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REPORT France’s National Museum of Modern Art, a public library, an audiovisual center, a rooftop restaurant and Internet café. Needless to say it has succeeded in gaining high social acceptance. Pompidou Centre stands as a peculiar example of an architecture that is aimed for establishing new trends rather than following the current mode. People often change their acceptance once they start to use the building. This is because true architecture value is in the quality of space rather than exterior appearance alone! ‘The magician of light’, Ieoh Ming Pei’s design for the new entrance to the Paris Louvre is as famous as the museum itself. In designing this new entrance to the Louvre Museum that houses Leonardo’s famous “Mona Lisa”, he constructed the neomodern glass pyramid famous as the Grand Louvre Pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre. While the traditionalists argued that it destroyed the dignity of the Renaissance courtyard, the progressive admirers hailed Pei’s seventy-one-foot tall transparent pyramid as a dazzling synergy of ancient structure and modern method- a symbolic link between the old and new- helping usher the Louvre into the next millennium, thus making its existence controversial. The Pyramid deliberately turns the tradition and concept of pyramid inside out. A pyramid is supposed to be solid, dark and solitarya mesmerizing symbol of the exotic world beyond the streets and cultures of Europe. In contrast, Pei’s version consists of clear glass, almost immaterial, a vast skylight hovering over streams of museum visitors as they are channelled into the Louvre galleries through the below-ground Grand Louvre Pyramid, Paris, France entrance corridors. (H. H. Arnason, Peter Kalb (Revising Author), History of Modern Art). Besides its association of timelessness and brilliant ingenuity in lighting an underground space, the ensemble is a superb example of how new buildings in old settings do not always have to accommodate themselves to the style of their ‘found’ surrounding. The above examples justify the appetite for breaking conventions, resulting in a more fascinating architecture. But these architectures often stand exuding Salome’s mysterious beauty. Salome was a young princess, enchanting and beautiful. Once, she danced at the Royal court for her stepfather, King Herod. Delighted by her performance, he granted her a wish. Salome demanded for the head 74 NOV-DEC 2005 SPACES
SALOME in symbolist art an analogy: ‘Beauty mocks Intellect’ of Saint John the Baptist, a brilliant and intellectual advisor to the king. Her wish was granted. Thus, Saint John’s intellect was defeated to Salome’s beauty. Salome thus stands as symbolism exemplifying beauty that mocks intellect. Analogous to Salome’s beauty, there is the architecture of fascination such as John Utzon’s Sydney Opera house which was so complicated a design mimicking the sea shells, that it took many years to configure its structural aesthetic. Santiago Calatrava, the architect, structural engineer and an artist, made quite good use of his artistic idea of architecture into structural wonder in the fascinating leaf like wing, sweeping upward in a curve, reaching a height of 197 feet at the Auditorio de Tenerife. This wing construction cost almost half the project cost and when Calatrava was queried regarding its function, he simply replied by saying that it had a purely aesthetic purpose. Designed in obvious violation of Berlin height restrictions, Peter Eisenmann’s Max Reinhardt Haus has not yet been built. But Eisenmann still states “it will become a truly prophetic building…” Just like Salome’s beauty mocks intellect the progressive acceptance and fascination of such architecture mocks rationality in preaching extravagant beauty. S References: Books 1. H. H. Arnason, Peter Kalb (Revising Author), History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography: Fifth Edition, Prentice Hall, Inc, 2004 2. Monica Bohm-Duchen and Janet Cook, An Usborne Introduction: Understanding Modern Art, 3. Michael Rush, New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, Thames and Hudson ltd, London, 1999 4. Matthew Collings, This is Modern Art, Weildenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1999 5. Architectural Design: New Age = New Architecture, Academy Group Ltd, 1997 6. Selected by Bill Lacy, 100 Contemporary Architects: References: Drawings and Sketches, Websites www.galinsky.com www.archspace.com www.greatbuildingsonline.com http://www.eyeconart.net/history/19th%20c./ http://www.victorianstation.com/palace.html http://cs.clark.edu/~hum101/Humanities_101/ http://ah.bfn.org/a/church/28/source/2.html http://galleryofart.wustl.edu/art/imgLarge/30lg.html http://www.artchive.com http://www.defensiblespace.com/book/ http://www.defensiblespace.com/book/ http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/gehryloyola/ http://ana.makeupyourmind.nu/trigs.html http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/ http://www.buecher.de/verteiler.asp SPACES NOV-DEC 2005 75
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