Functional Design

Noguchi Museum and Garden: When Art & Functional Design Meet

A visceral connection between what is art and the best design has always been an intense inner quality radiating visually and materially resonating. It is underscored by an aesthetic convergence of form and function.

Left: Interior, Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, N.Y. Photo: M. Favermann

The overlap of elegance of function and beautiful form is due to great talent, lucky coincidence or probably a bit of both. This is most often translated by sculptural form.

Great three-dimensional design is almost always great sculpture. The sculptural form gives the functional design a visual eloquence, an elegant objectness. This articulated sculptural quality makes a statement of intrinsic value. xxxxxxMore

Editor’s Letter: January, 2015

“The art one chooses to collect becomes a self-portrait.” ~Dennis Heckler, Artist

Left: Emile Nolde, “Portrait of the Artist and His Wife” (ca. 1932), watercolor. Collection Detroit Institute of Arts.

Out of the Blue

“Nothing is as tedious as the limping days [of winter],” decried Baudelaire. Our world is once again draped in a veil of blue. Summer’s yellow-orange glow has, of late, been rudely displaced by a cold, indifferent blast of winter chill. Landscapes, once verdant, appear as medieval tapestries, their muted tones of purple-gray, deep maroons, rich ochre and black now enshrouding us. Slanting early afternoon light extends trailing sapphire shadows of bare tree branches, like innumerable swaying, gnarled fingers, across vast expanses of snowy fields. While many welcome the season, others, like Sinclair Lewis, were not so inclined. “Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation,”he protested. xxxxxxMore

Philadelphia’s Penn Museum Cooking with ‘Culinary Expeditions: A Celebration of Food & Culture’

Food and—more specifically—its consumption are intimately linked to our identity as social beings, anchoring us together as families, communities and nations. Wolves consume calories the same way each time, hurriedly to avoid losing their kill to another. For creatures of the wild, swallowing trumps savoring every time. Not so with the human species. We suspend food on our tongues, rolling our eyes with delight with each bite. Chewing releases vital flavors as taste buds and the brain’s sensory and memory centers revel in the experience.

Left: Tarentine Red Figure, Bull’s Head Rython, Apulia, Italy (ca. 350-320 BCE)

Only our most primitive Paleolithic ancestors likely consumed their food without cooking it. Once fire was discovered as a means of enhancing mastication and digestion, it was a short step to specialty meal preparation. The regionalization of herb and spice enhancements, grain and vegetation cultivation soon demarcated one tribe from another, one culture’s culinary traditions from that of their neighbors. Given our rapidly-evolving omnivorous propensity, gourmet kitchens became a Darwinian evolutionary inevitability! xxxxxxMore

Beaux Arts Architecture: Toward a Classical Metropolis

www.artesmagazine.com — Grounds of the Columbian Exposition, Chicago , 1893, a Beaux-Arts extravaganza.

One in a series of articles completed by BiLLY BoY Enteprises, the division of William Green Architecture that focuses on self-generated creative projects. This investigation was inspired by a project with which the firm is currently engaged, influenced in part by Beaux Arts architecture.

Introduction

Beaux Arts architecture was very much a style of its time, an architectural reflection of imperial ambitions and an embodiment of formal opportunities given birth by technological advances in the building industry. With its origins in the École des Beaux-Arts, France’s leading art academy in the nineteenth century, the style was informed by a strong scholarly tradition in the architectural orders of ancient Greece and Rome. The erudite heritage of the Beaux Arts style was balanced by its unique response to the rapidly evolving industrialism of the nineteenth century. Architects of the period made increasing use of iron, a material that became more available as new manufacturing methods significantly reduced production costs. An extremely malleable material that could be mass produced and quickly assembled like no other material previously employed, iron allowed for the proliferation of grand buildings designed as celebrations of national pride. Unique in its attempts to negotiate the old with the new, Beaux Arts architecture culminated in the early twentieth century, when its strong Classicist streak was superseded by the industrial forms dear to the metropolis which it had come to define. xxxxxxMore

Harvard Art Museums Reborn: A New Architectural Frame for Art, Education, Conservation

Harvard Art Museums mark favermann artes fine arts magazine — A Renzo Piano-designed steel and glass ‘lantern’ and one-story addition sit atop the original 1925 Fogg Museum. Photo: Harvard Univerity

When a visitor enters the new Harvard Art Museums, there is a feeling of great institutional arrival, a sense of an art historical place and an overall atmosphere of beauty of light and materials envelops the space.

However, with that said, the newly renovated and expanded Harvard Art Museums tries to put too much great art and great educational resources into just a good, not great structure. xxxxxxMore

Domaine de Chantilly, France, with Mystery of Fra Angelico Renaissance Masterpiece

The Domaine de Chantilly in France is honoring the prized collections of the Condé Museum with a special exhibition of 14th and 15th century Italian paintings. The exhibit, Fra Angelico, Botticelli…Rediscovered Masterpieces will be on view from September 8, 2014 to January 4, 2015. One of the highlights of the exhibition is the reunion of five of the six paintings that comprise the Fra Angelico Thebaïde (‘solitary retreat’).

But, one is still missing… xxxxxxMore

Architecture as Privilege: the Rarified World of Private Clubs

The following research was inspired by an architectural project with which the firm of William Green Architecture is currently engaged. This project spurred research on historical private clubs in New York City, which then naturally expanded to span from their historical roots to their place in modern society.

The Origin of the Private Club

Private clubs have been a fixture of urban society for nearly two centuries, first in England and later in the United States. The motivation to form clubs derives from basic human desires: sociability; belonging to a larger entity; the comfortable safety net of being judged by a wider pool of friends and associations, rather than only one’s self. They are also arguably practical. Etymologically, “Club” derives from “cleave” – splitting the costs to reap the benefits of privilege [1]. The sensibility increases when clubs form around a common interest, as they are often wont to do. Members pool their resources, from financial to social, and their experiences, to create a hotbed of cultural production and consumption. xxxxxxMore

The Calder Family Legacy: Sculpting a City’s Image

The boulevard runs straight as an arrow from a towering city hall to the front door of its eponymous museum of art. Fashioned after Paris’s 19th century, Baron Hausmann-designed thoroughfares, Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway is the mile-long artery that daily pumps new life into this historic setting. And standing atop City Hall tower, a beneficent, 27-ton, 37-foot tall sculpture of Quaker, William Penn, hand out-stretched, surveys all. Today, this metropolis still bears the name he first assigned to it in the 1660s—phila-delphia, the city of ‘brotherly love,’ in his very own sprawling “Sylvania” (Latin for “forests” or “woods”), gifted to him by King Charles II. The towering figure faces northeast, toward Penn Treaty Park — the site where, legend has it, Penn once signed a treaty with the native Lenni Lenape. With his right hand he gestures in that direction, while his left holds the Charter of Pennsylvania. xxxxxxMore

Modernist Architect Hans Scharoun Shown at MIT’s School of Architecture + Planning

Early 20th century German architect Hans Scharoun’s compelling story, as both a man and artist navigating perilous times, has been neglected (aside from architectural historians and seriously informed students) until relatively recently.

When it comes to the popular history of the visual arts, the contributions of architects tend to be pushed into the background. A case in point is an important leader of the modern movement, the German architect and city planner Hans Scharoun (1893–1972). He was a visionary architect, a spectacular expressionistic watercolorist, and a master draftsman. Yet his compelling story, as both a man and an artist navigating perilous times, has been neglected (aside from architectural historians and seriously informed students) until relatively recently. xxxxxxMore

Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum, ‘FreePort [No. 007]: From Hear to Ear’

The Australian Zebra Finch has a new gig.

They’re jammin’ at The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, and they’re making beautiful music. In FreePort [No. 007]: From Here to Ear, celebrated French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has revamped PEM’s Barton Gallery into a magnificent aviary for an eye and ear-opener in performance art.

As 70 Zebra Finches discover their surroundings and respond to museum goers, they perch on the necks of 14 amplified guitars, revealing the music made in their rhythmic vibrations. artes fine arts magazineMore