Yesterday’s walk around the Atlantic Yards had me thinking about cubism and post cubism (which I suppose is Gorky and deKooning, etc…. and maybe a few people like Elizabeth Murray) and I was wondering if Gehry is giving cubism new life as a way of seeing, or merely pushing it over the edge into a sort of Baroque, kitsch? I was wodering if painting and architecure really have all that much to do with eachother… the thing about a building is that it’s useful and so I was wondering how well they keep out the rain? Can you wash the windows, heat them, etc? In short, all those form follow function sorts of questions. Are Frank Gehry buildings more or less sculptural gestures? Is it like trying to make the Statue of Libirty into an office park?… or the old lady who lived in a shoe ? or maybe those L.A. hot dog stands in the shape of hot dog? … or the Brown Derby restaurant? Maybe that’s why they’re particular to California? Maybe they ARE just show biz?
Somehow these musing got me pissed off at some old drawings that I felt were over worked: so today I worked over them while thinking about the complex simplicity of cubism. This was Cyclops the scat cat (a little play on the shape of the OTHER genius’ OTHER Guggenheim and critics there of and the fairly recent addition there to) was Ulyseess as an old man. Whatever the discussion is, I know sometimes you have to destroy the old to make something new… Course you might destroy something someone liked… but I thought those drawings were decadent.
