Watching a Window

An image that many Malaysian Catholics believe resembles the Virgin Mary appears in a seventh-floor window at a hospital near Kuala Lumpur, in a photograph taken on November 11, 2012. The onlookers in front of the clinic in the city of Subang Jaya grew large enough to potentially interfere with essential medical services, prompting officials to announce that the panel would be moved to a church to be evaluated by religious authorities. (Adding to the mystery, some claimed that the figure could not be detected from inside the hospital walls, but could only be seen from outside the facility.) The glass was transported to the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in the nearby town of Klang over the weekend.

(Photo: Reuters)

Brief Encounters

Most of us equate architecture with the idea of permanence; after all, it’s one of the three precepts espoused by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius – durability, utility, and beauty – that have propelled builders since antiquity. But a new phenomenon, “pop-up” architecture (also known as “temporary” architecture, or even “urban interventions”), has shaken that idea to its very — excuse the pun — foundations.

The scale of the concept ranges from huge to small, from boutiques and grocery stores to entire neighborhoods. The current London Olympics fall full-force in the supersized category, where the imposingly impermanent includes the Basketball Arena (detail shown above), which was intended as a temporary site since inception, with almost two-thirds of its building materials destined for reuse or recycling. The facility’s textured shell and portal frame will eventually travel to Brazil for the 2016 Games.

The realities of difficult economic times have played a large role in the growth of these transformable venues, many of which are easily disassembled or refashioned for longer-term needs, and which come in all shapes and sizes, encompassing all levels of imagination. In Winnipeg, Canada, the pop-up huts (above), designed for those braving the cold as they skated along a frozen river trail, were winners in the temporary-architecture category at this year’s Azure Awards. In New York City, the LOT-EK design firm transformed shipping containers into walk-in “stores,” below, complete with shelf space, cash registers, and fitting rooms. (More amazing examples are featured in the book, Temporary Architecture Now!, by Philip Jodidio.)

An idea that’s “so retro it’s become radical,” according to New York Times writer Allison Arieff (citing, as one past example, the temporary bookshops that have sprouted up along the Seine River in Paris for centuries), Arieff also points to the flexibility inherent in impermanence as an incentive for designers and planners to experiment with new structures and services without the time-consuming bureaucratic burdens necessary for the creation of brick-and-mortar buildings.

As for this year’s Olympics, it looks like London will have served as a testing lab for what is already becoming one of the defining architectural trends of the decade. In addition to the Basketball Arena, both the Aquatic Center and the Olympic Shooting Gallery are scheduled for disassembly and recycling, and the Olympic Stadium itself will be shrunk down to a smaller community venue.

In a twist on the old saying: Now you see ‘em … and now you may see ‘em again.

(Photo/top: Bryn Lennon / Getty Images)

Rolling Stone

Pop-music allusions are inevitable when referring to Levitated Mass, the “rock star” boulder that finally made its debut as a work of art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) over the weekend.

Three hundred and forty tons of granite, suspended over a concrete channel carved out of parkland adjacent to the museum, the massive “sculpture” had already created quite a bit of a sensation in March, when it was transported across 22 cities en route to the Big Orange. Street parties erupted at stops along the way of the traveling monolith’s 11-day, 100-mile journey. (In a nice marketing move, residents of the zip codes along the four-county route have free admission to the site through the end of this week.)

The seeds for the project were sown over 40 years ago, but it was in 2005 that artist Michael Heizer finally found the stone he envisioned, when it was created out of a routine blast at the Stone Valley Quarry in California’s Riverside County. The reclusive Heizer – the L.A. Times calls him the “Thomas Pynchon of the contemporary art world” –  is well-known for his so-called Land (or Earth) Art, already come to life in a mysterious mile-and-a-half-long undertaking called City, in the Nevada desert near his home.

Visitors will experience something “like a walk-in version of an alien landscape painting by Surrealist Yves Tanguy,” says Christopher Knight in his review for the Times, which is borne out by the view from underneath the giant rock, shown below. The critic addresses the serious artistic underpinnings of the installation, funded by $10 million in private donations, when he notes: “The brooding sculptural ensemble marks time both cultural and geological…Unavoidably, it calls for contemplation of our transient place in the larger scheme of things.”

Almost like a touch of Stonehenge –  in the sunny City of Angels.

          (Photos/ top and above: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

March On

Program cover for the landmark suffrage parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.,1913

With its designation as Women’s History Month, March is awash in celebration of women’s innumerable contributions to society. Today marks International Women’s Day, an observance that saw its inception in the early 1900s and which is now an official holiday in many countries, with over 1,000 events scheduled to take place in some form or another around the world.

In Washington, D.C., plans are currently underway for a physical location for the National Women’s History Museum (NWHM), presently online in cyberspace, waiting for a legislative march through Congress to provide the site with a permanent venue in the nation’s capital.

A high-profile supporter should help in making that a reality. Freshly re-minted Oscar-winner Meryl Streep, left, who’s already donated $1 million to the project – as well as her salary from The Iron Lady – is something of the fairy godmother for a dream that is close to her heart. “There are museums in Washington, D.C. for everything from postage stamps to poetry to spies,” Streep ironically notes, while also stating that the project is vitally important “because our history was written by the other team.“ The facility would be located on the Washington Mall, alongside the National Air & Space Museum and the Grant Memorial, with plans for a design by a female architect, making it the first repository on the Mall to be fashioned by a woman. It’s expected to be funded with private donations.

Already in place and marking 25 years since its opening in D.C. in 1987 is the National Museum of Women in the Arts, an assemblage of women’s creative legacies through the centuries. Among the artists in the collection, Georgia O’Keeffe, below, who summed up the frustrations of many pioneers when she mused in 1923:

“One day seven years ago, I found myself saying to myself: I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to, I can’t even say what I want to … I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.”

It’s that very same spirit that we celebrate today.

Pop Culture Musing for a Monday 2/13/12

Grammy Snapshots

Missing Whitney: Thought the attention was measured and appropriate. Jennifer Hudson — who received her first Grammy from her idol at the awards a few years ago –  delivered a next-best rendition (which is high praise) of “I Will Always Love You,” in an emotional moment.

Adele Ascendant: Back from throat surgery, relaxed, in command, and looking gorgeous, she swept the Grammys – and charmed with her down-to-earthiness.

No Reprieve: Chris Brown was all over the place and won for best R&B album, but men who hit women shouldn’t be so easily forgiven.

Taylor Off-Key: Is it just me, or is Swift always out of tune when she sings live? Even she seemed surprised at the applause at the end of “Mean.”

Full Throttle: Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters, performing outside the Staples Center, were one of the most electric displays of the night (they later garnered Best Rock Performance).

Picasso in English

Fifty-two years ago, an exhibition at London’s Tate Gallery created such a sensation that it coined the term, the “art blockbuster.” The largest-scale retrospective of the work of Pablo Picasso at the time, it drew more than half-a-million visitors, breaking all records (still the artist’s most attended show), and coincided with the height of “Picasso-mania.” It’s also considered the moment when Modernism conquered stodginess in the British art imagination, and was finally embraced after long resistance.

Picasso’s “Vase of Flowers” (1908) …

Fast-forward to 2012 and the opening next week at the Tate of Picasso and Modern British Art – and things come full circle. An overview of Picasso’s profound influence after his initial introduction to English audiences in 1910, the exhibit will feature over 150 pieces, including 60 Picassos, spotlighting an Anglo-Spanish alliance that spanned decades.

At first derided by the establishment  — “Apart from a few heroic collectors, very few people were ready to take Picasso on,” says Tate curator Chris Stephens – Picasso’s impact on the avant-garde artists of the time and to come was wide and deep. Henry Moore, Duncan Grant, Francis Bacon, and David Hockney (who’s said to have seen the 1960 Tate show eight times) were just a few among them.

… Duncan Grant’s “The Tub” (1913)

One need look no further than Grant and Bacon to witness Picasso’s sway on two seminal British artists. Grant’s The Tub (1913) evokes Picasso’s Vase of Flowers (1908) in color, shape, and shades of primitivism; likewise, Bacon’s Crucifixion (1933) followed one of Picasso’s Bathers by a handful of years, and clearly derives from the Andalusian master’s Cubist-tinged creation of 1929.

Picasso the provocateur was the subject of many heated discussions about the merits of his art that took place in Britain in the 1940s. “Señor Picasso’s painting cannot be intelligently discussed in the terms used of the civilized masters,” wrote the novelist Evelyn Waugh in 1945. “He can only be treated as crooners are treated by their devotees.” (Picasso’s joint exhibition with Henri Matisse at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1945 was similarly met with rancor.)

But time — or in this case, the art world’s first-ever “blockbuster” — healed all. An association that encompassed both disdain and acclaim, Picasso and Modern British Art (which runs February 15–July 15), is another chapter in the towering artistic journey of the most celebrated painter of the 20th Century.

Occupy Ice

Inside an igloo that served as a base for dissenters at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which wrapped up on January 29 in Davos, Switzerland.

(Photo: Johannes Simon / Getty Images)

What’s in a Name?

The recent opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art spurs some thoughts about a pervasive practice involving philanthropy and the arts, and how (thankfully) there can still be an exception to the rule.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, AK

Created with a $800-million-dollar donation spearheaded by Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, Crystal Bridges is situated in a lovely locale surrounded by streams and woods in Bentonville, Arkansas. It’s unique not only in that its unassuming location belies the magnitude and scope of its collection, but the fact that its name is refreshingly devoid of its benefactor, in contrast to the long history of the rich bequeathing millions in exchange for immortality. (Among the more notable: the Whitney, Guggenheim, and Morgan museums in New York City, the Gardner in Boston, the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C.– and the list goes on.)

Pop Culture Musing for a Tuesday 7/5/11

Bad Mommy: As I write this, it’s the end of a day (an apoplectic Nancy Grace graces the TV screen) consisting of long hours of debate after the conclusion of the Casey Anthony trial. Not having followed the proceedings (was I the only one?) I can only venture a superficial impression or two based on limited attention. Though everyone seems shocked by the outcome, I find the verdict, with no forensic or DNA evidence linking the accused perpetrator to the crime, more understandable than the Simpson travesty of 1995. Why this woman waited a month to report the child’s initial disappearance, however, seems more damning than anything else. Still, I don’t get the feeling that whatever happened was premeditated murder. Looks like the prosecutors may have “overcharged” their case — with resulting overcharged exoneration by the jury.

Hawking’s Non-Heaven

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

With those words, British physicist Stephen Hawking set off yet another round of controversy already preceded by similar pronouncements in his 2010 book, The Grand Design. There, he wrote that “the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” a thought reflected in his comments from a few days ago in The Guardian, reiterating his belief in spontaneous creation and human life as being a matter of “chance.”

The reference to heaven as a “fairy story” is what’s gotten the most attention, but Hawking’s computer analogy is what most struck me. Far be it to call anything Hawking believes “simplistic,” but to reduce the sum total of a human being to hardware destined for the dumpster feels a bit shallow. Much as I view cemeteries as metaphorically nothing more than used-car lots where the drivers have long since moved on, that failed PC in Hawking’s example would likewise have been worthless as well had something bigger not pushed the button and turned it on in the first place. (The “soul” being a subject for another time.)