Modern Views: James Welling

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Join us for the Modern Views event to be held at Sotheby’s in New York on October 6 (reply card here). The evening will feature an auction (complete catalogue here) and the premiere of the film, Points on a Line, by artist Sarah Morris.

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0962, 2006 Inkjet print, Edition 1/5, Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner

James Welling’s luminous and evocative Glass House photographs utilize color in bold and unexpected ways and further the artist’s examination of  light, color, and reflectivity, and how these elements articulate architectural form. In the artist’s own words, these works investigate the process of transforming and obliterating the Glass House, Philip Johnson’s iconic residence in Connecticut.

Welling Bio

 Welling is currently a professor of photography in UCLA’s Department of Art

 Current exhibitions include:

 New Pictures 3: James Welling
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota
August 20, 2010 – March 6, 2011

Glass House Cross Dissolve video by James Welling

 Recent press coverage:

Artforum.com

Metropolis Magazine

Wallpaper*

Design Boom

Map Magazine

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles

Modern Views: Ken Smith

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Join us for the Modern Views event to be held at Sotheby’s in New York on October 6 (reply card here). The evening will feature an auction (complete catalogue here) and the premiere of the film, Points on a Line, by artist Sarah Morris.

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GRASS GLASS, 2010. Lenticular print, 16" x 16", Courtesy of the Designer, photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s

“When I think of the Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and Philip Johnson’s Glass House the predominant images that come to my mind are of grass and glass. A radical goal of the modernists was that of transparency and the idea of the landscape moving from outside to inside and through the house. The landscape setting and the architectural space are collapsed into iconic abstractions in these houses. Both houses are as much landscape as architecture.” — Ken Smith

Ken Smith is part of a new generation of landscape architects who are equally at home in the worlds of art, architecture and urbanism.  As he was trained in both design and the fine arts, he explores the relationship between art, contemporary culture and landscape.

He is committed to creating landscapes, especially parks and other public spaces, as a way of improving the quality of urban life.  His work pushes beyond traditional landscape typologies – plaza, street, and garden to landscapes that draw on diverse cultural traditions and influences of the contemporary urban landscape.

 

 

GRASS GLASS, 2010. Lenticular print, 16” x 16” Courtesy of the Designer, photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s

Current projects:

Orange County Great Park, Irvine, California

Goldman Sachs Headquarters, New York, New York – just completed

East River Waterfront, New York, New York

Croton Water Treatment Plant, Bronx, New York

Publications:

The Library Book:  Design Collaborations in the Public Schools, Anooradha Siddiqi, Princeton Architectural Press, April 2010

 

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles

Modern Views: Paula Scher

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction as well as the formal launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

 

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Paul Scher, Print, 34-1/2" x 23-1/2", Courtesy of the Designer, photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s

For over three decades, Paula Scher has been at the forefront of graphic design. Iconic, smart and unabashedly populist, her images have entered into the American vernacular.

Drawing from what Tom Wolfe has called the “big closet” of art and design history, classic and pop iconography, literature, music and film, Paula Scher creates images that speak to contemporary audiences with emotional impact and appeal.

For Modern Views, she has created a bold, graphic print which juxtaposes the site footprints of the Farnsworth House and the Glass House at diagonal angles from which other geometric forms emerge.

Paula Scher Bio

Modern Views project on Pentagram.com

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles

Modern Views: Gary Hilderbrand

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

 

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction as well as the formal launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

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Almost Nothing, 2010 / Gary Hilderbrand / Photo collage, 9-3/4" x 11"/ Courtesy of the Designer, photograph courtesy of Sotheby's

Gary Hilderbrand’s Almost Nothing recalls photomontages by Mies, notably for Resor House, 1939. Mies describes the aim of reducing the presence of building to “beinahe nichts” (“almost nothing”). Farnsworth House and the Glass House exploit this motive. Over time, in both, the landscape becomes almost everything.

BIO:

Gary Hilderbrand is a principal of Reed Hilderbrand Associates, in Watertown, Massachusetts, and he has been Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 1990. Widely published as an author and critic on landscape architecture practice, his writings include The Miller Garden: Icon of Modernism, a monograph on the 1955 Miller Garden project of Eero Saarinen and Daniel Urban Kiley in Columbus, Indiana.

Hilderbrand’s hand-constructed maps, photo-collages, and design work have been exhibited in group shows and solo exhibitions in Rome, New York and at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, Mass MOCA, and Boston University. For more information see:  www.reedhilderbrand.com

Recent projects and publications:

Essay, “Varied Tree Shade for New Urban Pleasures,” in Harvard Design Magazine, No. 31, Fall/Winter 2009/10.  http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/

Essay, “Reciprocities,” in Sturm und Drang: Landscape Architecture in Europe, publication of Colleccion Arquithemas, Barcelona, Spain; 2010.

Recently completed project: East Court at the Dallas Art Museum, a collaboration with the artist Richard Fleischner.  http://www.dm-art.org

Feature in T magazine (New York Times supplement), in April 2010, by Pilar Viladas, on the renewal of Philip Johnson’s 1964 Beck House, in Dallas. Six acres of gardens and sculpture; we are the landscape architects.

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles

Modern Views: Sheila Hicks

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

 

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction as well as the formal launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

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Diagonal II Tipped, 2005 / Sheila Hicks / Textile, 16-1/4" x 18"x1" / Courtesy of the Designer, photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s

“Drawing a pliable line into tension stretching it between distant anchor points invites adventure.”

– Sheila Hicks

Sheila Hicks’ many influences include training at Yale under Bauhaus giant Josef Albers and immersing herself in traditional weaving traditions after a Fullbright scholarship to South America.

Her extensive experience as a teacher, professor, and exhibiting artist can be explored on her website. Her seminal exhibition and publication, Weaving as Metaphor, was presented at the Bard Graduate Center in 2006 and published with an essay by Arthur C. Danto.

The retrospective of her work, Sheila Hicks, 50 Years, opened at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, and is on view until February 2011.

“I found my voice and my footing in my small work. It enabled me to build bridges between art, design, architecture, and decorative arts.” - Sheila Hicks

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles

Modern Views: Brigitte Shim + Howard Sutcliffe

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

 

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction as well as the formal launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

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The Integral House 2009 / Brigitte Shim & Howard Sutcliffe / Model/mixed, 60" x 1/2" x 40" / Courtesy of the Designers, photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s

“The undulating glass wall of the Integral House has a different relationship to nature than either Mies’ Farnsworth House or Philip Johnson’s Glass House. Unlike the still picture quality of nature through the plate glass framed windows, this wall of syncopated solid void creates a cinematic relationship to the forest beyond that is always changing.

Weaving architecture and nature together through movement, the view from within has changed from gaze to dream as one moves through the space.” – Brigitte Shim & Howard Sutcliffe

Shim-Sutcliffe Architects was formed in 1994 by Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe to focus on an integration of architecture, landscape and furniture.

The team is most noted for their Integral House in Toronto which Architectural Record described as “a large residence built as a concert hall with living quarters.” (Complete article here).

The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Perched on a hillside overlooking a ravine, the five-floor, 18,000-square-foot house-cum-concert hall looks like an accordion in motion, with undulating walls of wood and floor-to-ceiling glass.” (Complete article here)

For more images, visit flickr.

Shim-Sutcliff Architects’ bios and awards are profiled on architonic.com.

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles

Modern Views: 2×4

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

 

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction as well as the formal launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

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2x4 | Ecstasy 2010| Still from animation | Courtesy of the Designers

“If the Farnsworth and Glass Houses are examples of a certain hyper-rationality — at least in the architectonic sense — and their beauty is a byproduct of a process rather than an end in itself — according to Mies — could a hyper-rational process be coaxed to produce an ecstatic, unintended beauty that surpasses the aesthetic imagination of the designer? The algorithm may be the apotheosis of rationality. The actual form then, to get back to Mies, ‘is not the goal but the result of [the] work.’” –  2×4 

BIO: 

Founded by Michael Rock, Susan Sellers and Georgianna Stout in 1993, 2×4 focuses primarily on communications for art, architecture and culture-related projects.  Specifically, the firm develops unexpected content for their clients, following a rigorous analysis of message, program, context, and audience. 

2×4 has worked with clients as diverse as The New York Times Magazine, Knoll, MoMA, The Guggenheim Museum, Vitra, Prada, Target, The P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art, The Nasher Sculpture Center, Diller + Scofidio Architects and Rem Koolhaas.

RESOURCES: 

Current exhibition:  Cooper Hewitt Museum, “Design USA: Contemporary Innovation“

Their studio and the environmental graphics for the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) McCormick Tribune Campus Center in Chicago, (in collaboration with OMA) are included in the above exhibition but, 2×4 also designed the exhibition as well as an unusual iPhone app exhibition experience. (Roberta Smith of the NYT covers the exhibition here).

 Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture in London: “OMA Book Machine: The books of OMA”

 2×4 also just published a book about the studio’s work (more of an artist’s book than a book about practice per se) called It is What it Is. The book was a catalogue for an exhibition in Tokyo at the Eye of the Gyre Gallery.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards 2006 – winner of Communication Design Award

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles

Modern Views: Gilles Saucier

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

 

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction as well as the formal launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

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FOUND OBJECT/OBJET TROUVE, Helsinki, 2003 (Reprinted, 2010) Gilles Saucier| | Archival pigmented ink on hahnmuhle photo rag, 46-3/4" x 35" | Courtesy of Architect Gilles Saucier

Upon encountering this found object in Helsinki, Gilles Saucier could not help but take a moment to pause and reflect. Originally a concrete stair for a beach building, the artifact is a remnant of human intervention along this coastline. In the Modern Era of architecture, the most enduring and iconic projects, such as the Glass House and the Farnsworth House, engaged their sites in new, yet meaningful ways. Rather than being isolated, detached objects, these landmark projects have restructured the way we see and live in the landscape, thus markedly shaping our understanding of outdoor space.

 Gilles Saucier received his Bachelor in Architecture from the University of Laval in 1982.  In 1988, Saucier + Perrotte was formed.  Since then, the firm has gained international recognition for its institutional, cultural and residential projects.  As design partner along with André Perrotte, Saucier is responsible for the overall design of each project.  His commitment to design excellence is recognized by the architectural press worldwide. 

Since 1990, Saucier has been visiting professor and invited critic at several Canadian and American Universities as well as lecturing extensively and as an invited guest speaker at architectural organizations and universities. He was one of three Canadian architects invited to join the recent Governor General Team to promote Canadian Culture through a series of state visits to Finland and Iceland.

RESOURCES:

Saucier + Perrotte Architectes

Recipients of two 2010 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada award announcement

Architype Review interview with Gilles Saucier

Semi-Finalist, Musee National Des Beaux Arts du Quebec International Competition

Finalist, Architectural Design Competition at Fallingwater

Designing Thompson Residences in Toronto

LEED Accreditation

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles, Andre Perrotte, Architectural Design Competition at Fallingwater, Architype Review, Farnsworth House, Gilles Saucier, Mies van der Rohe, Modern Views, Musee National Des Beaux Arts du Quebec International Competition, Philip Johnson, Philip Johnson Glass House, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Saucier + Perrotte, Thompson Residences in Toronto

Modern Views: Constantin Boym

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

 

One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction as well as the formal launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

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A Souvenir of Modernism, 2010 | Mixed media, 8" x 8" x 8" | Courtesy of the Designer, photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s

“Over the years, we have created many miniature buildings inspired by the icons and events of the twentieth century. All along, I was imagining a seemingly impossible task of making something full-size, a monumental mega-souvenir of Modernism. Steel columns and beams are not merely structural components of Mies van der Rohe’s and Johnson’s houses. In their uncompromising industrial clarity, these steel elements become an expression of the very essence of these buildings, icons of Modern architecture in their own right.”

– Constantin Boym

Constantin Boym was born in Moscow, Russia in 1955, where he graduated from Moscow Architectural Institute. In 1984-85 he earned a Master’s degree in design from Domus Academy in Milan. In 1986 he founded Boym Partners Inc. in New York. Together with Laurene Leon Boym, he was a winner of the National Design Award in 2009. Constantin Boym has been appointed as director of graduate studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. For the academic year 2010-11, the studio of Boym Partners will be relocated to Doha, the capital of Qatar.

RESOURCES:

Boym on twitter

Oh Boym! Blog

Boym Partners’ work is included in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Moss Gallery

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles

Modern Views: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

Modern Views: A Project to Benefit the Farnsworth House and the Glass House invited some of our era’s top creative minds to continue one of the twentieth century’s great cultural dialogues; the historic exchange reflected in the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Farnsworth House (1945 – 51) and the Philip Johnson Glass House (1949).

 One hundred contemporary artists, architects, and designers created and donated works of art and written statements, capturing their thoughts and inspirations about these iconic buildings and the architects who created them.

 

Tune in weekly for a preview of these works and check back for breaking news surrounding the launch of the Modern Views online auction this summer as well as the pre-sale launch of the Modern Views book published by Assouline.

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Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle | Gravity is a force to be reckoned with (untitled Repose), 2010 | Giclee print on paper, 12″ x 30 “, 1/10 “ | Edition 1 of 10, Courtesy of the Artist

Gravity is a force to be reckoned with (untitled Repose), 2010

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s work, Gravity is a force to be reckoned with, is inspired by two uncompleted modernist projects; Mies van der Rohe’s House with four columns (c. 1951), and Sergei Eisenstein’s screenplay the Glass House (c. late 1920s). Gravity is engineered as an inversion of Mies’ theoretical house that in turn houses Eisenstein’s film played back as a series of videophone messages to an absent protagonist, and was commissioned by Mass MoCA. The photograph, (untitled Repose), is a document of a series of ongoing performances that take place inside and outside the inverted dwelling.

 RESOURCES:

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle Bio

Ovalle website 

 ”Over the past two decades, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle has gained international recognition for a diverse, conceptually rigorous body of work-both activist-inspired public art and studio-based objects-that consist of formally arresting, often technically complex, poetic meditations on aesthetics, nature, and modernity.”  – Art Institute of Chicago  

The exhibition at Mass MoCA, Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With, remains on view through October 10, 2010.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s is represented by Max Protetch

Filed under: Modern Views, Profiles