personal touches and period furnishings add to the visual appeal of the works, contextualizing them for the viewer.

Panels from Maxwell Parrish's, A Florentine Fete (1911), hung in the Rose Garden Loggia at National Museum of American Illustration

For any that would argue illustration art is not ‘serious’, consider first the technical merits of the work and the fact that many artist, adopting this genre did so because of a lucrative publishing market, that sought out competent image-makers to support their editorial content and offer visual appeal at the newsstand. Director, Judy Cutler points out that, “At that time, if you were paid in advance to complete a work of art on a specific theme, then you were not considered a serious artist.” Consider that many illustrators trained with well-known artists of the early 20th century and that some, like Rockwell and Flagg, during their long careers and on their own initiative, tackled profoundly important patriotic and politically-charged issues as subject matter for their paintings (Artist, James Montgomery Flagg, himself, was the model for Uncle Sam in the iconic, ‘I want YOU! poster).

Maxfield Parrish, A Florentine Fete (1911), detail

Commenting on her own extensive collection of illustration art, celebrity, Whoopi Goldberg, describes the strong emotion and magic associated with finding well-crafted illustration plates of her childhood books. She points out that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel was, in its day, illustration art! It should also be noted that early 19th century painter, John Trumbull, was intent on documenting key events in the American Revolution, before they were lost to collective memory. His brush was his camera of the day. Winslow Homer began his career as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly. George Lucas, director and master story-teller on film, defines illustration art as, “Cultural artifacts infused with a sensibility of time.” For Lawrence Cutler, this means that, “illustration art carries with it a sense of history; either defining who we are through mass-produced images, or reflecting our identity as discovered through the artist’s eye.”

Norman Rockwell, Miss Liberty, Saturday Evening Post cover, July 1, 1943

A breathtaking series of large panels by Maxfield Parrish, hung in the Rose Garden Loggia and the stairwell leading up to the second floor, is an astounding representation of the early Art Deco style, epitomized by Parrish. Once adorning the 175’-long cafeteria walls at Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia (publisher of Ladies Home Journal), this commissioned series, entitled, A Florentine Fete (1911) was acquired by Judy Cutler when the business closed several years ago. Theatrical and romantic in their conception, each panel radiates with individual motifs and implied dramatic ‘moment’. Yet each is infused with the rich glowing color and subtle inflection of gesture or intent. One less obvious theme linking the works is the repeated appearance of Parrish’s companion, Susan Lewin. These panels, once part of a work-a-day office building setting, are well served in the naturally-lit loggia, garden views outside every window.

Norman Rockwell’s, Miss Liberty is another favorite, not to be missed. The central figure, preoccupied with her heavy burden, seems poised to bustle directly off the canvas. She represents America herself, carrying symbols of many of careers that women in the 1940’s were prohibited from. Rockwell captured a seminal historical moment as doors were being opened to women in the competitive market place, previously denied them. With humor, dynamic action and rich symbolism, he thus educates the viewer on an important issue in our collective history, without uttering a syllable.

Vanderbilt Hall and Vernon Court are symbols of a common history that define what Newport, Rhode Island once was. Both homes embodied the hopes and dreams of a people and era, long-past. Henry James once bitterly remarked that the Newport ‘cottages’ should stand there always, reminders “of the peculiarly awkward vengeances of affronted proportion and discretion.” But James could not imagine the dreams of a new generation and the re-purposing of these splendid spaces as havens of enlightenment and rejuvenation.

Thanks to people like Peter de Savary, and Judy and Lawrence Cutler and their exceptional efforts, Newport Lives!

by Richard Friswell, Executive Editor

Please post your secure comments in the section below. We welcome your feedback.

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Visit Vanderbilt Hall at www.vanderbilthall.com

See the collection of illustration art and scenes of Vernon Court at www.americanillustration.org

Detail, The Green House, Santa Barbara, CA (1983)

  What’s going on?   

The dismaying dearth of intellectual rigor in our popular culture has been parried with an overly- zealous esotericism among the architectural elite. This clique of influential architects has been given a much louder voice by their precocious benefactors than befits their numbers and yet their stamp upon the contemporary architectural landscape has been profound.Fine Arts Magazine   

The last McDonald’s restaurant in classic 1950s style, San Jose, CA. A Stanley Meston design

 Just as our built environment is littered with construction that is bane and banal, the contemporary detritus is a plethora of factious forms that have been generated by sophisticated software and technological zeitgeist. These visually enticing, yet vacuous assemblies, have appeared in great numbers on the choicest of urban and rural site, as if they’ve come to existence in a vacuum, with wanton neglect of their context and past architectural achievements. The brazen new work seems to have rendered the architectural old-guard meek and humiliated by the new, brash neighbor who’s just made its grand entrance to the scene. After the initial fanfare, these awkward juxtapositions serve only to disrupt the architectural continuity and further diminish the cultural fabric.   

Has the architectural universe been distilled to a choice between another fractured Frank Gehry, or a Kentucky Fried drive-through? Probably, the answer is yes, but if there is a way to be modern, smart, sincere, and beautiful, and to offer the promise of contemporary architecture deemed worthy by future generations, it’s worth some observation and introspection to understand how we can improve the current state of affairs.   

Justification for the current paradigm:

With sheer determination that mistakes wealth for truth, and truth for beauty, the collective sense of being modern purveyed by certain acolytes coupled with the desire to being ‘different’ has ambushed our ability to distinguish between good and that which is simply unique. When Modernism embraced the machine and its physical manifestation, represented by the Bauhaus School of design, how neatly did the philosophy fit with the need to re-build Europe after the destruction wreaked upon the continent during the First World War? The economic advantage of being modern begs the question as to what is serving whom? Did the style follow economic necessity or was it just a happy coincidence that a financially friendly form just so happened to fall upon the architectural scene when society could no longer afford to build the way it used to before the Great Wars? Form follows finance?   

(above) Jackson Heights: Queens, NY- a laboratory for new ideas in 20^th C. housing. This planned community introduced several modern planning ideas in 1920’s. ‘Towers’ designed by A. J. Thomas (1925), illustrate ‘Garden Apartment ‘ planning- open space and suburban amenities – within confines of city’s grid.   

What was left behind and lost was not only the tradition of a tightly-woven architectural fabric but, almost entirely rendered to the waste heap of knowledge was the language of western architecture, developed and refined over the past 2,500 years. Perhaps the formal architectural predilection that we understand to be modernism evolved to suit manufacturing methodology and then continued to develop to the present day where even more sophisticated machines not only build the physical components and assemble the project, but then these machines are again employed to actually create the design itself.   

Even if there were a place for the language of architecture as we once knew it, how would we know it if we saw it anymore? Willful negligence and inexcusable ignorance regarding reference, context and a lack of reverence for appropriate precedent has resulted in the jettisoning of architectural and cultural context—so essential to the success of any architectural response. Have we lost for an eternity the architectural landscape that embodies those cohesive qualities of a built environment that were once taken for granted but are today only packaged and preserved in precious “historic districts”? Or is it possible to be both modern and reverential at the same time?   

Justification for trying something else:

This image and those below: Details of the Green House (1983)

 Not only is historical and cultural reference a valid, honorable, and completely modern point of departure for the design of a new building, but only an edifice that is fundamentally relevant can be considered truly modern; because its very nature embraces qualities that pay attention to its context, heritage, materials, culture, and its essential nature to be a product of the current time.   

The understanding of purpose and place and the difference between here and there are primary factors that warrant a project to be deserving of construction relative to one that is better left on the computer monitor because it didn’t know any better. Is there any reason that “Stupid” should be substituted for being “Smart” just because it’s been purveyed and then consumed as being “cool”?   

What I did:

The Green House, a single-family, three-bedroom house in Santa Barbara, California, is a construction that was commissioned by my mother, Norma Green, in 1981 and completed in 1983. As a Promethean effort for a newly-minted architect, this project provided the post-thesis culmination of idea, idiom, and execution. This writing is an investigation of concepts that are timeless and a retrospective of a specific architectural response that intends to be modern even though the last brush stroke of paint was applied nearly twenty-seven years ago.   

The design inspiration point of departure for the Green House arose from the Southern Californian Mission Style of architecture and surrounding Mediterranean landscape. The goal was to deliver an innovative, yet historically-informed design, into the ongoing diatribe of current taste and classical virtue; thereby making it essentially ‘modern’.   

The dissection begins with its composition. Modern convention insists on the arrangement of pure geometric volumes, planar screens and linear exclamations, celebrated to the exclusion of ornamentation, which would otherwise distract from the purity of sheer form. The assembly of these elements is both additive and reductive, creating a variety of dynamic forms that are perceived by mass and void and by the changing play of light and shadow.   

One experiences this architectural object through time and space and an unfolding view that cannot be fully digested in one sighting, but only fully appreciated by collecting immediate visual perceptions and combining them with a collection of previously digested memories of the edifice, giving power and life to this form. Inspired by spatial ‘surprises when touring through an Italian hill town, sightlines are designed to be abbreviated, changing, and without repose. Vistas open up to the viewer as the culmination of a lengthy approach. The banal and anticipated are vanquished in favor of the unexpected and varied, enjoining the relationship between landscape and serendipity.   

The courtyard, with its galvanizing point-of-focus, provided by the single palm tree, finds its precedent with the atrium house of the Vettii in Pompei. While the steep hills of Sycamore Canyon have been employed as a substitute for the “fourth wall” of the atrium space, the quality of this private/public outdoor vestibule remains true to the function of its predecessor. Openings to the house and garage are screened or framed according to the desired visual access deemed appropriate for these specific functions.   

The interior of the house seeks to provide a seamless play of the same compressed and expansive volumes that are experienced outside, only with a ceiling involved. Saltillo tile, a commonly found mission-style paver, is used at the exterior and then carried into the house as finished flooring so as to further interfere with standard conceptions of outdoor and indoor spaces. White stucco walls… monolithic, common, and ordinary to the region further support the sense of place and yet are the binding surfaces that transform the geometry of the structure to a uniform and cohesive composition.   

Could this house exist anywhere other than in Southern California? Perhaps so, but I would like to think not nearly as successfully. Can its design be traced to a specific date in time? I would hope that it could because only the honesty of a detailed design response that is acutely aware of its specific time and place of creation warrants the brand of being modern. It is also true that only the qualities of the design that are steeped in the context and tradition of this specific project will spare the house from appearing as dated. That fate would be a failed miscarriage of conception that places a preconceived form ahead of its influences, instead of the design of an architecture that gathers its strength and integrity out of respect for discovering the truth, without fear of finding it and with confidence that the journey will end with a design that is beautiful and consummately modern.   

William Green, RA, Contributing Writer   

To see more images of this project and others by William Green & Associates, Architects, go to www.wgaarchitects.net

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“Sustainability is a topic of our time,” Sophia Gevas, SHU’s gallery director, says with conviction. “We can no longer ignore the environmental challenges our world is facing. These problems are real and there are real solutions that are both beautiful and quantifiably which can make a difference in our quality of life.”  

above: Exterior Facade & Courtyard of the General Theological Seminary, NYC
Architect: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners. Photo Credit: Fed Charles
  

Follies Kinetic Sculpture Design for the Stepping Stones Children's Museum, Norwalk, CTArchitect: Beinfield Architecture PC

 The exhibition contains hand sketches, plans, photos, and video of four architecture and planning firms making strides in sustainability: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners of New York City; Beinfield Architecture of Norwalk, CT; Centerbrook Architects and Planners of Centerbrook, CT and Faesy-Smith Architects of Wilton, CT. The selected projects encompass all types of architecture styles and uses–from living space, to educational, worship, and recreational projects. The common thread is brilliant sustainability.  

“Architects are most proud of their finished works, but I wanted to include their hand drawings to show how an idea is born and fleshed out. Everyday we see, live in, and walk through the finished product. The thinking that goes on behind the design is just as impressive,” says Gevas. “When we have a group of local school children come in, view the works, and participate in an analysis, it is important to help them understand where to start – with an idea. Something connects with the brain-to-hand-to-paper movement that can lead to brilliance.”  

The hand sketches show site analysis, sun angle studies, an inventory of deciduous and evergreen trees, slope of the land, and locations of bodies of water. Sustainable design is a discovery process that engages the architect to think about resources that already exist on the site, how the space is used, and imagine solutions that are resourceful, functional, and beautiful.  

Fountain, Exterior Courtyard, Lock Building, Beinfield Architects. photo: R. Benson

 Beinfield Architecture PC, for example, has designed three kinetically-moving, musical sculptures for the proposed renovations of the Stepping Stones Children’s Museum in Norwalk, CT. Elements of sun, water, and wind energies are illustrated through whimsical sight and delightful sound, teaching children how these natural resources are harnessed and converted into power, where society can live more harmoniously with nature in a built environment. The Stepping Stones project is scheduled to be completed in December 2010 and attain LEED Gold status.  

Exterior Courtyard of the Lock Building, Norwalk, CT Architect: Beinfield Architecture PC. Photo Credit: Robert Benson

 Before U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) program existed and became the organizational protocol system of qualifying sustainability standards, there were movements by architects and designers to design with the environment in mind. Another of Beinfield’s projects, the Lock Building of South Norwalk (an historic lock factory constructed in 1856) was condemned and destined to be replaced with a parking garage. Built in response to the industrial revolution, then abandoned after the lock factory closed its doors, it was then converted into studio spaces and inhabited by local artists. As artists moved in, so did chic cafés and boutiques. But, the building remained in derelict conditions, an eyesore within sight of profitable, waterfront development. Saved from the wrecking ball by public action the building was later purchased by a private buyer. The Beinfield architectural group was then contracted to redesign the existing building. Lofts were converted into office spaces, but the original brick walls and some of the original factory furnaces and other equipment were restored in place to become sculptural forms that enhanced the assigned conference room areas. Beinfield used existing copper pipes and smokestacks to create water fountains in the exterior courtyard.  

“Artists are pioneers in neighborhoods needing attention,” says Bruce Beinfield. “Real estate developers often follow artists’ migratory paths to scout areas for their risky business ventures. The Lock Building is an example of this. As technology evolves, it alters the way we can live and use space and, in turn, changes the appearance of the New England industrial cityscape.” Over the course of its history, this building has had three distinctive uses. New materials and technology allows us to re-purpose older spaces to accommodate changing lifestyles and activities within a space.  

Technological innovation is also critical in the search for new ways to create energy. Both Beyer Blinder Belle and Faesy-Smith Architects exhibit projects in which innovative technologies were employed to analyze the application of geothermal and solar energy, resulting in smaller carbon footprints for both urban and residential environments. However, all the architects in the exhibit stress the importance of a super-insulated building envelope to make these technologies more functional and cost effective.  

Beyer Blinder Belle, a firm renowned for its historic preservation of sites like the Empire State Building, the Beacon Theater, and Grand Central Station, emphasizes both sustainability and aesthetics as the core of their mission to curate the restoration of iconic buildings of important social value. Architect, Maxwell Pau, explains the specific issue of historical preservation in retrofitting existing buildings to be more energy efficient: “Every project’s focus it to provide people with an environment of beauty and comfort, of contemporary relevance and timeless endurance. We look first at a building’s current condition and uses. Then we think, how can we make this better, not only for the singular structure and its occupants, but for society as a whole and for those that will use the existing building long after we are not here.”  

Exterior of Historical Wilton Home, Wilton, CT. Architect: Faesy-Smith. photo:Pam Ronleau

 One of Beyer Blinder Belle’s projects on exhibit, the General Theological Seminary, in Chelsea, NY, is a 260,000 square foot building that spans an entire city block. A new geothermal heating and cooling system will reduce the building’s carbon emissions by more than 14,000 tons. The 850-ton geothermal system is one of the largest geothermal projects in the Northeast. Three years of engineering studies were necessary in determining optimal well locations and system size. Immediate energy solutions included improving the insulation factor and integrity of the gothic windows.  

Paper Airplane Metal Awning for Shade, Centerbrook Studio,Architect: Centerbrook Architects & Planners. photo: Jeff Goldberg

 Faesy-Smith Architects took a similar approach when retrofitting historical homes on a smaller scale. Projects on display include the Weston Historical Society’s Archival and Exhibition Space, a private residence in a historical Wilton neighborhood, and a new house construction in Southern Vermont located in a historical neighborhood. “The median house age is 35 years, built in the early 1970s before energy codes. This leaves tremendous opportunity to bring the existing housing stock to higher standards,” says architect, Thomas Smith. “Just as agencies monitor conservation of wetlands and other native forests, energy conservation can be enforced without compromising unique design.”  

Michel Pariseau of Centerbrook Architects and Planners believes that the most sustainable action we can take is to build a structure that will last. “Of course, we should use technology in our designs, but even the most technical solutions won’t endure human indifference.” Centerbrook designed the Wolf Law School of the University of Colorado, Boulder, in an “L” form. Constructed of local sandstone and limestone façade with a red terracotta roof, the building’s long, narrow form take advantage of Colorado’s sunny days for light and warmth. Simply by orientation, daylighting, and window placement, Centerbrook was able to reduce heating and electricity needs by 40%. “The shape, not technology, was involved in making this building sustainable and comfortable.”  

Energy efficiency, material selection, community interaction, and aesthetic relevance are a few factors taken into consideration when creating sustainable spaces. “The complexity of being green requires a collaborative approach,” says Gevas. There is more than one right answer when aesthetics come into play. The Art of Sustainable Architecture is an introduction to sustainable imagination, the possibilities that exist in facing and responding to some of the most difficult issues of our times.  

by: Michelina Docimo, Contributing Writer  

The Art of Sustainable Architecture runs through March 4, 2010.  

Sacred Heart University: The Gallery of Contemporary Art, 5151 Park Avenue, Fairfield, CT 06825  

Gallery Hours: Monday – Thursday, 12 – 5 pm & Sunday, 12 – 4 pm, Telephone: (203) 365-7650  

http://artgallery.sacredheart.edu  

Beyer Blinder Belle, 41 East 11th Street, New York, NY 10003, Telephone: (212) 777-7800  

www.beyerblinderbelle.com  

Beinfield Architecture PC, 1 Marshall Street, Norwalk, CT 06854, Telephone: (203) 838-5789  

www.beinfield.com  

Centerbrook Architects and Planners, 67 Main Street, Centerbrook, CT 06409, Telephone: (860) 767-0175  

www.centerbrook.com  

Faesy-Smith Architects, 523 Danbury Road, Wilton, CT 06897, Telephone: (203) 834-2724  

www.faesy-smith.com