The 'Z'-Chair, a Zaha Hadid design, on view at PMA

On view through spring, 2012, the Philadelphia Museum of Art features a unique exhibition, Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion. This show includes furniture and design objects in a space entirely transformed by the prominent female architect. The fluid, site-specific installation is the first of its kind in the United States, assembled by a team of designers from Hadid Architects. The show reflects Hadid’s seamless work methods, as well as her technological breakthroughs in architecture and design. artes fine arts magazine

Hadid's Opera House, Guangzhou, China (2010)

Born in Bagdad, Iraq, Hadid is known worldwide for her visionary architecture. She is responsible for many breakthroughs in her field, and is the first woman recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She is the founder of London-based Zaha Hadid Architects, and has numerous projects completed around the world, most recently including MAXXI: National Museum of XXI Century in Rome (2009), Guangzhaou Opera House in China (2010), and Olympic Aquatics Centre in London (2011). She is now based in London and works internationally in the fields of urbanism, architecture and design.

Mesa Tables, Design by Zaha Hadid

The museum gallery housing the exhibition, in the Perelman building, is completely transformed. The installation greets the viewer with sleek, attention-grabbing furniture and functional objects, such as the Z-Chair, Vortexx Chandeliers and the Mesa Table. To the left, there is a rippling wall—a temporary structure built on site. This undulating form also serves as a shelving unit for Hadid-designed objects, including limited-edition footwear, jewelry and silverware. The silver lines painted on the floor echo the shadows made by the furniture, creating a seamless visual composition.

Lighting plays an important role in this exhibition. The metallic chairs and tables reflect the natural light casted from the window, evolving and morphing as they are viewed from different angle. The functional objects on the shelving unit, including Flatware, Crevasse Vases and other items seem to flash from the light cast through a small opening in the shelves. The Vortexx Chandeliers, continuously changing hues with the use of high-intensity, light emitting diodes LED, cast an ephemeral glow on the surrounding objects and walls.

Flatware, by Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid makes it a goal to integrate her designs to their environment. In this exhibition silver lines painted on the floor fuse the shadows to the objects, at times creating a 3-dimensional effect. The fluidity in her work stems from her creative process. According to curator Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, Hadid works on her designs simultaneously, having several computer screens open at a time with various objects and architectural images, resulting the work that is interrelated and flowing. Design similarities can be seen throughout both her architectural and object designs.

Most objects in the exhibition are made from steel, aluminum, and polyurethane, apart from the sofa, which is upholstered with metallic fabric. Despite the hard materials, the objects are surprisingly organic. They walk the line between fine art and product design, and are often viewed as functional sculptures. Hadid sells her objects as both art and useable products.

Hadid's Z-Car I, a Hydrogen-powered, 3-wheel prototype

Some of the highlights of this exhibition are the mini-sculptural jewelry pieces—Celeste Necklace and Cuff and Glace Collection Jewelry—which are both made with Swarowski Crystals. Like most of the objects in the show, the unusual jewelry shapes elevate them beyond mere utility, to become works of art. Another unexpected design offering by Hadid, is the hydrogen-powered, three-wheel vehicle, Z-Car I prototype. It is presented outside the immediate gallery area, gracing the hallway of the Perelman building with its aerodynamically sleek, quirky presence. As if to leave no part of our lives unattended to, the exhibit also features futuristic Hadid footwear designs, produced in conjunction with clothing brand Lacoste.

Not only does this show offer an exclusive look into the future, with spectacular Hadid designs, the museum also honored the architect with a Design of Excellence Award on November 19, 2011. Collab, a volunteer committee specializing in design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be presenting this award to Hadid, with her multi-faceted contributions in the fields of design, architecture and urbanism. The architect used the award event as an opportunity to share her views on design with the audience.

By Ekaterina Popova, Contributing Writer

Visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art at: www.philamuseum.org

See more of Zaha Hadid’s design concepts at: www.zaha-hadid.com

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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.

Qianlong Garden Complex, photo: Dennis Helmar, courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

In 1644, just 24 years after the English Pilgrims arrived on what is today the Massachusetts coast of the United States, the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) was overthrown by the Manchu, a people from the north who were not Han Chinese. The subsequent establishment of the Qing (pronounced “ching”) Dynasty (1644-1911) signaled the end of Han rule and the installation of foreign rulers in the imperial palace complex, also known as the ‘Forbidden City,’ in Beijing.

Despite their non-Han origins, however, the Qing produced two of the greatest imperial patrons of art in China’s long history: the Kangxi (pronounced “kang-shee”) and the Qianlong (pronounced “chee’en-long”) emperors, the grandfather and grandson who ruled from 1662 to 1722 and from 1736 to 1799, respectively. fine arts magazine

Qianlong Garden Complex, photo: Dennis Helmar, courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City now offers visitors a unique opportunity to see a selection of artifacts commissioned by the emperor for the Qianlong Garden. This unprecedented loan by the Palace Museum, Beijing, of 90 art objects, furnishings and other elements makes, The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, a landmark event (February 1, 2011 – May 1, 2011). The exhibition was first organized by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, in partnership with the Palace Museum, Beijing, and in cooperation with the World Monuments Fund. Peabody Essex Museum’s links to China can be traced back to the last year of the Qianlong emperor’s life; its progenitor, the East India Marine Society, was founded in 1799.

A contemporary of Louis XV, Frederick the Great, George Washington and Ben Franklin, the Qianlong emperor (1711-1799) was also a devout Buddhist who enjoyed contemplative pursuits; a fervent admirer of the arts who enjoyed literature, writing poetry and practicing calligraphy; and a military leader and conqueror who expanded the Chinese empire to its greatest extent.

In 1771, three-and-a-half decades after he came to the throne, he began designing a compound for his retirement. It included a garden that he intended to be a tranquil retreat, first for himself, and later for subsequent Qing rulers. It was not his first garden, but it is the only one that has survived in its original form. It is this garden that we know today as the Qianlong Garden, and which is the focus of ‘The Emperor’s Private Paradise.’

Qianlong Garden Complex, photo: Dennis Helmar, courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing.

The concept of the garden as a space of contemplation set apart from the world, and which includes buildings as well as elements of nature, the latter often endowed with symbolic meaning, has a long history in China. Thus the Qianlong Garden might include trees, bamboo and other growing things, but it was above all the emperor’s tranquil, private space: a place for reflection; a place for cultivation of the inner self; a retreat; a place for poetry and painting; and a work of art in its own right.

In keeping with Chinese tradition, the Qianlong Garden was designed as a complex of architectural structures and spaces organized on a longitudinal axis and enclosed by a wall.  The buildings were placed either perpendicular or parallel to that axis, and the entire complex covered an area of a little more than two acres. As befitted the art-loving ruler of what was then the world’s most prosperous nation, the utmost care was lavished on both the structures and their furnishings, which were fabricated from the finest materials and which demonstrated the highest quality and craftsmanship.

Screen (one of 16) From Yunguanglou. Zitan, lacquer, jade, gold paint © Palace Museum, Beijing

The emperor, however, never took up residence in the compound he had so carefully designed. Instead, he chose to live the last few years of his life elsewhere in the Forbidden City. The Qing Dynasty came to an end in 1911; in 1925, the Forbidden City became the Palace Museum. Over the years, the roofs and exteriors of the structures in the Qianlong Garden were maintained, but as decades turned into centuries, the building interiors fell into disrepair. Nevertheless, unlike other gardens the emperor had designed, the Qianlong Garden remained intact, escaping both modification and destruction.

In 2001, conservation of one building interior in the Garden began: that of the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service (Juanqinzhai). The work was undertaken as a partnership between the Palace Museum of Beijing and the World Monuments Fund, a New-York based organization that specializes in the preservation of significant cultural sites around the world. Completion of conservation work on the remaining interiors of the Qianlong Garden is anticipated for 2019. Most of the artifacts on display in the “The Emperor’s Private Paradise” exhibition come from nine of the structures in the garden complex and were commissioned by the Qianlong emperor.

Screen (one of 16) From Yunguanglou, Zitan, lacquer, jade, gold paint© Palace Museum, Beijing

The ‘The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City’ occupies the Peabody Essex’s six Special Exhibition galleries. It does not recreate specific rooms or spaces in the Qianlong Garden complex. Instead, each gallery presents a selection of furniture, paintings and other artifacts grouped around a specific theme: “Ruler, Conqueror, Connoisseur,” “Raising Mountains,” “Pursuing Virtue,” “Extending Delight,” “Cultivating Spiritual Harmony,” and “Assuring Longevity.”

Visitors enter the exhibition to find themselves face-to-face with one side of a long sixteen-panel screen decorated with bamboo, plants and flowers rendered in gold on a black ground.  The Qianlong emperor particularly admired the opposite side of the screen, which shows 16 luohan, or disciples of the Buddha known in Sanskrit as arhat.  Their distorted figures are rendered in jade, which contrasts strikingly with the rich black lacquered background. The stark beauty of the screen, which was a special favorite of the emperor, sets the tone for the exhibition, whose meticulously crafted objects are notable for their exceptional quality and magnificent workmanship.

The sixteen-panel screen also serves as a partition around which visitors must move to advance through the gallery. This is a device that is repeated throughout the exhibition, and it hints at the gradual progression and disclosure that are characteristic of a Chinese garden. While providing additional display surfaces for artifacts, the partitions also serve to restrict views, ensuring that a room and its contents are never visible in entirety from a single point. Instead, new views unfold as visitors round the partitions and make their way from one space to the next.

The first gallery introduces both the man who commissioned the Qianlong Garden and the Garden itself. A formal portrait shows the Qianlong emperor dressed in an imperial court robe and seated on a throne. A quote written on a nearby wall – which, like the imperial robe, is painted yellow, a color reserved for the emperor, the empress and the empress dowager – provides a more revealing glimpse into the emperor’s inner self. “Every emperor or king … should have extensive grounds to stroll in and lovely vistas to enjoy. If he has such a place, he will be able to cultivate his mind and refine his emotions.”

Portrait of Qianlong Emperor, Ink and colors on silk, 99 ½ x 59”, Peabody Essex and Milwaukee Art Museums only, © Palace Museum, Beijing

To help visitors understand the layout and the physical appearance of the actual garden in Beijing, a list of the buildings in the garden, a plan, and a bird’s-eye view of the complex appear on a nearby wall. At the far end of the room, a throne is flanked by two tall fans. Behind it is a tall throne surround screen which also functions as a display case; it was originally in the building known as the Belvedere of Viewing Achievements (Fuwangge). Like many of the wooden objects in the exhibition, it is made of zitan, a precious tropical hardwood. Visitors interested in conservation and in the “before and after” appearances of artifacts in the exhibition will want to remember to look at the panel on conservation in the last gallery. There they may view a photograph of the screen as it appeared at the start of conservation.

Visitors are also introduced to an essential feature of Chinese gardens: rocks and rockeries. Given the Chinese garden’s role as a microcosm of nature, rocks were often valued as miniature representations of mountains as well as for their irregular shapes and textures. A lingbi stone, mounted on a pedestal illustrates one way that a rock might be displayed and admired.

Another expression of appreciation of irregular shapes in nature appears in the display of rootwood furniture. The couch bed, footstool, and chair, which come from the Pavilion of the Purification Ceremony (Xishangting) near the southwest corner of the Qianlong Garden, demonstrate how gnarled wood and roots of trees could be shaped into functional objects valued for their natural beauty. In China, the attraction of rustic forms dates back centuries, and rootwood experienced considerable appeal during the Qing Dynasty.

Moving on to the next gallery, visitors encounter in the initial partition a cut-out that brings to mind the openings of various shapes that so often puncture Chinese garden walls. The theme of the gallery is “Pursuing Virtue.” A design of pine, bamboo and plum blossom motifs ornament a zitan throne, a pair of screens and a pair of stands. The three plants, which remain green throughout the winter or bloom in early spring, are known collectively as the Three Friends. This specific grouping of furniture comes from the Three Friends Bower (Sanyouxuan). Situated on the eastern side of the Qianglong Garden, the small structure offered the emperor a contemplative space well suited to the writing of poetry, which was an essential skill for a gentleman-scholar and one of the emperor’s acknowledged interests.

Nearby, a hanging panel from the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service (Juanqinzhai) shows plum blossoms bursting from the branches of an ancient tree. The design is crafted from an array of precious materials, including sandalwood, zitan, jade, lapis lazuli and glass.

A display case in the same gallery contains a brush, a jade brush pot, a jade brush rest and other tools essential to the practice of calligraphy. Valued as an art form, calligraphy represents far more than mere handwriting. Two touch screens allow visitors to trace Chinese characters using a brush and interactive black ink.

Post Conservation Mural, Interior scene from Yucuixuan (detail), Ink and colors on paper, © Palace Museum, Beijing.

In the next gallery of the exhibition, “Extending Delight.” A gilt copper and enamel mechanical clock measuring 30 inches in diameter, with hours indicated by black roman numerals, hangs at the end of the passage. European mechanical clocks were introduced to China in the late sixteenth century and quickly became a source of fascination. The Qianlong emperor was an ardent admirer of new technologies and artistic techniques introduced from other parts of the world, and the objects exhibited in this fourth gallery reflect this passion. They testify not only to the ability of Chinese artists to master new techniques and methods, but also to marry them to Chinese tradition.

Also of interest is the emperor’s fondness for mirrors and illusions. A table screen from the Building for Enjoying Lush Scenery (Cuishanglou) features a reverse-glass painting incorporating a technique known as verre églomisé, which produces a mirror effect. The painting is mounted Chinese-style in a wooden screen and shows a European couple in a landscape, a subject matter familiar to eighteenth-century European rococo art. The piece was probably given to the emperor by an official in Guangzhou. The port of Guangzhou, which Westerners generally knew as Canton, was the center of Western trade with China prior to the 1840s.

Hanging panel with niches, From Cuishanglou, Zitan, painted and gilt clay, colors on silk, 65 ½ x 36 ½ x 1 ½”, © Palace Museum, Beijing

Also on view is a large, rare mural from the Bower of Purest Jade (Yucuixuan).  Executed in ink and colors on paper by a number of artists, including Yao Wenhan, a favorite painter of the Qianlong emperor, it depicts a room with women and a handful of lively children at the New Year. In rendering the altar table, wall, partitions, floor and ceiling of the room, the artists made skillful use of such techniques as Western perspective and trompe-l’œil. On the wall beyond the altar table and on the partitions and door panels, they painted and signed Chinese-style landscapes, creating, in effect, paintings within a painting. Once again, a single work demonstrates both familiarity with traditional Chinese subject matter and facility with Chinese and Western techniques.

An informative video shows some of the artifacts, including the mural, undergoing conservation in Beijing.

Not all of the foreign techniques that the emperor admired were of Western origin. A pair of black lacquered wooden cabinets, which like the mural come from the Bower of Purest Jade (Yucuixuan), are ornamented with gilding in a technique associated with Japan.

“Cultivating Spiritual Harmony,” focuses on artifacts related to the Qianlong emperor’s devout practice of a form of Tibetan Buddhism. On the initial partition is a shrine in the form of a rare hanging panel that comes from the Building for Enjoying Lush Scenery (Cuishanglou).  It combines elements of both Tibetan and Chinese art, and features a painting on silk that incorporates painted and gilt clay figures. The painting shows the colorful sky and landscape of a Buddhist realm and is punctured by a number of circular niches. An imperial temple dominates the center of the composition; in the center of the temple, there appears a large niche shaped like a lotus petal. A golden figure of the Qianlong emperor as the Bodhisattva Manjusri occupies the niche. In a smaller niche directly above is shown Rolpay Dorje, the emperor’s religious guide, and in a round niche further above is the figure of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Small painted and gilt clay figures representing other teachers, Buddhas and deities occupy the remaining niches of the panel.

Mandala, Cloisonné, 22 ½ x 19” (diam.), © Palace Museum, Beijing

Further along, a mandala is displayed on a pedestal.  Mandalas, the geometric charts that serve as symbolic images of the universe and are used in certain Buddhist religious practices, are typically executed on a flat surface and are two-dimensional. This mandala, however, is a striking piece of cloisonné with a circular base that is rimmed in gold.

Advancing beyond the mandala, visitors encounter a calligraphic inscription from the Supreme Chamber of Cultivating Harmony (Yanghe Jingshe) written by the Qianlong emperor in 1777; it is one of his own poems. “I work hard at present and I wait for the future when I can roam at leisure,” reads the translation of one line. The paper on which the poem was written is decorated with gold motifs and was made specifically for the court.

Of particular interest to Western observers is an exhibition that speaks to “Assuring Longevity,” a theme that applied not only to the Qianlong emperor but to his garden and its future as well. As the artifacts in the exhibition show, the emperor appreciated a wide variety of art forms and decorative techniques. A number of these techniques are summarized in a zitan throne ornamented in jade, semi-precious stones and lacquer. Among the featured decors is bamboo inner skin. The technique, which is often associated with the Qianlong era, involves painstakingly removing the inner skin from bamboo.

Throne, from Yanghe Jingshe, Zitan, bamboo, jade, semi-precious stones, lacquer, 38 ½ x 46 ¼ x 33”, © Palace Museum, Beijing

Opposite the throne, a computer-generated video presentation simulates a visit to the interior of the Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service (Juanqinzhai) and enables visitors to imagine moving through it.

Visitors wishing to learn more about the restoration process of the Qianlong Garden will want to look at the photo display along one wall of this same gallery. The first photograph shows the throne surround screen, now on display in the first gallery of the exhibition, as it appeared on location in the actual Qianlong Garden prior to the start of restoration. Shortly beyond the photographs, the exhibition concludes with a large carved zitan window.

When Nancy Berliner, the exhibition curator and Curator of Chinese Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, was asked what she would like visitors to take away from “The Emperor’s Private Paradise,” she replied, “The concept of creating a place where you can focus on your own higher pursuit.”

It is this higher undertaking that the exquisitely beautiful objects now gracing the Metropolitan Museum of Art were designed to serve.

by Susan Schopp, Contributing Writer

The Emperor’s Private Paradise: ‘Treasures from the Forbidden City’ runs until  May 1, 2011. The galleries are wheel-chair accessible and are served by both a stairway and an elevator. A full-color catalog is available for purchase. The exhibition travels then travels to the Milwaukee Art Museum (June 11-September 12, 2011).

Susan E. Schopp is an independent scholar specializing in the shipping of the Canton trade, c. 1700-1842. She holds a Diplôme de recherches in East Asian art history and a Diplôme d’études supérieures in museum studies from the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Her current research focuses on chop boats. In her spare time she is a member of the volunteer crew of the full-size, fully operational reproduction East India ship Friendship of Salem.

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)

Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, N.C. (photo by Jeff Clare)

The Mint Museum welcomed a record-breaking 17,000 visitors to its new facility in uptown Charlotte during its grand opening weekend on 1-3 October, 2010. The debut of the Mint Museum Uptown was accompanied by a 24-Hour Grand Opening celebration, featuring free admission, live entertainment, and art activities for all who attended.

Contemporary art permanent collection galleries of the Mint Museum Uptown (photo by Jeff Clare)

The building also includes a café, the Lewis Family Gallery, painting and ceramics studios, classrooms, a 240-seat auditorium, a Special Events Pavilion with outdoor terrace, and an expanded street-level Museum Shop featuring crafts of the Carolinas and showcasing merchandise that complements both the permanent collection and special exhibitions. Following the opening of the Mint Museum Uptown, the Mint Museum Randolph, located in the historic Eastover neighborhood, will reinstall its galleries dedicated to the art of the ancient Americas, decorative arts, and historic costume, among others.

The Mint Museum and Bank of America have collaborated to present the inaugural exhibition New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection (1 October 2010 – 17 April 2011), comprising over 60 works from the bank’s art collection. Widely regarded as one of the world’s finest corporate art collections, the Bank of America Collection is noted for its quality, stylistic diversity, historical depth, and attention to regional identity.

Frank Stella, American, 1936- , Damascus Gate II (1968), © Frank Stella / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York

The exhibition contains a broad selection of regionally-diverse practitioners and offers an opportunity to experience significant works by visionary artists of the past decades. The exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures and works on paper by an array of artists, including Milton Avery, Jennifer Bartlett, Roger Brown, John Chamberlain, Janet Fish, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, John Marin, Elizabeth Murray, Louise Nevelson, Jules Olitski, Edward Ruscha, Miriam Schapiro, and Frank Stella.

Beginning with works from 1945, the exhibition highlights the strengths of Bank of America’s postwar collection and reveals a range of creative philosophies, approaches and artistic movements, reaching into the early 1990s. Historically-significant works focusing on intense color and geometry as an organizing principle, such as Frank Stella’s Damascus Gate and Ellsworth Kelly’s Black and White Triangle, reveal the monumental scale and rigorous structures of late 1960s through early 1970s Minimalism. Postminimalist works from the 1980s, such as Elizabeth Murray’s Split and Join and Jennifer Bartlett’s In the Garden, present a return to imagery, while still retaining defined formalist structures.

Elizabeth Murrary, American, 1940- 2007, Split and Join (1980) o/c Bank of America Coll., The Murray-Holman Family Trust, courtesy Pace Gallery

The vibrant and irreverent canvases of Ed Paschke and Roger Brown exhibit the influence of outsider art and Surrealism. This influence was a hallmark of the second generation Chicago Imagists, a regional offshoot of Pop Artists. The influence of popular culture and media fueled diverse works by Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Longo. Paintings by some of California’s most heralded artists—including Edward Ruscha Clock Speed, James Weeks Ocean Park Studio and Wayne Thiebaud Dark Cake—demonstrate a surprising and complex relationship between abstraction and realism. Deborah Butterfield’s cast lead horse sculpture, as well as Lynda Benglis’s biomorphic reliefs and John Chamberlain’s steel assemblage, comprise some of the compelling sculptural works within the show.

New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection is organized by The Mint Museum, Charlotte, N.C., and provided by Bank of America Art in our Communities™ program. Through this program, Bank of America has converted its collection into a unique community resource from which museums and nonprofit galleries may borrow complete or customized exhibitions. By providing these exhibitions and the support required to host them, the program helps sustain community engagement and generate vital revenue for the nonprofits, creating stability in local communities. From 2008 to 2010, Bank of America will have loaned more than 30 exhibitions to museums internationally.

Ed Ruscha, Clock Speed (1986). Coll. Bank of America

The bank did not set out to collect art, but through numerous acquisitions over the years, art came into their possession. “We were the beneficiaries of a trend that began in the 1950s and 60s and peaked in the 90s, when so many banks ran into difficulty,” said a spokesperson in the bank’s New York City headquarters. Bank of America was the beneficiary of that trend and several years they resolved to use the collection to support communities where it does business and, ‘give something back that would allow us to share what we have in a meaningful way.”

In a statement released by Bank of America, they describe their Art Exhibition Program to include fully-curated exhibitions from their extensive collection of paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures and art objects, which will travel to museums around the country, and exhibitions created in collaboration with curators from major museums.

Museums participating in the program include the Mint Museum of Art (Charlotte), the International Center of Photography (New York), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia), the St. Louis Museum of Art, , the Boca Raton Museum of Art and a number of other institutions across the country. These exhibitions will allow audiences to experience extraordinary works of art from the Bank of America Collection, some of which have never been on public view.

Wayne Thiebaud, Dark Cake (1983), woodcut on paper. Coll. Bank of America

“We are pleased to offer this unique program to museums and to share our collection with the widest possible audience,” said Rena M. DeSisto, Bank of America’s Arts & Culture Executive. “From our perspective, sharing these pieces of art with the public through our museum partners is the best possible use of the collection. Not only is there a cultural benefit, but we are bolstering institutions which serve as economic anchors for their respective communities.”

“The scale and scope of this program is unmatched in the art world,” said Millicent Gaudieri, Executive Director, Association of Art Museum Directors. “Bank of America – which is renowned for having one of the most expansive art collections in the world – is addressing a real need among museums. Not only do these exhibits have extraordinary curatorial value, but they help museums by covering most of the major costs associated with the exhibit. This program will be very popular, both for the museums and their visitors.”

In addition to this collaboration, The Mint Museum is also part of Bank of America’s Museums on Us™ program. Through this unique program, anyone with a Bank of America ATM, credit card or check card has the opportunity to gain free admission to more than 120 cultural institutions across the country, including the Mint, during the first Saturday and Sunday of each month.

by Elizabeth Isenhour, Contributing Writer, with additional content by Richard Friswell, Executive Editor

For more information, visit www.mintmuseum.org

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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.

____________________________________ 

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