The Cullen Sculpture Garden Bylsamu Noguchi

14 Cite Fall 1986 at^^X* i Top. Model, Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, Isamu Noguchi. Below: View looking north I'Mllllllll Romancing n>.'11111111 the Stone The Cullen Sculpture Garden bylsamu Noguchi Andrew Bartle The people of Houston have cause to the problem of excessive glare will fade additions to the original neo-classical celebrate a recent embellishment. The and the extravagant wealth of vegetation building by William Ward Watkin (1924). city's most elegant institution, The will give the city a shady corner of not a Haid's scheme, offered as an alternative Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has little interest. to a more domestic landscaping plan acquired a new bauble, a work of cautious prepared by Thomas Church under the yet romantic sensibility in the form of an Isamu Noguchi, a remarkable and prolific auspices of the Houston Garden Club, outdoor public sculpture garden designed artist now 81 years of age, is known would have paved over much of the by Isamu Noguchi. The Liilic and Hugh primarily as a sculptor, although he has truncated triangle south of the museum Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, built at a designed a number of other gardens, stage with a fan-like grid to accommodate the cost of $3.2 million, is a maze of concrete sets, furniture, and industrial objects as display of sculpture. This pristine setting. and stone-clad walls, earth mounds, well as this year's American Pavilion at penetrated only by trees already on the paving, and trees sited across from the the Venice Biennale. Noguchi began his grounds, was bounded at one end by an museum at the corner of Bissonnct and career as an assistant to Gutzon Borglum arcing, ornamental pool and at the other Montrose on an acre of park land owned in the carving of Mount Rushmore and Preliminary garden study for The Museum by a broad platform ascending to the by the City of Houston. At present, it is subsequently worked in the studio of of Fine Arts, Houston, 1954, Ludwig Mies museum. This conception still seems the repository for 18 pieces of sculpture Constantin Brancusi. He has been van der Rohe, architect commendable for the activity it would by 12 artists, two of which are from the producing designs using landscape have imparted to an honorific space, late 19th century, the remainder from the elements for more than 50 years, the most unceremoniously subordinated by the 20th; eventually the garden may recent of which is a 32-acre bay front park a longtime associate who, like Noguchi, relocation of the museum's principal entry accommodate as many as 30 pieces. planned for Miami. The choice of had also collaborated on projects with to the north with the completion of Completed in April, it has already been Noguchi for the museum's sculpture Buckminster Fuller. Cullinan Hall. It also might have the scene of concerts, receptions, and garden is credited to Alice Pratt Brown established a semblance of urbanity on a other events and is open daily between who, after a minor epiphany at the Billy The idea of a sculpture garden for the comparatively precious and visible piece 9 AM and 10 I'M One hesitates to say that Rose Sculpture Garden, which Noguchi museum can be traced back at least 30 of Houston real estate, facing onto the the project is really finished, for besides designed for the Israel Museum in years to a rather elegant proposal devised traffic ellipse at the confluence of Main sculpture yet to be added, the plant Jerusalem (1960-1965), proposed that he for the south lawn in 1958 by David Haid Street and Montrose Boulevard, opposite materials will require time to mature. As be retained. Noguchi began the Houston in the office of Mies van der Rohe, the entrance to Hermann Park. the trees fill out and the proportion of project in 1978, working as the design architect of Cullinan Hall (1958) and the sunlight to shadow becomes more even. progressed with the architect Shoji Sadao, Brown Pavilion (1972), the two principal A more recent project that merits mention Cite Fall 1986 I? were three schemes prepared in the 1970s latter display, and reaction to it by the by the landscape architects M, Paul Museum Area Municipal Association Fried berg and Partners of New York for among others, led to a regrettable a site that included the area finally set alteration in the design in which the aside for the Culien Sculpture Garden, As walled enclosure became fragmented and matter of wishful thinking, Friedbcrg's replaced at points by bermed schemes encompassed not only the outcroppings, an erosion that tended to rectangular plot that now forms the make the scheme leaky and more diffuse sculpture garden, but also a significant if without effecting any fundamental change narrow strip of land excerpted from a in its relation to its surroundings. As is parking lot belonging to the First often the case, this community Presbyterian Church and extending east to intervention was apparently motivated Main Street, thus enabling the scheme to more by a reaction to the aesthetics of the track the full expanse of the Mies van der proposal than the defense of any ralionaJ Model, Riverside Park Playground, New Billy Rose Sculpture Garden. Jerusalem, Rohe front of the museum. Although the set of design criteria calculated to serve York, 1960-1965, Isamu Noguchi (Photo I960-1965, Isamu Noguchi (Photo museum initiated negotiations to obtain the civic good. The museum's indulgence courtesy The Isamu Noguchi Foundation) courtesy The Isamu Noguchi Foundation ) the parking lot in its entirety, the in this instance was matched by its transaction was ultimately deemed too willingness to permit Noguchi full artistic If one looks for a body of work to stand is the initial perception of the perimeter costly and abandoned. With it, the license, particularly with respect to for a 20th-century attitude in garden walls that forces visitors to suspend prospect of a cohesively landscaped edge adjustments on site and expenditures for design, these three sources are virtually conventional expectations of architectural along Bissonnet from Montrose to Main additional materials, plant and mineral. always present. From Parque Guell in production and consider the prospect as a was deferred, perhaps indefinitely, Barcelona by Anton i Gaudi, to Lc ruin. The whirling spatial currents of the withholding the amenity of a balanced and The process by which Noguchi realizes Corbusier's Trench of Consideration at interior induce the rise and fall, retreat unified street, trees on one side and the projects of this kind runs contrary to Chandigarh, to Antoine Grumbach's and advance, of the exterior wal Is, placing museum on the other. Two of Friedberg's conventional building practice and competition entry for La Villette, one the project apart from the public realm. schemes also proposed extending the area requires a great deal of on-site consistently observes elements of spatial This ruined countenance suggests a of the garden to include the south half of manipulation, modification, and even continuity, juxtaposition, a sense of certain temporal notation and the the block now occupied by the Glasscll reconstruction. Here delicate changes of dislocation, and also an evocation or poignant, irresistablc power of nature. School of the museum - an augmentation levels and contours are central to the intimation of mythic form. The primary Thus conflicting formal strategies are held that would have extended its influence desired effect of eye-level perceptions and identifying feature of most modernist together by the introduct ionoftheillusion along Montrose while securing a to the cumulative visual experience of the gardens is the transformation of the of time. somewhat ampler site overall. Viewed in visitor. Because the work is premised on landscape into something that strongly this light, the limited purview accorded these and the most immediate tactile contrasts with the existing natural The body of the garden is a more Noguchi's completed project may have sensations, as well as the conceptual features. This breaks with the tradition of abstracted extrapolation of this approach. discouraged any concerted effort to make appreciation of abstraction, the hands-on European garden history, which exploited Incomplete and interrupted geometries, the design less insular and more adjustments dictated by Noguchi's the capability of existing landscape mammoth fragments of walls (some responsive to the urban possibilities of its well-practiced eye become a primary features (as manifested, for example, in supported by foundations 27 feet below context. expression of his sensibility, the Italian Renaissance gardens, where grade), and raw building materials authentication of a model, and hillsides and streams became terraces and contribute to a sense that this place had Noguchi's initial idea, inspired by a visit construction drawings that are more in the cascades; and in French gardens, where some earlier function, now mysterious, to Houston during a flood, was to make nature of final notes than a finished design. vistas were delineated to create images of that although lost, inspires awe for both the garden an island. This charming and control over large fiat plains). the place and its artifacts. This arch- probably impractical scheme was This "touchy-feely" creative process is romantic sensibility is made presentable rejected, as was a subsequent and related part of the inheritance of the romantic The Cullen Sculpture Garden adheres to by the immaculate condition of the proposal for a sunken garden. The notion tradition that elevates sensibility above the modernist tradition in its self- exposed construction. The glossy finishes of the garden as a walled enclosure reason. Noguchi's garden is experienced conscious manipulation of the ground prevent any chance of shock or surprise.

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