20 January
2004 Frank Lloyd Wright, the Guggenheims and Sigmund Freud at the Vatican
2005 commencement of I'm a Big, Fat Nobody: the Autobiography of Unbekannt
scanning
Schinkel
Exhibit Graphics
1997.01.20
gallery 1999
1999.01.20
Re: Saarinen, Kahn and the Use of History
2000.01.20
Trope and/or Reenactment
2000.01.20
Wright and historical method
2000.01.20
Re: distribution
2000.01.20
2000.01.20
ideas
2001.01.20
Re: Critical Theory Clinically Dead?
2003.01.20 00:28
Re: abstract for Studium Urbis
2003.01.20 10:48
Re: Sorkin: In search of democracy at Ground Zero
2003.01.20 12:44
Re: "REEKING GALLERISM"
2003.01.20 16:43
art
2003.01.20
Re: Giuseppe Capitano
2005.01.20 09:50
Re: Rirkrit Tiravanija
2005.01.20 09:56
Re: Kitsch
2005.01.20 10:26
Re: Shelf Life: The Art of Carol Bove
2005.01.20 10:31
Re: Quality Time
2005.01.20 14:30
Re: Is this art?
2005.01.20 14:57
2005.01.20 19:03
heavy reading
2005.01.20 11:56
Atheist Architects
2006.01.20 11:31
Architectural Icons
2006.01.20 12:01
2006.01.20 12:26
what is the good source to study folding architecture?
2006.01.20 12:19
2006.01.20 12:29
2006.01.20 12:41
2006.01.20 12:58
2006.01.20 20:14
GETTY VILLA a snapshot visit
2006.01.20 14:59
Show your computer background!!
2006.01.20 16:23
Re: folding theater
2006.01.20 09:02
Second Life
2007.01.20 09:42
I want to write about architecture....How?
2008.01.20 13:06
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Wright and historical method
2000.01.20
...thanks for a more thoughtful reply Re: the Vatican ramp and Wright's Guggenheim. I'll only pick on one part of your reply, when you say:
why would Wright--who maintained that he was the consummate creative genius, He who Let There Be Architecture--all else being deficient--why would the self-proclaimed artistic loner risk his precarious (as that stage) reputation in history by copying a ramp at the Vatican Museum? It doesn't make sense to me.
I don't think the workings of logic or sense making necessarily help here, and, ironically, it doesn't seem all the logical for one to admit Wright's charletanism, his PR tactics, his spin-doctoring, and the skepticism of his after-the-fact accounts, and then to draw a rigid line by saying, but Wright would never, ever copy and/or find design inspiration in a European architectural precedent.
I have nothing against Wright or his architecture. In fact, I feel very lucky to live not far from his Beth Sholom synagogue, a real masterpiece. But I don't like to see personal opinion or even accepted scholarship get in the way of understanding creativity and the creative process (as opposed to the 'fabrication' of creative genius). In this particular case of the Vatican and the Guggenheim, I see a very interesting example of creative mimesis, and even some very creative reenactment. I'll explain below.
As I walked up the Vatican ramp that first (and so far only) time in 1977, I remember thinking, "Wow, this is just like the Guggenheim." I then wondered if Wright had ever been in the same space. Such a connection had unorthodox connotations (as this thread of posts attests), but alas, one will probably never really know. Only when I looked up at the skylight and instantly recognized the obvious similarity between the Vatican skylight and the Guggenheim skylight was it then that I became convinced of the extreme likelihood that Wright very much knew of the Vatican space (be it either by having been there himself, or by drawings and/or photographs).
I will now get very 'Freudian' here, and say that just maybe the Guggenheims, like Freud, had this strange love/hate thing vis-à-vis Rome/the Vatican. After all it was Freud, a Jew, who reenacted the Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit by instituting the ego, id, and super-ego. So, one could then imagine the Guggenheims saying, "Mr. Wright, we want you to build for us a Jewish Vatican museum!" And, lo and behold, Wright, creative genius that he was, designed the foremost Jewish Vatican Museum in existence, with no one ever being the wiser--quite an accomplishment, (or did it all just happen subconsciously?). [I better stop before I start writing a reenactment novel here.]
Anyway, I think there is a lot more to learn about how 'design' happens by looking at the potential relationship between the Vatican entry ramp and the New York Guggenheim, especially in noting how Wright's design deviates from the Vatican model, then there is to dismiss the relationship because of its contrariness to received (but not necessarily fully disclosing) opinion.
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