jacob_g's blog

This semester was my first at Gallatin.  I applied into the music composition program at Steinhardt and stayed there for three semesters before feeling that I needed a change.  I was losing interest in the theories and principles taught in music school, not that they were no longer pertinent, but rather, I felt a shifting of focus into a realm of music that didn’t operate on the moment to moment, fixed basis of standard notation.  

 

I was beginning to see a strong and helpful connection between the music I was interested in and architecture.  In short, a building establishes certain confines, and in doing so, caters to certain functions while making others quite difficult.  In some way, it limits what a person can do inside of its walls, but in no way does it determine moment to moment activity.  Toward the end of last year I started experimenting with a system of graphic notation; my goal was to provide a score to an entire piece within the limit of one page.  I divided the page into two boxes, creating two distinct sections, each containing a set of musical directions and possibilities.  It struck me one day that this sort of score was working very similarly in relation to the improvisor/performer as a building works in relation to its inhabitant(s): In both cases, certain predetermined structures limit what can go on inside of them while allowing and encouraging creative decisions to be made in order to best use this predetermined material to and within its limits.

 

When I decided to transfer to Gallatin, this interest in architecture was very much at the front of my mind, and while looking through courses, this one was the first to catch my eye.  I wanted to better understand the effects of space and place in order to work towards a new way of working with music.  I expected the course to take a mostly spiritual standpoint, and through Tuan, this expectation continued.  However, as we moved onward, the course quickly shifted toward a concern for space and place within the real world, and as a result, my understanding, awareness, and concern for the “built environment” was heightened, while my interest in the spirituality of space and place with regards to music, continued to be stimulated.  

 

During the Fall, I proposed to create a sound installation as part of a fellowship program at school.  I had never before worked in this way, as much of last year was spent writing chamber music for other musicians to play.  I spent a lot of time, some of it thinking, some of it procrastinating, and finally, during the Spring, started working on this installation, which I showed at the Gallatin Arts Festival.  Many of my concerns and thoughts either originated in or were informed by this class, and so I can confirm with certainty the positive effect it had on me.  

 

This summer I am going to study with a favorite composer of mine in Paris, whose work seems to share a consideration of space, as he often writes for monolithic forces, not for the complexity of hundreds of intertwining parts, but for the effect that such a crowd can have on the way the music moves in space.  Whatever I am working on or doing while there, I am sure that Kunstler, with his high regard for the Parisian streets and cafés, and our classes’ concern for the urban environment will be ever-present.  

(Photo taken by me of an aforementioned score)

 

From a grassy nook to the expanse of central park, New York City and its inhabitants take grass where and when they can get it.  It seems obvious, but after coming to NYU, the first thing I missed about home was seeing grass and trees, hearing birds during the day and crickets in the evening.  I remember a particular night last year when my mom called me and told me to look at the moon; I went outside, walked several blocks both east and west along 12th St. and couldn’t find it. It was late and the sky was clear, yet the moon was nowhere to be seen.  

 

The importance of good public space in a city like New York is unmeasurable.  On the first good day of the warmer seasons, you will always find the parks and green spaces packed with people, all of them enjoying the stillness and the comfort of that wedge of nature, hemmed in between the overly trodden concrete.  Even the animals can pick out these spaces and appreciate them as the closest thing to their natural habitats; it usually takes only one step into a city park to hear the chirping of birds and the scattering of squirrels, sounds we used to take for granted but in which we now find comfort.  What larger places like Central Park and Prospect Park have are paths and roads that wind out of sight–immediately my sense of direction is gone and I can wander in the true sense of the word.  

 

A recent discovery mine is the garden at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, a place which is at once unexpected and welcoming.  Tucked away in the West Village, it offers respite from the agitation of city life, like any good garden would, but what’s more is its connection to the church and the spiritual overtones that result:  

 

Enter through the gate on Hudson Street. Follow the garden path toward the red brick annex beside the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, the neighborhood young Thomas Merton left to join the Trappists. Come any Tuesday evening and you will see a group of men and women sitting quietly, their faces still and serene.

Nobody moves. Nobody speaks. There is only silence. They are practicing Centering Prayer, the meditation practice Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Whenever you pray, go into your room, shut the door and pray to your Father, who is in secret. (Matthew 6:6)

Its landscaping is diverse for its size, but in maintaining a sense of simplicity, it does not overwhelm me.  In fact, there seems to be a perfect balance of complexity and simplicity, as the garden appears much bigger than the space it is in.  One of its sides is marked by a fence which runs along Barrow St. until intersecting with a brick wall at Hudson St.  Looking toward the fence I see row houses and cars drive by; the garden seems small and at its perimeter, the city dominates.  Looking toward the brick wall, the garden opens up again; it seems expansive despite the wall’s sense of enclosure.  

 

The center of the garden is marked by a tree–the most impressive of the garden–from which small white flowers grow.  Its roots are contained within a circular patch of greenery which gives way to the convergence of four stone pathways.  The four pathways designate the four quadrants of the garden, each of which is embellished with a slightly different array of flowers and bushes.  Two of the pathways lead under simple, metal archways through which green vines grow.  The first things to catch my eye are the roses, which are both red and purple.  The brown soil is covered by the white petals falling from the tree in the center.

 

Bird songs provide a counterpoint to the passing cars, and the longer I listen, the more organized it seems to be.  To make a connection to my midterm, this garden would undoubtedly make for a perfect location in Max Neuhaus’ LISTEN “Field Trips Thru Found Sound Environments,” along which he advises the audience to pay special attention to the unique sounds of discrete locations, meeting them with a certain awareness that perhaps had not before been activated (Nyman 104).  

 

The garden seems very English in its classical style.  As I turn for a 360º perspective, I notice that there is no real influence of modernism within the garden or beyond its walls–a quality that cannot be attributed to many other 360º views in the city that I can think of.  Furthermore, every surrounding building and every wall of the garden is made of brick.  The two prominent colors–the green of the plant life and the red of the brick, in both cases, earth tones–play a major role in shaping the peaceful, calm character of the place.  A pile of chopped wood against the brick wall seems to quietly combat modern technology.

 

The birds often outnumber the people, and seeing them run about the path and soil makes me feel like an intruder of some sort–an intruder who has been welcomed so long as to not give up the privacy of the place.  Again, I look to my right, through the fence, and I return to the life of the city as a truck drives down Barrow St.  The two worlds seems symbiotic, as each is so completely wrapped up in what it is, neither attempting to imitate the other in any way.  

 

In New York City, the garden at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields offers repose to keep a person sane among the perpetual motion beyond its walls.  Just like the abundance of skyscrapers and concrete makes us more appreciative of the valuable green space, these parks provide us with a necessary lull and enable our return to the hectic city day after day.  This garden in particular stands out as being catered to this notion and shows that a cathartic retreat is possible within the confines of just one square city block.

 

As a supplement, I’ve made a short piece of music whose material comes from St. Luke’s garden.  The music is comprised of a field recording I made in the garden and a synthesizer’s modulations of that recording.  It begins with the unaffected sounds of the garden; what is heard is a combination of birds chirping, cars driving by, planes overhead, and a mother and child walking nearby.  The recording, as it has been modulated by the synthesizer, enters from silence and slowly gains volume.  Through a combination of an envelope follower, an oscillator, and a filter, I have taken the field recording and turned it into what sounds like a further collection of chirping birds.  As that approaches full volume, the original field recording begins to fade out until what is left is only the sound of the synthesizer, and with it, the allusion of birds.  It can be found here.

 

 

Sources Cited

 

Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Print.

 

"Prayer Groups." The Church of St. Luke in the Fields. Web. 2 May 2011. <http:// www.stlukeinthefields.org>.

 

 

Toward the end of his “Tribeca” chapter, Michael Sorkin begins to insist upon the forward motion of cities, arguing that “historic cities die when their narratives freeze” (178).  His argument is made in response to his distaste for the seemingly constant film shoots and general sense of inauthenticity in his studio’s neighborhood.  

 

Sorkin’s frustration reminded me of the frustration that many of my neighborhood’s inhabitants  shared several years ago when the city was proposing to designate the neighborhood as a historic district.  As a resident, the initial flattery of such a proposal wears off quite quickly once you take inventory of the pros and cons in such a situation.  The pros are that your neighborhood has been exalted and as a result, your property value will probably increase.  The cons, however, are that any sort of renovation to your house or property becomes a process of appealing before a board to gain approval, the neighborhood will see more visitors (this could be seen as good as bad, but in a quiet neighborhood like mine, I think many would see it as an invasion of privacy), some sort of plaque would be installed, and some amount of open house time might be required annually.  In other words, you would likely only benefit from the historic designation if you were to leave.  Otherwise, what used to be your home, not just the physical house, but the mentality of home, of ownership, is sacrificed.  Your home is likely the one piece of property that is yours–yours to keep, yours to change, yours to do with what you will in order to keep yourself comfortable.  The historic preservation, then, is not for the neighborhood’s inhabitants, but for the city and for the spectators, and better suited for a more public space.

 

The overarching question, both with regards to Sorkin’s situation and my own, is a difficult one:  how do we preserve the goodness of a place without “freezing” its narrative?  How do we enshrine while still supporting forward motion?  Speaking generally, it seems that a compromise must always be made; a place cycles through various stages of development, some of which stand out as especially desirable, and to freeze one of these stages is to discontinue the progression of the place, though it is commonly done nonetheless.  I think what Sorkin proposes in regards to rent control, etc. is the best we can do, as it allows for a sort of combination of a place’s various golden years.  

In “The Block,” Michael Sorkin writes of the flâneur, or stroller: “The flâneur was a man who was part of a crowd, whose walking was a product of leisure, who reflected in the idleness of his pursuit a degree of alienation and who walked in order to observe” (82).  Although it’s not often that I walk outside with no destination, there are times–especially on the first nice day of the season, for example–when a casual stroll can be quite nice and a perfect time to do some clear thinking.  However, there are certain spatial qualities of a place that can make turn an uneventful stroll into a quite fulfilling one.  

 

Within days of moving to New York, I realized that I was walking more than I ever had.  This didn’t come as a surprise; it’s something I was told and expected.  However, I hadn’t thought much of it, at least not beyond the basic fact that I was walking a lot.  It was a particular day this past summer, June 12th actually, that I began to think more about walking, or in this case, strolling.  I was back home in New Haven for the Arts and Ideas festival and had just gone to a concert at Yale’s Woolsey Hall.  My mom was out of town and my ride there was heading another direction and so I walked home.  The walk is by no means lengthy; it’s actually quite easily done, but it is a distance I would have, on any other day, traversed by car.  But why?

 

Woolsey Hall is situated near the edge of the densest part of Yale’s campus.  As I walked away from the center of New Haven I passed several new buildings, among them the new Kroon Hall, home to the Yale School of Forestry and one of the greenest buildings in the world.  In this case it was nice to be on foot, as I had more time to explore what, while driving, would be merely peripheral.  However, as these impressive buildings became fewer, the walk became longer.  Aside from a flâneur every so often, the remainder of the walk was a bit uneventful and a bit lonely.  It became clear that the less dense (both in terms of people and buildings) a stretch was, the longer that stretch would seem.  

 

The walk is 1.2 miles, approximately 25 minutes, and only slightly longer than my daily walk from Greenwich St. to the Gallatin building, which is 0.9 miles, approximately 18 minutes, yet it seemed to take twice as long.  And although the same walk repeated many times can get tiresome even in New York, this walk between Woolsey Hall and my house had the potential to become tiresome much sooner.  

 

While visiting my grandparents in Florida over spring break, I noticed for the first time the extreme un-walkability that many of the neighborhoods suffered from.  That, in addition to the scarcity of other walkers and interesting sites, make it no wonder why nobody wants to stroll there.

It’s funny to think about what we Americans imagine when we think of the idealized, romantic city while reading about the plans of Robert Moses.  As Kunstler mentioned in The Geography of Nowhere, we think of Paris, for example, and its picturesque streets, narrow and lined with low-rise buildings which house commerce on the street level and apartments above.  This is the essence of the city; these are the sort of streets that we seek out on a nice day, when we have a moment to escape our work and unwind.  Why then do prominent urban planners like Robert Moses insist on developing projects whose effect on the civic environment is unanimously deemed so bad?  

 

Anthony Flint writes of Jane Jacobs’ meeting with Philadelphia’s preeminent urban planner, Edmund Bacon, an assignment given to her while writing for Architectural Forum.  After being shown the “before” streets and then the newly renovated ones, her first question was, “Where are the people?” (20)  It seems like a simple enough observation, and indeed, it is.  

 

On Monday, when the weather was nice, I went for a walk in the West Village–near Jacobs’ Hudson St. apartment–and found such solace, not surprisingly, on those well-inhabited, lively but not overworked, narrow blocks.  Charles St., between Washington St. and Greenwich St., was especially pleasant and full of people, most of whom were divided amongst the bike shop, the restaurant, and the coffee shop, all of which combined indoor and outdoor space very successfully.  The aura of this block actually reminded me quite specifically of Portland, Oregon, a city I had promoted with some reservations in an earlier post, which I am now left to reevaluate after this pleasant experience.  One very obviously thing about Portland is its lack of Modernist buildings.  It has its fair share of modern skyscrapers, not all of which are all that pleasing to look at, but the rest of its newer buildings, apartment complexes and the like, fit very nicely into the atmosphere that had been developed since the founding of the city.  I remember many of these buildings’ exteriors being full of foliage, vines on the walls and flowers on the balconies.  They didn’t interrupt the street experience that makes city life enjoyable, as the Edmund Bacon plans did for Philadelphians.  

 

Perhaps if people like Robert Moses were to spend more time interacting with the places they wanted to develop–Washington Square Park, for example–they would better understand their opposition’s gripes.  Flint talks about the imperfections of Washington Square Park, the offset fountain, and the general coincidence of its coming into being.  It’s communal, organic development are exactly what gives it its charm, and are exactly what big, Modernist developments lack.  People want a reason to go outside–they want to explore the quirks and inconsistencies of a neighborhood.  And they also want to be around other people.  These complex networks are not easily replicable, and they are certainly not worth destroying, for the city is more of a melting pot than a thru-way.  In this way, cities like Portland and Paris are successful in separating big business and places which cater more to the modernist mindset, which in Paris is centered in La Défense, from the city proper.  

 

Pollan dedicates a portion of his eighth and final chapter to the topic of the “time and place” of architecture.  Of course, it comes as no surprise that he chooses to put the controversial theories of Le Corbusier in conversation with those of Christopher Alexander and J.B. Jackson (with whom he sides) in order to dissect the subject.  Pollan writes, “The modernists were avid about making buildings that had as little to do with time as possible, time future as much as time past...They designed and built them in such a way as to leave as little scope as possible for the sort of changes that the passing of time has always wrought on a building–namely, the effects of nature outside, and of the owners within.” He continues by explaining that to do this, they disposed of stone and wood, materials used in the past “for the graceful way they weather” and instead turned to steel with an often white surface “that was intended to [keep the buildings] looking new forever” (272).  However, the modernists failed to defy nature and these buildings have weathered too, in the most unpleasant way.  

 

This false projection of modernism’s immortality was exemplified equally well in the field of music, among other art forms.  Arnold Schoenberg, the famed father of serialism–a strict practice of implementing all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, each with equal emphasis, abandoning the idea tonality all together–is quoted saying, “I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years.”  Perhaps it is always the case that such a grandiose and boastful prediction fails.  It was not even 40 years before a forceful opposition to the strict, and even non-musical rules of serialism began to be forcefully broken.  

 

This talk of modernism’s battle against time comes about during Pollan’s discussion of finishing his hut, a process that includes painstaking procedures and detailed ornamentation (if desired).  He writes, “The modernists were the first architects in history to insist that they design the interiors of their houses down to the very last detail” (272).  To continue the comparison, so too did serialism, as it developed, codify each and every aspect of a composition–pitch, rhythm, timbre, dynamics–until it was nothing more than a largely underwhelming musical equation.  

 

It isn’t hard to understand how such stubborn systems deny themselves the longevity that is expected of them, for without flexibility nothing is likely to endure for long.  

With his interest in making something real and lasting, as opposed to cerebral and abstract, Michael Pollan touches on what is undoubtedly a widespread struggle that divides the academics and the handymen into two worlds. The academic may always have the desire to create something that stands on its own in the world, while the handyman may envy the new idea that could immortalize one’s name.  As we’ve discovered, architects fall into to both of these fields.  There are the practicians (handymen), whose work is practical yet ridiculed as being insipid by the academics (someone like Le Corbusier), whose work is in turn considered futile by the practicians.  

 

Pollan writes, “At the end of his day the builder alone could say–and yet didn’t need to say, because there it was–he had added something to the stock of incontestable reality, created a new fact.  It sounded to good to be true” (26).  As James Kunstler explained in one way or another on Tuesday, the ability to create something physical, something that fits into the progression of everyday life, is not only a desirable skill, it’s a survival skill.  Sure, innovative thought will always be appreciated, but when it comes to day-to-day survival, one must be, to a certain point, self-sufficient. 

 

Earlier in the book, Pollan discusses our natural inclination to build from an early age.  He writes, “I’m thinking of the huts a child builds with an appliance carton, or two chairs and a blanket, or of one particular closet I cleared of coats and outfitted (with dials and gauges drawn in Magic Marker) to resemble a Gemini capsule” (18).  I certainly loved nothing more than climbing up to the small loft atop my closet’s dresser to draw or tying string around every last piece of furniture to turn my brother’s room into a spider web through which we navigated ourselves.  No matter whether we see this inclination through to a profession, hobby, or anything else, I don’t think our love for building things, for feeling something in our hands, or for producing something tangible of our own ever goes away.  From making a baby to growing a fine leaf of basil, we’ll always hold closest to our hearts that which holds a piece of us within.  It is no wonder, then, why Michael Pollan is so set on building his fantasy hut with his own two hands.

It’s only recently that I’ve learned to ignore the the creaks and moans of my now 100 year old house.  

One day my brother came running home for help when his friend had been jumped by some kids from the school for juvenile delinquents across the street.

On a snow day I remember finding a wallet in my backyard.  The house behind ours and up the hill had been robbed and through our yard were footprints and the wallet.  I was excited to talk to the policemen, excited to have my name written in their little book.

What must’ve been a few years later, a Yale student was murdered right outside a friend’s house a couple blocks away.  There was almost no evidence and the case, now a cold one, remains unsolved.  

 

A number of years after that a friend’s house up the street was broken into by a couple of young kids from one of the neighborhoods over the hill.  They beat up the woman who was watching the house but were caught within a day or so.

 

I’ve lived in the same house all my life and I’ve always felt safe.  It’s a popular neighborhood to walk through.  People from around town come to enjoy its tranquility and admire all the big, old houses.  In fact, it has quite a reputation

 

I’ve always had two big dogs, three at one point.  Always a pair of Bernese Mountain Dogs.  I can’t imagine them ever giving someone too hard of a time, but I guess to an outsider, they’d be seen as pretty effective watch dogs.

 

One night, late but not too late, a nondescript minivan pulled into our driveway.  The dogs barked and ran up and down their gated run.  My brother, sister and I kneeled by windowsill in my sisters room.  I can’t speak for them but I was young and terrified.  We watched out the window as the van just sat there, no one getting out.  My mom went downstairs and dialed the police.  They didn’t show up for a while, not until after the van left and we had found out it was our dog-sitter’s wife, mistakenly having showed up at the wrong house.  

 

I’m often asked, isn’t New Haven a dangerous place? and I always answer the same way: it’s just like any other city, there are good parts and there are bad parts.  To me, most parts are good and I grow more fond of it as I grow up and begin to recognize its many virtues.  

 

This past October a friend and I ventured up to the Hudson Valley to spend a day at the Dia:Beacon, a unique museum with an extensive permanent collection of innovative art from the 1960’s onward.  For months I had been encouraged by teachers and friends alike to make this short trip up and out of the city.  Finally, on a pleasant, fall Saturday, we made the trip, driving about two hours northwest of New Haven, Connecticut to Beacon, New York, a small town sixty miles north of Manhattan.  I was certainly looking forward to a break from the city to see what I’d heard was an unprecedented collection of work by a number of modern artists whom I admire.  I had not expected to find such comfort in the very good place that I found Dia:Beacon to be.  

 

Housed in an old Nabisco factory, the museum sits, surrounded by trees, right on the Hudson river.  A long driveway takes you into the parking lot where “each car is matched with a flowering fruit tree.”  How thoughtful.  The museum, hidden until this point, reveals itself.  The brick facade of the building is forerun by a beautiful garden whose geometric path–a series of intersecting panels between which grass sprouts along the edge–and deliberately placed foliage is complemented by the organic contours of the surrounding trees, a combination which makes Robert Irwin’s modern garden design seem a beautiful understatement as opposed to an unwelcome boast.  All of this, beautiful as it is, was made more so by the distinctive colors of Autumn, especially vibrant in the undisturbed landscape of the riverbank.  To enter the Riggio Galleries (the proper name for the museum’s large exhibition space) one passes through a small vestibule, evidently added after the Dia Art Foundation’s acquisition of the factory.  It too is very simple and sleek in its design, made of brick (like the factory) and constructed almost entirely of right angles save for a curved brow.  The gallery space itself is extensive.  Although refurbished so as to accommodate the collection, the gallery still retains the look and feel of a factory, interrupted only scarcely and pragmatically.  

 

The Dia:Beacon website describes the building as a “model of early twentieth century industrial architecture.” These seven words put together would undoubtedly cause Kunstler heart failure, however, I see it as a virtue.  From afar, the complex is actually quite unassuming.  It neither flaunts its presence nor shies away its attractiveness. Sure, nearly everything about it screams post-modernism, but it does so in such a gentle, welcoming way.  The geometries of the garden’s pathway, the annexed vestibule of the galleries, and the galleries themselves are rectangular without being foreboding, free of ornament without being charmless, and highly contrasting to their surrounding without seeming out of place.  The pathway, described above, was to me, the ultimate example of a successful combination of nature and architecture.  Although it was no coincidence and the nature aspect was deliberate, the unpredictable way in which the grass creeps through the path is simple without being periodic, and to me, exemplifies good, thoughtful design, making the most out of both form and function.

 

The galleries close at dusk, as the work is lit only by natural light, which seems to be ushered in effortlessly (certainly not hindered by the 26,000 square feet of skylight).  Not only does this light provide an ever changing counterpoint with the collection, but it also impresses upon the work some of its own thoughts, the best example being the shadows of windows that appear very visibly on Richard Serra’s massive steel circumscriptions during the mid-to-late afternoon.  Like it or not, it’s quite an unusual thing to see.  It is plain to see that the Dia Art Foundation is as concerned with its collection as it is with providing the visitor an experience beyond that of simply pacing back and forth amongst it.  The museum does not take its idyllic location for granted.  No, the collection is not made up of landscape paintings from the Hudson River School, but that would be redundant anyways.  The contrast between the minimal work inside and the complex world outside is surprisingly beautiful.  Dia:Beacon clearly noticed this and took full advantage of it.

 

I had never thought much of the layout within a museum before going to the Dia:Beacon.  90 degree angles, bright white walls, etc. seem to always do the trick.  And, like all other museums and galleries, Dia:Beacon has this, but it does it quite a bit differently.  The gallery space is divided in such a way so as to give special attention to each artists’ work.  Every artist has his or her own designated space, uninterrupted by any outside work, allowing the visitor to immerse him or herself within that particular artist’s thoughts, visions, and idiosyncratic world.  Not only is each artist designated a space, but it is clear that thought was put into what artist would be placed where, both in relation to the other artists and to the architecture of the building.  I imagine it is no coincidence that John Chamberlain’s drastic sculptures made of recycled metal and car parts are given a large space in one of the sides of the museum so as to provide for them the more utilitarian backdrop of exposed brick.  The same goes for what occupies the rest of the museum’s brick perimeter: Michael Heizer’s massive negative-space sculpture made of massive cuts into the gallery’s floor; Richard Serra’s imposing steel structures; Dan Flavin’s surreal fluorescent light sculptures; Fred Sandback’s delicate, empty acrylic yarn sculptures; and upstairs, Louise Bourgeois’ imposing arachnid.  The inner, white-walled spaces are reserved mostly for paintings, organized in such a way that I felt little awkwardness in moving from one artists’ world to the next.  The most pleasing transition for me was from Agnes Martin’s beautiful, deceivingly complex, and subtle paintings and drawings to Robert Ryman’s densely textured all-white paintings.  Dia’s dedication to the artists’ work was especially apparent in Ryman’s space, as his unconventional method of hanging his work was exemplified by a massive painting, supported on the floor by a mere few pieces of exposed styrofoam.  It is worth mentioning also that there is nothing on the walls of each artists’ space besides the work itself.  Information, titles, and biographies are provided by laminated sheets of paper stored near the entrance to each space.

 

Another favorite space of mine was that of artist Franz Erhard Walther.  The exhibit is titled Work as Action and consists of a large number of Walthers Action Pieces and Work Pieces.  Each is made from hand sewn canvas, assembled in a particular way so as to infer a specific action or work to be performed.  The canvases are all folded neatly around the perimeter of the room and visitors are invited to “activate” any number of them.  My friend and I activated a giant loop of canvas; each of us stood at one end, supporting one another with the weight of our bodies leaning backwards.  The visitor can consider the deeper meaning of Walther’s work or enjoy the lightheartedness of the unexpected opportunity for interactivity; I know I certainly enjoyed watching a little girl be endlessly amused by her dad putting the fabric on his head, around his body, etc.

 

In addition to Dia:Beacon’s collection inside and gardens outside, there are are multiple doors at variously places along the perimeter of the gallery that lead out to terraces with stunning views of the Hudson River.  Some of these spaces are inhabited by sound pieces, namely Birdcalls by Louise Lawler on west side of the museum, facing the river, and Time Piece Beacon (which I talk about in more detail in a previous post) by Max Neuhaus in the garden near the entrance.  These terraces allow the visitor peaceful intermissions to the work inside and successfully establish the unexpected relationship between the abstract, conceptual art within and the actuality of the outside world.  Tuan’s phenomenology resonates deeply in a situation like this, as it certainly recalled for me a “lost innocence and a lost dread, an immediacy of experience that had not yet suffered (or benefited) from the distancing of reflective thought” (20).  Although I can’t claim to have experienced it with the totally immediacy of a child, the welcomed interruptions of the landscape outside was very effective in bringing the work inside back down to earth.

 

Whether or not one has an affection for the simple, minimalist work that Dia:Beacon exhibits, I think that within the context of everything in and around the museum–the picturesque views of the Hudson River, the architecture of the surrounding grounds, the careful and deliberate layout and design of the galleries–one can find a deep and meditative solace.  Of course, beauty can be found in both an uninhibited natural landscape as well as in a manmade, deliberately planned and worked landscape; Dia:Beacon brings together both possibilities in a purposeful and effective way, creating a unique sense of place made up of the experience of art, the knowledge of culture, and the repose of the natural world. 

 

Sources Cited

"About Dia:Beacon." Dia Art Foundation - Dia. Web. 08 Mar. 2011. <http:// www.diabeacon.org>.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis, Minn. [u.a.: Univ. of Minnesota, 2008. Print.

This past August I went with my brother, sister and mom to Portland, Oregon for a week long visit.  Having never been before, we were inspired by all the good things we had been told about the city.  The first thing that stuck us was the friendliness of the cab driver who took us from the airport to the hotel.  Next, the weather.  We were coming from humid, 90 degree days on the east coast, and there, in the dead of summer, the air was light and rarely surpassed 75 degrees. When we arrived at our hotel in downtown Portland we were a bit surprised by the lack of pedestrians.  The streets we nearly empty save for quite a few vagrants who, I realized, were there for the near-perfect climate.

 

The next day there were a few more people out; as the week passed, it was clear that downtown was not the most popular area.  But that was because it housed the majority of the city’s office buildings.  To the north was the Pearl District, a seemingly younger, and more up-and-coming area, full of boutiques and diverse restaurants.  Also enjoyable were the Hawthorne and Alberta districts, across the river to the west.

 

As the week passed, I remained content, enjoying the overwhelming number of food carts, Powell’s books, the greenery, and the weather.  It was certainly not what I expected–I had never spent much time in the west, and was used to the more frenetic pace of the north eastern cities–but nevertheless, I grew to appreciate it.  Still, despite how pleasant my time there was, I don’t think I was fully fulfilled.  Kunstler comments on its favorable zoning code, requiring buildings “to have display windows at street level” and to be “built out to the sidewalk,” two qualities which from earlier chapters we know are very important to Kunstler’s idea of good civic planning.  Likewise, the Urban Growth Boundary, past governor, Tom McCall, and mayor, Neil Goldschmidt, helped to instill such civic-minded things as the electric street car, an unobstructed waterfront, and parks (to name a few) and keep out what Kunstler dreads most, suburban sprawl.  

 

To Kunstler, Portland, Oregon is a good place.  And I agree.  However, I argue that it can’t be seen as the exemplary American city.  Although culturally diverse, Portland did seem lacking in some regard.  That is not to say it is doing anything wrong, rather, it is just not all encompassing (granted, my time there may have been to short to pass any judgement).  I guess it just seemed a bit placid, which, don’t get me wrong, can be idyllic.  Nevertheless, being less of an opponent to Modernism than Kunstler, I do enjoy the occasional austere, yet striking buildings of van der Rohe, Johnson, Saarinen and the like.  Function aside (I know, that sounds ignorant), I think such boastful buildings, when made in good taste, can often signify a place of rich intellect and artistry.  I think this is what concerned me a bit about Portland: it seemed so casual, it’s architecture struck me neither as impressive nor displeasing, but rather sort of unimaginative, and its streets just seemed a little desolate at times.  In other words, it seemed quite happy with its current state, and rightfully so, but it didn’t appear to be pushing the envelope. Of course, it seems that New York has all that Portland lacks, yet I do not want to use it as an example, for it too may not be exemplary.  Rather, I will look at Savannah, Georgia.

 

I visited Savannah for the first time this past winter break.  I was there for a disappointingly short amount of time, one night and about a half of a day.  Still, it left a terrific impression on me.  When I arrived in the late evening, the streets were still quite lively, filled with a diverse bunch of people.  The following morning and afternoon I spent walking, trying to fit in as much of the city as I could within my time constraints.  The parks, as Kunstler mentions early in the book, are tranquil and alluring.  The streets are filled with people, professionals and students alike.  The architecture is gorgeous, mostly victorian, gothic, and greek revival, and hence, quite close to the ground, comparatively speaking.  Savannah College of Art and Design provides the city with a home base for the arts and perhaps stands in place of Modernist architecture as a visible example of the city’s art patronage.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed Portland.  I question not its status as a good place, for surely it is one, but rather it being the closest thing to a perfect American city.  To me, Savannah seemed to have it right: the landscape is beautiful, the city is well-planned, clean, and the culture seemed more liminal, closer to the edge of what’s to come.  

Throughout chapter five, Yesterday’s Tomorrows, Kunstler makes clear his distaste for Modernist architecture, accusing it of “stamp[ing] out history and tradition” and causing “tremendous damage to the physical setting for civilization” (84).  

 

Whereas music, visual art, literature, theater and film all have the ability to exist as nothing but art, architecture carries the burden of being an essential component of every person’s day-to-day life; it serves as a work place, a meeting place, an eating place, and a resting place.  Being a part of the arts, however, architects cannot consider only a building’s function, but also its form.  That, of course, is the rub.  And it is also what architects strive for: a perfect pairing of each.

 

Of the transition into Modernist architecture, Kunstler writes: “Of course, the Americans missed something crucial–not because we were dumber than the Europeans but because we lived in a different world, and it was obvious in the way we discussed the subject: To us, it was just another style” (73-4).  But this change in “style” has been taking place at varying intervals for all of art’s history.  After all, the arts feed off one another.  They are all tied together to form a web; if one field pushes the envelope, it can be certain that the others will follow closely behind.  Because Kunstler is so harsh toward Le Corbusier, I will use him for an example.  In designing the Philips Pavilion for the Expo of 1958 in Brussels, Le Corbusier was largely assisted by the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis.  Xenakis, who continues to gain recognition as one of the century’s greatest composers, is known to have relied heavily on his knowledge of architecture in his music.  Be it organizing musicians so as encircle the audience, composing for particular spaces and places, or generating pitch and rhythmic material through geometric constructions, Xenakis’ music cannot be separated from architecture.  Likewise, Le Corbusier commissioned Edgard Varese to compose an accompaniment to his installation within the Philips Pavilion.  The piece, Poeme Electronique, pioneered the genre Music Concrete and elevated Varese’s status to the “father of electronic music.”  In each case, Le Corbusier, an architect whose mind and work Kunstler detests, helped to cultivate two artistic accomplishments that can almost unanimously be thought of as good.

 

So yes, although in a Le Corbusier home “[t]he tiny kitchen had little counter space” and “[t]he study had no door to afford quiet and privacy,” one has to remember that in as much as it was a “stamping out of history and tradition,” it was a move forward, if not for the commodified side of architecture, than for the artistic side.

Pervasive in J.B. Jackson’s Discovering the Vernacular Landscape is his penchant for the natural qualities that make up a landscape.  His disdain for the current generation of environmental designers is made clear throughout, as is his wariness of some contemporary architecture (that which favors form over function).  He seems to be most interested in the innate qualities of a space, and how these qualities can dictate or influence the human act (according to Jackson) of organizing and creating landscape.

 

In Habitat and Habit, part of his larger essay, A Pair of Ideal Landscapes, Jackson looks at our “close, never-ceasing relationship with the environment” (53).  He talks of a place’s character, defined by the habits and customs that have been cultivated by natives in conjunction with the place’s attributes.  He goes on to talk about how the ancient farmer depended only on his five senses before eventually uncovering a “human role.”  Jackson explains: 

 

“In short, he was no longer to be a drudge, blindly following routines rom the past, he was to  be a guardian, a teacher, a helper.  In the old sense of the word, the farmer undertook to improve his land, to bring it to its natural perfection, and this required of him that he learn to recognize the invisible potential of soils and animals and plans, the landscape of universal law instead of the landscape of local custom” (54-5)

 

Although perhaps not completely parallel, the first thing that came to mind after reading this was Martin Heidegger’s essay, The Origin of the Work of Art.”  In it, he investigates what he considers to be the three components of art–art itself, the artist, and the artwork–and their relationship to one another as far as how one emerges from and responds to the other.  He talks of an openness, a “resoluteness”, in which man opens himself up to a work, allowing the work to express what it will and the man to preserve it.

 

Toward the end of the essay the are two passages which seem especially relevant to Jackson’s farmer example and his philosophy as a whole:

 

“Art lets truth originate.  Art, founding preserving, is the spring that leaps to the truth of what is, in the work.  To originate something by a leap, to bring something into being from out of the source of its nature is a founding leap–this is what the word origin means.”

“The origin of the work of art–that is, the origin of both the creators and the preservers, which is to say of a people’s historical existence, is art.  This is so because art is by nature an origin: a distinctive way in which truth comes into being, that is, becomes historical” (75).

 

An artist and art work, Heidegger explains, bring about art, an origin, just as the farmer nurtures and responds to the land to bring about bountiful and healthy crop.  This bringing something into being that Heidegger describes seems to be exactly what Jackson expresses the need for in designing a landscape.

In chapter eight, Architectural Space and Awareness, Tuan discusses the ephemeral nature of emotions and how architecture strives to prolong and shape these emotions by sculpting space.  He writes, “Without words feeling reaches a momentary peak and quickly dissipates...The built environment...can sharpen and enlarge consciousness” (107).  This is true, insofar as the feeling must be conveyed to others, but to the individual affected, such a feeling often resonates within us and influences us deeply (and subconsciously) as we move forward.  It seems that all things with aesthetic value, not only architecture, can serve as pleasing reminders to intimate emotions and thoughts.  For me, these reminders are often nonliteral and tend to be very simple.  For example, I’ve noticed recently how affected I am by a good workspace.  Lighting, temperature, sound, smell...it all contributes to a stimulating environment.  When these things come together, I feel a certain equilibrium, as if each part of the environment is working in conjunction with the others to create a tensionless space.  Although such a situation doesn’t bring me directly to a moment in the past, the sense of stability and comfort alludes to a time of emotional fulfillment.  

In chapter ten, Intimate Experiences of Place, Tuan returns to this intangible and sentimental formation of place, discussing the overlooked nature of experiences that make up one’s home.  He writes, “Intimate experiences, not being dressed up, easily escape our attention” (143).  In other words, it is almost without exception that what we pass over daily is exactly what comforts us and provides the foundation for our sense of home.  On the other hand, the things we dote on, though easily apparent, are really quite transient.  

This concept of feeling most comfortable in that which we take for granted reminded me of the work of sound artist Max Neuhaus.  After abandoning his career as a master percussionist, he began making installations that spoke to the vast world of sound and its intersection with everyday life.  The first piece of his that I experienced was Time Piece Beacon, a permanent installation at Dia: Beacon in the Hudson Valley.  Seeing it on the museum map, I went to its location but was unable to detect any trace of it; all I could hear were the everyday sounds that surrounded the museum.  A bit flustered, I did some research and found that much of his work is made up of transparent sound fields–transparent not in the sense that they are easily detected, but that they bring to the forefront the space which they inhabit.  Of his work he writes, “The sound is not the work; the sound is the material that I make the place out of....The social context, the physical context, the architectural context, the acoustical context are my building blocks.” This seems a perfect example of Tuan’s ideas about the home.  The house itself is not the home, it is the melting pot for all that comforts us, from the features of the house, to objects within it, to the people that inhabit it.

Both Neuhaus’ sound pieces and the various objects and memories that amount to one’s home eliminate “a distance between the self and object” (146).  We do not actively think about these things, but their presence speaks volumes to our sense of place.  Tuan ends chapter ten by saying, “thought creates distance and destroys the immediacy of direct experience, yet it is by thoughtful reflection that the elusive moments of the past draw near to us in present reality and gain a measure of permanence” (148).  Immediacy seems to have a major presence in Tuan’s book, for this excerpt immediately reminded me of an earlier one from chapter three, Space, Place, and the Child:  “Like candid snapshots out of the family album [poets’] words recall for us a lost innocence and a lost dread, an immediacy of experience that had not yet suffered (or benefited) from the distancing of reflective thought” (20).  Nevertheless, as Tuan explains, it is only through immediacy’s opposite, reflective thought, that we understand its virtue and remember its effects.  

 

P.S. I cannot claim to have thoroughly enjoyed Time Piece Beacon, for in expecting to hear something, I was experiencing it in the wrong way.  It was discovering Neuhaus’ work and learning about his philosophies that was most enjoyable.  Much of his work seems quite paradoxical in that it is most effective when gone unnoticed, however, unnoticed, it fails to demonstrate a lasting effect.  This is exactly the paradox with which Tuan ends chapter ten.

On page 16, Tuan writes, “The organization of human space is uniquely dependent on sight.  Other senses expand and enrich visual space.”  Working with sound and music I often struggle with the abstractness of music as an art form.  If we look comparatively at the other arts–dance, theater, literature and visual art–we find that music is an anomaly in that there is no visual component.  Yes, there is a score that the composer creates and that musicians follow, and of course you can watch musicians play, but neither of these visual components are an innate characteristic of the music itself.  Nevertheless, we accept music as a viable and distinguished art form despite its lack of visuality. Why then, do we rarely consider and fail to popularize the other three senses–taste, smell and touch–as mediums for the fine arts? Why is that which excites our taste buds: well-prepared food; that which excites our fingers: expensive fabric; and that which excites our nose: a candle or perfume; not tasted, felt, or smelled as a work of art but as a commodity, while that which excites our ears: organized sound, is heard almost exclusively as art?

 

In the Introduction, Tuan delves briefly into question of how individuals experience space and place and writes, “If an experience resists ready communication...a common response among activists is to deem it private...” (6).  On the following page he suggests that it is the artist who is partly responsible for “articulating subtle human experiences.”  In the first chapter, Experiential Perspective, he asserts that, “Odors lend character to objects and places ... our nose, no less than our eyes, seeks to enlarge and comprehend the word,” and that, “Touch articulates another kind of complex world” (11).  Clearly, all of our senses have unique qualities, each of them allowing us to experience a space or place in complex and exciting ways.  However, Tuan later goes on to say that, “The various sensory spaces bear little likeness to each other” (15), and, although they have defined differences, I cannot help but largely disagree.  It seems fair to contend that, of the five senses, sight rains supreme.  Tuan writes, “The organization of human space is uniquely dependent on sight.  Other senses expand and enrich visual space” (16).  This statement follows the previous excerpt by only a page, but nevertheless seems to combat it greatly.  It is the duty of the other four senses, the “expanding and enriching of visual space,” that unites them.  Sight  and language translate directly to what we consider to be literal.  All that we see, we assign to a word.  In the second chapter, which investigates how children come to experience space, Tuan describes the child identifying an object based on where it is located, and the progression to a point at which the child recognizes the object as the same no matter its location (22).  Even in this case, something is recognized and given a word, even if that object and word change when seen from a different perspective.  We communicate through the combination of language and visuals, and therefore, if something has a word linked to it, it is easily understood as the same thing by many people.  It seems that everything we see can be understood as a noun: a definitive thing.  When I look outside I see that it is bright (adjective), but I realize that this is because of the sun (noun).  In the case of taste, touch, smell, and hearing, we translate what we sense mostly with adjectives.  There is no entirely objective way of understanding anything that these senses recognize, as it is different for each person.  Perhaps a more concrete way of explaining my thoughts would be to say that with a narrative film, any person could make a similar conclusion regarding its plot due to the components of language and sight. A protagonist can easily be identified as such. Antagonists can be recognized in how they speak to or look at the protagonist, and how they contribute to the protagonist’s problem. However, by eating a dish at a restaurant, feeling a friend’s sweater, smelling a woman’s perfume, hearing a sound, or experiencing any sequence of each of these things, no definitive conclusion can be determined.  So, in this way, aren’t the four senses apart from sight indeed quite similar?  If so, now returning back to my original question, why don’t we experience more scent operas, taste installations, or exclusively felt sculptures?

Within the Yale Center for British Art is a courtyard, not in the traditional sense of the word, though, for it is closed off with a ceiling.  The courtyard intersects all but the ground floor of the museum, reaching three stories, and acts as a centerpiece for the surrounding galleries.  Three of the four walls are checkered in large panels of white oak framed by travertine marble (see picture).  The fourth wall, made of all marble, stands behind the large and austere cylinder that houses the museum’s staircase.  To cap it off, the ceiling is constructed of intersecting marble beams that frame windows, ushering a natural light into the courtyard.  The room (and the building), designed by the late Louis Kahn (his last work actually, finished posthumously), is elegant, simple, geometrical, and reserved in its materials.

 

The three available walls are filled almost entirely with the paintings of George Stubbs.  These works from the mid-18th century all make apparent a very strong interest of Stubbs: the animal.  Toward the ceiling hangs a giant painting of a lion attacking a horse.  To the left hangs a second lion with its front paws draped over its prey, and to the left, on an adjacent wall, hangs a row of hunters standing next to their pointer dogs.  Also included in the collection is a portrait of a zebra, a portrait of an english water spaniel, and multiple paintings outlining a day spent quail hunting (which, coincidently, I had just done, going against my better judgment, during my brief visit to Valdosta, GA over winter break...I ended up sitting in the jeep the whole time).

 

I’d imagine that neither the architecture nor the paintings would hold up very well for me on its own, however, together, I think they work excitably well and compliment one another nicely.  The effectiveness of pairing classical, or otherwise early, painting with modernist architecture first occurred to me while visiting Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, CT (also, a “good place”).  Unlike the painting gallery there, which houses pieces by the likes of Stella, Rauschenberg, and Warhol, within the Glass House itself stands a single painting (perhaps due in part to the lack of available wall space) of a landscape, perhaps from the 19th century.  It seems that although minimalist or modernist architecture can be neutral in a way, it is also quite loud in its bareness and attention to detail, which is why, in the case of the Glass House and the courtyard, it seems to work well to hang art of another period and avoid the possible redundancy of displaying works of the same period.  In any case, this pairing seems to work so well, a feeling which was, for me, magnified once I returned to the courtyard later in the year.

 

Sitting in one of the four couches (which happen to be of a very modern design and sit atop a very ornate and beautiful carpet), I thought to myself how peaceful and multi-dimensional the room was.  My focus leaned neither to the architecture nor to the paintings but rather to a feeling of order and stillness.