Armajani New Yorker 3 19 19

9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 48 • o • o 1 • p R. o F 1 L E S • OPEN, A V AILABLE, USEFUL NTIL the Irene Hixon nose, and a piratical grin-is Whitney Bridge actual enormously pleased to report that U ly went up, a lot of peo he was treated as a fully qualified ple in the twin c1tJes of Min professional by the engineers, the neapolis and St. Paul did not steelworkers, and everyone else seem to understand that it was who worked on the project. He going to be a real, functiorúng treated them with equal respect, bridge. The man who had con and he was willing to alter his ceived and designed it was an plans when the situation required artist, for one thing, and who it. He had at first opposed the ad had ever heard of a bridge de dition of access ramps for the signed by an artist? One end handicapped; he wanted, instead, of the structure, moreover, was hydraulic elevators at either end to be situated in the brand of the bridge. But when he was new sculpture garden of the told that the elevators would Walker Art Center, in Minne probably freeze up in subzero apolis, and this led sorne citizens weather he went ahead and de to assume that it was going to be signed access ramps, and he now one of those "environmental" agrees that they have enhanced sculptures which city-dwellers the look of the bridge- curving, have to cope with from time to ascending ramps that play off time. According to Siah Ar against the cool right-angled majani, the artist in charge of geometry of the structure and the the project, "lt did not become reverse curve of its two great a bridge until the first person Síah drmajani catenary arches, one convex and walked across it." the other concave. The substitu Since its formal opening, in Sep begins, you feel as though you were tion of pressure-treated unpainted pine tember, 1988, however, the bridge, moving from one pleasant room into boards for the steel flooring that a three-hundred-and-seventy-five-foot another, which is just what the artist Armajani had intended originally (it, pedestrian walkway that spans sixteen had in mind. "The yellow is from too, would have iced up in cold lanes of traffic and reconnects two areas Monticello," he told me. "Jeffer weather) turned out to be another of Minneapolis which were sundered son caBed it the color of wheat, of the bonus. The sound and feel of sturdy nearly twenty years ago by I nterstate harvest, but it is also the color of wooden beams underfoot increase the H ighway 9+, has bt:wme a huge hit happiness. The blue is just-well, the pleasure of walking the bridge. Other with the public. J oggers, cyclists, sky. Minneapolis has these long, gray pleasures abound: benches made in the mothers with strollers, school kids, winters, so I felt the colors should be same clean style as the rest of the lovers, tourists, museumgoers, office light." bridge; places where the walkway workers on their way to work-every The Minnesota Department of widens and strollers can pause to take one uses the bridge. E ven in the dead of Transportation, which owns the in the passing scene; superb views of the Minneapolis winter, when the bridge, and put up half the million six the W alker's new sculpture garden, thermometer seems permanently stuck hundred thousand dollars required to which was designed by the architect below zero, and you hesitate to invite build it ( the rest carne from the Edward Larrabee Barnes. Armajani guests for dinner because their cars Wheelock Whitney family, in Min commissioned the poet John Ashbery, may not start when they try to go home neapolis ), notified Armajani at one whose work he admires, to write a and you wi1l have them for the night as point prior to construction that baby text for the bridge; the hundred-and well, the walkway is rarely deserted. I blue and Jefferson yellow did not figure thirty-five-word text is set into the walked across it for the first time last in its regulation palette of colors. The wooden floor, in individual bronze spring, with Armajani as my guide, department was not making an issue of letters. and what sttuck me most euphorically this; it just thought Armajani ought to Siah Armajani is an American citi was its color scheme. From the W alker know. Nobody tried to make him zen, naturalized in 196 7, but he was Art Center to its midpoint, the bridge change his color choice, or quest.ioned born and raised in Teheran, and, like is painted a pale, luminous yellow; the any of his aesthetic decisions, and he many Iranians, he often makes his other half, which leads to a grassy found this truly remarkable. Arma points by telling stories. When the swale called Loring Park, is light jani, whose natural reticence is at odds painting contractors were getting blue-Armajani calls it baby blue. with his appearance- he has dark ready to put the final colors on the Where the yellow stops and the blue curly hair, a full mustache, a broken bridge, he told me, the chief inspector, archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 1/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 49 a man named Dave, climbed up the women have come to prominence in America's particular mixture of demo scaffolding to make sure that the un public art is no coincidence. Sorne of cratic ideals. The notion of monu dercoat had been applied correctly. He them turned to the public arena in the mentality does not interest him at all. climbed down again shaking his head, nineteen-seventies because they felt He has never gone in for large and and said it wasn't good enough. that the gallery scene was weighted assertive sculptural "statements"- the "What are you talking about?" the so heavily against them; others say kind of sculpture that has appeared in head painter demanded. He and his that, as women, they feel more natu front of so many governmental and men had been painting bridges for rally inclined than men do to put ego corporate office buildings as a result of twenty years, he said; they knew their aside and to collaborate with others. the per-cent-for-an public commis trade. "This is different," Dave said. Armajani is represented in New York sions of the last twenty years. He likes "This is a work of art." The painter by the Max Protetch Gallery; his work to describe his work as "low, common, said, "Just what the hell does that is in many museurns and corporate and near to the people." Since 1968, mean?" collections; and he had a retrospective, Armajani has designed and built This is a question that Armajani has in 1985, at the Institute of Contempo houses, offices, newsstands, picnic gar been asking himself for years. As one rary Art in Philadelphia, but in spite of dens, reading rooms (both indoor and of the leading practitioners and theo this he is practically unknown within outdoor ), a lecture hall, a hospital rists of a new form of public art that the N ew York art world. As a public waiting room, and, in Mitchell, South has emerged during the last decade in artist who is also an intensely prívate Dakota, a bandstand. He collaborated this country, Armajani has given a lot man, he prefers it this way. He lives with Scott Burton and the architect of thought to the redefinition of art in more or less anonymously in St. Paul, Cesar Pelli on a Iarge waterfront plaza late-twentieth-century American soci and he works in a nondescript commer in lower Manhattan, and, also with ety. He has little or no interest in cial 1oft in Minneapolis. Until the Pelli, he has designed two elevated producing high-priced objects for opening of the Whitney Bridge, he walkways in Minneapolis and the top wealthy buyers. Armajani and a num was not nearly as well known in the section of an as yet unbuilt office tower ber of other, Iike-minded artists Twin Cities as his wife, Barbara, a in San Francisco. (The last project, the list includes Robert Irwin, Mary successful businesswoman; in 1983, she which is neither low nor common, hints Miss, Nancy Holt, Richard Fleisch left her position as president of Powers, at the loftier ambitions that coexist ner, George Trakas, Jackie Ferrara, a large department store, to start a with his Midwestern populist ideals.) Athena Tacha, Elyn Zimmerman, and chain of specialty clothing shops, From the stan of his public-an ca the late Scott Burton- have devoted which she recently sold to Sears. The reer, Armajani has also built bridges. themselves almost exclusively to work publicity that attended the bridge open The bridge is a fine symbol of what he ing on projects in public spaces, usually ing blew Armajani's cover; strangers wants to achieve, as an artist and as a in collaboration with architects, city speak to him on the street now, and this citizen. lt links two separate points in planners, real-estate developers, land embarrasses him a good deal. "In pub space, but it is a sort of neighborhood, scape architects, engineers, and city lic art, there is no room for a focus on too- a locality with a particular char officials. These artists have had a hand the ego," he has said.

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