Le Corbusier, Plan for a Contemporary City of 3 Million Inhabitants (never realized) 1922

Unlike many Modern architects, Le Corbusier was up to the task of large urban planning as seen in this drawing, an urban meritocracy influenced by American skyscraper cities.  Le Corbusier published his models + sketches for the city in his journal L’Esprit Nouveau.  His plan depicts a skyscraper-filled, capitalist city, the interior core being the “brain,” 24 sixty story high rises, acting as an administrative center for the city.  A great multilevel platform with roads and airfields would be the centerpiece, in line with the Modernist interest in speed and transport; he believed a city built for speed was built for success.  Further in line with Modernist’s hygienic movement, he included lots of green park space hoping to strike a perfect labor/leisure balance.  Unlike many Modernists however, Le Corbusier has not broken down the social hierarchy, the urban elites will have earned their position while the proletariat is housed in outlying suburbs.  Low-lying apartments of 10-12 stories would dot the city, these villa units based on his maison citrohan, apartments that blended the boundaries between interior and exterior.  A communal environment, yet taking into account individuality, Le Corbusier attempted to strike a balance between the two with this city.

(image courtesy of tesugen.com)

Antonio Sant’ Elia, Station for Airplanes + Trains (never realized) 1914

The resident architect of the radical Italian Futurists, Sant’ Elia’s design captures the mechanized interests of the group, annihilation of tradition and a focus on speed & machinery.  Centered in the industrial city of Milan, the young Italian futurists fully embraced technology.  Italy had been late to industrialize and modernize, and the Futurists believed that this was due to the celebration of their long history.  To be part of his La Citta Nuova, Sant’ Elia’s station emobdies Futurist ideals through engineering, machinery, speed and dynamism.  A multipurpose structure, Sant Elia has designed a transportation station with numerous bays for trains, even placing an airfield behind it, though planes had just been invented a few years prior.  With the onus on transportation, Sant’ Elia stresses movement.  As a fringe avant-garde group, the Futurists were unable to realize any of their buildings, primarily because they had no funding, but also because of the sheer monumentality of their designs.  Futurist drawings like this one did circulate however, primarily in the newly formed USSR, later influencing the Constructivists.

(image courtesy of kmtspace.com)

Carolee Schneeman, Interior Scroll, 1975

Schneeman’s body art performance exemplifies her crucial role in the woman’s movement, using her body to expose cultural, political and economic inequalities due to gender.  A feminist, Schneeman’s use of her body here creates a forced intimacy between the performer and the audience, allowing the resulting reactions to range from amusing to discomfitting.  One of the most visceral performances of the decade, Schneeman was working counter to the masculine overtones of minimalism and conceptual art.  Schneeman’s performance included readings, paintings and the removal of a scroll from her vagina, which was described as giving her vagina a voice.  Rather than lapse into simplistic opposition of masculinity, Schneeman stayed away from male symbols.  Her fluxus inspired piece was performed in East Hampton, NY and Telluride, CO and represents the culmination of Schneeman’s exploration (?) of vulvic space.  Her overarching concern was breaking down the perceived or otherwise, barriers created by a patriarchal society.  Rebelling against biology being the deciding factor in the classification of gendered professions and activities.

(I seemingly cannot write about this work without sounding like a high schooler)

(image courtesy of Brooklyn Museum)

Pentecost Portal, Vezelay, 1120-1140 CE

A jumping off point for the crusades and pilgrimmages, the “Church of the Madeleine,” features an iconographical program on its portal that corresponds to these events.  Possibly designed by Peter the Venerable, the great Romanesque portal at Vezelay is located within the narthex and depicts the theophany of Pentecost, a divergence from the more typical Last Judgment scenes.  The holy spirit has given the gift of tongues to the disciples of Christ to go out and convert.  Light from Christ’s hand instills them with this gift, heathens, pygmies and panotii of India are shown in the lintels, illuminating the interest in things on the periphery of existence.  A statue of John the Baptist occupies the trumeau, linking the Pentecost and the baptism.  (Additionally, John’s location at the trumeau references the entrance of one to Christianity through baptism).  This created a great backdrop for the fiery speeches given by the Pope before the crusades, the middle age equivalent of Pentecost.  The figures are executed in a dynamic/energetic angular style.  The outer moldings are of a luxuriate foliate design that would become the trademark of Burgundian decoration.

(image courtesy of sacred-destinations.com)

Miegeville Portal, St. Sernin, Toulouse, 1118 CE

One of the earliest extant complete monumental Romanesque doorways, this didactic entrance is the maturation of the 11th century style born from sculptors making Christian history understandable to common pilgrims.  A stop on the pilgrimmage road, the Miegeville portal was strategically situated to be seen and read from the road.  The door is flanked by spandrels featuring St. Peter and St. James.  This sculptural program reflects a pertinent situation in Toulouse there were a number of heretics and a growing disconnect between the aristocracy and the clergy.  The relief panel under St. James shows men surrounded by women beasts, a warning to not engage in too much sex.  Below St. Peter is Simon Magus, who believed he could fly, a heretic claiming to be god.  The tympanum features the theophany of the ascension, an awesome triumphant Christ ascending into heaven.  ON the lintel below are 12 apostles, who, along with St. Peter & James act as intercessors to the Christian worshipers.  The supernatural God of the Romanesque was not as relatable as the human saints.  The figures are each contained in a single block of stone, rendered in the flattened wild dance pose of the Romanesque.

(image courtesy of e-spania.revues.org)

Rainier of Huy, Baptismal Font, 1107-1118 CE

An ars sacra from the Mosan region, Rainier’s skill illustrates the classical style kept alive in the region.  The Romanesque period was a time of distinct regionalism.  The Mosan region was renowned for their artisans and Rainier’s font for St. Barthelemy Church in Liege is no exception.  A baptismal font of bronze and cast using the lost-wax technique, Rainier shows the continuation of ancient figural tradition kept alive in the region, the figures being idealized, moving and exhibiting a tangible realism.  The figures project into space, imbued with dignity, simplicity, harmony and realistic 1 to 7 proportions.  The scenes show St. John the Baptist baptizing Christ while God the father looks from above, a theophany but also a narrative of Christ’s life.  The other scenes of projecting, moving figures are also baptisms, delineated by stylized trees.  The bowl sits upon twelve oxen, perhaps alluding to the 12 apostles or also referencing the basin at Soloman’s temple.  Rainier was a secular artist, working within the regionalism of the Romanesque at a time when exceptionally skilled artists began to gain notoriety.  (Meaning: not just monks/clergy making religious art at this time)

(image courtesy of lib-art.com)

Hosios Loukas, Near Stiris, early 11th century

A great extant example of middle Byzantine architecture, the monastery’s vertical plan and iconography respond to the assertion of hierarchy within the Eastern Church at this time.  Built in a rugged remote area, the monastery contained the relics of St. Loukas, the relics known for their healing powers.  The exterior has striking brickwork, recreating a particular surface dynamism or cloisonne effect.  Though two churches on the site, the Katholikon, the bigger of the two, bears some similarities to San Vitale in Ravenna with its double-shelled central plan.  Its dome however rests on squinches, an octagon in a square, giving the interior a differing effect, complex yet unified.  The interior mosaic decoration responds to the increasing complexity of the Eastern Church’s liturgy.  A hierarchy has been asserted, the condensed vertically oriented church draws the eye up to affirm this.  At this time a screen was erected so only priests experienced the mass.  The congregants meditated upon religious icons on the screen (acting as intercessors).  Closest to the floor showed the real of matter - saint.  Above that came the human life of Christ, angels and Mary and finally, inhabiting the dome is Christ Pantokrater, God as the ruler of the universe, inhabiting the dome.  This mosaic, now lost, was the common depiction of Christ in the East at this time.

(images courtesy of montebastides.com)

Praxiteles, Aphrodite of Knidos, Roman Marble Copy after Original c. 340 BC

The first nude woman sculpture by a well-known Greek sculptor, Praxiteles imbues his statue with an anti-Polykleitan sensuousness.  The 6 ft 8 inch Aphrodite was actualy rejected by the city who commissioned it, yet Knidos gladly took this one, building a shrine for it to be seen in the round.  Starting the long tradition in the West of the female nude, it was usually seen as a sign of low character, but Praxiteles may be merging Aphrodite with the Phoenician goddess Asarte, who was typically depicted nude.  The work was wildly popular in its own time and later as copies numbered in the hundreds.  Able to carve marble to look like flesh, Prax’s sculpture shows a shift towards the real, losing the solemn grandeur but gaining worldly sensuousness.  In realistic contrapposto, Prax’s Aphrodite prepares to step into the bath as the viewer happens upon her, she covers her crotch in a Venus-pudica-like pose.  Praxiteles makes the viewer a voyeur of a goddess no less, creating an erotic, surprising and a little embarrassing psychological scenario, born from creating a statue with such sensuousness, a divergent step from the seriousness established by Polykleitos 100 years prior.

(Taking the viewer into account is looking forward to Hellenism)

(image courtesy of proteus.brown.edu)

Meret Oppenheim, Le Dejeuner en Fourrure (Fur Lined Teacup) 1936

The quintessential surrealist object, Oppenheim used the Surrealist concepts of encountering an object and rendering it unfamiliar in order to activate an embodied response to the work of art.  This was in line with the Surrealist’s goals of upsetting the status of reality.  A result of a conversation with Picasso, Oppenheim bought this tea cup from a department store and covered it in Chinese gazelle fur.  Oppenheim has rendered an everyday object otherworldly.  The work both attracts (subconscious desire) and repels, its fur is soft to the touch but abhorrent to the mouth.  A multivalent object, Oppenheim refer to gender roles with “tea time” but the thought of hair in the mouth cuts through the idle chit-chat.  Furthermore, the work carries a psychosexual element, the fur acting as a woman’s pubic hair while the cup acts as a vagina and the spoon as a phallus.  Perhaps Oppenheim is reacting to the common projection of sexual desires on to women by the male Surrealists.  Name by Breton, alluding to Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, and Masoch’s Venus in Furs, Oppenheim’s work is the archetype of the surrealist object, demanding viewer’s react to the unfamiliar object.

(image courtesy of Moma)

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao Spain, 1993-1997

A perfect example of architecture as spectacle in the vein of FLW’s NYC Guggenheim and the Pompidou Center, the idea is fully articulated here, leading to the term, “the Bilbao Effect.”  Commissioned by Spain and the city of Bilbao, the museum was built to revitalize a city in economic decline, using culture as economic regeneration, like the Pompidou Center, it worked here as well/  The Guggenheim was becoming a multinational corporation, transforming the art world.  Holding post-war American Art, Gehry’s building recalls a ship, referencing Bilbao’s shipbuilding history.  A deconstructivist design, Gehry’s titanium structure features unstable masses in curvilinear shapes, far more exuberant than modern architecture.  This undulation would have been impossible however without the used of CAD, making the advanced calculations possible.  Its interior is indecipherable from the exterior, inside massive galleries were built large enough to hold monumental works like those by Richard Serra.  Erupting out of the city, Gehry’s building represents the growing globalism of the late 20th century.  Much like the Pompidou Center, the Guggenheim Bilbao outshines the art it holds.  Its success in revitalizing the economy however set off a series of adventurous museum designs, not all as successful as this one.

(use of Titanium = Globalism)

(photo courtesy of wikipedia)