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Treacherous Transparencies: Thoughts and Observations Triggered by a Visit to Farnsworth House
Treacherous Transparencies analyzes transparency as expressed in architecture and art in an attempt to understand the intentions and objectives that underlie its use by pertinent architects and artists.
The publication looks at a few important works by selected artists and architects who work with transparency as an artistic strategy, which they implement primarily by using glass and mirrors but other media as well. e architects and artists listed together in this context form an unlikely Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham, and Gerhard Richter. But they do have something in their work marks salient way stations in the story of modernism up to the present day.
Concept & text by Jacques Herzog and photographs of Farnsworth House by Pierre de Meuron.
The publication looks at a few important works by selected artists and architects who work with transparency as an artistic strategy, which they implement primarily by using glass and mirrors but other media as well. e architects and artists listed together in this context form an unlikely Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham, and Gerhard Richter. But they do have something in their work marks salient way stations in the story of modernism up to the present day.
Concept & text by Jacques Herzog and photographs of Farnsworth House by Pierre de Meuron.
- GenresArchitecture
96 pages, Hardcover
Published September 15, 2016
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 14, 2016
Treacherous Transparencies is a short book that reads like a conversation with author-architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron as they reflect on their visit to Mies van der Rohe’s legendary Farnsworth House. Instead of the expected responses of rhapsody and entrancement, the two walked away from the experience bewildered and overwhelmed by disappointment.
What ensues is a discussion on transparencies, both in art and architecture, and where the ideals of Modernism — purity, neutrality and abstraction — fail to transpire. Or even worse, as in the case of the Farnsworth House, unwittingly give rise to psychologically charged spaces; the owner complained that in the space she felt like a ‘prowling animal, always on alert … always restless’.
Drawing from such diverse figures as Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Dan Graham and Gerhard Richter, the text critically analyses the basic tenets of Modernism and the ‘essentialism’ ascribed to by Herr van der Rohe, which the authors suggest more than missed the mark in the critical human-nature-architecture nexus.
What ensues is a discussion on transparencies, both in art and architecture, and where the ideals of Modernism — purity, neutrality and abstraction — fail to transpire. Or even worse, as in the case of the Farnsworth House, unwittingly give rise to psychologically charged spaces; the owner complained that in the space she felt like a ‘prowling animal, always on alert … always restless’.
Drawing from such diverse figures as Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Dan Graham and Gerhard Richter, the text critically analyses the basic tenets of Modernism and the ‘essentialism’ ascribed to by Herr van der Rohe, which the authors suggest more than missed the mark in the critical human-nature-architecture nexus.
Displaying 1 of 1 review