I'll jump in here. Though my memory of all his specifics is a little dim,
Davis's critique of Gehry's vocabulary was dead on. Where I part ways
with Davis is in his equation of the symptoms with the disease. Gehry, I
believe, like most architects, is working within strictures defined by a
wider cultural shift than by individual choice. To call equate him with
DIrty Harry is a bit like equating Edward S. Curtis with Buffalo Bill.
What we can now call Curtis's "racist" depictions of American Indians
were made by a man operating from an artistic and preservationist bent.
Like Curtis had an employer (JP Morgan), Gehry to has a boss. To attempt
to make art, he has to participate in the police state. Show me an
architect who is not and I'll wager he or she is an architect unemployed.
Rather than being a "deconstructivist" I would suggest Gehry has made an
earnest -- and, I might add, rhetoric-free -- effort to synthesize the
cultural uncertainty that spawned the theories with architectural form.
As for he and Eisenman's kinship with the Beav and the Butt, Gehry talks
less and Eisenman more. The question is, when Beav and Butt are 60 whose
buildings will they vote to preserve?
randy gragg
On Tue, 25 Oct 1994, Michael Kaplan wrote:
> "I'm not above poking fun at institutions, which is exactly what
> Eisenman, Gehry, Beavis and Butt-head all have in common---don't you get
> it?
> These four are more alike than you'd think."
>
> These four have much more in common -- they're all involved in the media
> manipulation of taste, a directing of critical energy towards the
> non-constructive and cynical. Mike Davis, in "City of Quartz," has a
> chapter entitled "Frank Gehry as Dirty Harry," which I think is a useful
> critique.
>
Davis's critique of Gehry's vocabulary was dead on. Where I part ways
with Davis is in his equation of the symptoms with the disease. Gehry, I
believe, like most architects, is working within strictures defined by a
wider cultural shift than by individual choice. To call equate him with
DIrty Harry is a bit like equating Edward S. Curtis with Buffalo Bill.
What we can now call Curtis's "racist" depictions of American Indians
were made by a man operating from an artistic and preservationist bent.
Like Curtis had an employer (JP Morgan), Gehry to has a boss. To attempt
to make art, he has to participate in the police state. Show me an
architect who is not and I'll wager he or she is an architect unemployed.
Rather than being a "deconstructivist" I would suggest Gehry has made an
earnest -- and, I might add, rhetoric-free -- effort to synthesize the
cultural uncertainty that spawned the theories with architectural form.
As for he and Eisenman's kinship with the Beav and the Butt, Gehry talks
less and Eisenman more. The question is, when Beav and Butt are 60 whose
buildings will they vote to preserve?
randy gragg
On Tue, 25 Oct 1994, Michael Kaplan wrote:
> "I'm not above poking fun at institutions, which is exactly what
> Eisenman, Gehry, Beavis and Butt-head all have in common---don't you get
> it?
> These four are more alike than you'd think."
>
> These four have much more in common -- they're all involved in the media
> manipulation of taste, a directing of critical energy towards the
> non-constructive and cynical. Mike Davis, in "City of Quartz," has a
> chapter entitled "Frank Gehry as Dirty Harry," which I think is a useful
> critique.
>