Postcard from New York

Gramercy Park

Although it takes five modes of transport to get from Fire Island to Manhattan, it only took us three hours. When it works, it works. But as soon as we got into the taxi line at Penn, we knew it was going to be an oven. We still used the subway a lot because the cars are air conditioned, but waiting at the stations in the middle of the day is a descent into hell. The sign on a church in Gramercy Park said, “The devil called. He wants his weather back.”

Our neighborhood church tells it like it is

The diner at the corner of East 22nd and Third near where we usually stay has been reborn as a Greek restaurant. Nothing fancy, but very fresh. Perfect for the hot weather. The other food highlight was probably the Union Square Café, which was delicious this time.

Mural at Union Square Café

Our regular breakfast meeting spot is Maialino, another Danny Meyer gem. It was one of those places where you have to make a reservation for breakfast, but it wasn’t so crowded this time of year, because the neighbors can afford to get out of town. If you need another breakfast spot in Gramercy, Friend of a Farmer is a good second choice. One place to avoid for breakfast or lunch on the Upper East Side is E.A.T. The food is tasty, but the prices are stupid expensive. Speaking of avoiding places, we were treated most rudely at the Standard. It is not a hotel for the over-30 crowd. Although I still like the spatial experience beneath the pilotis when you stand on the High Line.

The very rude but handsome Standard Hotel

A good friend of ours was able to get us tickets to Book of Mormon. Given its extreme popularity, you wonder if it can be that good. It was. Even Paul liked it. As with other big Broadway hits, the authors built a base with a popular media brand, in this case the irreverent television show South Park. While it makes fun of the absurdities of Mormonism, it isn’t mean. The thread is that we all tell stories to make sense of a world that doesn’t make sense. And if you want a wild story, Mormonism is it. Even Kolob is mentioned. Don’t know about Kolob? Worth a Google search.

Book of Mormon

It was a stunning museum summer.

One of our favorite shows was also the most modest. William Menking, founder of the Architect’s Newspaper, and Wolfgang Forster have mounted a simple show about social housing in Vienna at the Austrian Cultural Forum called the Vienna Model. I had never visited Raimund Abraham’s slender landmark on East 52nd Street. The guard only lets you into the exhibit, but even the detailing on the handrails is exquisite. Using construction scaffolding, the curators create a varied armature to provide dimension and variety for what is basically a show of photographs. The catalog won’t be out until the fall, but it will be a valuable tool for all of us who care about social housing. The show reminds us that the original promise of modernism, beautiful housing for everybody, need not be dull or oppressive, but can be life affirming and joyful.

http://www.acfny.org/home/

The exhibit constructed of scaffolds.

A handrail at the Austrian Cultural Forum.

At the high end of architecture exhibit budgets, MoMA has mounted Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes. It can be read in any number of ways. Most reviewers like to say his buildings were better than his paintings. I would say his paintings were better than his master plans. Some of my favorite artworks of his are the bolder tile murals. Unfortunately, those were not in evidence. But the curators did reconstruct his rustic cottage by the sea and a typical double-height living room of Unité d’Habitation, which gives the viewer a sense of the beauty of his most modest spaces. They’ve hung a beautiful wood model of Chandigarh on the wall, and that reinforces the strong relationship between the artwork and the landscape. The long scrolls are an insight into this drawing/thinking process. Despite all this research and material, I still think his individual buildings were genius and his plans were mad.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1321

Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) with Pierre Jeanneret.
Villa Savoye Poissy-sur-Seine, France. 1929–31.
Wood, aluminum, and plastic, 16 x 34 x 32" (40.6 x 86.4 x 81.3 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase.
© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/FLC 

In the next gallery, Claes Oldenburg: The Street and the Store resonated strongly with my own introduction to modern art. When I was about 12 years old, our parents took us to the then-new Berkeley Art Museum, where we saw melting electric plugs, light switches, lipstick, food, and all kinds of wonderful craziness. I had never seen a building like Mario Ciampi’s brutalist masterpiece, nor had I ever seen everyday objects memorialized. It was a turning point in my young life. MoMA is showing Oldenburg’s early explorations in cardboard and vinyl, which he designed to get the viewer to really see the everyday. This was before his work got so smooth, so shiny, so much more like the culture it was commenting on.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1320

"Empire" ("Papa") Ray Gun
Casein on papier-mâché over wire.
Gift of the artist. © 1959 Claes Oldenburg.
Photo: The Museum of Modern Art, Imaging and Visual Resources Department

Lunette Flag. Wood. Centre Pompidou, Paris.
 Musée national d'art moderne / Centre de création industrielle.
© 1960 Claes Oldenburg. Photo: CNAC/MNAM/Dist.
RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich)
Vinyl, kapok, and wood painted with acrylic.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Gift of The American Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc.,
Leonard A. Lauder, President. © 1963 Claes Oldenburg.
Photo: David Heald, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Over at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the most sublime ceramics exhibit of recent memory. It’s a long schlep to the modern art side of things at the Met, but worth the walk. Ken Price, who passed away last year in New Mexico, stayed true to his West Coast surfing roots and shows that craft can rise to art. Frank Gehry has designed a subtle (yes subtle!) background for Price’s brilliant work. The glazes are unlike any I have ever seen. His forms seem to come from the ocean and are then recast or reshaped into new life forms. Although they are highly sensuous, they are also calming.

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/ken-price

Ken Price, Pastel, 1995. Fired and painted clays, 14 1/2 x 15 x 14 in.
James Corcoran Gallery, © Ken Price, photo © Fredrik Nilsenn

PUNK: Chaos to Couture had very little punk and a whole lot of couture. One thing the Met seems to do especially well are costume/fashion shows. Honestly, I am embarrassed to spend more than an hour looking at fashion promoted as art. But the museum is trying to make a connection between couture and culture, and I am a willing audience.

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/PUNK

D.I.Y.: Graffiti & Agitprop
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Facsimile of CBGB bathroom, New York, 1975
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

But the spectacle of the summer belongs to James Turrell. This summer, there are three unique shows devoted to his work in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. The accomplishment is mindboggling. There will be more on all three shows in a separate blog entitled “Summer of Turrell.” Suffice it to say, it is worth a trip to the Guggenheim to check it out. Go early, avoid the weekend, and buy your ticket ahead of time.

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell

James Turrell Aten Reign, 2013 Daylight and LED light, dimensions variable
© James Turrell Installation view: James Turrell, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York, June 21–September 25, 2013 Photo: David Heald
 © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

Ronin, 1968 Fluorescent light, dimensions variable Collection of the artist
© James Turrell Installation view: Jim Turrell, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,
April 9–May 23, 1976 Photo: Courtesy the Stedelijk Museum

For you light and space fans, Robert Irwin’s Scrim Veil—Black Rectangle—Natural Light from 1977 has been reinstalled at the Whitney. And what a triumph it is. In his quiet but sure way, he takes the measure of a place and then makes the most subtle and powerful intervention, thereby transforming the space and asking you to question your perception. While I love what Turrell is up to with his complex lighting, angles, and apertures, I am also very drawn to the simple line that Irwin traces through space.

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/RobertIrwin

With a bit of scrim, metal, wood, and tape and just daylight,
Irwin gets you to question what you are seeing.

If you are a Hopper fan, there is also a fine show that links his sketching to his most famous works. You get your money’s worth at the Whitney! We will be sorry when they leave the Marcel Breuer fortress for the light-filled Renzo Piano jewel box down in Chelsea.

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/HopperDrawing

Edward Hopper (1882–1967), Study for Nighthawks, 1941 or 1942.
Fabricated chalk and charcoal on paper; 11 1/8 × 15 in. (28.3 × 38.1 cm).
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;
purchase and gift of Josephine N. Hopper by exchange 2011.65

Image courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop in
collaboration with Cooper, Robertson & Partners

And this year Grand Central Station is a century old! Talk about enduring design.

Mural at Union Square Café

Postcard from La Jolla

The Scripps Lab
Architect: Irving Gill

La Jolla Shores Beach
There are few houses right on the beach at La Jolla Shores, just north of the village. They tend to be large and nondescript. It’s not a community full of those “my architect is more famous than your architect” houses that you find in Malibu. Nobody is bothered too much with style. This is odd, given that it could be argued that American modernism was born and dramatically furthered here in La Jolla.

Our modern beach house for a week
Photo: Connie Poor

Our good friends David and Cherie rented the best of these large houses for a week to celebrate a milestone birthday. The arrangement of volumes was like a modernist puzzle, while the décor was faintly baroque. Most importantly, every room faced the ocean. I can’t remember when I last slept so well. Our constant companions (and entertainment) were the surfers, who never crashed into each other despite their numbers. They would shoot inside the water tunnel and fly over the top of the cresting wave to ride the backside. Invariably, we put our novels down to watch the neoprene-clad dancers wait and then suddenly cast their fate to the curl. Of course, the coup de grâce was when they pulled off their rubber skins.

Our view of the surfers

The hosts with your loyal correspondent
Photo: Connie Poor

La Jolla Village/Gill’s Corner
The best parts of the village are the coves where the seals have taken up physical and olfactory space. Up the hill is the landmark pink hotel, La Valencia, and what perhaps was the center of early American modernism, a neighborhood full of the works of Irving Gill.

The cove now taken over by seals

La Valencia

San Diego has a touch of the Texas. By that I mean questionable zoning practices.… One highrise right on the ocean in the village is the kind of carbuncle that Prince Charles goes on about. I assume it was built before the coastal initiative. No detail, no materials, no grace, wrong scale. Should be removed. There are still a number of historic buildings, but most of the contemporary buildings could be anywhere suburbia.

Carbuncle at the shore
Photo: Connie Poor

However, around the intersection of Prospect, Silverado, and Draper Streets is the heart of America’s own modernism. Known mostly to the cognoscenti, Irving Gill was one of the country’s architectural pioneers. Practicing at the same time as the Viennese Adolph Loos (Esther McCoy would argue that he was already practicing before Loos), he was creating a new architecture that paid attention to tradition and the vernacular but was built for the 20th century. He made concrete humane.

His lessons still hold. He very nearly shaped an entire precinct with his work for the Bishop’s School and his patron, Ellen Browning Scripps. (Gill designed the original building for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography a mile or so up the coast. That building still stands, although the west façade has been somewhat obscured by later construction.)

Gill’s largest commission was the Bishop’s School (1910-1916), which Scripps underwrote. A nostalgic spire designed by Carleton Winslow, who had worked for Bertram Goodhue, replaced his original tower. Unfortunately, the complex is nearly impenetrable from the street. During this period, Scripps also commissioned the La Jolla Woman’s Club, which can be seen easily from the street and is a popular destination for weddings and other social events. The columns that hold up the arcade have inspired several other buildings, including the nearby Brooks Brothers retail building by ELS.

The Woman’s Club was one of the first buildings built with tilt-slab construction. The same method was used across the street at the Scripps Recreation Center. This public building shows the wear and tear of public maintenance and is currently painted pink. But at least it still stands. Next door to the Woman’s Club is the Kautz Residence, which is now a bed and breakfast. Across the way is Ellen Scripps’s own residence, which has been engulfed by Robert Venturi’s Contemporary Art Museum. There are more beautiful examples of Gill’s work throughout San Diego and Los Angeles, and one beautiful complex in Piedmont is attributed to him. His story is tragic, but his accomplishment is immense.

Bishop School detail
Architect: Irving Gill

Ellen B. Scripps residence surrounded by Robert Venturi

Ellen B. Scripps residence surrounded by Robert Venturi

La Jolla Recreation Center
Architect: Irving Gill

La Jolla Woman's Club
Architect: Irving Gill

Kautz Residence now a bed and breakfast
 Architect: Irving Gill

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/online_resources/gill.html
http://www.amazon.com/Irving-Gill-Architecture-Reform-Architectural/dp/1580930166

Safari Park
I was worried that the Safari Park would be like Disneyland. And while there are Disney touches (Land Rovers parked in the trees?), the park is beautifully landscaped and goes to great lengths to educate the public about the animals. Our hosts treated us to a photo safari. We got on a truck (with a canopy, thank God) and drove out into the savannah to see the giraffes, rhinos, and impalas in something close to their natural habitat.

Disney-like display at Safari Park

The giraffe’s tongue was the longest I’ve ever seen. The beast can find your food and reach its tongue out several feet to get it. But the color of the tongue was not, as I imagined, a range of pinks, reds, and maroons—instead, it was the ugliest grey, like a slug. But those beasts do have the prettiest eyelashes. When they lean over to drink water, they can’t get oxygen. Just before they appear to pass out, they swing their long necks into the air and fill their lungs. Although enormous, the rhinos were quite gentle. In a photo, their hides look like metal plates, but in person they are suppler, bending and creasing as they waddle along.

The giraffe nibbles at our hosts at Safari Park

The gentle rhinos come in for a snack

http://www.sdzsafaripark.org/ 

Salk Institute
For architecture junkies, Salk is a kind of Mecca. For agnostics (about God or concrete), the place can also make you a believer. The genius of the place is that the architect integrates the ineffable and the real. Spirit and science. Space and concrete. Infinity and walls. We were lucky to get Ellen Zimmerman as our guide. She talked about Kahn as an existential architect and spoke of his masterwork in philosophical terms. Although we didn’t get to see the private offices, we did see the library and an interstitial floor. Vierendeel trusses and the full-height interstitial floors allow the lab floors to be completely flexible. This was one of the highlights of the year so far. If you go, be sure to book a tour in advance.

The ethereal and very real Salk Institute

http://www.salk.edu/about/architecture_tours.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Salk_Institute_outline_of_laboratory_floor_and_Vierendeel_truss.jpg


UC San Diego
Built in the second half of the 20th century, UC San Diego is a modern campus that will take a few years to explore. That’s a good thing, because my niece Jaclyn starts school there in the fall. We explored her college, Eleanor Roosevelt, designed by Moshe Safdie and opened in 2003. It’s an interesting experiment in the scale of outdoor space. The buildings on the west side of the road are much more inviting because of the scale of the courtyards and the landscape. The east complex has few plants, and the courtyard doesn’t feel quite right. Hopefully, my niece will get an ocean view room! Then she will also have a fine vista of the Salk Institute.

Eleanor Roosevelt College
Architect: Moshe Safdie

The other goal of this visit was to see Mandeville Hall by A. Quincy Jones. It was one of the few buildings of his in California that I hadn’t seen. It is a tough building, but given that it was designed to house visual arts and music students, it had to be tough. (The art students are probably a tougher lot.) The concrete work doesn’t compare to Salk. But I doubt the construction or maintenance budget did either! His building altered Robert Alexander’s master plan forever, blocking his grand axis and resulting in a more meandering pedestrian experience.

Mandeville Arts Center
Architect:  A. Quincy Jones

We were also lucky to see Robert Irwin’s “Two Running Violet V Forms,” which gave me pause. They change the landscape if you take a few moments to slow down. Look for more reports in the next few years!

"Two Running Violet V Forms"
Installation: Robert Irwin

http://www.dah.ucsd.edu/events/ubd.shtmlhttp://www.amazon.com/University-California-San-Diego-Campus/dp/1568988605

What would a trip to San Diego be without some pink flamingoes?