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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,
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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. ''Yo u have to get acter and ambience. As a work of art, in the designing or the redesigning of lost in the context of the work." moreover, a bridge invites the active parks, playgrounds, gardens, indoor More than any of the other new participation of the onlooker; it is, in and outdoor plazas, traffic inter public artists, Armajani sees his role in fact, incomplete until the onlooker be changes, sidewalks, bus stops, drain political and social terms, and in a comes a participant. "All of Siah's age basins, and other spaces that are in context that is specifically American. permanent pieces deal with the ques the public domain. "l am interested in He has great admiration for the Rus tion of the non-an audience," Burton the nobility of usefulness," Armajani sian Constructivist artists, whose ef said last year. "His work is ex'¡>licitly has written. "My intention is to build forts to create a socially relevant art in democratic. I think an untrained audi open, available, useful, common, public the wake of the Russian Revolution ence can understand what it's about, gathering places. Gathering places were crushed by the emerging Stalinist because he adapts the genre of the that are neighborly. They are not con regime, but he has always insisted that garden, or the log cabin, or the covered ceived in terms of wood and steel but in public art in America has to refiect bridge. Siah has really brought about terrns of their nature as places at hand, a significant mutation in what art is, ready to be used." and he's been hugely infiuential on a F or Armajani and his colleagues, art lot of other artists and a lot of archi is, or should be, a public matter, much tects as well. It's profoundly Amer as it was in Quattrocento Florence, ican, what he's done, and, of course, he and the artist should have an integral probably couldn't have done it if he'd connection to society. This approach been bom here." more or less rules out the concept of heroic individualism that has attached NE summer evening in 1960, itself to artists throug hout the modern O when Siah Armajani was in his period. It also pretty much rules out a last year at the Presbyterian missionary career in the highly publicized art school in T eheran, he carne home and world of galleries, museurns, and prí• was told that he would be going to vate collections. The fact that so many college in America that fall. This was
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50 him that it was all a matter of luck. lt 1 had nothing to do with measurement, it was just his own bad luck-'lf I had been lucky, 1 would not be a poor carpenter working in your basement.' Our father understood perfectly. He paid the man, and then he paid another carpenter to come and cut the sofa in half so he could move it upstairs and put it together again. My younger brother and 1 just could not stop laugh ing over this." For all his pro-American bias, Siah's father did not approve of the forced W esternization of lran under the Shah. "Like most of his class, he be carne increasingly disheartened by all that," Armajani told me. "The old, oral ways of doing business were being replaced by written contracts and le galism, and eventually he just stopped, withdrew from business. What people have never understood is that the lra nian revolution was supported by the merchants and shopkeepers as well as by the peasants.'' Christianity did not prevent the Armajanis from being deeply immersed in the Islamic culture "Care for a sleazeball?" of lran, which differs from its Middle Eastern neighbors in being predomi • • nantly Shiite. Every lranian child learns the story of the seventy-two quite a surprise. He had spent the af to the Presbyterian missionary school Shiites who stood firm against an army ternoon writing "Yankee Go Home" in Teheran, and all fou r of them even of ten thousand Sunni Muslims: they and "Death to Franco" on the walls tually went to live in the U nited States. could have escaped, but they chose to of buildings, using an onion-and-wax Siah's memories of his childhood are stand and be killed. "The story is told medium that would be invisible until mostly happy ones. He was the third o ver and over, and the people weep the sun hit it the next morning. He and in line of birth ( there was an older sis every time," Armajani explains. "The his politically engaged friends were not ter, an older brother, and a younger seventy-two represent the ideal, which t:Specially anti-American, and Ar brother ), and he grew up in a large lives on. T his is the genesis of Shiite majani concedes that he was not house full of books and tradicional Islam. In Iran, defeat is always seen as exactly sure at that time who Franco comforts, with sorne Western addi the first step toward eventual victory. was; they were passionately opposed to tions. His mother yearned to replace Shiism is not a happy religion. But on the Shah, however, and his corrupt and the ancestral furniture in the main the periphery of Shiism there was al repressive regime, whose power de sitting room with the kind of modern ways Sufism, tempering its severities. pended so largely on United States furniture that she saw in American All educated people in lran consider support. At any rate, it did not occur to magazines, and at length she engaged a themselves Sufis. All Persian art, all him to question or oppose a decision carpenter to come and make sorne for Persian poetry come out of Sufism, handed down by his father. her. He worked for severa! months in which is not a sect but an alternative The Armajanis belonged to the the basement of their house, copying strategy. lt is a civilizing and human small but thriving Christian minority from magazine photographs a four izing influence that works very quietly in lran. Siah's father, Aga Khan teen-foot sofa with attached end ta and without calling attention to itself. Armajani, had been educated at a Pres bles. When he had finished, the piece There is very little of the pronoun '1' byterian missionary school in northern was too large to get up the stairs. in lran; it is considered bad forro. lran, where the family lived then; most Mrs. Armajani was furious. "She told People say 'we,' or they tell stories, to of his teachers had been Americans, the carpenter that he was stupid," take away the personal edge.'' and he had come away with a lifelong Armajani recalls, "and the man said, When Siah was still a young child, admiration for the U nited States . In with great dignity, that he was not he decided he was going to be an artist. time, Aga Khan had moved to Tehe going to talk with her anymore about He has no idea why- there were no ran, married, and become a successful it, that he would wait until her hus artists in the family. His father, a man merchant, an importer of silks from band carne home. When our father of deep culture, who used to read Per Europe. He sent all four of his children returned, the carpenter explained to sian poerns to the children every eve-
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52 MAR.CH 19, 1990 ning, arranged for him to study with ligation to others. In Iran, of course, medium-sized liberal-arts college in a master painter and calligrapher. loyalty to the family was the primary the American Middle W est. "He was terrifying," Armajani recalls. social duty. "! come from a very rigid, "The first day, he produced a couple of hierarchical culture," Armajani told HERE is sorne uncertainty about semi-rotten apples in a dish, gave me me. "Every father there is a king, with T Armajani's age when he arrived ink and brushes, and told me to paint the immediate family as his kingdom, in this country. He usually cites 1939 them. He told me that I had no talent and sorne fathers behave with great as the year he was born, but birthdays whatsoever and that he was taking me brutality." Aga Khan Armajani was are not celebrated in Iran, he says, and, only as a favor to my father, and he never brutal, but since he was the eldest chronology notwithstanding, he thinks used to strike me on the hands with a son of his father his authority extended he was nineteen when he got here, in long ruler when I made a mistake. I beyond the household. His younger the fall of 1960. A uniformed guard studied with him only for six months brother Y ahya, Siah's uncle, would saw him racing with his uags through -I couldn't stand it any longer-but certainly have preferred to get his the terminal at Kennedy Airport, try in the end I really could draw. " higher education in France, as most ing to make his connecting Bight to During his last two years at the well-to-do Iranians did in those days, Minneapolis-St. Paul. "Slow down, missionary school, Siah became inter but he went to an American college sonny," the man said, in a friendly ested in Western philosophy. Although instead, at Aga Khan's urging. Yahya voice. Armajani was so impressed that ninety per cent of the students were not graduated from Princeton with a de he did so. "l slowed down," he said. "! Christians, the school had a special gree in history, and he returned there a missed my flight. T hat sort of casual course on the major Western phil year later to get a master's degree in friendliness was the first thing that osophers, from Socrates to the German theology. On a subsequent lecture tour struck me here. Of course, I felt lost school of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Hei in the United States, he was invited to for a while, because of the language, degger. "There was very little dis speak at Macalester College, in St. and also because of the differences in cussion," Annajani remembers. " Most Paul, Minnesota, and his talk there so behavior. I n Persia, you never reveal ly we just memorized textS." His atten impressed the staff and the administra yourself to a stranger, but here when tion was captured nevertheless. Ger tion that he was asked to stay on as a you travel you reveal everything to the man philosophy and Islamic culture member of the faculty. Y ahya accepted. person in the next seat. I t is impossible {humanized by Sufism) combined to He taught history at Macalester for the to be an exile in this country. I ac develop in his young mind a persistent next thirty years, and his presence quired friends, got involved in college streak of idealism and a sense of ob- there explains why Siah was sent to a life. I missed all that política! activity I
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THE NEW YORK:EI\ 53 had been part of in Iran, but eventually had at one time translated Persian po student who was chattering away on her I joined an Iranian students' organiza etry into English. Armajani had read right, so that she could concentrate on tion called Friends of the Middle East. the English translations as a child. this decidedly un-Midwestern-looking Later, we found out that the C.I.A. Now, at Macalester, he found in stranger, because he was the person she was paying the costs of our newspa Emerson's essays many of the ideas wa-s going to marry. She found out his per." At Macalester, he majored in that had infiuenced Hegel and Nietz name somehow, ilien went to ilie regis philosophy, with a specific goal in sche. "Emerson underlined the excite trar's office and looked up his course mind. He wanted to find a framework ment, the unpredictable madness of schedule. After that, she managed it so for his social and political ideas. Ma America in terms of daily life," he that their paths crossed at least once a calester was then and still is a fount of told me. "Unpredictable because the day. Eventually, he said helio, they Midwestern populist thinking, which past is forgotten intentionally. Emer started to talk, and iliat was iliat. "Siah appealed immediately and deeply to son wanted to break away from Europe never had a chance," Barbara jukes. Armajani. Hubert Humphrey, who had intelJectually, and to develop a truly They went together from then on, and taught at Macalester and was a friend American context. This led to prag they were married in 196 7. of his Uncle Yahya's, became one of matism rather than metaphysics, to All through school in Iran and col his heroes. It bothered him, though, anthropology rather than philosophy lege in America, Armajani never devi that populism was so often misinter to John Dewey's insistence that all ated from his decision to be an artist. preted as a movement geared to the ideas be tested according to tl1eir ap He was a relentless self-critic, though, lowest common denominator; to his plicability to life." and the only student works of his that mind, it was committed to making the One day in 1961, at the start of the survive are a few large black-and-white highest achievements available to ev fall term, Armajani wandered into a calligraphic paintings that he did at eryone-available, but not accessible. classroom where sorne students were Macalester. They were made by in The distinction was important: what sitting in groups and talking. His un scribing lines of Persian poetry (in you achieved was up to you. obtrusive entrance was noticed by a Persian) on every inch of the canvas, E ven more important than populism, student named Barbara Bauer, a young lines going in all directions and sorne though, was his discovery, or, rather, woman of Scandinavian and German times on top of other lines, impossible rediscovery, of Ralph Waldo Emerson. descent, who had grown up in a small to read except in fragments. lt was an In an effort to break away from Euro town near St. Paul. As she explains attempt, perhaps, to hold on to his pean literary conventions, Emerson, it, she had a sudden feeling that she Middle Eastern roots in the heart of working from German translations, must find a way to silence the fellow- the American Middle West. Armajani
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54 MAR.CH 19,1990 thought, on the basis of seeing their work and talking to them, that they would challenge and invigorate the students, and they more than fulfilled his hopes. Le Va, who had recently graduated from the Otis Art lnstitute, in Los Angeles, took the job because Minne apolis was on the way to New York, where he wanted to be. He knew a lot more about the contemporary art world than Armajani did, and he really intro duced him to conceptual art, which Armajani had been dabbling in without knowing that there was such a thing. Having graduated from Macalester with a major in philosophy and a minor in mathematics, Armajani had been spending sorne of his time in the com puter lab at the University of Minne sota, experimenting with number pro gressions. Le Va filled him in on the work of Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence W einer, and other N ew York artists ((¡ address all of Daniel's spelling and long-division needs." for whom ideas, concepts, and simula tions had become not only the most • • important but virtually the sole aspect of their art work. Armajani and Le Va had a hard time with European art ready established here," he recalls. He became close friends almost immedi history. He flunked the basic art worked entirely on his own for severa! ately, and, as first-year teachers teach history course at Macalester six times, years, testing out ideas, reading philos ing first-year art students, they called because he couldn't pass the tests in ophy, and shaking off what he had on one another for support both inside which slides of paintings were shown learned in college. He continued to and outside the classroom. "l'd get him on a screen and students had to identify work on black-and-white calligraphy to lecture to my students, and l'd lec the artists. "At the end of each semes paintings. The W alker Art Center ture to his students," Le Va recalls. ter, I would ask if I could write a paper had shown one of them in its biennial "We both emphasized ideas over prod on Persian miniatures as a makeup exhibition in 1962, and subsequently ucts, and tried to give the students exam," he said, "and the answer was bought it for the permanent collection. other options." The options that always no. Finally, after six tries, I Minneapolis has a reputation for be Armajani presented to his students asked if I could write a paper on the ing exceptiona!ly hospitable to the arts. were mainly philosophical and politi Russian Constructivists and they said Years of sustained patronage have en cal. He was in the process of develop yes, and I passed. I was interested in abled the Minneapolis lnstitute of Arts ing his ideas about public art as a the Constructivists because they were to build an impressive historical collec means of involving himself in Ameri political, because there was no separa tion, and in the nineteen-sixties the can society, and his lectures helped him tion between the citizen and the artist Walker Art Center, under the imagi to sharpen his thinking. The students -what we're trying to do now in native direction of Martin Friedman, were responsive. Armajani took anti public art. They are really our para was turning into one of the best mod authority positions on most of the po digm, Tatlin and Rodchenko and ern-art museums in the country. The litical issues of the late sixties, and he Malevich and the rest." Walker, the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, told Sufi stories. Everybody laughed a When Armajani graduated from and the Minneapolis Symphony are all lot in his classes. In one of the col college, in the spring of 1963, he found generously funded, and severa! lo lege yearbooks, there is a picture of a cheap Ioft in downtown Minneapolis cal foundations give grants to resident Armajani on skates, being held up at and started right in being an artist. and non-resident artists. T here is also the elbows by two giant Minnesota lads "Siah always knew where he was go the Minneapolis College of Art and in hockey pads; they had talked him ing," Barbara Armajani told me. "He Design, a hundred-and-three-year into being coach of the hockey team, had no doubts at all, even in the begin old school that attracts art students mainly because he knew absolutely ning, and he never needed encourage from a11 over the country. Armajani nothing about the game. ment or recognition." was hired to teach there in 1968, Since Armajani knew no other art along with another young artist, Barry 1\ lfiNI MAL and conceptual art, the ists at the time, he was not aware that Le Va. Arnold Herstand, the school's 1 V.1 dominant aesthetic strategies of in order to be one you were supposed to president at the time (he later became the late nineteen-sixties, appealed to go to New York. "By the time I found an art dealer in New York), hired Armajani's philosophical bent. He that out, it was too late-! was al- Armajani and Le Va because he read the critica} tracts that sometimes
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THE NEW YOI\KEI\. SS threatened to sink both movements in an avalanche of words, and he contrib uted a few works of his own to the conceptualist inventory. In 1968, he computed the height and diameter of a Sorne of the most tower that would casta three-hundred important meetings in America and-sixty-mile shadow across the en arent held in a boardroom. tire state of North Dakota, from one border to the other. (It would be eigh teen miles high, and its tip would be two miles in diameter.) One of his mathematical projections was includt:d in the "lnformation" show at the Mu seum of Modern Art in 1970, the first big museum exhibition of conceptual art. There was a note of absurdist humor in the N orth Dakota tower and other Armajani concepts-a note sel dom detectable in the solemn cogita tions of most of the other conceptual ists. lt was as though he could not take quite seriously an art whose content was the artist's thinking process. lt had always been clear to him that his own art would require a social content, and by the late sixties he had come to feel that it must deal specifically with American life and American society. The Beverly Hills Hotel and &mgalows "Around that time, a new group of 9641 Sonset Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90210 (213) 276-2251 Iranian students had appeared over D•rect Reservations (800) 283-8885 · Cable: BEVHILL ·Telex: 188586 · TWX 910-490-2580 here, talking about Islam," he told me. ·-ol~Iotelsofthtfmxkr "That was really something to behold. My generation had been trying to find salvation through a synthesis of East ern and W estern civilization, but the new generation rejected all that, and they were very self-assured about it. That's when 1 decided to become an American citizen." To get a firmer conceptual grip on what America was and how it had developed, he had also begun to teach himself about early American building methods and struc tures, from log cabins and wooden bridges to Jefferson's designs for Mon ticello. "1 decided to cast my lot with architecture, which by its very nature is social," he said. This did not mean that he had decided to become an archi tect, or even that he wanted his work to be primarily functional. His idea was to use architecture-pragmatic, vernacu lar, American architecture- as a frame of reference for an art that would be relevant to his adopted society. That art was obviously going to be sculpture. One of the earliest examples of it was "First Bridge," which he built in 1968, on an open field he had bought for the purpose in the town of White Bear Lake, sorne twenty miles GIFTABLE ARL.Available at Liberty of London shops in New York Oty, Chlcago. Washington D.C.. Ardmore. PA and other fine stores. north of St. Paul. "First Bridge" was Ubertyoflondon, NewYorl< , N.Y. (212) 391- 2150 a hundred-and-twenty-five-foot-long Uberty. The very fabrk of British life.
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58 MAR.CH 19, 1990 covered wooden bridge whose height William W egman's thirty-five-foot diminished progressively from ten feet long billboard painting of the Foshay at one end to four feet at the other. Its Tower (a Minneapolis landmark), function was conceptual: to make an looking highly realistic but lying on its apparent visual experience a real one. side, disappeared overnight from its When we start across a covered bridge, site on the University of Minnesota View the far end of it always looks smaller campus; sorne days later, it was learned than the end we enter. The far end of that agents of the F.B.I., who appar WithARoom. "First Bridge" actually was smaller, ently saw in the work an incitement but that did not become evident until to bombing, had removed and confis the viewer was halfway across. "1 was cated it. (A bomb had gone off in the just trying to investigate bridge struc mathematics lab at the Urúversity of ture physically, perceptually, and con Wisconsin that summer, killing a ceptually," Armajani explained to me. research student.) Inside the W alker, He had never seen a covered bridge at museum staffers doctored a poster that time, only photographs to read "7 ARTISTS/7 of covered bridges. This SPACES" and then "6 ART one looked very much like IST S/ 6 SPACES." Next, High atop a butte the real thing ( except for Richard Treiber's "Ele in]ackson Hole, Wyoming, the foreshortening); it was vated Brush Pile," a wood with a glorious view of the made of weathered boards en platform with a huge Teton mountains, is a nailed together in practi pile of brush on top, which secluded, luxurious resort cal-carpentry style. had been installed on the from which to enjoy it all: Two years later, an Ar Court of Honor in front Spring Creek Rcson. majani bridge was part of of the state capital, in St. an exhibition at the W alker Paul, was denounced by ~ Art Center. This singu one of the legis1ators as larly ill- fated show, called "9 an insult to the war dead; the Fire SPRING CREEK RESORT Artists/9 Spaces," was the brainchild Department declared it a tire hazard EO. Box 3154 )aOOon Holc, WY 83001 307'733-8833 of a young curator named Richard and carted it away. 1-800-443-6139 Koshalek, who is now the director of Siah Armajarú's contribution to the the Museum of Contemporary Art in show miraculously failed to offend How to Brooch the Subject Los Angeles. "The idea was to get anyone, although its installation was From 1he fabufous collec1•on of Leooore Doskow artists to do things in vacant lots, fraught with difficulties. lnstalled on comes 1t.s personahzed b
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THE NEW YORKER 59 smaller, in which he continued his con ceptual investigation of structure and meaning. He built them out of cheap lumber, using the practical, rough and-ready methods of early American carpenters, but they did not look very practica!. W alls, ceilings, windows, fioors, and other elements, although recognizable as such, did not relate to each other in the ways that one would expect, and the interior spaces were highly eccentric. What he was really doing was deconstructing the idea of a house. "I was trying to take apart and decipher each separate element, and then put the elements back together according to a larger context," he said. "There are always two historical pat terns at work-the past that once was present, and the past that still condi tions the present. F olk art versus the vernacular. By deconstructing, we sup press the priority of the past." Accord ing to Armajani, the American under standing of history is pragmatic and is oriented toward the present. In trying to get at what was truly and actively American in American vernacular ar chitecture, though, he seemed to be moving in a strange direction. F or all its homely materials and straightfor ward carpentry, the work was becom THEM YOU SHOULD. ing increasingly hermetic, prívate, and indecipherable. There was nothing You know Washmgton, D.C parks, pandas and puppet day rates. Call l-800- for memorials and monu shows. 422-8644 or write for a free open, available, or useful about his ments. Get to know sorne of Most museums are free brochure listing free annual wooden house models. When I asked D.C:s other faces as well. and all D.C . hotels otfer festivals, theatres, parks, at him about this, his reply, as usual, was Washington·s well known reduced weekend and holi- tractions, discounts for per stages and theatre corridor sons 60+ and reduced week succinct. "lt is always through the idea otfer premiere performances. end rates for91 D.C. hotels. of the usefulness of an object that 1 Step intoa shoppers· para Write to: The D.C. Commit dise of specialty shops and tee to Promote Washington. become acquaú1leu with it," he said. OC. P.O. Box department stores. I\-OIUMENTSAND MLCH I\O{f. 27489, Washington, " This usefulness can be functional, or And kids wiU !ove our ~422-8644 D.C. 20038-7489. perceptual, or spiritual. It can provoke ideas without being functional." Ideas were what mattered. Arma jani's mind was so taken up with ideas that he had trouble driving a car. He MISSING A PIECE had a number of accidents, nene of OF YOUR PATfERN? them very serious because he never Now }'Ou can replace drove fast. H e sideswiped other cars, pieces or add to your sterlíng silver collec- and went through red lights. Once, tion at up to 75% off "~1 while he was driving back from the retail prices. \\e spccial- ~~~ =!::. airport, his attention was caught by a ize in new and used 11 muiji OatwareandhoUowarc, ~'::... t : ¡, 850 \( billboard put up by a religious group: ;~;~~~~aJJ ga,~~r~~s i! "lt showed C hrist, P ontius Pilate, and . for a free inventory of •· a crowd of people behind them, and }'Our pattem. (\·\e also j \ underneath it said in big letters 'What bu y sterling. with a , caieful appraisal for lit f \ Would YouD o?' MyGod, whataques maximum value.) Pat- \i1 t..... ) tion!" The next moment, Armajani tem shown: Chantilly SWIMATHOME byGorham. felt a substancial impact, and, looking A unique personallap pool f or swimming in Bevertv Bren1er out to the side, he found that his car place against a smooth, adjustable current had gone right up the back of the car in _()~ ENDLESSPOOLSIN<:. SILVERSHOP front of him, which had stopped for a C:::~~~l6;c:;;..;~._.,; ~~?m~ERSI: light. " I was actually on top of that ENt¿>!;-~~00.1.;5 =J,~NY100t4
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60 MAI\CH 19, 1990 car," he said. The woman driving the time, was the need for a new approach of culture and of human values- or so 1 other car got out, unhurt. The police to public art. Surprisingly little thought the client hoped. But could such works assumed that Armajani was drunk, but had been given to thls question, or to real!y be called public1 The public, for they were preved wrong. He got off the contradiction that lay at the heart the most part, seemed to accept them with a stiff fine. of it. In the past, public art works with an equanimity that was barely dis "Because 1 was in so many accidents, commemorated real people or real tinguishable from indifference. The I had an attorney, Mr. Byrne," Ar events, or else they provided a symbolic public seemed to accept anything that majarü told me. "One day when we rerninder of shared, communal values. the corporation chose to enhance its were having lunch together, somebody Most modern art, however, was self image with, even totally abstract and telephoned him from J ackson, Minne contained; it had jettisoned the age anti-formal sculptures by artists who sota, to say that they wanted to bring old task of representation in order to were far less gifted than Calder or thcir town into the twentieth ccnlury, become a thlng-in-itself, and, if it re Moore-all those bent tubes in plazas and did he have any ideas? Mr. Byrne ferred to the world outside, it often - but there was always the suspidon said, '1 have just the right person sit did so in ways that were not easily ap that such works meant little or nothing ting next to me.' W e fiew over there a parent to the layman. To be sure, a to the people who passed by them every day or so later in a small plane.'' good deal of quasi-public art had been day on their way to and from work. Jackson, a rural town of about thirty produced in the years since the Second A great many more artists began five hundred people, wanted help in W orld W ar; the most familiar exam doing public art in the late sixties and saving its eight-block central business ples of it were large-scale sculptures by the early seventies, when the federal district, which was losing all its busi Alexander Calder and Henry Moore, government, after years of providing ness to highway shopping centers. commissioned by corporate clients and no direct support for the arts, discov Armajani became deeply involved in set down in front of the high-rise steel ered that there was a significant arts the problem, and he ended up working and-glass office towers that were mak constituency in this country. The Na with the townspeople, off and on, for ing the business districts of so many tional Endowment for the Arts, estab the next four years. He conferred with American cities look so much alike. lished in 1965, began in 196 7 to make the local citizens' committee and with A big, serni-abstract Henry Moore grants to public-art projects initiated at the store owners, he put high-school worked against uniformity. lt helped to the state and local leve!. The Gener students and teachers to work doing soften the hard edges of the Interna al Services Administration, the huge research on how the street used to look, cional Style, and it also served to sug bureaucracy whose functions in and he drew up plans for restoring the gest that the corporation was rnindful elude contracting for all new govern- buildings to their nine ment buildings through teenth-century purity. out the country, activat (The way to enter the \ 1 ed in 1973 a dormant twentieth century, ap 1 1 per-cent-for-art program, parently, was to bring which comrnissioned art back the nineteenth.) works for hundreds of Each store owner as new federal buildings. A sumed the cost of his number of state govern building's restorations, ments followed suit, and and because the work a rtists of all kinds was considered mainte sculptors, painters, print nance, not capital im makers, ceramicists , provement, there was weavers- began getting no increase in property comrnissions for work in taXes. lt was a wonderful pu blic places. All thls in experience for Arma volved public money, of jani: "! learned that in course, and there were a order to do something few cases where the pub like that you had to get lic, whose tax dollars right in and deal with were paying for it, took the taX structure, with issue with the results. T he the businesspeople, and citizens of G rand Rapids, with the politidans.'' Michigan, rose up in anger when their elected f\ RMAJANI was getting authorities applied for n more and more in N.E.A. funds and com vitations to lecture at col rnissioned a large Cal leges and universities der stabile for the main outside Minneapolis. He square. That was the first could be a mesmerizing N.E.A. grant for public talker when he warmed art, in 196 7, and much to hls subject, and his has been made of the fact subject, much of the "Of cottrse, if yot1 feel yott must pick up the tab . .." that popular sentiment in
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THE NEW YOI\KER. 61 Grand Rapids eventually turned in favor of the Calder work, "La Grande Vitesse," to such a degree that its irnage is now used on the mayor's stationery, on the sides of the city's garbage trucks, and on every down town street sign. The sculpture ap parently carne to stand for something, then, but what? Civic pride? The conquest of Babbittry? The importance of a logo in a world where image is everything1 Large sculptures like "La Grande Vitesse" raise the question of monu mentality, which was an important as pect of earlier public art. The publk monument, larger than life-size and raised above eye level, used to convey a heroic or an otherworldly message. Today, such messages are out of fash ion; they embarrass us. Sorne of the Abstract Expressionists in the nine teen-forties and fifties tried to hit the note of heroism in their paintings, and it was this aspect of their work that the WouldAnActaCo~ConvinceYou next generation, the Pop-art genera tion, reacted against with such derisive To BringYour Family 1\Jong On Business? élan. Claes Oldenburg's drawings of lf.~ur family travels witll yru on _busiress to Fairfax County, they can ea91y Fairfax VISit Capitol Hill. ex tlle Smthsontan. ex any number of histonc paces right r ro, ..,1n 1 proposed colossal monuments, such as 1 the vast toilet float for the Thames in here in the County Once you take care of business. you can even join ~ ~y, tllem- tllere's no law against it For infcrmaticxl. cal (703) 790-FFAX. Virginia London or the giant Teddy bear for nure Central Park, were viewed as great jokes; to the surprise of many people, though, severa! of his proposals were subsequently commissioned, and built to monumental scale- a hundred-foot high steel baseball bat in Chicago, for example, anda forty-five-foot-high clothespin in Philadelphia. Olden burg's anti-monuments are in tune with late-twentieth-century America, but this may be another way of saying that monumentality itself is no longer valid. The most successful monument in recent years is Maya Ying Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Wash ington, D.C.- a polished, V-shaped black granite slab bearing the name of every American serviceman killed in Vietnam. lt is set into the earth on the Mall and is virtually invisi ble until you walk right up to it the antithesis of the vertical man-on horseback or the triumphal arch. "l think in a real democracy you should not look up at anything," Armajani has said. "Everything should be at eye level. And in this particular democracy you don't need heroes." At sorne point during the nineteen seventies, the term "site-specific" carne into vogue as a justification for art works in public places. The term had
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62 MAI\CH 19, 1990 been used originally by the earth art Plaza, in Manhattan, and Isamu No other art, could operate effectively in a ists, whose work was by no means guchi's sculpture garden for the Bei non-art setting. public; financed by their dealers or by necke Library, at Y ale. (Noguchi was prívate sponsors, they used bulldozers making proposals as early as the nine A RMAJANI's bridge and house models and other heavy-duty equipment to al teen-thirties for projects that antic n appeared in a number of group ter the landscape in areas remote from ipated both earth art and the most re exhibitions in the nineteen-seventies, human habitation. (The best-known cent public art; not many of his de including one at the Clocktower in earthwork was Roben Smithson's signs were realized, but the ones that New York. In 1974, he started to work earth-and-rock "Spiral Jetty," in were-for example, the UNESCO Gar on a series of architectural objects U tah's Great Salt Lake.) Other artists den in París and "Two Bridges" in which he called his "Dictionary for liked the term, however, and soon Hiroshima- establish him as the most Building." Each of these was a study nearly every new sculpture or wall significnnt public artist of his time.) of a panicular element in domestic hanging in a public place was being There is no doubt, though, that a great architecture- a door, a window, a referred toas site-specific. This meant, deal of mediocre public art has come piece of furniture-presented sorne presumably, that the artist had studied into existence here since 1970. This in times in isolation and sometimes in every aspect of the site and then had itself is not so surprising. Many of the relation to another element. From made a work that related to it directly, equestrian statues and portrai t busts 1974 to 1978, he made hundreds of either in harmony or in opposition. All that were put up in parks and town these in small scale, out of cardboard, too often, though, what those works squares in the last century were medio and after 1978 he made them in larg seemed to relate to most specifically was cre, too, though at least the public er scale, of more durable materials. the artist's previous work. Another could ( and maybe still can) feel sorne "What I was trying to do was put term, "plop art," was coined to de sort of personal relationship to them. together an index of art and architec scribe a studio scu]pture that had sim What is surprising is that so few artists tural possibilities," he told me. "All ply been blown up in scale and plopped and so few govemment or corporate the physical properties of doors, win down in a public setting. Sorne of the sponsors felt the need to rethink or dows, and so forth, such as a chair architecturally related sculpture of the redefine the nature of public art in against a wall, or a chair by a win last fifteen years has been brilliantly contemporary terms, or to ask them dow." At the same time, he was de successful in its own terms-works selves how contemporary painting and signing structures based on J efferson's such as Jean Dubuffet's "Group of sculpture, which are essentially prívate plan for Monticello. Armajani wanted Four Trees," in Chase Manhattan in their appeal, and refer principally to to absorb Jefferson's política} thinking
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THE NEW YOI\KER. 63 architecturally, by immersing himself who could go inside and climb around installations, but one has become per in what he considered Jefferson's at and wonder what made it art." manent. Having been commissioned to tempt to define and develop an Ameri Up to this point, none of Armajani's do a work for the "Art at the Olym can architectural style in which a work had been functional. l ts main pics" program in 1979, Armajani went building was based on the equality of purpose had been to test or refine cer to Lake Placid, the Winter Olympics its parts. In Armajani's versions of tain ideas-a Iegitimate function in his site, found a vacant lot on a quiet Monticello, though, the architectural terms but hardly the open, available, residential street, broug ht in sorne ideas are dissected and reassembled in useful sort of art that he eventually benches and tables and placed them such a way that walls meet ceilings at carne to envisage. Toward the end of where they would get the best light strange angles, and every proportion is the seventies, though, he began to de during the day, and proceeded to build askew. In 1978, when Armajani was sign a series of "reading rooms" and a wood-frame house around them. invited to participate in the new-truent "reading gardens" that show him This odd-shaped "Reading House" is show at the Guggenheim Museum, in moving in the direction of art-for-use. still there ten years later, althoug h New York, he commandeered the mu Reading, of course, is the key to the nobody uses it for reading. seum's entire ground floor for an ar democratic experiment, the essential W ritten texts became an element in chitectural piece called "Lissitsky's first step on the road to responsible Armajani's work in 1980. Persian ar N eighborhood, Center House." A citizenship. The spaces that Armajani chitecture often has quotations from sprawling, chaotic-looking wooden conceived for this purpose were neither the Koran worked into its decorative structure on many levels, it paid hom comfortable nor particularly inviting, scheme, and Armajani, whose calligra age to the Constructivist artist El Lis as they might have been if he had phy paintings showed a reverence for sitsky while employing the methods addressed reading primarily as a form the combination of word and image, and materials of early American build of pleasure. The furniture consisted of had been thinking for sorne time about ers. Linda Shearer, the Guggenheim tables and hard wooden benches, and using written texts in his architectural cu rator who selected the artists for the the fragmented, odd-angled geometry pieces. He did so for the first time in a show, said later that she had been of the surrounding elements did not "Meeting Garden" that he constructed surprised by Armajani's sculpture. "It offer much privacy. What he was do for the annual invitational show at struck me that this very unaggressive ing, once again, was largely concep Artpark, in Lewiston, New York. He man had made a very aggressive tual: the idea of reading made mani was very uneasy about doing it; he piece," she said. "But in an odd way it fest through architecture. Most of the had made a space for a quotation, but was accessible to the ordinary viewer, reading spaces were done as temporary he hesitated to put it in until the last
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MARCH 19, 1990 moment. "I'd been feeling that my gle. Armajani had discovered in his pieces didn't provoke people enough," research for the commission that Louis he explained to me. "lt seemed that a Kahn once studied art at the Fleisher; written text could be the catalyst I was his decision to dedicate the room to looking for, to make a connection and Kahn so touched the architect's widow bring people together, but I was afraid that she donated one of his drawings to that people might think the whole the school, and she has continued to project was designed for the quotation. lend others to the changing exhibitions I wanted it to be one part of the of Kahn's work. experience but not the whole point." The quotation he chose was from John HE questions about contemporary Dewey'~ "Art as Experience," and it T public art that were largely ig appeared in stencilled capitals high on nored in the runeteen-sixties and sev the wall of a shedlike structure at the enties carne to the fore with consider Thc carcff'1.'t llnd sedudt.>d atmc.~phned (lUr hlstonc valley hM been s{l()thing e\ busy, r"Cstless world for far end of the garden: "AS LONG AS able urgency in the eighties. Artists over70 ycars. 'bu'll find everything yruenjoyon flur ART IS THE BEAUTY PARLOR OF CIVI and patrons alike, it appeared, were 1000 priv¡_,tel}•-m.vned acres: ritlc, hl!...e, swim, sh('lof'ot, play, sook, or rela)\ rigt,t i\t tht.~ Lodge. Only fivc LIZAT ION, NEITHER ART NOR CIVILI troubled by the proliferation of self minutes from fascinating S.'nta Fe ''~·ith museums, ZATION IS SECURE." referential abstract sculptures in plazas gallcrres. roncerts, world-famous (!pera, uniquc shops.. Sightsee the man) ncarb)• lndlan pucbkls. He must have felt that this text and in front of new buildings. Many And Mobil fut.ar-Sta.r Rated ~ansdeliciouscool..cry and f..ne5f:atn('n rties. Call505-963-lí377, orwrite. worked the way he wanted it to, be artists carne to feel that their work was cause he has used quotations in his being used to pretty up bad buildings, Tllt:~ work ever since: Emerson in an "Office which was often the case. Quite a few BISHOP'S LODGE for Four," commissioned by the Hud architects objected to the commission r • • • • SA!\TA FE. NEW MEXICO• •-•l son River Museum in 1981; Walt ing of art works that they felt were l 1 Whitman for an "Employee Lounge," inappropriate for the spaces they had J Titc B "h;ts Lod~ 1 at the Hirshhorn Museum, in Wash designed. The public, meanwhile-the 1 :;-;~!cn;,t;;!'!'1,u;er::M87S04 1 ! • ington, D.C., in 1981; Robert Frost formerly docile and largely accepting 1 N.,... f for a "Poetry Lounge," at the Califor public-was beginning to show its 1 1 ,-~ rua Institute of Technology, in Pasa teeth. A great many office workers in 1 e · .1 dena, in 1982; Whitman again for a 1 "Y.· ~"P 1 lower Manhattan objected violently to "Louis Kahn Lecture Room," in Phil Richard Serra's "Tilted Are," a mas ------· adelphia, in 1982. These spaces were sive sculpture in the form of a leaning more readily available for human use steel wall, twelve feet high and a hun than the earlier reading rooms had dred and twenty feet long, which bi been. Although their furniture was ru sected the pedestrian plaza in front of dimentary and their amenities were the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, Spartan-the "Office for Four" con on Foley Square. The public dispute sisted of four wood-frame cubicles, over "Tilted Are" dragged on for each of which contained a bench, a eight years, and ended acrimoruously, table, and a coatrack, and had a naked last March, wirh the sculpture's re forty-watt light bulb in the ceiling moval by the General Services Admin they could be, and actually were, used istration, which had commissioned it. for the purposes intended, more or less. Serra fought tenaciously against its re (A writer and a seamstress worked in moval, claiming breach of contract and two of the four "offices" at the Hud impainnent of his rights to freedom of son River Museum for the run of speech and expression. "Tilted Are" the show.) The "Louis Kahn Lecture was site-specific, he insisted; to remove Room," which had been commissioned it from the site was to destroy it. (No GIVE A LIFETIME OF PLEASURE. as a permanent installation by the body seemed to notice that there was a Your Ashwood Basket is guaranteed for ten years. Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, is strikingly similar curved steel wall by An unforgettable gih. used today as a meeting room, a small Serra, the "St. Johns Rotary Are," For wer ooe hundfed years Ashwood basl archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 14/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 THE NEW YOR.KER. 65 he favored "relocating" the piece from recommending and accomplish ing its eventual removal, and the wrath of the art world lies heavy on his head. Behind all the rhetoric, though, sorne interesting questions were raised. Should a work of art that is intended for a public space be judged by the same criteria as a work of art that is intended for a prívate collector or a museum1 Should the public- or, anyway, that part of the public which is in immedi ate, everyday contact with the work have a voice in its selection, and, if so, how much of a voice1 (People can choose whether or not to look at works of art in museums, but with public art no such choice is possible.) What is to We do everything -rerfectly be done if a work of public art, after a sufficient period in situ, is perceived to so you can do perfectly nothing. have been a mistake- perceived not Extraordinary French architecture and cuisine. Legendary service and only by the layman but by what the accommodations. The fine art ol vacationing involves doing everything, and champions of "Tilted Are" kept refer nothing, exquisitely. For reservations, call your travel prolessional or Hilton Reservation Service at l·SOO·HILTONS. ring toas "qualified observers"1 Muse uros make mistakes of this kind, and so do prívate collectors; the results are LA BE LLE then sold or put in storage. Sorne of CREOLE Serra's most fen,ent art-world support A C ONRAD HOTEL ers thought that "Tilted Are" was a mistake, in the sense that it did not "work" successfully in the architec tural context of F ole y Square. One of the effects of the "Tilted Are" fiasco was to throw into sharper relief the new kind of public art that was evolving in the work of Armajani and certain other artists. Most of these artists admired Serra, and sorne of them were his friends, but the truth was that their approach to work in public spaces was virtually the antithesis of his. "lt is not the business of art to deal with human needs," Serra has said. Serra perceives himself as an artist in the early-modern, "heroic" mold, an artist who wants to impose his monumental sculptural forms upon a society that probably will not understand them for years to come; the audience for his work, he often says, is a limited one. Serra's work was in many museums throughout the world, and his reputa THOS. MOSER tion as a major artist was secure. For CABINETMAKERS Armajani and others, though, art in You're invited to visit our Showrooms public places was not the same as the 415 Cumberland Avenuc, Depr. R3 , great modern art in museurns. They Portland, ME 04101 (207) 774-3791 were not interested in creating unique, 210 West Washíngwn Square, Depr. R3, individual works of art, no matter how Philadelphia, PA 19106 (215) 922-6440 site-specific; what they wanted was a Our Harvest Table is ideal for a long, narrow room, yet: accommodares up to 601 Sottth Washington Strect, Dept. R3 , chance to work with public spaces in eighr side chalrs. Dctail: Thc dean, Alexandria, VA 22314 (703) 548-3447 their entirety- to articulate thern in precise rule joints al;celltuatc rhc two rabie leaves. Call or write for our 80-page. fulkolor Catalog, $9. ways that were useful, exhilarating, and aesthetically pleasing. Scott Bur- archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 15/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 66 MARCH 19, 1990 ton said that in a public space it mig ht cess. Armajani tried to persuade the lntrocluctory Offe~ not even be possible to point to a spe four other artists to work together with NEW CUSTOMERS ONLY! cific "work" by the artist; the work him on a single, over-all plan for the Try A Little would be the space itself, and its effect si te; th re e agreed, but the fourth did on the people in it. A1l this would not, so each one chose his own spot and require a certain abandonment of ego did something different. The five envi on the artist's part. l t would require a ronmental works, spread out over the willingness to collaborate with others site and connected by footpaths, did -architects, engineers, municipal au end up complementing one another in thorities, local community groups various ways, though, and not one of and an ability to deal with political and them looked like a piece of sculpture. social n:alities. The danger was that Puryear's concrete-and-glass mound those pressures from the outside, non resembled the top of a large, spherical art sphere would neutralize the artist's rock buried in the earth. Burton, the 1678 4 (6 OZ.) Flklf Mignons. 1 '/•" lhick & 1 (4 oz.) Pkg. d Seosoned 8utter vision and keep it from operating most function-oriented of the Sauce effectively, but that seemed a new public artists, dredged up Reg. $49.95 ...... $29.95 risk worth taking. Armajani glacial rocks from the lake and (plus SS. 50 shipplng ond handli'lg) was under no illusions that the shaped them into rough-hewn sort of work he wanted to do chairs and benches. T rakas built You Save (Umlt ot 2. Pteose> $20 00 Valld In 48 S! ates Until would appeal to everybody. " P ublic a wood-and-steel platform at the • AprW 30. 1990 art is not popular art," he told me. "lt shoreline, a place where you could Phone or rroi o archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 16/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 THE NEW YORKER 67 opment Corporation took it over and his committee, which included severa! Ganz's committee decided to sponsor a drew up a new master plan, under museum curators and art historians, competition among a selected group of whkh forty-two per cent of the area felt the same way. There was, in addi artists, who would be asked to visit the would be residential, nine per cent tion, a nearly unanimous consensus on site and come up with a plan for its would be commercial, and thirty per the committee that instead of asking development. After months of deliber cent would be open public space. (The artists to make something for a space ation, the list was narrowed down remaining nineteen per cent was that was already a fait accompli the to seven candidates: Robert lrwin, needed for streets and sidewalks.) artists should be brought in at the Athena Tacha, Robert Morris, Rich Richard Kahan, the first chairman of a earliest stages of the design process, so ard Fleischner, Harriet Feigenbaum, revamped Battery Park City Authority, that their thinking could become part and Siah Armajani and Scott Burton, pushed through a novel provision un of that process. who were asked to work together as a dcr wlúch rcal-cstatc developers in Thc first public spacc schedulcd for team. (The team suggestion carne from volved in the project had to set aside a completion under the master plan was Linda Shearer, the former Guggen small percentage of their total budget the large waterfront plaza. lt embraced heim curator, who was at that time the to commission works of art in the a rectangular indentation in the water executive director of the nonprofit or public spaces, and a Fine Arts Com front called the North Cave, and it was ganization Artists Space. Shearer knew mittee was appointed to advise the au going to be bounded on the east side by Burton and Armajani well, and she thority on art and artists. The chair the World Financia! Center, a com thought their ideas would complement man of this committee was Víctor plex of four high-rise office buildings each other, a notion with which both Ganz, a well-known collector and a being designed by Cesar Pelli. Archi artists immediately concurred.) When trustee of the Whitney Museum. Ganz tecturally speaking, it was a difficult the committee voted subsequently to had done a good deal of thinking about site, with a wide, asymmetrical center award the commission to Armajani and public art. He had spent a summer section and two wings enclosing the Burton, one of the deciding elements refreshing his memories of the Piaz North Cave. lt was estimated that was a sense that they would be able to za Navona, in Rome, the Place des between eighty thousand and a hun keep their own artistic egos in check, Vosges, in Paris, and other great public dred thousand office workers were go and collaborate not only with each spaces in Europe, and one of his con ing to pass through it every day. The other but with all the players in the clusions had been that Battery Park waterfront plaza would be one of the high-stakes game of urban develop City could do without "plop art." lt main orientation points in Battery Park ment. turned out that most of the members of City, and, in view of its importance, The most important player was You've worked hard to achieve the finer things in life. Why not enjoy them on the weekends? HOTEL I NTER·CONT l NENTAL NEW YORK Enjoy a weekend of luxury and incomparable service at rnidtown Manhattan's most stylish $159* local ion, 48th Street jusi east of Park Avenue. Work out in our spectacular new health club. 111 East 48th Street • New York, New York 10017 THE W ILLARD I NTER·CONTINENTA L WASHI NGTO N , DC Enjoya weekend of luxury and incomparable service in the heart of Washington, OC just $155* two blocks from the White House. Experience the city's fines! dining, in the 'Willard Rooi"IL' 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue • Washington, D.C. 20004 For reservations caU toll- free (800) 327-0200, or for N.Y. call (212) 755-5900, for D.C. (202) 628-9100. •) lNT ER·CON TIN E N TAL HOTE LS lt's where you go wlum you've arrived! archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 17/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 68 MAI\CH 19, 1990 end, which would get OJ.., ~.,r( wt! rodad.,,...,.,...,¿ 1 full sun year-round, th" cl<><"k a/1 ri')l-.t lo ... bc-fo~t! 1 t was to be a sort of win ltU óiJ VJ( h"J ct.cr ft,,..,~ ter garden, with shel '5"7"'-'urs plrni'1 of 1 ?"+ n~t, ter from the wind, and t)t'ld """"d archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 18/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 THE NEW YOR.KER 69 "lt was a very generous act on their part," Pelli said. "An extraordinary demonstration of maturity." As Armajani saw it, "the great thing was that Cesar was willing to listen, and so were we." Their true collaboration began at this point. lt involved a constant effort to reconcile the differences between an architect's need for careful planning and strict cost accounting and an art ist's need for an experimental, trial and-error approach. "We spent many hours discussing what working in the ~ ~ public arena really meant," Pelli says, TUDOR "and we found that, by and large, we by Rolex all thought alike-the main goals were ~i~~ shared. But in smaller matters there z~ were as many differences between Scott and Siah as there were between them OYSTERDATE a: and me!" The Tudor by Aolex Oysterdale. \11 Burton was more committed to func Automalic. wilh date calendar. Waler tesled te 165 fect e: tionalism than Armajani was. A mer Stainless stcciiWld 14K gdd. curial, effervescent man who began as Oysterdate Prlncess, $895. a: a painter, spent ten years as a writer, Oyslerdale Prince. $995. and then was drawn back into the visual area as a conceptualist and per e formance artist, he had found his real direction in the early seventies, as a TOURnEAU MAOISON AVE. &52NDST SEVENTHAVE. &34TH ST IIAI.HAABOU~SHOPS/FLORIOA maker of sculpture that functions as MAJ~ C~EDIT CAAOS.INOUIRIES & DroE~ NY !2121 758·3265/1·800-223·12S8. C~PORATE GIFT OfV.I2121888-2955 furniture-rock chairs, onyx tables with interior light sources, wood and metal and glass pieces that are power fully sculptural but can also be used. Burton died last December, of AIDS, at the age of fifty. None of his many friends mourned him more deeply than Armajani did. During the initial stages of their work together on the Battery HAVE You HEARD Park City competition model, Burton ABoUT OuR NEWTRADE SECRET... had gone out to stay with Barbara and Siah in St. Paul. The Armajanis, who have no children, live comfortably and quite conventionally in a Victorian house that they have restored to its original, 1903 condition. Both of them work very hard, and Burton, whose New York life used to take place mainly at night, discovered during his stay with them the discreet charro of regular hours. He got up at six every l t's absolutely brilliant! Our time-hooored trade-in policy for watches morning, had a big breakfast, spent all now goes for jewelry too! In celebratioo of Tourneau's expanded jewelry day working in the Minneapolis stu dept., you can now apply the trade-in value of your old watch ...or your a: old jewelry... towards the purchase of any new watch or jewelry items. dio, carne back to a large, hot dinner lt's a simple, logical strategy that helps you recoup the value in your old \11 (Barbarais an accomplished cook ), and watches or jewelry that you've been saving, but not wearing. Those pieces e went to bed early, and in the process he that haven't seen the light of day for years. \fJsit Tourneau for your free carne to admire Armajani even more trade·in appraisal. And our little trade will be our little secret. than he had before. "l've never known anyone else who is so spontaneously a 1 Me archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 19/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 70 MAI\CH 19, 1990 when he disagrees, but he projects an along the way. The are almost did. 1 LJVE.JN extraordinary aura of kindness. He ac Both the Battery Park City Authority EUROPEAN cepts me, although my life couldn't be and Olympia & York tried again and CIDLD CARE. more different from his. W e do argue, again to delete the are, because it was of course. We often argue about func going to cost so much, but the artists EurAupair lnt.ercultural Child Care Pro grams is currently placing carefully tionalism-he keeps urging me not to would not give an inch on that issue. selected. Eng)ish- forget the nonfunctional elements in For both of them, the experience was a speaking au pairs, Brlgille, Denmark functional works. Siah and I had our harrowing one but on the whole a good ages 18 lo 25, with only serious fight in one of those meet one; they learned a lot, and, if the end qualified American lamilies. These ings with Pelli, over the issue of monu result was something less than they had bri~hl. reliable au mentality. Siah was very much against hoped for, it was still an impressive pairs. frorn putting a vertical element in the middlc dcmonstration of what artists could uv Scandina\·ia. tlolland, EngJand, of the plaza. I wanted something in in the public arena. Pelli has said that ~mee. Cermany and that panicular spot, a son of centering the completed plaza is better than the most European coun· device, but he was against it. His phi original Armajani-Burton design and tries, Pl"O\'ide flexible , losophy is not ever to be impressive or better than anything he would have child care and a cuf turally enriching authoritarian. I have a perverse fasci designed on his own, and the reactions experienc:e for the nation with those elements. l'd had the of other architects and of architecture enlire famil)' Now idea that we could get a lot of nine critics and the public have so far been accepting applica teenth-century bronze sculptures from highly enthusiastic. ttons for immediate a.u pair placement. other parts of the city, things that were Pelli was so stimulated by the collab for informal ion call in bad repair, maybe, and group them oration, in fact, that he asked Armajani 1-800-333-3804 there, And then l'd had the notion of to work with him on the design for getting a cast of Bartholdi's half-size the top of the Yerba Buena Tower, a model for the Statue of Liberty- it's in high-rise office building in San Fran Paris, I think. Cesar loved that idea, cisco. "The building top is an element 'éirAuPair but Siah hated it; he thought it was of the architecture, like the colonnade lntercultwal Chdd Cate Programs he was right. Anyway, at the base, but much more so," Pelli Laguna Büch, California · Washington D.C. cynical. Maybe the question of the vertical element says. "Here the functional require Oflltul• -. Sloddm . c...,.._, Poris. hrich, - ·& london, Madrid, l'ilm, Oslo, in the plaza was finally resolved. We ments are slight and the formal oppor l!t)i archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 20/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 THE NEW YOI\KER. 71 experience suggests to him that archi and they keep filling them and sending THE NAT U RE CoMPANY tects and artists are incompatible by them up. This is what has happened to nature. "Our point of view, our histor our revolution." ical heritage are so different," he said Having tried collaboration, Arma FouR f'EET BIG I NFLATABLE GORILLA! to me recently. "We have different jani has decided that public artistS Rwan4a's mountain ape appears rcarsomc but in sensibilities and values, and we speak should go it alone. T he fact that he reality is sh)' and gentlc. Our rnctOJiwsly dctaiJed inflat¡;¡ble ¡;¡pe is m*1~ llflt!r I:>Um Fosse')''s different languages. The way I look at was able to do this on the Irene Hixon beloved "Digit .. and 1:8 printed ín r-eal.istic;: a project is totally different from the Whitney Bridge has been imrnensely cdorsmheavy-gauge textutedvin~1. wa}' an architect looks at it. Artists are encouraging to him. Armajani had no for open-ended design; we have to collaborators on that project: the De leave things open to question, to con partment of Transportation contracted tcmplatiun. Nu, lL is more accidental with him to design the bridge, and he than normal that Cesar and I have hired the structural engineers. He had been able to work together." the same sort of design con A year or so ago, Arma trol over a "Covered W alk jani went through a stage way" that he recently com of feeling profoundly disil pleted for General Mills lusioned about public art. in Minneapolis- a striking, The movement had succeed six- hundred - and- ninety ed too well and too quickly, five-foot-long steel-and he felt. The idea of get glass structure that is the ting artists to work on ur largest comrnissioned work ban and suburban projects of in the firm's developing all kinds had preved to be so sculpture garden, as well as $21.50 popular throughout the country dur a shelter for employees on their way ppd. ing the previous few years that nearly from the parking lot to the office 8 0STON MINNiiA.POLIS every state had set up its own public building. There are a great many L....:--=:=-..J WASHINGTON O.C. art program, and so many artists were projects of this kind that could be taken ORDER TOLL FREE 1· 800-227- 1114 THI: f"A.TURE CO~J'A.toiV lU~PT I'IY 30 P O. Be»< UJO trying to get on design teams that over by artistS, he says- projects that l;lE.RKELE\', CA ld&t IAl)D 1AX WHt M .t. APPLIC,BLEt the original incentive was becoming are usually directed by technicians who P LEAS E ASK FOR OUR N EWEST C ATALOC vitiated and bureaucratized. "Public give little thought to the aesthetics of art was a promise that became a night design. "We are in the second stage of mare," Armajani said last spring. our revolution," Armajani says. "Art "Our revolution has been stolen from ists can now begin to reject projects IN SAN FRANCISCO us, and now it is our job to get it back. that call for collaboration. We have Just 2 blocks west In the first place, the idea of a design really been talking about public art of Union Square. team just doesn't work. Cesar and only sin ce 196 7 or so, and that is no Complimentary Continental Scotty and I went through a lot to long history, after all. Now we are Breakfast. Home gether, and we carne to understand adjusting and reevaluating. We need to of the highly ac· each other very well, but the kind of annex more territory for sculpture. Of claimed Post St. design team that just gets together course, we also have to recognize that Bar & Cafe. $76-$105 around a table is like a situation com art has its limitS. Art by itself cannot edy. It is cynical and unproductive. bring about social changes. But art in Corporate Rates Available. Genuine debate can't take place around concert with other forces can make a THE ANDREWS HOTEL a table that way. You get what the difference. We can be citizens with 624 Post Slreet, San Francisco, CA 94109 - Col/ for Brochur. - real-estate developer and the arts ad something to offer besides self-analysis. (800) 227-4742 (415) 563-6877 ministrator want, because they control We can be part of society, and notjust In California: (800) 622-()557 the money. The whole emphasis in a small élite supported by a wealthy most of those projects is on who can get minority." along best with the others involved Armajani's future work could very at the expense of vision and fresh well move in directions that nobody thinking. It is like that story about the foresees at the moment. A series of two thieves who hole up in an aban beautifully crafted "Elements" that doned restaurant to plan their next job. have come from his studio since 1985 While they are plotting in the base are architecturally oriented but more ment kitchen, the dumbwaiter comes mysterious and even less functional down, and there is an order for fried looking than the "Dictionary for Build chicken, Southern style. 'What shall ing" pieces he was doing before. Func we do?' asks one. 'Quick, fill the order,' tion may be an important aspect of says the other, 'or they'll come and find his work, but there has always been us.' So they send up sorne fried chicken, something strange and obdurately non Southern style. But then another order functional at the heart of it. The new (Al) POLO R.Ui Natw1J CokJr 1.8" X 13• X 8" comes down, and another, and another, pieces do not sell very easily. "Sorne Sa.Wbaiool;t.l11Uittd roRStaiiOn, h'Y, h'YIOISO archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 21/22 9/18/13 The New Yorker : Mar 19, 1990 72 museums and corporations have bought them, but there's no real market for Siah among the big collectors," Max Protetch, his dealer, says. "There's an uncertainty about what he does and whether it's art or not. Not that he cares. He won't go to parties or schmooze with clients. A dinner after his show opens at my gallery? F orget it. The other day, he called me up from Minneapolis and said, 'Max, jack up the prices.' I said, 'Siah, what's come over you?' He said, 'That's an expres sion I just heard. Did I use it right?' " The danger of his being tempted to join the art world, at any rate, is about as remote as the danger of his with The Charles Ri\oer sets the jtt¡::ttiiiiiñ of Cambridge right in our back- drawing into sorne form of ivory tower. mood. As sails catch the breeze yard. you·ve got the best of both and crewboats glide by below. worlds. So relax. Enjoy our luxu When we were having lunch to you kno.v you couldn't h the new will be known, like an old shoe that, no matter how old, still pinched one's foot or, because old, collected so many harsh and stinging pebbles as you went back and forth over the dusty trails, among the boulevards and graveyards of remote and savage countries, all in the hope of recovering yet again the fabulous solace of one's true and original home now that you're free to go away and return, as before you'd been free to go away and leave, as Adam once was, or Eve -ROBERT MAZZOCCO archives.newyorker.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/?i=1990-03-19#folio=048 22/22dtlng cials and employees and to attend meet Park City had become a municipal ytt wry sate n>les by ratt lhf0<.11h clW1est. most rregrifiarlt scenetY In tanada! 11 doy$ Al.l lrct. 110m \lancouwr. ings of local citizens who wanted to nightmare. The project had run out of J.H. MIICIS, CANAD1AH RM!l EXPUmONS, Ste. 401 know what was being done with the funds and had lain dormant from 1974 845 Cl1ik:o St Yan<:ouwr. ac ~ 2R2 • Ftt (6041738-4449 land. It became a real public-art pro- to 1979, when the state's Urban Devel-