The thread's moved on, but I was arguing for recognising a continuum between art and architecture as a way of avoiding hierarchy or diminishing either one.
to exist
to be seen
to be admired
to be sat beside
to be remembered
to memorialise
to be sat on
to be walked through
to store things in
to pass between
to shelter
to make comfortable
to unsettle
to allow one to service one's bodily functions
which of these are properties of architecture, and which of art? Which if these are functions, and which are properties? Unless we can draw a clear line, then we have to recognise a continuum.
@ AP,
Yes it has been too long ey?
I hope to visit the NE archinect crew (Quillian and you + some other friends of mine) before the years end.
Are you enjoying NYC? I have been reminiscing alot lately about my childhood years in Brooklyn.
@ Agfa8x and others
If you want an answer to the question of hierarchies.
It seems as if many academics over the last 2-3 decades have been trying just that to escape or provide alternative typologies to the older hierarchal models. Whether in history (which my graduate training was in, or art or even psychology etc)
I would think that such a project as applied to art/architecture has been articulated by someone before. I will be reading the article "Sculpture int he Expanded Field" (for my first time perhaps this will answer some of my questions.
To answer yours regarding the list you provided.
Here is my take on which is which or both
Art
to unsettle
Architecture
to store things in
to shelter
to allow one to service one's bodily functions
to make comfortable
(in a physical sense, not necessarily in terms of challenging previous assumptions)
Both
to exist
to be seen
to be admired
to be sat beside
to be remembered
to memorialise
to be sat on
to be walked through
to pass between
agfa and namhenderson...interesting take on that list...
especially both:
"to exist
to be seen
to be admired
to be sat beside
to be remembered
to memorialise
to be sat on
to be walked through
to pass between"
i like to think that architecture manifests itself more often than its label...
However, begs the question of whether (and i say yes) "IT" should be defined
If only by negation,
Not in a post-modern sense...
But in terms of plurality of modalities.
Not hierarchical
(refering to an earlier post)
nam, its interesting that the only property you reserve for art alone is 'to unsettle'. One could argue the early modernists were explicitly trying to unsettle with their architecture. They were quite pleased with the discomfort of traditionalists.
i don't know if he was published in architecture magazines, but am not sure that signifies anything, really. it would depend on the work and the context.
i don't mean to say that architecture and sculpture/art are not of interest to each other as fields, nor that discussion should not take place...only that serra does not make architecture. this is not a territorial thing, just an observation. the fields make statements at different levels and have different obligations. maybe this should not be so, but at some point for art to become architecture it has to jump a level where the purity of an idea is lost in some ways to code, to structural requirements, to desire for longevity, etc. etc. etc. am sure you can fill in a longer list. when that happens it is "just" architecture...maybe nice, maybe not.
i do however have no issue with artists working as architects (or vice versa). not sure if my artist collaborators should ever be allowed to design a hospital though. Artists are in many ways too selfish to think of "users", especially when they might get in the way of an idea about their work; yes this is an unfair generalisation, but also very often true.
In that light, perhaps the list of attributes above is not complete without adding ideas about social responsibility and willingness to lose the role of "author" of a work (building).
Certainly artists deal with these things but i don't know any professional artists who would be willing to let their work be taken through a million iterations in the hands of doctors, nurses, lawyers, clients, as well as the "users" and owners of a space.
For an architect the challenge of making great works of art/architecture must by definition include that kind of negotiation. And that means thinking beyond surface, beyond graphic design, beyond space, and taking on a lot of foreign ideas...and STILL making something worthwhile. That's why i have so much respect for folks like H+deM, and even OMA...they deal with all the rubbish and still make great works. In same way architects who are DEFINED by those negotiations are not so interesting to me...
i agree, but i think we are guilty of wanting our cake and eating too, are we not? i guess when i think about architects like lebeus woods, john hejduk and ben nicholson and their oeuvre, i don't wholly consider them "architects" in the traditional sense. for me at least, their work although obviously is architecture, stands pretty close to the edge of art.
as for vito, i saw some of his work in that book done by Jennifer Siegel, what is it called Mobile Architecture or something like that...
i saw lebbeus give a lecture at the bartlett a few years ago. he was talking about an installation, with lots of reference to philosophy and emergence (he was really reaching). it was pure art/sculpture as far as i could tell.
architects often try to be artists... but are seldom good at it.
May 13–August 12 | Modern and Contemporary Art Building
This is the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to minimalist artist Dan Flavin's full career. Organized by Dia Art Foundation in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and co-curated by Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, and Tiffany Bell, Director of the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné, the exhibition features more than forty of Flavin's seminal fluorescent light works. Also presented is a special reconstruction of the corridors made for the E.F. Hauserman Co. showroom, formerly located at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. This will be the final destination of a multi-venue tour.
"Perhaps because Flavin is known so well as one of the founders of minimalism, his work has rarely been considered in all of its breadth and innovation before this retrospective," said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. "Flavin was one of the inventors of what we now know as 'installation art' and his groundbreaking use of color and light in architecture has been emulated not only in art, but in design and architecture. I count him among the most important figures in twentieth century art."
@ agfa8x
Obviously your right that the best of art and architecture should challenge but i don't think that this is a necessity for architecture definition.
Whereas i think it is art must fill this characteristic.
As for servicing bodily functions, i guess i was trying to point to the lack of utility in my defintion of art. Even Tiravanija's work is articulated for it's own sake not for that of the user...It still art as art,
Relational aesthetics is not functionally independent, even if it references utility or necessity.
If
" For an architect the challenge of making great works of art/architecture must by definition include that kind of negotiation. And that means thinking beyond surface, beyond graphic design, beyond space, and taking on a lot of foreign ideas...and STILL making something worthwhile."
and if an architect as you said must deal with codes, regulations etc
What about someone in the East...
Like Ai Weiwei
Are the regulations, codes as demanding or forced in non-Western/developed countries??
Moreover, even if they are would you say then that one clear line between art and architecture is that artists don't mediate?
Their is no negotiation except perhaps with themselves?
What about their relationship especially in the case of "installation art" with context (spatial esp.)???
And in Ai Weiwei's case he is as the last paragraph point's out constantly negotiating with the State,
yeh, i am generalising. weiwei has been a fave for years.
i work lately a lot with an artist here in tokyo who does installations that are becoming more and more architectural too. we have designed furniture together and done some archi-competitions and installations, and currently are working on a large landscape project and a proposal for a shop interior...not the stature of weiwei, but working on it.
anyway, Yes codes are enforced here, and in china too, and if not codes then other things...
the article about weiewei is interesting for me because it talks about his interest in architecture emerging from his experience with building his studio...that is, from architecture. The experience was, by implication, different from what he did as an artist, even the installations. I think that says something important...
For me if he is doing architecture then he is working as an architect, not as an artist. It might have an artistic bent, but in the end it is still architecture. Maybe i am missing something, but it does seem that way to me.
As a final thought, Weiwei's story about the state and censorship is that he DIDN'T negotiate. He felt his work was not to be impinged on, or at least not by his own hand. There was to be no self-censorship, only censorship imposed by the state against his will. Can't think of any example that better expresses the artist's mindset than that.
I believe architecture can be like that too, but not in the same way as art. We can't help but negotiate with something or someone along the way, even if we are very artistic. In the end, Frank Gehry is an architect and Richard Serra is an artist. There may be overlap, but they are (clearly?) different mediums.
hadn't read that krauss article since undergrad. i love that kind of criticism. does anyone do that anymore? i mean write criticism that doesn't either exhibit sour grapes negativity or, conversely, double as marketing material. i'm not sure that i can agree with some of the logical jumps, but it still makes synapses fire in my head that don't usually get exercised.
thanks to aml for linking to free writing. you seem to know where to find it and it's always much appreciated.
Just to prove that Sculpture and Architecture have the same roots in production, if not philosophy: Richard Serra and Frank O Gehry share the same engineer for their curved forms...
xacto mentioned the stella painting/architecture exhibit above. funny that, after rereading the krauss article and then seeing an ad for the stella exhibit, the exhibit copy claims exactly the continuous line between sculpture and architecture that krauss discredits. i guess that, even if stella and the curatorial staff know their art crit, the marketing folks don't!
beautiful sunday in royal oak, mi...played some tennis, came home, sat on the porch with a couple of Bell's Oberons and read the Krauss essay...
Very interesting reading, and i agree with Steven, "it still makes synapses fire in my head that don't usually get exercised."
the parameter of sculpture as "not landscape" and "not architecture" is also mentioned by Serra:..."because people could enter into these pieces, my work became more accessible. They could walk in and find something that wasn’t in nature and wasn’t in architecture.” Though he admits, for example that his Torqued Ellipses "were inspired by a misreading of the floor-and-ceiling ellipses in Borromini’s church San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome"...inspired by architecture...
agh...maybe i am just against labels when it comes to art...
(and can "architecture as architecture" can co-exist with "architecture as art")...why is "art of making architecture" offensive to architects and "art of rolling cigars" a compliment to cigar-rollers...
sorry if i am being redundant...it's monday morning...my mind is not warmed up yet!
i don't relly care if people appropriate/get inspired by/ use other work as a metaphor etc as long as they know where it came from and why. you need to understand a thing/movement/manifesto/ etc. before you can use it for your own end.
ok, finally got around to watching the charlie rose interview... thanks for the link, simples. i'm not sure i can contribute anything else to what's been said before, so i'll just share my notes from the charlie rose show [all serra more or less quotes except the questions]:
So I watched steel being rigged, I watched it being hoisted…
Sculpture after that point had been the handmaiden of painting
[steel had been used in sculpture before, but] The way it was anchored into the ground was false
[I’m interested in]
The tectonics of the industrial revolution, by that I mean the building processes of the industrial revolution
To bring the use of steel as an industrial material
The procedures of rigging, the procedures of steel manufacturing
You bring another rationale of making and you intersperse it with ‘high art’
You can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools. Meaning, you have to find your own procedures and your own tools. Because if you use the master’s tools…
I’m not a welder. All these pieces are put together section by section
Are you contempttous of welding? No I’m just not into stitching
What are you into?
Into the properties of the gravitational way
Creates spaces and places where you walk into and around
Spaces that you walk into and around where you yourself are part of that steel… joined by that space. These forms invite you in to a feel of gravitational load that is an expression or a manifestation of the volume of steel [aprox. Minute 13]
What’s the purpose of art?
Purpose is to generate thought, thought is a catalyst to think things you haven’t felt before.
The purpose of art is to provide different experiences.
…
i liked hearing of his interest in the building processes of the industrial revolution... the tectonics of steel. you can draw lines across disciplines [painting, sculpture, poetry, dancing, architecture] but you can also draw perpendicular lines across modes of thought: tectonics & materiality, presence, linguistics, simbolism [i''m deliberately including other categories that have nothing to do with serra].
i also liked his statement of sculpture really coming into itself in the 60's- as the study of space [not his words] or the research of spatial development.
i guess those are the big areas of overlap with certain architectural modes of thought: space and material.
so i'm scared to death of posting this but it shows i've been thinking about this for a while now... only keep in mind it was done about 8 years ago and i had just heard about serra.
@ AML
Interesting slideshow/essay,
Have you seen any pics etc about Zumthor's new Chapel?
I posted a news piece earlier about it.
Looks amazing....
As you (and Serra) and many others on this post have said,
i think the key is that both sculpture (although perhaps only in the modern era) and architecture share an interest in space and it's possesion or at least the experience of,
as well (at least in Serra's case) materiality
aml...your essay made me miss my Architectural Theory classes...a quote from the story (beautifully written by the way) namhenderson has posted:
"...a building containing just one room, with a roof that fails to keep out the rain, made of rough concrete, burned timber and lead. It has no electricity. No running water. No plumbing. No lavatories. No wind turbine. No solar panels. No air-con. No pictures hang on its walls. It offers no obvious, or accepted, sense of comfort. And yet it is compelling and very beautiful, offering solace."
re. the krauss essay, it does an excellent job of mapping "sculpture" in its historical structure...it does so by using accepted terms (non-architecture, non-landscape)...but in its own conclusion, it indicates a need for a deeper investigation/explanation into the root cause of this "expanded field". I think that almost needs to happen in an individual project/piece/installation basis, w/o "terms"...maybe there shouldn't be a need to classify art...it is what it is...
sorry for the rambling above...
lastly, someone suggested i watch the first
Rose/Serra interview...towards the end, "architecture" comes up, and serra attacks the notion of his work being called architecture, and furthermore, architecture being called art, furiously...his reasoning was that architecture deals with a whole new set of problems (function, plumbing, etc - "i don't want to be concerned with plumbing") and that by merely attaching function, it can not be art. (Rose shows he is a fan of architecture...funny exchange).
Interestingly enough, Serra explains that the purity of art is the reason why he doesn't join any of his shapes (to each other, or ground) - almost as if, then, it would join the realm of architecture.
thanks for all the great links being posted here by the way...
Richard Serra's Architecture
thats what i said in my last post ken...
missed it vado, could be the Novocaine...
The thread's moved on, but I was arguing for recognising a continuum between art and architecture as a way of avoiding hierarchy or diminishing either one.
to exist
to be seen
to be admired
to be sat beside
to be remembered
to memorialise
to be sat on
to be walked through
to store things in
to pass between
to shelter
to make comfortable
to unsettle
to allow one to service one's bodily functions
which of these are properties of architecture, and which of art? Which if these are functions, and which are properties? Unless we can draw a clear line, then we have to recognise a continuum.
@ AP,
Yes it has been too long ey?
I hope to visit the NE archinect crew (Quillian and you + some other friends of mine) before the years end.
Are you enjoying NYC? I have been reminiscing alot lately about my childhood years in Brooklyn.
@ Agfa8x and others
If you want an answer to the question of hierarchies.
It seems as if many academics over the last 2-3 decades have been trying just that to escape or provide alternative typologies to the older hierarchal models. Whether in history (which my graduate training was in, or art or even psychology etc)
I would think that such a project as applied to art/architecture has been articulated by someone before. I will be reading the article "Sculpture int he Expanded Field" (for my first time perhaps this will answer some of my questions.
To answer yours regarding the list you provided.
Here is my take on which is which or both
Art
to unsettle
Architecture
to store things in
to shelter
to allow one to service one's bodily functions
to make comfortable
(in a physical sense, not necessarily in terms of challenging previous assumptions)
Both
to exist
to be seen
to be admired
to be sat beside
to be remembered
to memorialise
to be sat on
to be walked through
to pass between
Just my thoughts
Given a choice, I'd rather live in sculpture than in architecture
i think most of serra's sculptures can only accommodate a twin bed. and forget plumbing. or heat or a/c.
agfa and namhenderson...interesting take on that list...
especially both:
"to exist
to be seen
to be admired
to be sat beside
to be remembered
to memorialise
to be sat on
to be walked through
to pass between"
i like to think that architecture manifests itself more often than its label...
@ simples exactly,
However, begs the question of whether (and i say yes) "IT" should be defined
If only by negation,
Not in a post-modern sense...
But in terms of plurality of modalities.
Not hierarchical
(refering to an earlier post)
nam, its interesting that the only property you reserve for art alone is 'to unsettle'. One could argue the early modernists were explicitly trying to unsettle with their architecture. They were quite pleased with the discomfort of traditionalists.
and art can service bodily functions, too. Rirkrit Tiravanija did a work where he cooked Pad Thai in a gallery.
stourley,
i don't know if he was published in architecture magazines, but am not sure that signifies anything, really. it would depend on the work and the context.
i don't mean to say that architecture and sculpture/art are not of interest to each other as fields, nor that discussion should not take place...only that serra does not make architecture. this is not a territorial thing, just an observation. the fields make statements at different levels and have different obligations. maybe this should not be so, but at some point for art to become architecture it has to jump a level where the purity of an idea is lost in some ways to code, to structural requirements, to desire for longevity, etc. etc. etc. am sure you can fill in a longer list. when that happens it is "just" architecture...maybe nice, maybe not.
i do however have no issue with artists working as architects (or vice versa). not sure if my artist collaborators should ever be allowed to design a hospital though. Artists are in many ways too selfish to think of "users", especially when they might get in the way of an idea about their work; yes this is an unfair generalisation, but also very often true.
In that light, perhaps the list of attributes above is not complete without adding ideas about social responsibility and willingness to lose the role of "author" of a work (building).
Certainly artists deal with these things but i don't know any professional artists who would be willing to let their work be taken through a million iterations in the hands of doctors, nurses, lawyers, clients, as well as the "users" and owners of a space.
For an architect the challenge of making great works of art/architecture must by definition include that kind of negotiation. And that means thinking beyond surface, beyond graphic design, beyond space, and taking on a lot of foreign ideas...and STILL making something worthwhile. That's why i have so much respect for folks like H+deM, and even OMA...they deal with all the rubbish and still make great works. In same way architects who are DEFINED by those negotiations are not so interesting to me...
jump,
i agree, but i think we are guilty of wanting our cake and eating too, are we not? i guess when i think about architects like lebeus woods, john hejduk and ben nicholson and their oeuvre, i don't wholly consider them "architects" in the traditional sense. for me at least, their work although obviously is architecture, stands pretty close to the edge of art.
as for vito, i saw some of his work in that book done by Jennifer Siegel, what is it called Mobile Architecture or something like that...
i saw lebbeus give a lecture at the bartlett a few years ago. he was talking about an installation, with lots of reference to philosophy and emergence (he was really reaching). it was pure art/sculpture as far as i could tell.
architects often try to be artists... but are seldom good at it.
speaking of minimalists....
There is a Dan Flavin exhibit on at LACMA.
their website
Dan Flavin: A Retrospective
May 13–August 12 | Modern and Contemporary Art Building
This is the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to minimalist artist Dan Flavin's full career. Organized by Dia Art Foundation in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and co-curated by Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, and Tiffany Bell, Director of the Dan Flavin catalogue raisonné, the exhibition features more than forty of Flavin's seminal fluorescent light works. Also presented is a special reconstruction of the corridors made for the E.F. Hauserman Co. showroom, formerly located at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. This will be the final destination of a multi-venue tour.
"Perhaps because Flavin is known so well as one of the founders of minimalism, his work has rarely been considered in all of its breadth and innovation before this retrospective," said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. "Flavin was one of the inventors of what we now know as 'installation art' and his groundbreaking use of color and light in architecture has been emulated not only in art, but in design and architecture. I count him among the most important figures in twentieth century art."
@ agfa8x
Obviously your right that the best of art and architecture should challenge but i don't think that this is a necessity for architecture definition.
Whereas i think it is art must fill this characteristic.
As for servicing bodily functions, i guess i was trying to point to the lack of utility in my defintion of art. Even Tiravanija's work is articulated for it's own sake not for that of the user...It still art as art,
Relational aesthetics is not functionally independent, even if it references utility or necessity.
@ Jump
did you see this news item on the front page?
http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=59110_0_24_0_C
If
" For an architect the challenge of making great works of art/architecture must by definition include that kind of negotiation. And that means thinking beyond surface, beyond graphic design, beyond space, and taking on a lot of foreign ideas...and STILL making something worthwhile."
and if an architect as you said must deal with codes, regulations etc
What about someone in the East...
Like Ai Weiwei
Are the regulations, codes as demanding or forced in non-Western/developed countries??
Moreover, even if they are would you say then that one clear line between art and architecture is that artists don't mediate?
Their is no negotiation except perhaps with themselves?
What about their relationship especially in the case of "installation art" with context (spatial esp.)???
And in Ai Weiwei's case he is as the last paragraph point's out constantly negotiating with the State,
yeh, i am generalising. weiwei has been a fave for years.
i work lately a lot with an artist here in tokyo who does installations that are becoming more and more architectural too. we have designed furniture together and done some archi-competitions and installations, and currently are working on a large landscape project and a proposal for a shop interior...not the stature of weiwei, but working on it.
anyway, Yes codes are enforced here, and in china too, and if not codes then other things...
the article about weiewei is interesting for me because it talks about his interest in architecture emerging from his experience with building his studio...that is, from architecture. The experience was, by implication, different from what he did as an artist, even the installations. I think that says something important...
For me if he is doing architecture then he is working as an architect, not as an artist. It might have an artistic bent, but in the end it is still architecture. Maybe i am missing something, but it does seem that way to me.
As a final thought, Weiwei's story about the state and censorship is that he DIDN'T negotiate. He felt his work was not to be impinged on, or at least not by his own hand. There was to be no self-censorship, only censorship imposed by the state against his will. Can't think of any example that better expresses the artist's mindset than that.
I believe architecture can be like that too, but not in the same way as art. We can't help but negotiate with something or someone along the way, even if we are very artistic. In the end, Frank Gehry is an architect and Richard Serra is an artist. There may be overlap, but they are (clearly?) different mediums.
define challenge.
hadn't read that krauss article since undergrad. i love that kind of criticism. does anyone do that anymore? i mean write criticism that doesn't either exhibit sour grapes negativity or, conversely, double as marketing material. i'm not sure that i can agree with some of the logical jumps, but it still makes synapses fire in my head that don't usually get exercised.
thanks to aml for linking to free writing. you seem to know where to find it and it's always much appreciated.
Just to prove that Sculpture and Architecture have the same roots in production, if not philosophy: Richard Serra and Frank O Gehry share the same engineer for their curved forms...
xacto mentioned the stella painting/architecture exhibit above. funny that, after rereading the krauss article and then seeing an ad for the stella exhibit, the exhibit copy claims exactly the continuous line between sculpture and architecture that krauss discredits. i guess that, even if stella and the curatorial staff know their art crit, the marketing folks don't!
beautiful sunday in royal oak, mi...played some tennis, came home, sat on the porch with a couple of Bell's Oberons and read the Krauss essay...
Very interesting reading, and i agree with Steven, "it still makes synapses fire in my head that don't usually get exercised."
the parameter of sculpture as "not landscape" and "not architecture" is also mentioned by Serra:..."because people could enter into these pieces, my work became more accessible. They could walk in and find something that wasn’t in nature and wasn’t in architecture.” Though he admits, for example that his Torqued Ellipses "were inspired by a misreading of the floor-and-ceiling ellipses in Borromini’s church San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome"...inspired by architecture...
agh...maybe i am just against labels when it comes to art...
(and can "architecture as architecture" can co-exist with "architecture as art")...why is "art of making architecture" offensive to architects and "art of rolling cigars" a compliment to cigar-rollers...
sorry if i am being redundant...it's monday morning...my mind is not warmed up yet!
i don't relly care if people appropriate/get inspired by/ use other work as a metaphor etc as long as they know where it came from and why. you need to understand a thing/movement/manifesto/ etc. before you can use it for your own end.
topic veer (but not OFF exactly):
check Juhani Pallasmaa's article - On History and Culture in this month's Architectural Record...
anyone posting on this thread should find plenty of food for thought.
and if you want to get to the essence of architecture touching art may i suggest "The Eyes of the Skin" (also by Juhani)
t...
i printed off that krauss article at work but forgot to bring it home. guess i'll have to watch summer tv instead.
ok, finally got around to watching the charlie rose interview... thanks for the link, simples. i'm not sure i can contribute anything else to what's been said before, so i'll just share my notes from the charlie rose show [all serra more or less quotes except the questions]:
So I watched steel being rigged, I watched it being hoisted…
Sculpture after that point had been the handmaiden of painting
[steel had been used in sculpture before, but] The way it was anchored into the ground was false
[I’m interested in]
The tectonics of the industrial revolution, by that I mean the building processes of the industrial revolution
To bring the use of steel as an industrial material
The procedures of rigging, the procedures of steel manufacturing
You bring another rationale of making and you intersperse it with ‘high art’
You can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools. Meaning, you have to find your own procedures and your own tools. Because if you use the master’s tools…
I’m not a welder. All these pieces are put together section by section
Are you contempttous of welding? No I’m just not into stitching
What are you into?
Into the properties of the gravitational way
Creates spaces and places where you walk into and around
Spaces that you walk into and around where you yourself are part of that steel… joined by that space. These forms invite you in to a feel of gravitational load that is an expression or a manifestation of the volume of steel [aprox. Minute 13]
What’s the purpose of art?
Purpose is to generate thought, thought is a catalyst to think things you haven’t felt before.
The purpose of art is to provide different experiences.
…
It’s not the quality, it’s the effort.
i liked hearing of his interest in the building processes of the industrial revolution... the tectonics of steel. you can draw lines across disciplines [painting, sculpture, poetry, dancing, architecture] but you can also draw perpendicular lines across modes of thought: tectonics & materiality, presence, linguistics, simbolism [i''m deliberately including other categories that have nothing to do with serra].
i also liked his statement of sculpture really coming into itself in the 60's- as the study of space [not his words] or the research of spatial development.
i guess those are the big areas of overlap with certain architectural modes of thought: space and material.
so i'm scared to death of posting this but it shows i've been thinking about this for a while now... only keep in mind it was done about 8 years ago and i had just heard about serra.
looks good aml. i will print it out and read it soon.
it's mostly pictures and quotes from the krauss essay... one serra, one zumthor work for each of krauss's four categories.
@ AML
Interesting slideshow/essay,
Have you seen any pics etc about Zumthor's new Chapel?
I posted a news piece earlier about it.
Looks amazing....
As you (and Serra) and many others on this post have said,
i think the key is that both sculpture (although perhaps only in the modern era) and architecture share an interest in space and it's possesion or at least the experience of,
as well (at least in Serra's case) materiality
My two cents,
aml...your essay made me miss my Architectural Theory classes...a quote from the story (beautifully written by the way) namhenderson has posted:
"...a building containing just one room, with a roof that fails to keep out the rain, made of rough concrete, burned timber and lead. It has no electricity. No running water. No plumbing. No lavatories. No wind turbine. No solar panels. No air-con. No pictures hang on its walls. It offers no obvious, or accepted, sense of comfort. And yet it is compelling and very beautiful, offering solace."
re. the krauss essay, it does an excellent job of mapping "sculpture" in its historical structure...it does so by using accepted terms (non-architecture, non-landscape)...but in its own conclusion, it indicates a need for a deeper investigation/explanation into the root cause of this "expanded field". I think that almost needs to happen in an individual project/piece/installation basis, w/o "terms"...maybe there shouldn't be a need to classify art...it is what it is...
sorry for the rambling above...
lastly, someone suggested i watch the first
Rose/Serra interview...towards the end, "architecture" comes up, and serra attacks the notion of his work being called architecture, and furthermore, architecture being called art, furiously...his reasoning was that architecture deals with a whole new set of problems (function, plumbing, etc - "i don't want to be concerned with plumbing") and that by merely attaching function, it can not be art. (Rose shows he is a fan of architecture...funny exchange).
Interestingly enough, Serra explains that the purity of art is the reason why he doesn't join any of his shapes (to each other, or ground) - almost as if, then, it would join the realm of architecture.
thanks for all the great links being posted here by the way...
long time ago in a book RSerra saw your first matter were gravity and weight, and i think it isn't an architectural principal problem
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