Here's Van Gogh's rendering of Les Alpilles:
ADDED: Gehry's Tower reminds me of the depiction of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (from 1563):
POLL RESULTS:
June 26, 2021
"We wanted to evoke the local, from Van Gogh's Starry Night to the soaring rock clusters you find in the region.... The manner in which Van Gogh rendered Les Alpilles influenced the development of the exterior cladding of the building."
Said Frank Gehry, quoted in "Frank Gehry unveils The Tower, a stainless steel-clad arts building for Luma Arles" (Dezeen).
Here's Gehry's new building:
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11 comments:
Nancy writes: "It’s hard to not see the collapsing Florida Condo even though it is supposedly evocative of solid rock. I used to find Gehry’s early projects interesting but this is just sad, a cartoonish joke."
Can architecture do humor?
Temujin writes:
I actually love it. I happen to love Gehry's work. Not sure why, but I consider him 'our' Gaudi. His work is unique, completely out of the box in comparison to other architecture of this era. These are buildings that will be known on sight, and remembered through years. And, like Gaudi, his work is either something you love or hate. There is no 'meh' when it comes to his buildings. They shake the environment and wake us up.
Architecture does not have to do this, but I like it when it does.
But he's imposed his stamp on a town that is of interest to the world because of Van Gogh. Now, if we go there in a romantic dream of communion with Van Gogh, we are confronted with one gigantic egotistical metallic representation of Van Gogh. What would Van Gogh think? Would he kill himself all over again?
lordsomber writes:
There's something backwards about going beyond the representational in trying to make the (post-) impressionistic into the concrete, so to speak.
Metal clad in the shape of rock clusters doesn't evoke rock clusters.
It's like someone who likes the way their house looks during a sunset, so they go and paint it streaked in orange and purple.
It doesn't work, in my eyes at least.
I'll bet there are houses people have painted so that it looks streaked they way it appears during a sunset. I have a view from my window of the back of a garage, and on winter days, it has shadows of tree branches on it. I have thought about painting the shadows onto the wall!
Iain writes:
Like all of Gehry's work, this is self-indulgent attention-seeking rubbish. Never does Gehry care about the surroundings in which his buildings will reside, unless it's to poke a misshapen metallic middle finger in the eye of the neighbours. Every one of his buildings screams "Look at me!" but says little else. He's not the first architect with an outsized ego, but he's absolutely the best at putting his ego ahead of and above any other considerations. If, as Louis Sullivan said, form follows function, then the function of Frank Gehry's work is to bring attention to Frank Gehry's architecture. And nothing else.
Balfegor writes: "That design doesn't suggest Van Gogh to me at all really. While it's not exactly to my taste, something like the Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna is a lot closer to the "feel" of Van Gogh. Lots of colour, contrast, somewhat off-kilter lines."
I agree!
Tom writes:
The news that The Foo Fighters are putting out a disco album almost convinced me that the world had finally gone completely mad, but seeing that "it's atrocious" is winning your poll has renewed a little of my hope for mankind.
Peter writes:
“ADDED: Gehry's Tower reminds me of the depiction of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (from 1563):…”
Or Gormenghast?
https://lithub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Gormenghast_1024.jpg
Michael writes:
A hundred plus years from now, when Palladio and Christopher Wren and Frank Lloyd Wright are still admired, people will stand in front of Frank Gehry's work and wonder: what were these people thinking? what was wrong with them? (The bandstand in Chicago is fine, since it's basically free-standing sculpture. And Fred-and-Ginger in Prague has its own bizarre charm. I've never been to Bilbao.)
ALP writes: "I was initially going to vote "no" but I am glad I went to the linked article, showing the building in many different kinds of light. THAT changed my view completely - the way it lights up at different times of the day, under different light. Stunning when you take the reflection of light into consideration. In that manner I do believe Gerhy has done a great job of evoking light on a mountain. Looking at the one photo in your post - you don't get that at all."
Dr. Weevil writes:
Even more like Bruegel's Tower of Babel is the European Parliament
building in Brussels, even to looking unfinished and lopsided. Mark
Steyn has had some amusingly vicious words to say about the
appropriateness of the resemblance, though I can't find them right
now. As for pictures, if this link doesn't work, you'll have Google it
yourself:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikinews/en/0/0b/14-02-04-Parlement-europ%C3%A9en-Strasbourg-RalfR-046.jpg
- you'll know it when you see it.
Richard writes: "Interesting that the Breugel’s conception of the tower has seven levels, as does Dante’s purgatorio. So who are the penitents destined to make the climb? A seven storey mountain, of a sort."
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