(Above: Gehry's model for Sydney's UTS, more details here).
First a confession. I once travelled to Bilbao to see Frank Gehry's building, along with a feeble attempt to witness the legendary Basque call for independence (perhaps inspired by an old Hollywood movie which made much of the Basque yodel), which sadly looked more absurd and parochial and IRA tragic than freedom-focussed the more we wandered around Spain (and no I'm not bitter about the Catalan independence T-shirt that dissolved in the first wash like a bit of fairy floss - perhaps I should have eaten it rather than washed it).
That said, it's just as well we didn't travel to see the exhibits within the Gehry building.
Lordy, the Guggenheim ain't what it was, if it ever was, as an international event, and the Bilboans were a bit long in the mouth about the impact of the building on actual tourism, never mind Jeff Koons' puppy littering the forecourt, and truth to tell there was more interesting work at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao.
All I learned after a visit to the Gehry was that if you imbibed the Licor de Hierbas (Ruavieja), este licor ha sido elaborado con hierbvas seleccionadas maceradas en aguardiente, 30% vol, you'd have surrealist nightmares to outdo Dali and Buneul, and might get a better night's sleep by taking a hefty tab of acid.
Never mind, moving along, if you headed off to the Bellas Artes, there was a more convivial internal space, and interesting works by locals along with some impressive guest artists.
Typically if you visit that museum online, the virtual tour will take you around the El Greco and the Bacon and the other heavy hitters, but the most interesting works are those which are intensely parochial, especially during the first third of the twentieth century, before Franco turned the entire country into a mausoleum. (If you can get the site into English, type in Bilbao or Basque and see what turns up).
Back in the nineteen thirties Bilbao was in fruitful ferment, though the likes of Juan de Aranoa Y Carredano doing this portrait of the painter Urbina were soon to be snuffed out, with Carredano forced into exile in Argentina, like many others so that repressive Catholic conservatism could rule the land.Never mind, they've gone now, even if they left a lot of blood behind, and that's the way art has always worked, the explosive and the repressive, and the flux of the local and the international, and it's a tad perverse to separate it out, and elevate one over the other, since the Gehry was well worth the trip, and so were the local artists.
The building made a grand front for wedding snaps, and we snapped away at the locals snapping away at the wedding guests, and so the digital world spiralled into a trillion images and counting ...
What's passing astonishing and wondrous is the way the current Gehry outing in Australia for Sydney's UTS has been immediately dismissed by a flock of visitors to the australian design/review site with a rampant bout of parochial negativity.
The site has the best set of model photos, here, and a relatively neutral commentary, along with a set of regressive tall poppy knocking comments which suggests that we really haven't moved past the nineteen sixties.
Universally the possums were disappointed, and shocked, and saddened, and resolutely parochial in a way no Bilboan would have reacted if Picasso had flaunted his Andalausian origins in their town, well at least not in the nineteen thirties before Franco got to banning everything in sight and Picasso already had his sights set on Paris.
Amongst the incisive comments?
Gehry did you push the melt button on your CAD program?
Is he having a laugh?!
In a world gone mad, anything is possible!
The master got really sick and they froze it before dispatching it to Cringeland.
One hapless possum even suggested:
cultural cringe. give the job to john wardle check melbourne grammar – modern classic
Uh huh. Here it is. Only someone one from Melbourne!
Actually there were a few Melburnians on view:
Sigh again. This from the city that gave birth to Federation Square, and features a monstrous facade as the entrance to the RMIT, so and thus.
Hah, and they like to take a free kick at Gehry!
It’s not the point. Regardless of the architecture, it is a ‘look at me’ cultural object, a poor man’s Lady Gaga. They’ll shift a lot of postcards.
As the world gets scarier
The Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956
(Below: ever think you're looking at the world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars? I know the feeling).
Indeedy, you had to go right near the end to find even a tolerable comment.
Proportions are a little dowdy, and it looks a little like a melted caramel overcoat resting on a collection of bar fridges, but quite apart from that, why doesn’t everyone relax? Why shouldn’t Mr. Gehry have a go at Ultimo? What did people expect? Why did they expect it? He was always going to be skewered by the locals: the comments here bear that out. The man isn’t a genius, but he is a maker. I say let him have a go.
No, no, no, we're all resolute in our righteous indication. Take this, from a character who selects as his avatar name, CultureVulture:
It’s not the point. Regardless of the architecture, it is a ‘look at me’ cultural object, a poor man’s Lady Gaga. They’ll shift a lot of postcards.
WTF?
Let's deconstruct that thought, shall we?
Cultural objects shouldn't be, whatever they might think they are, "look at me" cultural objects.
Rather they should be things that are invisible, or perhaps things that should hide themselves behind a kind of burqa, lest their outward brazen cheap sluttish ways produce an affront to culture vulture sensibilities, and people might feel compelled to - gasp - look at them.
And by the way, to prove that I'm hip and fey, allow me to reference Lady Gaga as a poor man's something, and provide a cheap innuendo about the way that buildings, art and Lady Gaga manage to shift a lot of postcards ...
As if there's anything fucking wrong with postcards. Or Lady Gaga ... or cultural objects that want to be seen. As opposed to being exhibited in a room without lights to people who can't see. Unless of course a black object within a black room witnessed by people dressed in black with nicely made up black face is the only kind of "look at me" cultural artefact we're allowed to witness.
Dear lord, is this the level of comment to be found in the trendy specialist online design and architecture sites of Australia?
Speaking of "look at me" cultural artefacts, it has to be acknowledged that Gehry's building will struggle to complete with the original iconic UTS masterpiece, a visual signal for everything splendid about Sydney architecture:
Now that's a pebblecrete masterpiece, about which former vice-chancellor Gus Guthrie said in a speech to students in 1986, "We have a tower, but no one could claim it is an ivory one", and which Associate Professor Paul Ashton, once said "It's the ugliest thing in town, but it's ours." (and for more fond memories of the tower, go here to the skyscraper city blog).
Yes Gehry's building will have a lot of fierce competition - I can think of three erections on the main roads in the inner west in the last six months that make a cardboard box a triumph of design. Don't get me started on all the erections of Sydney, mostly masculine, we could be here for years ...
And don't get me started on the exquisite views to be had of the buildings wherein the University of Sydney's Faculty of Architecture resides. Here's a sample:
Talk about 'look at me' cultural objects that will sell a lot of postcards.
Yes, Frank Gehry's building will face enormous competition from the splendid work done on campuses throughout the land. I do hope he understands, in a sophisticated way, how green wheelie bins can be used to highlight and bring out weathered grey, and the white smears of pigeon shit.
Sigh, as they say. We really haven't moved much further forward than the good old days of Barry Humphries, have we:
It’s a pretty decent area
Melbourne
The envy of the world
Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries),
Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries),
Melbourne Commonwealth Games 2006 Closing Ceremony
Oh no, not that Barry Humphries, this one;
The Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956
Put the City Council in a pretty nasty fix.
They feared that our foreign visitors might well misunderstand us
And think we were Provincial, so they pulled down the verandahs.
Each black disgrace in iron lace from every street they wrenched,
So pedestrians got sunstroke - or else were slightly drenched.
Then an architect from Overseas, too late to make amends,
Said that liking iron verandahs was one of the very latest trends ...
Yes, what we need is an architect from Overseas, who can take us back to the grand, wonderful, explosively powerful brutalist days of concrete and pebblecrete (what, no wiki on pebblecrete in Australia? Architects, a chance to redeem yourselves and reaffirm the joys of bringing your high art to the masses).
I know, I know, this blog is supposed to be about commentariat loons, but every so often the cultural cringe and the sheer insouciant stupidity of the leets drives me into a frenzy.
Yes, yes, I have a private interest in the arts and architecture, but I promise it will remain hidden under a bushel, as it should, because never never would we want to be accused of supporting cultural objects that want to be looked at.
Quick, hide them, hide them deep in the bowels of the basement, along with the postcards and Lady Gaga ...
My theory is that Australians don't like any architecture which attracts attention to itself, no matter what it looks like.
ReplyDeleteThus the hatred directed at UTS Building 1 and Harry Seidler's Blues Point Tower, neither of which are exceptionally ugly buildings - there are many worse in Sydney's CBD.
But both UTS and Blues Point stand out on their own, and we can't have that.