On Art
MARK, PHYLLIS
On ART By Phyllis Mark Conflict Between Form and Function In Wright's New Guggenheim Museum THE NEW Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the only building in New York City by Frank Lloyd Wright, is as...
...The inaugural exhibition is a representative selection of about 140 works from the more than 2,500 pieces in the permanent collection...
...story cone, pierced by a narrow continuous band of windows, which gently spiral upward...
...And does it work...
...This museum, which is six stories high and which cost over $2 million to build, has only enough wall and floor snace to exhibit about five per cent of the permanent collection...
...On ART By Phyllis Mark Conflict Between Form and Function In Wright's New Guggenheim Museum THE NEW Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the only building in New York City by Frank Lloyd Wright, is as bravura as the architect himself...
...With no level plane of reference, the eye and the inner ear are deceived, and a mild dizziness results...
...If aesthetic and structure, form and function are indeed one: if they have grown inevitably out of the geographic location, the material used and the purpose of the building: then it is impossible to judge the parts—only the whole has validity...
...It is a most uneasy marriage...
...It is not hard to find an instance of the unhappy results of this conflict between Wright's single-minded-ness about the form of his museum, and the suitable and proper function of the building...
...There is an elevator available and it was the architect's intention that people ride to the top and walk down the gallery ramp: ". . . In the easy downward drift of the viewer on the giant spiral, pictures are not to be seen bolt up-right as though painted on the wall behind them...
...The art works would benefit from a softening of illumination...
...No," he replied, "this is used to help align titles...
...Our gadget for hanging paintings is over there," pointing to Sweeney...
...On entering the Museum, the visitor is in a large rotunda, where the architectural effect is monolithic...
...Given the difficult problem of showing art in this complex environment, it is a great tribute to the ingenuity and discerning eye of James Johnson Sweeney...
...The sculptural form of this building, which Wright called his "Temple in the Park," seems to require a parklike space around it for the proper play of light on form...
...and when the Museum starts its program of exhibitions, most of even this small percentage of the whole will have to be removed...
...The Guggenheim must be considered a dramatic and exciting building, however unsuited to its present use as a museum...
...His solution to the problem of display was a metal arm with a hinged tip...
...Comments on the building ranged from "a monstrous mud pie on Fifth Avenue" to ''a serene and dynamic use of space...
...In its present location on Fifth Avenue and 88th Street, it is crowded by the existing buildings that surround it on three sides...
...Picasso...
...Seurat...
...Therefore, this interior plan is not a form suitable for a museum, but an obstacle to overcome in the enjoyment of the paintings...
...These windows provide natural light for a ramp which ascends the inside of the wall, and is the Museum viewing gallery...
...Wright returned the written request with these letters bold, written across the face: "There will be no level floors in my Museum...
...It is now possible to note the direction the collection is taking in regard to contemporary painters...
...A problem arose concerning the needed addition of a work room for restoring and reconditioning the Museum Collection...
...All are impressive samples of these artists' work and admirably serve to further the Museum's avowed purpose of acquainting the public with major pieces that are interesting in themselves, rather than significant for their place in the evolution of visual form...
...Although there are works by Albers, Arp...
...In a culture devoted so largely to material ends, it is at the very least healthy and gratifying to have a work of art generate such widespread public excitement...
...Klee and Mondrian...
...The wire-glass domed roof, rising 92 feet above, and the continuous curve of wall spiralling upward, combine to give a feeling of grandeur...
...In architecture, more than in other art forms, experiment is difficult...
...Now that the excitement of the opening is passed, it is time to examine the project quietly, and, avoiding the extremes of outrage or rapture, simply to pose these fundamental questions: What is it designed to do...
...It was decided to partition off the topmost section of the ramp for this work room and it was necessary to get the architect's permission to level the floor in the work area...
...Its purpose is to educate the public with major examples of painting, sculpture and graphic arts of the recent past, and to encourage contemporary creative work...
...The painting is attached to the tip and then balanced in its surroundings...
...These include Cezanne...
...To appraise the building from Wright s own viewpoint of organic architecture, it is necessary to experience the building in use...
...It is a sixPHYLLIS MARK is a young artist who works and resides in New York City...
...Wright also said, "We are not building a cellular composition of compartments, but one where all is one great space on a continuous floor . . . the whole cast in concrete—an eggshell in form...
...That 95 per cent of the collection cannot be shown is a real loss to the public, but for the Museum there is the additional problem of inadequate storage space, and it has been necessary to rent additional warehouse space outside the Museum...
...To this writer there is no substance in the charge...
...It is sometimes suggested that in designing this building, Wright was, in effect, thumbing his nose at both easel painting and New York...
...In a great upward sweep of movement the picture is seen framed as a feature of architecture...
...That the building would benefit from more space around it is borne out by the fact that at night, when the surrounding dark and the lights within the building combine to create a new orientation, the Museum exterior truly delights the eye...
...The opening of the Museum three weeks ago was front-page news, for it brought into the open a controversy that had existed within a narrow7 circle of specialists ever since Solomon Guggenheim first approved Wrights plan in 1947...
...Braque...
...To form a frame of reference for modern art, there are notable masters of the late 19th and 20th centuries...
...the director, that he has succeeded in hanging this show...
...The art works, set in alcoves along the outer wall, have to be enjoyed in spite of the setting...
...Important contemporary painters missing from the collection are Glarner, Knaths and Tobey, but it is assumed they will be added at a future date...
...Calder, Davis, Ernst, Pevsner and Villon, the largest single category represented is Abstract-Expressionism, including work by Brooks, Francis, Kline, De Kooning, Mathieu and Pollock...
...The Guggenheim is primarily a museum of contemporary art...
...Dramatic innovations, precisely because they are new, do sometimes fail...
...Here one can understand what Wright meant by "architecture for the spirit of man...
...This is an important museum activity which requires natural light...
...The exterior of the building is a sand-colored shell of reinforced concrete engineered to support the inner cantilever construction...
...or did the fact that this was to be his only building in New York lead him to choose a squat shell in opposition to what he termed the '"vertical tombstone architecture" of the city...
...The almost one-third of a mile of inclined ramp in fact makes a most unsatisfactory gallery...
...I asked an attendant standing with a ruler-like instrument whether it was a gadget used in placing the art...
...Wright tried to mate his view of art as an integral part of architecture with the role of a museum as a place to display easel paintings...
...But an eggshell encloses the whole egg...
...The total impact of receding curved walls and a tilted floor is to disorient the viewer...
...Bonnard...
...The trustees have altered Wright's plan for lighting, and at present the combination of natural, artificial and reflected light is too intense...
...Gently inclined, faced slightly upward to the viewer and the light . . . the paintings themselves are emphasized as features, and . . . gracefully yield to movement as set up by these slightly curving massive walls...
...Did Wright choose this form because it was ideal for the site and for its purpose as a museum, as he viewed it...
...This is a relatively minor problem and should be easy to adjust...
...Rousseau...
...The shortcomings of the building are logical outgrowths of the architect's insistence on certain preconceived ideas, which really no longer accorded with his own principles of organic architecture...
...Delauney, Modig-Iiani, Kandinsky...
Vol. 42 • November 1959 • No. 41
