Frank Gehry and his Critics: Sketches of Frank Gehry

Magnanimity is a quality that is lost on critics. I've just finished watching Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry (the architect that does the wavy titanium pieces - the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao Spain, the Music hall in LA and I think he's redoing the AGO in Toronto) , and I've been surfing around with the reviews. Figures like Eva Hagberg, weren't fans of this film, and I suspect they aren't fans of Gehry either (though I think Hagberg is ambivalent). Hagberg's probably right about Pollack's film, it is a bit too much of a celebration - not enough of an evaluation... what can you expect from a friend? But Hagberg, let's face it, you don't need to be an expert to tell if a piece of architecture is aesthetically interesting (technically interesting yes...). Now the average Schmoe won't be all that specific, though she may surprise you (you wanted me to use the male pronoun there didn't you). Gehry's Bilbao and his LA piece radically alter the aesthetics of their place for the better for the moment. Does architecture need to be eternal? Well the best pieces will have longevity, but it must also speak to the phenomenology of the contemporary city dweller, and on that level, Gehry's work all but forces a viewer to dwell poetically. It stands out in the midst of tall city shit, like an iceberg. Not necessarily there for eternity, but something to gawk at, in awe, for the time being. And the awe that a Gehry invites us to partake in is not the awe of totalitarianism...it is the awe of the passionate inwardness - the romantic expressivism of that aging hippy generation (you know the type - they drive Mercedes and hang on to the revolutionary urges of their youth).
Hal Foster, very much the aesthete, doesn't think that Gehry's work is worth all the hoopla. Foster gives the impression that he is rooting for the architect who ruptures the metanarratives, renders open the closures, the messianic type who celebrates provisionality and makes the ordinary (chain link) extraordinary. To Foster the early Gehry is an artist, the later Gehry...a sellout. But let's examine the nature of this sellout. I can agree that some of his stuff is pretty shitty, but I can also ascent to the praise that is extended to his work at Bilbao. Bilbao and the LA piece do rupture the skyline. They explode the city forms. They look like futurist sculptures that are lived in. Now Foster is right to say that Gehry shouldn't be heralded as the greatest living artist because of this, but this shouldn't take away from the sublimity of his work. I, for one, can appreciate his pieces without the need to deify him. After all, there are lots of 'conformity buildings' to compare his work to, and I can tell the difference without any training.

To Foster's credit, he claims that he needs to hold to a critical line, as a critic, so that the public will know that dissenting voices are permitted, available. I think this is a valuable role for an artist to play, but lets identify the object we are playing with - consensus - and not the object of art. Magnanimity is worth exploring. Greatness, something both Foster and Gehry know a bit about, is a privilege that is not a privilege for the sake of debasing others. Greatness need not exist on a Darwinian plain of violence and competition. Greatness can stand on its own, in its own presence, among other great presences, without fear of limited space.

By the way, Hagberg is on point about Julian Schnabel; Pollack completely mis-reads him:

"and Julian Schnabel, who (in a brilliantly critical farce that Pollack seems to have missed) shows up in a terrycloth robe with a brandy snifter in one hand and a cigarette in the other, dropping loaded one-liners like "It makes me want to put my stuff in there." They get it: Frank's just fucking with us".

What Hagberg isn't clear about who her "us" is that Frank fucks with...I think Frank is fucking with them, for our benefit...

Download the Gehry film at Greylodge (lord knows neither he nor Pollack needs the money)

Note: Zizek! and Sketches of Frank Gehry have both shocked me with the quirkiness of their subjects. It is interesting to see such heterogeneous personalities, with their odd gestures, tones of voice, neuroses. You swear it was a Woody Allen conspiracy.