GEHRY, NOT @ THE GUGGENHEIM
New York, New York, New York (August 23, 2001) -- Thought it wise to avoid the crowds and waited till the near bitter end of the Gehry Event. Went to the Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim to see the Gehry Exhibit and no one was home. The galleries are closed on Thursdays. The gift shop and the cafe were, of course, open. Peeked at the exhibition. Impressive array of chain link hanging from the upper reaches of the Great Hall. (Kept thinking of that "So Long, Frank O. Gehry" song by Simon and Garfunkel ...)
Left. Walked to 93rd Street and Madison Avenue (the Upper Uppity East Side) for coffee and the entire northeast end of the block was blockaded by a camera crew, plus parallel services, for HBO's smash sex-com Sex and the City. Sarah Jessica Parker fans shadowed the shoot, a camera track blocked the entrance to several stores, and around the corner on 93rd was an idle encampment of technical assistants and a mountain of equipment.
Thought of checking out Sex in the Park. Walked from 93rd and Madison to Central Park, and passed into the park above the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The late afternoon crowd of merrymakers was a pleasant alternative spectacle to the "Sex and the City" shoot. Rollerbladers, runners, strollers, flaneurs, undercover policemen, bikers, cabs, and etc. rolled, sauntered and whizzed by.
Central Park Map
Olmsted's "Great Lawn", a.k.a. the Great Baseball Diamonds, was relatively quiet. The Ramble was unusually well-occupied and boaters on the brownish-green waters of the Serpentine were leisurely rowing about in their rented aluminum gondolas.
At the Bethesda Fountain, the threshold to the southern portion of Central Park Memorial Cemetery, new wave artiste Thoth had taken up his high-profile roost in the underpass to the Promenade and exotic music poured, flowed and careered over the fountain plaza and lapped the green edges of the Serpentine. The Paganini inspired violin solos, with an improvised vocal score resembling a screaming banshee, frightened off most passersby but Thoth carried on nonplussed in gold loin cloth, modified beefeater hat and not much else. The pyrotechnic high-kitsch tempo, and the minimal costume, put one in mind of a crossdressing diva and/or a Bois de Boulogne transvestite hooker.
Reached the entrance to the Central Park Zoo, then quickly backtracked to the 65th and Fifth Avenue exit, which was cluttered with idle New Yorkers and gawking day trippers. Strolled along the leafy, cobbled way along Fifth, outside the Park, passed by the zoo (within the Park), and admired its faux giganto tree trunks with Hobbit doorways.
Ended this stroll with a hop aboard a southbound M6 bus, to bypass the freak show at Grand Army Plaza and the Shopping Circus at 57th Street, and de-bussed at around 53rd and Fifth. The winking and twinkling display windows of Midtown - Bulgari, Cartier and such - faded quickly following a quick duck into the NYC sub-par subway at 53rd and Fifth, a major hub for the E, F lines for the City's famously derelict anti-transportation system and sauna.
Lurched and screeched back to Jackson Heights and de-trained at the City's absolute worst sub-par subway anti-transportation system station, Roosevelt Avenue-Jackson Heights, where labyrinthine tunnels eventually shoot you out into the dazzling, fragrant display of burning goat flesh, saris (sarees) and a vast array of 23.5-carat gold costume jewelry around 74th Street.
The Editors
IF YOU GO - Don't bother, the exhibit is closed. You may see large swaths of chain link, however, at the Central Park Great Lawn and Baseball Diamonds.
DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH - The Krens-Gehry fabuloso cultural confection, The New New York Guggenheim (The New York Times, 11/28/00), that swirly-twirly thing on the lower East River, ain't likely gonna happen ... New York ain't Bilbao (i.e., some sort of Basque backwater) ... The City don't like it (everyone, that is, except Empress Giuliani) ... The waterfront is sacred (the State controls all waterfront development) ... Krens is crazy (this is common knowledge) ... And etcetera ...
ALSO - See "Why the Jura?", in A Structured Return to the Archaic? (1993), for a sweeping annunciation of neo-expressionist architecture vis-à-vis the triadic nature of Gehry's Vitra, Steiner's Goetheanum and Le Corbusier's Ronchamp - all in and/or around the picturesque intersection of Germany, Switzerland and France.
FOG - Hal Foster on the Frank O. Gehry Phenomenon (London Review of Books, 08/23/01) - "For many people, Frank Gehry is not only our master architect but our master artist as well. In the current retrospective which is about to transfer from the Guggenheim in New York to the one in Bilbao, he is often called a genius without a blush of embarrassment [...]"
MISCELLANEOUS STUFF
Bilbao Guggenheim
Brilliant Careers (Salon, 10/05/99)
Architectural Arts
The Pritzker Prize (1989)
The MIT Stata Project (Archinect, 05/06/04)
GO TO SO LONG FRANK O. GEHRY?
