The New York Times
February 12, 1995
Arts & Leisure, p. 34.
Architecture View / Herbert Muschamp
An Emporium for Art Rises in the West
[Photos] The central turret and oculus of the new San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art as seen from the outside,
far left, and from the interior atrium, above. Left, the
main second floor gallery -- No sense of monotony or
confinement.
San Francisco. Department stores may be a dying breed, but
new museums continue to rise, and Mario Botta's new
building for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which
opened last month, should delight those who lament the
passing of the great shopping emporiums. For the $60
million building, the Swiss architect's first American
project, could be easily mistaken for the last great Art
Deco department store.
I hope that Mr. Botta would not be chagrined by the error.
Bonwit Teller, Derry & Toms, May Company: department stores
were some of the great creations of the Deco era. And in
our era, which has seen mass consumption displace
connoisseurship as a top priority for many major museums,
the department store is not the worst model a museum's
architect might choose. Indeed, in Los Angeles, there are
plans afoot to turn May Company's landmark black-and-gold
building on Wilshire Boulevard into an annex to the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art. In his first museum design,
Mr. Botta, working in association with Hellmuth, Obata &
Kassabaum, has created a landmark for a time when museums
are less punctilious about holding the line between looking
at art and window shopping.
I confess that when I first saw the nearly completed
structure a year ago, I wished that museum officials would
have the wit to inscribe the museum's name outside in gold
Lord & Taylorish script. I forgive them for having the good
taste not to, however, for the exterior is a richly
pleasing urban composition. In a part of town (south of
Market Street) where the cityscape runs largely to grays,
the museum's ornamentally patterned brown-brick facade (a
veneer over structural concrete) throws out a warm Sienese
welcome. The stepped profile of the setbacks recalls the
monumental form of the ziggurat (a classic Deco motif)
without overpowering the street.
Set on an axis with the entrance to Yerba Buena Gardens,
the new arts complex and park just across the street, the
museum (formerly housed in the classical 1931 War Memorial
Veterans Building) eases the transition from the low scale
of the gardens to the skyscrapers downtown. And its central
turret, with an angled oculus at the top, injects its own
distinctive symbolism into the skyline. An eye for an
eyeful: what better way to mark a place dedicated to the
reciprocal pleasures of looking?
It is wonderful to look at art here. The permanent
collection is installed on the second floor, much of it in
a stately enfilade of seven galleries that runs along the
street side of the building. It's a manageable, even
intimate procession, gently punctuated in the center by a
window that looks out toward Yerba Buena Gardens.
Skylights, made possible by the building's setbacks, filter
natural light through deep paraboloid recesses in the
ceiling. You swim up to a painting through luminous air.
Ceiling heights change with each floor, and that, along
with the natural light and the circular turret, eliminates
any trace of monotony or confinement. And there's one
thrilling moment at the top of the turret: a 38-foot-long
catwalk, with a nearly transparent grid floor, that you
must cross to reach the chapel-like fifth-floor gallery.
The museum's dramatic atrium lobby gives people something
to argue about as well as gape at: some find the space
architecturally too assertive. I like it a lot. A
theatrical space, three stories high, dominated by a
central staircase of black granite, the lobby is paved with
alternating bands of rough and polished granite that are
softly echoed by a ceiling of pale wooden slats. Mr. Botta
calls the lobby a piazza, while the staircase -- an endless
ziggurat that rises toward the turret's circle of light --
represents a campanile. It's the sort of space that makes
people look up when they enter, and some will be unable to
resist extending their arms in the classic Ziegfeld pose as
they descend the final flight of steps.
Why, then, do I find myself resisting a building that has
so much going for it? Because I am unsettled by the
museum's air of flawless composure and by the stilted image
of modernity it projects. A new modern art museum, after
all, is more than a place to look at modern art. It is also
a chance for an architect to say something fresh about the
changing nature of modernity. I am not persuaded that Mr.
Botta makes the most of the opportunity.
There was a time, in the 1970's, when it seemed that a
particular strain of modernism -- the Romantic strain that
incited modern artists to oppose conventional taste -- had
run its course. The avant-garde had become
institutionalized. The public's taste for provocative art
appeared to outstrip artists' capacity to provoke.
Modernism had become socially reconciled, if not tamed, and
now veered toward the classical model of social
accommodation.
That is the idea conveyed by Mr. Botta's design. Its
classical symmetry, the perfect balance of Mr. Botta's
forms, materials, even his color palette, embody the idea
that a state of equilibrium has been struck between art and
society and that the task of a modern art museum is to
preserve that happy balance.
Today, this classicized view of modernism looks hopelessly
naive. It is now clear that a large, vocal and politically
aggressive segment of the public has little appetite for
artistic provocation. And it's questionable whether the
harmonious integration of modern art and life is desirable,
even as an ideal. In the 1980's, many artists and critics
did question it. They asked on what grounds it was still
possible to distinguish paintings from other commodities,
like cars, fur coats or high-yield bonds. Perhaps, in fact,
the need for art that throws things off balance has never
been greater, as the margin outside the marketplace
continues to shrink.
This need is not acknowledged by Mr. Botta. What points up
the failure is his insistence on presenting himself as a
modernist. For years, he has depicted himself as a
descendant of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. He seems to feel
that like these architects, he has found a way, through the
use of recognizably modern forms, to reach back toward a
rudimentary classicism.
But the legendary modernists Mr. Botta invokes knew where
they stood on the timeline. The rawness of invention clings
to their work, and with it the conviction that balance in
the modern age is attained only with struggle. They
understood that to overplay the classical aspect was to
risk crossing the line from building into style -- into Art
Deco, in fact, a style that sometimes went by the name
"modern classicism."
Whether by bold design or inadvertence, Mr. Botta has
crossed the line into Deco territory. His exactly
calibrated symmetry, his stripes and ornamental brick
veneers put all the weight on the classical side of the
equation. Yes, the building is full of remembered
modernisms -- traces of Kahn in the skylights, of Adolph
Loos in the granite stripes. And Mr. Botta has contrived to
make these references look at home in their Deco setting.
That may be because, in his hands, modern ideas have become
pedigreed commodities -- like the Frank Lloyd Wright
candlesticks for sale at Tiffany.
Will this obsessively composed building dampen the museum's
ability to put across challenging art? No, to judge from
the inaugural presentations of contemporary painting and
photography. Clearly, the museum's curatorial staff
believes that modern art has not lost its capacity to
startle the eye into seeing the world afresh, and Mr.
Botta's design will not undermine that belief. Indeed, his
galleries should serve the curators well. But the museum
has let slip an opportunity to demonstrate its faith in the
power of architecture to reckon with the discordance that
lurks beneath our masks of composure.
END
February 12, 1995
Arts & Leisure, p. 34.
Architecture View / Herbert Muschamp
An Emporium for Art Rises in the West
[Photos] The central turret and oculus of the new San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art as seen from the outside,
far left, and from the interior atrium, above. Left, the
main second floor gallery -- No sense of monotony or
confinement.
San Francisco. Department stores may be a dying breed, but
new museums continue to rise, and Mario Botta's new
building for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which
opened last month, should delight those who lament the
passing of the great shopping emporiums. For the $60
million building, the Swiss architect's first American
project, could be easily mistaken for the last great Art
Deco department store.
I hope that Mr. Botta would not be chagrined by the error.
Bonwit Teller, Derry & Toms, May Company: department stores
were some of the great creations of the Deco era. And in
our era, which has seen mass consumption displace
connoisseurship as a top priority for many major museums,
the department store is not the worst model a museum's
architect might choose. Indeed, in Los Angeles, there are
plans afoot to turn May Company's landmark black-and-gold
building on Wilshire Boulevard into an annex to the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art. In his first museum design,
Mr. Botta, working in association with Hellmuth, Obata &
Kassabaum, has created a landmark for a time when museums
are less punctilious about holding the line between looking
at art and window shopping.
I confess that when I first saw the nearly completed
structure a year ago, I wished that museum officials would
have the wit to inscribe the museum's name outside in gold
Lord & Taylorish script. I forgive them for having the good
taste not to, however, for the exterior is a richly
pleasing urban composition. In a part of town (south of
Market Street) where the cityscape runs largely to grays,
the museum's ornamentally patterned brown-brick facade (a
veneer over structural concrete) throws out a warm Sienese
welcome. The stepped profile of the setbacks recalls the
monumental form of the ziggurat (a classic Deco motif)
without overpowering the street.
Set on an axis with the entrance to Yerba Buena Gardens,
the new arts complex and park just across the street, the
museum (formerly housed in the classical 1931 War Memorial
Veterans Building) eases the transition from the low scale
of the gardens to the skyscrapers downtown. And its central
turret, with an angled oculus at the top, injects its own
distinctive symbolism into the skyline. An eye for an
eyeful: what better way to mark a place dedicated to the
reciprocal pleasures of looking?
It is wonderful to look at art here. The permanent
collection is installed on the second floor, much of it in
a stately enfilade of seven galleries that runs along the
street side of the building. It's a manageable, even
intimate procession, gently punctuated in the center by a
window that looks out toward Yerba Buena Gardens.
Skylights, made possible by the building's setbacks, filter
natural light through deep paraboloid recesses in the
ceiling. You swim up to a painting through luminous air.
Ceiling heights change with each floor, and that, along
with the natural light and the circular turret, eliminates
any trace of monotony or confinement. And there's one
thrilling moment at the top of the turret: a 38-foot-long
catwalk, with a nearly transparent grid floor, that you
must cross to reach the chapel-like fifth-floor gallery.
The museum's dramatic atrium lobby gives people something
to argue about as well as gape at: some find the space
architecturally too assertive. I like it a lot. A
theatrical space, three stories high, dominated by a
central staircase of black granite, the lobby is paved with
alternating bands of rough and polished granite that are
softly echoed by a ceiling of pale wooden slats. Mr. Botta
calls the lobby a piazza, while the staircase -- an endless
ziggurat that rises toward the turret's circle of light --
represents a campanile. It's the sort of space that makes
people look up when they enter, and some will be unable to
resist extending their arms in the classic Ziegfeld pose as
they descend the final flight of steps.
Why, then, do I find myself resisting a building that has
so much going for it? Because I am unsettled by the
museum's air of flawless composure and by the stilted image
of modernity it projects. A new modern art museum, after
all, is more than a place to look at modern art. It is also
a chance for an architect to say something fresh about the
changing nature of modernity. I am not persuaded that Mr.
Botta makes the most of the opportunity.
There was a time, in the 1970's, when it seemed that a
particular strain of modernism -- the Romantic strain that
incited modern artists to oppose conventional taste -- had
run its course. The avant-garde had become
institutionalized. The public's taste for provocative art
appeared to outstrip artists' capacity to provoke.
Modernism had become socially reconciled, if not tamed, and
now veered toward the classical model of social
accommodation.
That is the idea conveyed by Mr. Botta's design. Its
classical symmetry, the perfect balance of Mr. Botta's
forms, materials, even his color palette, embody the idea
that a state of equilibrium has been struck between art and
society and that the task of a modern art museum is to
preserve that happy balance.
Today, this classicized view of modernism looks hopelessly
naive. It is now clear that a large, vocal and politically
aggressive segment of the public has little appetite for
artistic provocation. And it's questionable whether the
harmonious integration of modern art and life is desirable,
even as an ideal. In the 1980's, many artists and critics
did question it. They asked on what grounds it was still
possible to distinguish paintings from other commodities,
like cars, fur coats or high-yield bonds. Perhaps, in fact,
the need for art that throws things off balance has never
been greater, as the margin outside the marketplace
continues to shrink.
This need is not acknowledged by Mr. Botta. What points up
the failure is his insistence on presenting himself as a
modernist. For years, he has depicted himself as a
descendant of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. He seems to feel
that like these architects, he has found a way, through the
use of recognizably modern forms, to reach back toward a
rudimentary classicism.
But the legendary modernists Mr. Botta invokes knew where
they stood on the timeline. The rawness of invention clings
to their work, and with it the conviction that balance in
the modern age is attained only with struggle. They
understood that to overplay the classical aspect was to
risk crossing the line from building into style -- into Art
Deco, in fact, a style that sometimes went by the name
"modern classicism."
Whether by bold design or inadvertence, Mr. Botta has
crossed the line into Deco territory. His exactly
calibrated symmetry, his stripes and ornamental brick
veneers put all the weight on the classical side of the
equation. Yes, the building is full of remembered
modernisms -- traces of Kahn in the skylights, of Adolph
Loos in the granite stripes. And Mr. Botta has contrived to
make these references look at home in their Deco setting.
That may be because, in his hands, modern ideas have become
pedigreed commodities -- like the Frank Lloyd Wright
candlesticks for sale at Tiffany.
Will this obsessively composed building dampen the museum's
ability to put across challenging art? No, to judge from
the inaugural presentations of contemporary painting and
photography. Clearly, the museum's curatorial staff
believes that modern art has not lost its capacity to
startle the eye into seeing the world afresh, and Mr.
Botta's design will not undermine that belief. Indeed, his
galleries should serve the curators well. But the museum
has let slip an opportunity to demonstrate its faith in the
power of architecture to reckon with the discordance that
lurks beneath our masks of composure.
END