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Some snaps from my journeys. Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge.
April 2007 and we finally took the art-trip that has been in our minds for a decade or so. Texas ?? Sure, there's art in them th'ar hills (and plains).
We flew to Dalls/Ft. Worth and then day-tripped via the Trinity Railway Express to Ft. Worth - to the Amon Carter and Kimbell Art Museums, and the Ft. Worth Museum of Modern Art. While the MAMFW, whose pond was empty and under repair, was designed by Tadao Ando and is certainly a fine and interesting building, the Kimbell is one of Louis Kahn's most sublime pieces, simply breath-taking. Much of its special magic comes from the way the light is brought through the top of the arches in the ceiling and then reflected off the high-sheen poured concrete on the arches' insides (also see the snaps below). Utterly mysterious and effective with no high-tech trickery at all. However the art it contains is less remarkable. But the cafeteria is wonderful with the Malliol L'Air and the four Matisse ladies' backs in relief (snaps below). The Amon Carter Museum is a Philip Johnson design and, well, if you like that sort of thing ... There are lots of fine Remingtons therein, which make you realize, once you allow for the cowpunching subject matter, that he was a very talented artist whose pictures had a huge impact on the minds and politics of those in the Eastern USA.
The next couple of days we visited the Dallas museums - the Dallas Museum of Art, which has a wonderful scuplture garden, the Crow, which is a very curious building paid for by Trammel Crow and full of Asian pieces, and the Nasher, designed by Renzo Piano, which had a fine Matisse sculpture/painting/drawing exhibit. The DMA has an interesting (permanent?) display of Dale Chihuli's glass hanging in the huge window of the foyer/eating space which works pretty well.
Then we flew to El Paso, hired a car and drove to Marfa - population 2,300 or thereabouts in the part of Presidio (West Texas) named as uninhabitable by the local Native Americans. A whole lot of nothing very much and three hours SE on straight roads from El Paso, much of it running alongside the railroad tracks. Plus a very curious tethered Department of Homeland Security baloon from which they can watch the border and much else besides, no doubt, and a Prada store !! Big ranches that do not make a whole lot of money and Marfa - expanded to its present size from a railway/cattle transhipment point to the kind of town one doesn't come across much anymore. This is where Donald Judd started to build his empire/civilization. After moving around more than he cared to as a kid, and military training in the Ft. Russell camp just outside Marfa, Judd escaped here from New York after quick fame changed his view of everything - and put a useful chunk of change in his pocket. First he bought 101 Spring Street in New York, then he bought the Quartermaster's stores (and house) in Marfa - where he then lived and which now houses his Foundation. The whole site is a live-in sculpture.
Marfa's main art event, though, is the Chinati Foundation established when Judd persuaded the Dia Foundation to join in with buying the Ft. Russell Camp in which he served part of his military training time. Judd's work never did much for me - maybe it was my own engineering background. But maybe it was because I just didn't get it. But now, after seeing the 100 aluminum boxes at the Chinati I think I'm just beginning. It is about volume and light, using light to present us with volume - sometimes more sometimes less. Something like that. Reminds me also of some of the finer Native American bowls. Part of the Chinati is a new installation by Dan Flavin, a great friend of Judd's. Again not my favorite kind of art but this really does work, and there is yet another Judd building in town with a lot of John Chamberlain's work. Overall the experience is quite amazing and makes one realize that the 1950's and 1960s New York art world really did change the history of art irrevocably.
Next stop Houston, the Rothko Chapel, the Menil, and the Museum of Fine Art. Houston seemed like a return to civilization after Marfa, and indeed Dallas/Ft Worth. Definitely livable, with some reminders of Berkeley CA, with a very effective light-rail system. The Menil was also designed by Renzo Piano and I find it less than compelling. The roof seems unecessarily complicated - especially once you have experienced the Kimbell.
Overall, the high points were the Kimbell and Judd's 100 boxes. Definitely some interesting art down there on the range.
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October 2006 in Vienna for the SMS conference. Lots of chums - including Dan Schendel and Rob Grant. A chance to see the Danube from the hotel window and the barges going by - really fast.
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September 2006 in Paris. Visited Jean Nouvel's extraordinary Quai Branly museum. Turned up early on a rainy weekday and walked right in. The weekend queue goes around the block. Then onto the the refurbished and subtly extended Orangerie. The entire building was rebuilt around Monet's 'Water Lillies' which were hermetically sealed with their own air-conditioning system. One is allowed to take phtotgraphs - without flash. So a quite new museum hazard has been invented, along with people stupified by their audio-guides.
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In June 2006 I was in Matera in Basilicata, in the South of Italy. My hotel was in Sassi Barisano, a truly awesome place, one of the few continuously inhabited since the Stone Age. Now ruled by cats, of course, and very properly so. The food illustrated was a superb raw fish lunch in Torre de Mar, just south of Bari. Unforgettable - once you have had these raw prawns cooked things won't do. Altogether the food in Puglia is simply wonderful - simple, tasty, fresh, and wonderful. The trulli in Alberobello, not far from Matera, are engineering marvels, built from the ground up without scaffolding, support, or formwork - and no cement, just a deep understanding of the materials available. Tacit knowledge indeed! These funny looking demountable dwellings are wonderfully airy and livable - and have been so for 600 years.
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In June 2006 Barbara and I were in Leeds - shown standing on the very famous Leeds Bridge where the first movies were taken. We also spent an evening at the Globe Theater in London, wonderful performance of Anthony & Cleopatra, with my brother's god-son as Octavius Caesar.
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Also a few snaps from our 2006 cruise to Maine. We caught up with the September Windjammer Weekend in Camden. There is also an anonymous looking building in Burnt Coat Harbor where we ate the finest lobster of my life with huge numbers of steamer clams and crab claws by candlelight. Plus a look inside the cabin of a Maine lobster boat shows how technology changes everything.
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Some snaps from my journeys. Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge.
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