ROGUE ARCHITECT

The American Masters documentary Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future is really two different films spliced together. It’s a hagiography of the modern architect, with photographs and footage of his best-know works. And it’s a conflicted My Architect-type portrait of the man by his eldest son, Eric Saarinen, who narrates the film. Like Louis Kahn, the subject of My Architect, Eero Saarinen left his eldest son and first wife for another woman and started another family. And, like Kahn, he’s ulitmately pardoned by his abandoned son because he’s a genius.

The accomplished cinematorgraphy, that includes dazzling aerial sequences, takes us through the General Motors and John Deere campuses, the Miller House, Ingalls Rink, Kresge Auditorium, Dulles Airport, and the TWA Terminal. These lyrical passages go beyond the iconic, expressionistic, black-and-white Ezra Stoller photographs of the same projects. In addition to seductive views, they give a sense of the buildings’ rich physicality, spatial complexity, and peculiar asymmetries.

Eric Saarinen’s personal account of his father is touching, but holds the film back from exploring more deeply the development and detail of the buildings. Instead of landmark modern structures, each one is framed as an artifact from the architect’s biography. We learn in considerable detail how the architect falls in love, gets married, has children, meets another woman, leaves his first family, marries again, has another child, and dies at the age of 51. An off-screen narrator even reads to us, pointlessly, from the love letters he wrote to his mistress. In between, we learn about his buildings.

It’s confusing but not terribly surprising that accomplished men behave less-than-heroically in their domestic lives. Eero Saarinen’s personal life was eventful but had no impact on his work. (The only major architect I can think of whose personal life is inseparable from his work is Frank Lloyd Wright.) My favorite image from the film is a black and white photo of the architect lying flat on his stomach inside an enlarged cardboard study model of the TWA Terminal, his legs hanging off the edge of the table. It illustrates clearly his passion for architecture, one that’s both ennobling and humanizing.

January 16, 2017 by Nalina Moses

HOME FURNISHINGS

The vital MoMA exhibit Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter examines refugee housing. At a moment when millions globally have been displaced, and more are displaced each day, the question of how to house them is vital. This exhibit is (disappointingly) small and gives only a glimpse into the challenges and horrors. In the end it might be most affecting for leaving a visitor with so many questions. What minimal quality of shelter is required? How can individual shelters make a community? Is it correct to build temporary shelters? What is the image of a refugee shelter? And, most importantly, What is the difference between a shelter and a home?

The most powerful artifact on display, standing at the center of the gallery, is a Better Shelter, a structure designed, fabricated and funded by the IKEA Foundation in collaboration with UNHCR. So far 30,000 Better Shelters have been deployed to refugee camps in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The Shelter exploits IKEA’s expertise in economies of manufacturing, shipping and assembly. It’s a small hip-roofed structure, about the size of a detached suburban two-car garage, built from plastic panels that are shipped flat and assembled on the ground in two hours by a team of four adults. The Shelter is spacious enough for five adults, affords more privacy and protection than a tent, and can be personalized very simply by finishing the interior with posters or wall coverings. It’s profile gives it the image of a (suburban, American) house, while its materials give it the feeling (flimsy, airless, beige) of a FEMA trailer.

In an essay accompanying the exhibit photographer Henk Wildschut, whose lyrical shots of informal settlements in Calais might be the emotional highlight of the exhibit, explains, refugees “carry on being human in an inhuman situation.” People who have been displaced will likely make the most of minimal resources. But the challenge remains. Can we design a refugee shelter that maximizes value, transportability and constructibility, while it also supports human dignity? IKEA revolutionized the industry by mass-producing handsome, inexpensive furniture that shapes an environment of modern comfort. Will their foundation aim even higher, and make homes rather than shelters?

Image courtesy of MoMA.

January 14, 2017 by Nalina Moses

DRESSED TO IMPRESS

A small exhibit at FIT, Proust’s Muse, The Countess Greffulhe, celebrates the wardrobe of this famous turn-of-the-century Parisian socialite. She captivated the most accomplished artists, writers and musicians of the day, including Proust, with her natural beauty and audacious style. There isn’t a single garment here that, in its extravagant construction and execution, doesn’t feel like a costume. These are clothes that serve personal drama, that heighten that moment when a woman rises from her chair, exits a carriage, or collapses onto a settee.

There are shimmering, floor-skimming Oriental-themed robes, inspired by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, that the Countess wore to receive visitors at her home on Rue d’Astorg. There is an an ankle-length Russian cape embroidered in gold and trimmed with ermine, papal in splendor, that she wore to her daughter’s wedding. There is a Worth ballgown in a brilliant, bracingly modern, emerald green. And there is an off-the-shoulder 1937 Lanvin evening gown of liquid black silk whose enormous ruffles seem to be floating out in front of it.

One senses, beyond the high level of museum curatorship, a strong personal voice. The Countess was discriminating about what she wore, and must have driven her tailors, milliner and jeweler to distraction with modifications and customizations. She fought hard to be fabulous. For women of her time there were few avenues to exercise creativity and forge a unique social identity. Here, with her wardrobe, the Countess did.

House of Worth, tea gown, blue cut velvet on a green satin ground, Valenciennes lace, circa 1897. © Stéphane Piera/Galliera/Roger-Viollet.

January 07, 2017 by Nalina Moses

UNDERGROUND THEATER

To much fanfare, and some surprise, the northernmost tail of the Second Avenue Subway line opened, as scheduled, on New Years Day. Initial publicity focused on the artworks gracing the new stations at 72nd Street, 86th Street, and 96th Street. These were coordinated by the NYCMTA’s Arts for Transit committee and funded by its Percent for Art Program, that allocates 1% of total construction costs for all major projects to new site-specific artworks. For these stations the MTA chose, wisely, three well-known artists: Sarah Sze, Chuck Close and Vik Muniz. But it gave them blank stretches of 1′x2′ tile to decorate, rather than soliciting works that were deeply integrated with the architecture of the stations, or that might even have inspired the design of the stations.

At the 72nd Street station Sze created scenes of whirling debris in blue and white that are rendered in custom porcelain tiles. The motifs brighten station walls along the escalators and mezzanine. But the tiles remains flat, ornamental rather than imagistic; they never really open into a fictional space. At the 86th Street station Close recreated twelve of his signature pixellated headshot portraits in nine-foot-high mosaic panels along the entrances and mezzanine. The renderings and tilework are skillful, but the celebrity painters he depicts, including himself, evoke the streets of SoHo and Chelsea, not the Upper East Side.

At the 96th Street station Muniz also rendered figures in mosaic tiles. But he’s based these life-size, head-to-toe figures on informal photographs of random contemporary New Yorkers. They represent a broad, comically accurate swathe of the population, including a married gay couple, a mother, a man in a turban, a woman in a sari, a gaggle of high school boys, a cop with a cherry popsicle, an actor in a tiger costume, on old man with a ukelele, and two uptight middle-aged hipsters. These figures create a strong rhythm as one walks the mezzanine, and hold the eye. On opening weekend visitors slowed to examine these characters closely, and stopped to photograph their favorites and to be photographed alongside them. Like the improptu post-election sticky note message wall at Union Square Station, Muniz’ mosaics at 96th Street make powerful street theater.

Photograph courtesy of NYCMTA and Vik Muniz.

January 02, 2017 by Nalina Moses