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Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 15
Lesson 5: International style- Peter Behrens, Turbine Factory
- Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye
- The White City of Tel Aviv
- Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater
- Wright, Fallingwater
- Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building
- Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building
- Gordon Bunshaft, Lever House
- Negotiating the past in Berlin: the Palast der Republik
- International Style architecture
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Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 1942-1959. Speakers: Dr. Matthew Postal and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Have we seen anything displayed at the Guggenheim on Smarthistory/KA? I don't recall seeing anything. There have been many from MOMA. Can anyone contrast the two collections? As a novice I am assuming they would be similar in their mission. Am I mistaken? Thxs.(15 votes)
- They are similar in SOME of the artists they feature, but MoMA is a much more comprehensive collection of "modern" art. Guggenheim's collection features mostly impressionist, early cubist, and minimalist pieces. Other than that, its featured temporary exhibitions tend to take the main stage at the Guggenheim.
Personally I prefer the MoMA, but Frank Lloyd Wright's structure casts a strong personality and persona onto the art there. Worth seeing if only for the architecture.(14 votes)
- You must make a video about one of the most important residential buildings in the world made by Frank Lloyd Wright - The Fallingwater!(10 votes)
- I agree. Have you ever been there? I've been to the Robie House, Talisen I & II and a few others that are in Chicago.(1 vote)
- When will more Skyscrapers be discussed? There is a lack of description of the architecture on many modern wonders throughout the internet. It would be interesting to learn more about these.(8 votes)
- The ceiling looks like it consists in part of hyperbolas or parabolas. Is that what those are?(1 vote)
- Here is some information from architectural historians on Wright's Guggenheim you might find interesting:
http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/brcak/fff/readings/flw-guggenheim-museum.pdf(4 votes)
- How would this sort of architecture hold up to a natural disaster such as an earthquake? I know modern architects probably think about those sorts of things, but I doubt Frank L. Wright was, am I wrong?(2 votes)
- They didn't have to check for that considering it was in New York. The only things that could potentially destroy it would be hurricanes or terrorist attacks.(1 vote)
- At5:35the discussion really gets to the heart of the matter when the speakers ask if this building is "combative" to the art it contains. This art museum, for all practical purposes, dictates the direction that the art displayed must take. Is this a good thing for an art museum? The speakers then go on to try and answer this question with other questions, but I was not impressed by their semi-conclusions.(2 votes)
- Yes and as Dr Zucker implies in the video regarding Modernism:6:47
We think about the way in which contexts construct meaning. I think this means that context is the great realization of modernism. So maybe it is not a matter of deciding between whether art can ever be purely considered or not from its environment but rather how the environment modifies our perceptions, experiences and understandings of the piece under consideration?(1 vote)
- Have we seen anything displayed at the Guggenheim on Smarthistory/KA? I don't recall seeing anything. There have been many from MOMA. Can anyone contrast the two collections? As a novice I am assuming they would be similar in their mission. Am I mistaken? Thxs.(1 vote)
- The Guggenheim is often loud and it is difficult to record there. We do have some things. See our video on Kandinsky for example. The collections and emphases are different due in part to the origins of each institution.(2 votes)
- The fact that the contractor normally does parking garages explains so much. The building doesn’t recede in the background because it sticks out like a sore thumb. Perhaps not all boundaries should be broken.(1 vote)
- It almost looks like the Cinema(1 vote)
- i went here before its my family tradition to go here until we moved :((1 vote)
Video transcript
(lively piano music) Steven: This is Steven Zucker, standing outside of the
Solomon R. Guggenheim museum, with Matthew Postal, an
architectural historian. Standing outside of one of the
most iconic buildings in New York, certainly one of the
most unusual buildings. We're walking up 5th Avenue. Rows of prewar limestone
and glazed brick buildings, of approximately the same height. Rectilinear, these boxes really. Then you come across
this wild construction. What is Wright thinking? Matthew: He wanted to design
something that would leave a mark, an unforgettable mark in Manhattan. Steven: Frank Lloyd Wright does
this at the end of his career. Actually, the dating of the building
is a little bit complicated. He was hired in ... Matthew: In 1943. Steven: The famous model that we
often see him and Hilla Rebay with, and Solomon R. Guggenheim
himself dates to 1945, but then the building
doesn't get built until 1959. What accounts for the delay? How does this work? Matthew: There were a lot of challenges. There was the Second World War, there was a downturn in the
economy in the late 40's. There's the Korean War. Then, finally, there is the issue of, how do you build a spiral
museum entirely out of concrete? Steven: It's really
complicated to even describe. From the front you've got
these two main masses, and this bridge that links them. There's a tremendous kind
of unity, I think, of form. The circle repeats itself
over and over again. What is similar to what he did before? Matthew: From the very start
he's interested in geometry. He's interested in patterns. He would use patterned brick work. He would use patterned floor treatment. He liked patterns. Whether they were hexagons
or octagons or triangles. Here's an opportunity to do a circle. Steven: You see them everywhere. Built into the sidewalk
in front of the building. Of course, you see it in
the rotundas themselves. It's Farris concrete, right? It's held up with rebar? Matthew: You know, his early buildings
are basically poured concrete. Blocks of concrete. Like Unity Temple. Although, he probably used metal to
strengthen the concrete in some places. This building, because of
the width of the ramps, and the walls and it all has
to be one continuous surface, requires a lot of different
types of cage-like metal, to hold up the structure. Steven: He's doing something
incredibly ambitious, by keeping this atrium completely open, by having these cantilevered ramps
that circle through the atrium, and give us the exhibition space. We see even more cantilevering
on the outside of the building. The whole thing seems
incredibly precarious, pushing the limits of engineering. In that it kind of reminds
me of its visual precedent, which is to say, something
like the Pantheon. That's really using
concrete in enormously new, and important ways. Matthew: This is certainly like
the Pantheon, and the Hagia Sophia, in it's inspired by
expressionist architecture, of the 1910's and 20's. Steven: Especially in Germany, right? Matthew: In Germany. Steven: And Austria, yeah. Matthew: When you think about it, it's one thing to have these ideas, it's another thing to execute it. Steven: To realize it. Matthew: Wright had great drawings. He had a terrific model. He had a patron with money. The real question was,
how was he going to do it? Ultimately, the person
who built it for him, deserves a lot the credit. The contractor was a man
who built parking garages. Steven: Didn't Frank
Lloyd Wright also design, a auto showroom on Park Avenue
that actually has a ramp? Matthew: That's right. Steven: For the cars. That's very much in the
style of the Guggenheim. Matthew: And a store in San Francisco. Steven: The museum was originally called, the Museum of Non Objective Art, which was an early way of saying abstract. It's now called the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum. Guggenheim came from
a very wealthy family. They had made their money in mining. We also mention this woman Hilla Rebay. Who was she? Matthew: Hilla Rebay was from Germany. She was an abstract painter. She came to the United
States in the 1920's. She exhibited quite frequently, and she met Solomon when his wife
commissioned a portrait of him. Steven: There's a really
interesting disconnect, because when we think of Frank
Lloyd Wright as an architect, I think we often think
of him as antithetical. As really in opposition to
the European modernists. And yet, here he is creating the
structure that's meant to house them. Matthew: He wasn't the first choice. When it was suggested to
Hilla Rebay to hire him, she reportedly said, "I
thought he was dead." Steven: Oh no. Matthew: They considered
several architects. Ultimately, Wright was well-known, there was a lot of attention paid to him, after Fallingwater was exhibited
at the Museum of Modern Art. The Museum of Modern Art had
given him a retrospective in 1940. Steven: Was it originally
intended for this site? 5th Avenue just across the street
from Central Park, 88th, 89th Street? Matthew: Solomon Guggenheim had begun
to finance his museum in the 1930's. They moved to various locations. They had a space where Lever
House is today on 54th Street. Clearly, they wanted an iconic building. They wanted a building
of great visibility. Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a
distant cousin of Robert Moses, who was the head of
planning in New York City, actually traveled around
Manhattan in an open Cadillac, looking for an ideal location. Steven: It's only a few blocks north, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Great bastion of classicism. Was it in any way, kind of consciously taking on
that tradition, do you suppose? A museum had always been a
kind of palace architecture. Matthew: I think it's a
pretty radical endeavor. Every building draws on other building. Clearly, Wright was trying, as he was almost always trying, to create something new. Steven: What does that do
to the art that it contains? Does it overwhelm or does
it frame it in a way, that draws the art out
and excites us visually? It's a funny and ambitious
but also, I think, combative relationship with the
modernism that's shown within the museum. That is, the container is an
object in the collection, isn't it? Matthew: Right. The issue is, should the
museum be a neutral container? Should paintings be hung
in simple, white boxes? Or should the architectural design
contribute to the aesthetic experience? Steven: There is a kind of push and pull, and there is a really kind
of modernist conceit here, in that it actually raises that question. That the building doesn't
recede into the background. It remains very much in the foreground, and forces us to grapple with
those kinds of questions. Kind of zealously guards its own primacy. There's always this
kind of antagonism then, between the rectilinear and two
dimensionality of the canvas, and the dynamos of the structure. Matthew: Is that a good situation
for paintings to be displayed? Steven: Maybe not paintings
themselves in isolation, but perhaps one of the issues is that, when we get to the modernist era, we don't think about
paintings in isolation. We think about the way in which
contexts construct meaning. Wright is asserting this
quite powerful context. Matthew: I think Hilla Rebay
wanted to break boundaries, and I think Wright was a
perfect candidate to do it. (lively piano music)