What’s Behind Frank Gehry’s Raised Middle Finger to Contemporary Architecture?

Architect Frank Gehry’s raised many controversial buildings over the years, but few as controversial as the middle finger he recently raised during a press conference in Spain. During a press conference for Gehry’s upcoming receipt of the Prince of Asturias Prize from the hands of Spain’s King Felipe VI, a journalist touched a nerve when he asked if Gehry’s buildings were just about public relations-grabbing spectacle. Gehry glowered and raised the one-finger salute in response, a clear, if vulgar (and not necessarily international) sign of his displeasure with the pejorative title of “starchitect” he’s been saddled with over the years. Gehry’s gesture captured the headlines, but it was his response to the next question at that press conference where he really expressed his concern not over his reputation, but rather over the purpose of contemporary architecture itself. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What’s Behind Frank Gehry’s Raised Middle Finger to Contemporary Architecture?"

Can a Classic Museum Really Be Made Modern?

Every new cultural institution hopes for “The Bilbao Effect”—the economic boom the faltering, former industrial city of Bilbao, Spain, enjoyed after the 1997 rise of architect Frank Gehry’s game-changing design for the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. But even old cultural institutions want some of that same magic. So, when Gehry came to see Barnett Newman’s The Stations of the Cross with artist friend Ellsworth Kelly at the Philadelphia Museum of Art back in 2006, the museum’s then director and CEO, Anne d’Harnoncourt, approached Gehry about “doing something special” there, too. However, instead of a new signature “Gehry” look, d’Harnoncourt requested “a quiet intervention”—an underground “Philadelphia Effect.” In Making a Classic Modern: Frank Gehry’s Master Plan for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the PMA finally unveils their “master plan” for revitalizing their classic main building first opened in 1928 for the 21^st century. The big question hanging over this whole decade-long, estimated half billion dollar project remains: can a classic museum really be made modern? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can a Classic Museum Really Be Made Modern?"

Can Franz von Stuck Bring the Idea of the “Big” Artist Back?

“I am big,” Gloria Swanson’s fading film star Norma Desmond says in Sunset Boulevard. “It’s the pictures that got small.” Have we lost the “big” artist, the artist who tackled the big ideas of truth and life whose name stood on the tip of everyone’s tongue regardless of class or nationality? Franz von Stuck, known in the late 19^th century as Munich’s “painter prince,” belonged to the highest rank of artistic royalty at the time, yet today his name’s as faded as that of most silent film stars. If we’ve lost not just such “big” artists of the past, but also the capacity to allow such “big” artists in the future, what have we also lost in the exchange of big pictures for small? On the 150^th anniversary of von Stuck’s birth and the 120th anniversary of his American debut, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington, presents the exhibition Franz von Stuck (which runs through February 2, 2014), which recreates not just von Stuck’s art, but also the culturally charged atmosphere that powered the Gesamtkunstwerk—the total work of art that captures the total human condition.  Can Franz von Stuck bring the idea of the “big” artist back? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can Franz von Stuck Bring the Idea of the 'Big' Artist Back?"

Are Tech Giants' Offices the Cathedrals of the Future?

On October 15, 2013, the City Council of Cupertino, California, debated for 6 hours before finally approving Apple’s plans for a new $5 billion USD office headquarters to be built in their city. Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs approved architect Norman Foster’s design (shown above) just weeks before his death in 2011. Work on the mammoth “mother ship” begins next year and is scheduled to be finished sometime in 2016. For a company that likes to “think different,” this architectural thinking looks more like old
school thinking to me, specifically the kind of “bigger is better” mentality that spawned the building of massive cathedrals throughout Europe for centuries. Whereas the old churches rose in worship of the old gods, these new churches rise up in worship of the new tech corporate gods. Are the tech giants’ offices the cathedrals of the future? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Are Tech Giants' Offices the Cathedrals of the Future?"

Is the Architecture World Sexist?

Women have come a long way in the arts, but there’s still a long way to go. It’s not so unusual to find the work of contemporary women artists in galleries and art historians continue to comb through the past in search of overlooked women visionaries. In the world of architecture, however, the fight for gender equality rages on, but a blast from the past recently put that inequity front and center again. Recently, Denise Scott Brown argued to Architecture Magazine that she should have received equal credit with her business partner and husband Robert Venturi on the 1991 Pritzker Prize, the highest honor for a working architect.  “They owe me not a Pritzker Prize,” Brown contended, “but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony.” A petition on Change.org now asks architects and fans of architecture to stand with Brown and compel the Pritzker people to right this wrong. But, as Brown as others demonstrate, the idea of “women architects” as different from the idea of architects with a male default setting continues to cripple women looking to break through (ironically) this particular glass ceiling. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is the Architecture World Sexist?" 

[Image: Zaha Hadid. Pierresvives, Montpellier, France. Photography by Helene Binet.]

[Many thanks to Rizzoli USA for the image above from and a review copy of Zaha Hadid: Pierres Vives, written by Zaha Hadid Architects, edited by Stephane Hof, and photographed by Helene Binet.]

Are We Living in a Second Gothic Age?

“[T]he Gothic era,” Bruno Klein writes in the introduction to Gothic: Visual Art of the Middle Ages, 1140-1500, “was a time of seeing, in which much was discussed in words, but even more conveyed with the help of images.” In this massive new study of the period published by h.f. Ullmann as part of the Collection of Art Epochs, we reunite with a generation powerfully like our own—a group of visual learners more comfortable with meaning filtered through images than through words. What separates this new book from previous encyclopedic surveys of the Gothic past is the photographic processes of the present. By zooming in and digitally manipulating images for maximum clarity and detail, Gothic: Visual Art of the Middle Ages, 1140-1500 pulls the distant past into our immediate future. Thrust literally face to face with this strangely different yet strangely similar time, we can ask, “Are we living in a second Gothic age?” Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Are We Living in a Second Gothic Age?"

[Image: Chartes Cathedral, Rose Window in the North Transept, circa 1230-1240. Copyright Achim Bednorz.]

[Many thanks to h.f. Ullmann for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of Gothic: Visual Art of the Middle Ages, 1140-1500, edited by Rolf Toman, text by Bruno Klein, photographs by Achim Bednorz, and produced by Thomas Paffen.]