The Times had an article about the death of Patrick Ireland, the artistic alterego of critic Brian O'Doherty. The intersection of cataloging and life moments. O'Doherty "invented" Ireland in 1972 as a response to the British presence in Northern Ireland. Recently, he had a funeral for Patrick Ireland and buried the alterego. I'll probably add a note to the NACO record. Since the heading doesn't have life dates, it obviates the issue of physical and intellectual life dates. Are Ireland's "life dates" 1972-2008 or those of O'Doherty? Not that it matters a great deal.
I finished reading The Palace of Varieties this morning. It's the latest novel by James Lear, another sexy romp with historical setting, hardly a new genre. This one is set in 1930s London and features a young man, in from Sussex to escape a drunken father and find his fortune or whatever. Reading Lear is easy. Reading Lear right after Trollope's He knew he was right is quite amusing. Lear appropriates a historical mode and Trollope is quintessentially Victorian. The dogged determination of Trollope's characters is quite the foil for Lear's "take it as it comes."
Morning is so beautiful here on Carol and Barb's hill in Branchport. The birds singing their various songs. It's chilly this morning but we didn't get a frost here as Doug said they threatened in Alfred. Somehow the morning beckons here. Morning's fine in NYC but almost screams "get up!" here in the country. And now the folks begin to rise.
25 May 2008
12 May 2008
what do they know?
We were meandering around Brooklyn Designs in DUMBO yesterday afternoon after a lovely brunch at Stan's Place on Atlantic Avenue. Looking up at the supports of the Manhattan Bridge is just so wonderful. I love the heavy classicism, the round arches, the rusticated columns, the tapered pilasters, the little hooded shelters along the pedestrian path. I was thinking "Hornbostel" as we looked and checked the AIA guide when I got home. They say that the Manhattan Bridge is "perhaps the least inspiring design of any of the city's suspension bridges" (4th ed., p. 82). Hornbostel also worked on the Carnegie-Mellon campus.
10 May 2008
bisuburbanality
Lovely morning. Not warm, nice spring chilly. I got out fairly early for a Saturday and wasn't able to get a haircut appointment before 10:30 so I meandered over to the Center to get the weekly rags: HX, Next, Gay city news, Blade, Philadelphia gay news. Really good walking temperature. And still it wasn't 10:30 and St Mark's Bookshop doesn't open until 10. I sat on a bench in Cooper Square but with construction on two or three sides, it wasn't good diary writing or reading space. Off to St Mark's where I found Worlds away: new suburban landscapes. Why is it that if I love walking the city streets so much that I am also drawn to studies of suburbanization process. Is it just that land use and human geography are so much a part of sprawl, strip stores, Googie architecture, etc. Or is it because I'm a Gemini? Christina Peter and I had quite a conversation last night at NYTSL about how we're not overly astrological but recognize that one's sign is reflected in our life course. Her folks said she was a bad Leo and good ... can't remember. She's not aggressive enough to be a normal Leo but has some of the characteristics.
Worlds away has a wonderful lexicon of "suburban neologisms" by Rachel Hooper and Jayme Yen (p. 270-288). It's in the salmon-colored pages. There are also green, blue, ochre, gray, and white pages. I bought the book partly because I knew Laura Migliorino had some works illustrated but also because it's aesthetically pleasing. It's published by the Walker Art Center and was designed by Andrew Blauvelt and Chad Kloepfer. Laura's photos are of families overlain on their domestic setting. The Walker bought a copy of "Egret Street" a year or two ago.
Sitting in Cooper Square was a bit of future tripping. The Technical Services Department is scheduled to move out of the Bobst Library building at the end of the year. Bobst is the central library for NYU, and NYU's libraries are fairly central so there aren't lots of branches though Courant, IFA, and REI aren't dinky operations to be sneezed at. Anyway, we're moving because zoning won't allow NYU to develop any new classrooms East of Broadway. Our space in Bobst is therefore to be converted to classrooms and we'll get windows. The building at 20 Cooper Square looks like a nice loft/warehouse building. Unfortunately, the space can't be ours permanently and we'll have to move in a couple years again. Since the office culture could use a good jolt, I'm hoping that the new environment will be a good jolt. What are the chances of that? A few weeks ago, I would have accepted a retirement offer in a second; recently, I've been feeling more optimistic. ARLIS/NA conference? Visiting with Geurt Imanse who was in town last week? Spring? Or just the Gemini flow?
Worlds away has a wonderful lexicon of "suburban neologisms" by Rachel Hooper and Jayme Yen (p. 270-288). It's in the salmon-colored pages. There are also green, blue, ochre, gray, and white pages. I bought the book partly because I knew Laura Migliorino had some works illustrated but also because it's aesthetically pleasing. It's published by the Walker Art Center and was designed by Andrew Blauvelt and Chad Kloepfer. Laura's photos are of families overlain on their domestic setting. The Walker bought a copy of "Egret Street" a year or two ago.
Sitting in Cooper Square was a bit of future tripping. The Technical Services Department is scheduled to move out of the Bobst Library building at the end of the year. Bobst is the central library for NYU, and NYU's libraries are fairly central so there aren't lots of branches though Courant, IFA, and REI aren't dinky operations to be sneezed at. Anyway, we're moving because zoning won't allow NYU to develop any new classrooms East of Broadway. Our space in Bobst is therefore to be converted to classrooms and we'll get windows. The building at 20 Cooper Square looks like a nice loft/warehouse building. Unfortunately, the space can't be ours permanently and we'll have to move in a couple years again. Since the office culture could use a good jolt, I'm hoping that the new environment will be a good jolt. What are the chances of that? A few weeks ago, I would have accepted a retirement offer in a second; recently, I've been feeling more optimistic. ARLIS/NA conference? Visiting with Geurt Imanse who was in town last week? Spring? Or just the Gemini flow?
07 May 2008
sometimes you wonder where you've been all your life
Ray Schwartz happened to send me a notice for the Spencer Finch talk last night at Cedar Lake. Finch is doing the first public art installation on the High Line. When I sent the notice to the ARLIS/NY list last week, Holly Wilson said "thanks" and he's one of her favorite artists. I trust Holly's taste (is that safe?) and decided I should go even though I just got back from the ARLIS/NA conference in Denver on Monday night and could probably use some sorting and/or sleeping time. But, boy, the lecture was great. Holly and her husband have a couple drawings by Finch: a drawing of snowflakes is one of them. Finch is captivating. His website is at http://www.spencerfinch.com/. The first part of the High Line park is supposed to be open in the later fall and Finch's project (stained glass windows in the building above the Chelsea Market) is scheduled to be up for a year from then.
So why wasn't this wonderful artist already in my ken? He was at RISD but graduated in 1989. I didn't work there until academic year 1989/1990. He has exhibited at galleries where I certainly have been numerous times. He does the kind of conceptual, thoughtful, quirky, ironic, earthy stuff I like, sometimes subtle, sometimes outrageous. Oh, well, NOW I know. Thanks, Holly. Not only all that but he also talked about the creativity that can come from not having enough to do. Finch had been in New Zealand for some time not so long ago and showed up some slides of stuff he did out of the boredom. I couldn't help reflecting on my brother's thoughts about me surviving in Alfred where there's stuff to do but it ain't New York City.
John Maier, Alycia Sellie, and Matt (Alycia's partner) also joined us. We walked past the Finch site and ended up at Karavas for some food -- I think it basically satisfied both the meat eater and vegetarian crowd. The pita was warm and the felafel was tasty. Alycia and Matt are from Wisconsin so I had some fun talking about Michael Perry, the author and humorist who writes about New Auburn, the town where we lived in the early 1950s. Early life thoughts are especially rampant these days, just having gotten back from Colorado where we lived in the later 1950s. I didn't get up to Boulder but did have good Colorado thoughts.
So why wasn't this wonderful artist already in my ken? He was at RISD but graduated in 1989. I didn't work there until academic year 1989/1990. He has exhibited at galleries where I certainly have been numerous times. He does the kind of conceptual, thoughtful, quirky, ironic, earthy stuff I like, sometimes subtle, sometimes outrageous. Oh, well, NOW I know. Thanks, Holly. Not only all that but he also talked about the creativity that can come from not having enough to do. Finch had been in New Zealand for some time not so long ago and showed up some slides of stuff he did out of the boredom. I couldn't help reflecting on my brother's thoughts about me surviving in Alfred where there's stuff to do but it ain't New York City.
John Maier, Alycia Sellie, and Matt (Alycia's partner) also joined us. We walked past the Finch site and ended up at Karavas for some food -- I think it basically satisfied both the meat eater and vegetarian crowd. The pita was warm and the felafel was tasty. Alycia and Matt are from Wisconsin so I had some fun talking about Michael Perry, the author and humorist who writes about New Auburn, the town where we lived in the early 1950s. Early life thoughts are especially rampant these days, just having gotten back from Colorado where we lived in the later 1950s. I didn't get up to Boulder but did have good Colorado thoughts.
29 April 2008
not supposed to be cool
"They looked at me like I wasn't cool. I thought, 'This is a library -- we're not supposed to be cool.'"
-- Matt Taunton, 28-year old postdoc at British Library, quoted in N.Y. times in article about crowds in the British Library reading rooms, too many of whom are giggling, texting, flirting, and I guess just being cool. cf "London journal" on April 28, 2008, p. A10 in the NYC late edition. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/world/europe/28library.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=british+library&st=nyt&oref=slogin
-- Matt Taunton, 28-year old postdoc at British Library, quoted in N.Y. times in article about crowds in the British Library reading rooms, too many of whom are giggling, texting, flirting, and I guess just being cool. cf "London journal" on April 28, 2008, p. A10 in the NYC late edition. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/world/europe/28library.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=british+library&st=nyt&oref=slogin
27 April 2008
Bombay TV
Kudos to Elaine Paul for discovering Bombay TV! http://www.flytobollywood.com/ You too can be a famous moviemaker!?!
music, art and dance, oh my
Pretty splendiferous weekend for the arts for me though it ended with someone booing at the Joyce. They must have read that article in the Times a month or two ago about booing.
Friday night was an American Composers Orchestra concert at Zankel Hall, with works by Charles Mason, Jonathan Dawe, Anna Clyne, Peter Heller, Dan Trueman, and Ned McGowan. Charles Mason's "Additions" was lovely in the granular modern style. Don't know if granular is the right word but it's that distinct note business, not all mellifluous with huge string bowing. "Armide" by Jonathan Dawe was a blend of Lully and laptop, in the wonderful cacophonous modern style. Anna Clyne's "Tender hooks" mixed the orchestra with one laptop doing music and another doing graphics. After intermission, a bit of nice interlude with Peter Heller's "Fanfare for Mary," a brass quintet. On to Dan Trueman's "Silicon/carbon." Two laptops isn't enough; let's go for 8 and the PLork (Princeton Laptop Orchestra). The evening ended with Ned McGowan, his big contrabass flute constructed of PVC and "Bantammer swing." I liked it all and was bubbling as I boarded the subway train with my colleague Andrea Harpole who was coming from Art Students League.
During intermission, I read my brother's presentation that he did last week at the Bergren Forum at Alfred University. It's a history of Seventh Day Baptists in Alfred and elsewhere. A cousin of my mother died recently and she called herself an SDB by culture if not by faith. That's pretty close to my story too.
Saturday's gallery hopping started with the Anh-My Lê show at Murray Guy. Really incredible, especially a very green one with a frieze of soldiers in camo, at rest in a forest glade. The soldiers are like a group of saints in a medieval or renaissance painting: a variety of poses, facial expressions, still but something important is in the air. I talked to Janice Guy and Margaret Murray quite a while about the works. This series of works is in color, large prints (maybe 30 by 45 inches), and it evokes much thought about the military machine. The views are all of military installations or activities. The last show was views of Twentynine Palms, a base in California, and was all in black-and-white, rich and dusty.
When I got to Matthew Marks for the Hujar show, I found another renaissance painting: a naked man with a sheet over his shoulders, the light hitting the fabric in a beautiful way. There was also the wonderful portrait of Charles Ludlum with a dotted veil over most of his face; the dots look rather like queer eyes, giving the portrait a surreal cast. Of course, looking at Hujar's photos is bittersweet since he died of AIDS.
With 250 or however many galleries in West Chelsea, there's no way you're going to get to all of them. I had started up that way with Murray Guy, Hujar, and Scott Treleaven on the list, figuring I'd stop at galleries until I got tuckered out. As always, there was at least one real find.
Today's unexpected find was the Bruce High Quality Foundation Retrospective at Susan Inglett Gallery. The work in the window attracted and repelled me but I decided to go in. In the back room was a film being projected way up high on the wall. I started watching it and got drawn into it. Part of the text was "this is public art, this is collaboration" as the same or contrasting images flashed by, e.g., the Iwo Jima photo/sculpture. With all the thinking I've been doing about social computing, and all the talk of strategic planning at work, this collaboration/public art stuff was mesmerizing. Great comparisons. You can find out more about them at http://www.thebrucehighqualityfoundation.com/Site/HOME.html or buy the catalog ($20 at the gallery) which includes a substantial section on the film with much (if not all) of the text. Maybe you had to be there but then the BHQF is dedicated to finding an alternative to everything.
Also on the worth going to list: Thomas Nozkowski at PaceWildenstein; Gary Panter at Clementine (I especially liked the little quonset hut model in the back); "Disavowal (Mark Wyse)" at Wallspace (very intriguing comparisons of photos, via reproductions, so of course you may now think Benjaminian thoughts); Gregory Crewdson at Luhring Augustine (interesting contrast with Anh-My Lê who I'll take any day). The Treleaven show was not so amusing.
I figured if I was going to walk up to see the Dargerism show at the American Folk Art Museum, I might as well stop at Exit Art on the way. Didn't know what the show was but found them in the second or third day of a silent auction. Audrey Christensen (archivist and former MoMA library assistant) was there so we got to talk for a while. She mentioned the EPA (environmental something) show downstairs and there was a wonderful video of some people in black garbage bags doing street interventions. Can't decide if it was wonderful, activist or just "Candid Camera." She also mentioned that Bruce High Quality was a special friend of Exit Art and they will be doing something special at their Williamsburg gallery sometime soon so I guess I better stay tuned.
There are some good things in the Dargerism show: Anthony Goicolea's films; Amy Cutler's works looking a bit like Marcel Dzama whose show I saw at Zwirner a week or two ago; very unsettling Justin Lieberman "Thank heaven for little girls" which mixes Jock Sturges little naked girls on defigured Darger backgrounds. The "Asa Ames, occupation sculpturing" show upstairs was quite nice.
That evening, I went to the Seán Curran concert at Dance Theater Workshop. The first piece was set to Wuorinen music and the dancers dressed in little undies. Quite lovely. Sound for the second piece mixed Handel arias with taped apologies from The Apology Line, probably my favorite piece. One of the male dancers could move and extend his limbs in a most wonderful manner. The third piece with live music by a very downtown cellist was best liked by the Times reviewer (read it after!) but not by me. I don't deny its energy.
As I read the papers this morning (that's the Sunday paper and some of last week's that were still unread), I noted the description of the Scapino Ballet Rotterdam run at the Joyce. I'm awfully glad I went. The first piece was seven men dancing on artificial turf, together, apart, in sync, in mock battle. Then a solo. The next one was "The brides" and was set to Stravinsky's "Les noces" but such a "raw interpretation" (program notes) that you'd have thought it Southeast Asian folk music. Or maybe it was the compelling face of dancer Sherida Lie. The last piece is described in the program as "mysterious, dramatic and absurd." Animal-like gestures, leaves on the dancer's bodies falling off. I was surprised by the booing (though it seemed fairly singular).
And now I'm sitting at the computer. I should be working on the review of the year in art cataloging (time is running out, the ARLIS/NA conference starts real soon) but I'm still ruminating about all that stuff. My brother and I were having a chat about living in Alfred and I said I could do it. He said: YOU?!?! (my punctuation). I do think I could. And that leads me to pass on an interesting statistic from the good Rachel Donadio essay at the back of today's NYTBR. She says that a recent report from the NEA found that 53% of Americans hadn't read a book in the previous year. I know that academia and museumia are not the real world but 53% had NOT read a book in the last year. I'm stunned. At the same time, more books are being published and, oops, 175,000 new blogs are started every day. By the by, the title of the essay is "You're an author? Me too!"
Now I gotta go get a ticket for "It is not the homosexual who is perverse, but the society in which he lives" by Rosa von Praunheim which is playing in the spirit of 1968 festival at Lincoln Center.
Friday night was an American Composers Orchestra concert at Zankel Hall, with works by Charles Mason, Jonathan Dawe, Anna Clyne, Peter Heller, Dan Trueman, and Ned McGowan. Charles Mason's "Additions" was lovely in the granular modern style. Don't know if granular is the right word but it's that distinct note business, not all mellifluous with huge string bowing. "Armide" by Jonathan Dawe was a blend of Lully and laptop, in the wonderful cacophonous modern style. Anna Clyne's "Tender hooks" mixed the orchestra with one laptop doing music and another doing graphics. After intermission, a bit of nice interlude with Peter Heller's "Fanfare for Mary," a brass quintet. On to Dan Trueman's "Silicon/carbon." Two laptops isn't enough; let's go for 8 and the PLork (Princeton Laptop Orchestra). The evening ended with Ned McGowan, his big contrabass flute constructed of PVC and "Bantammer swing." I liked it all and was bubbling as I boarded the subway train with my colleague Andrea Harpole who was coming from Art Students League.
During intermission, I read my brother's presentation that he did last week at the Bergren Forum at Alfred University. It's a history of Seventh Day Baptists in Alfred and elsewhere. A cousin of my mother died recently and she called herself an SDB by culture if not by faith. That's pretty close to my story too.
Saturday's gallery hopping started with the Anh-My Lê show at Murray Guy. Really incredible, especially a very green one with a frieze of soldiers in camo, at rest in a forest glade. The soldiers are like a group of saints in a medieval or renaissance painting: a variety of poses, facial expressions, still but something important is in the air. I talked to Janice Guy and Margaret Murray quite a while about the works. This series of works is in color, large prints (maybe 30 by 45 inches), and it evokes much thought about the military machine. The views are all of military installations or activities. The last show was views of Twentynine Palms, a base in California, and was all in black-and-white, rich and dusty.
When I got to Matthew Marks for the Hujar show, I found another renaissance painting: a naked man with a sheet over his shoulders, the light hitting the fabric in a beautiful way. There was also the wonderful portrait of Charles Ludlum with a dotted veil over most of his face; the dots look rather like queer eyes, giving the portrait a surreal cast. Of course, looking at Hujar's photos is bittersweet since he died of AIDS.
With 250 or however many galleries in West Chelsea, there's no way you're going to get to all of them. I had started up that way with Murray Guy, Hujar, and Scott Treleaven on the list, figuring I'd stop at galleries until I got tuckered out. As always, there was at least one real find.
Today's unexpected find was the Bruce High Quality Foundation Retrospective at Susan Inglett Gallery. The work in the window attracted and repelled me but I decided to go in. In the back room was a film being projected way up high on the wall. I started watching it and got drawn into it. Part of the text was "this is public art, this is collaboration" as the same or contrasting images flashed by, e.g., the Iwo Jima photo/sculpture. With all the thinking I've been doing about social computing, and all the talk of strategic planning at work, this collaboration/public art stuff was mesmerizing. Great comparisons. You can find out more about them at http://www.thebrucehighqualityfoundation.com/Site/HOME.html or buy the catalog ($20 at the gallery) which includes a substantial section on the film with much (if not all) of the text. Maybe you had to be there but then the BHQF is dedicated to finding an alternative to everything.
Also on the worth going to list: Thomas Nozkowski at PaceWildenstein; Gary Panter at Clementine (I especially liked the little quonset hut model in the back); "Disavowal (Mark Wyse)" at Wallspace (very intriguing comparisons of photos, via reproductions, so of course you may now think Benjaminian thoughts); Gregory Crewdson at Luhring Augustine (interesting contrast with Anh-My Lê who I'll take any day). The Treleaven show was not so amusing.
I figured if I was going to walk up to see the Dargerism show at the American Folk Art Museum, I might as well stop at Exit Art on the way. Didn't know what the show was but found them in the second or third day of a silent auction. Audrey Christensen (archivist and former MoMA library assistant) was there so we got to talk for a while. She mentioned the EPA (environmental something) show downstairs and there was a wonderful video of some people in black garbage bags doing street interventions. Can't decide if it was wonderful, activist or just "Candid Camera." She also mentioned that Bruce High Quality was a special friend of Exit Art and they will be doing something special at their Williamsburg gallery sometime soon so I guess I better stay tuned.
There are some good things in the Dargerism show: Anthony Goicolea's films; Amy Cutler's works looking a bit like Marcel Dzama whose show I saw at Zwirner a week or two ago; very unsettling Justin Lieberman "Thank heaven for little girls" which mixes Jock Sturges little naked girls on defigured Darger backgrounds. The "Asa Ames, occupation sculpturing" show upstairs was quite nice.
That evening, I went to the Seán Curran concert at Dance Theater Workshop. The first piece was set to Wuorinen music and the dancers dressed in little undies. Quite lovely. Sound for the second piece mixed Handel arias with taped apologies from The Apology Line, probably my favorite piece. One of the male dancers could move and extend his limbs in a most wonderful manner. The third piece with live music by a very downtown cellist was best liked by the Times reviewer (read it after!) but not by me. I don't deny its energy.
As I read the papers this morning (that's the Sunday paper and some of last week's that were still unread), I noted the description of the Scapino Ballet Rotterdam run at the Joyce. I'm awfully glad I went. The first piece was seven men dancing on artificial turf, together, apart, in sync, in mock battle. Then a solo. The next one was "The brides" and was set to Stravinsky's "Les noces" but such a "raw interpretation" (program notes) that you'd have thought it Southeast Asian folk music. Or maybe it was the compelling face of dancer Sherida Lie. The last piece is described in the program as "mysterious, dramatic and absurd." Animal-like gestures, leaves on the dancer's bodies falling off. I was surprised by the booing (though it seemed fairly singular).
And now I'm sitting at the computer. I should be working on the review of the year in art cataloging (time is running out, the ARLIS/NA conference starts real soon) but I'm still ruminating about all that stuff. My brother and I were having a chat about living in Alfred and I said I could do it. He said: YOU?!?! (my punctuation). I do think I could. And that leads me to pass on an interesting statistic from the good Rachel Donadio essay at the back of today's NYTBR. She says that a recent report from the NEA found that 53% of Americans hadn't read a book in the previous year. I know that academia and museumia are not the real world but 53% had NOT read a book in the last year. I'm stunned. At the same time, more books are being published and, oops, 175,000 new blogs are started every day. By the by, the title of the essay is "You're an author? Me too!"
Now I gotta go get a ticket for "It is not the homosexual who is perverse, but the society in which he lives" by Rosa von Praunheim which is playing in the spirit of 1968 festival at Lincoln Center.
25 April 2008
polemical postcards &c
As we were leaving the restaurant, Tony White mentioned the book Some forms of availability: critical passages on the book and publication by Simon Cutts that he happened to be carrying. The cataloging is weird (classed in PR6053 as if it were "just" a work of literature; only "Publishers and publishing" for subject headings) but the book looks very interesting. I'm especially intrigued by the "Polemical postcards" chapter which illustrates several "attempts at a cryptic use of this form over the years." But then I love postcards of all kinds: those with enigmatic or ironic texts, those without text, but mostly those that match or mismatch something that has happened. Sharon Chickanzeff sent me a card saying she was coming back to town and was going to get a donkey named Walter (for our long-standing devotion to Walter B.) and I happened to have a go-card for the Wild Burro Preservation and Rescue Project. Wild Walter, indeed.
15 April 2008
Vote Debs in '08!
One of my co-workers just dropped off a little card on my desk with the slogan: I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it, than vote for something I don't want and get it. It's part of a May Day celebration on the part of Pack of Other(s): an other theater company. http://www.packofothers.org/votedebs
ungers and pasolini
Last week at MoMA, I looked at one of the newer books in the regular backlog, i.e., O.M. Ungers: Kosmos der Architektur (Hatje Cantz, 2006). When I checked our catalog, I discovered that NYU didn't have it but NYSID had the English translation. It has some wonderful photos of the library space that Ungers built on his brutalist house in Berlin as well as the recent house that he had built in the countryside. The library space is very central in plan and has those great classical proportions that Ungers does so well. The space also includes busts by Ian Hamilton Finlay. Really a beautiful space. The exterior of the house in Berlin is fine too and, according to the book, was so exemplary that Reyner Banham included it in his The new brutalism.
When I started this, I wasn't thinking of the connection on the word brutal but the other interior space that rose from my reading in the last few days was an article in the Times style magazine on design from a couple weeks ago. It describes how Manuela Pavesi has bought and is refurbishing the Villa Zani outside Mantua which served as a setting for Pasolini's "Salò" which I saw not too long ago at Lincoln Center. The setting is deliciously decadent, the action is brutal though the thought action speaks more loudly than the physical action. It's about some Italian fascists who kidnap some young women and men and torture them emotionally and bodily while also listening to Sade-like tales and esoteric songs. The article may be found at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/style/tmagazine/16pavesi.html
New brutalist architecture was in high swing in the mid-late 1960s when I was in college. Davis Brody designed a wonderful science building for the New Paltz campus that was rather in the style of Le Corbusier's Convent of La Tourette. I was dumbstruck by the beauty of the materials: raw concrete, staircases sticking out from the main block of the building. That brutalist concrete, alas, didn't always age well. The Ungers house is more brick than concrete and in the book looks rather like a deconstructivist predecessor with cubic shapes. More like other Corbusier works of the brick and concrete style.
When I started this, I wasn't thinking of the connection on the word brutal but the other interior space that rose from my reading in the last few days was an article in the Times style magazine on design from a couple weeks ago. It describes how Manuela Pavesi has bought and is refurbishing the Villa Zani outside Mantua which served as a setting for Pasolini's "Salò" which I saw not too long ago at Lincoln Center. The setting is deliciously decadent, the action is brutal though the thought action speaks more loudly than the physical action. It's about some Italian fascists who kidnap some young women and men and torture them emotionally and bodily while also listening to Sade-like tales and esoteric songs. The article may be found at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/style/tmagazine/16pavesi.html
New brutalist architecture was in high swing in the mid-late 1960s when I was in college. Davis Brody designed a wonderful science building for the New Paltz campus that was rather in the style of Le Corbusier's Convent of La Tourette. I was dumbstruck by the beauty of the materials: raw concrete, staircases sticking out from the main block of the building. That brutalist concrete, alas, didn't always age well. The Ungers house is more brick than concrete and in the book looks rather like a deconstructivist predecessor with cubic shapes. More like other Corbusier works of the brick and concrete style.
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