Review - Exhibition - Richard Meier: Art and Architecture
- Published: 24 October 2007 16:32
- Last Updated: 24 October 2007 16:32
- Reader Responses
The AA’s director is taken round the American legend’s first exhibition in the UK
Richard Meier: Art and Architecture, at the Louise T Blouin Institute, London W11,
until February 2008.
AJ 25.10.07
KAYE ALEXANDER
Brett Steele Tell us about the exhibition.
Richard Meier Well, it’s a little bit of everything; something old and something
new. Here, of course, is the Getty Center – I must have 50 models of it.
BS I remember one you had at the Netherlands Architecture Institute a few years ago, like the size of a room. [Points] Wow, I haven’t seen these ones. Are these recent?
RM Yeah. These are three-dimensional collages. These are pieces that are discarded from Getty models (pictured above, foreground left), which were made in wood, and then cast in stainless steel. It’s like a collage sculpture.
BS A lot of materials, a lot of models. It’s seriously reworking the history of a project. Have you done that before?
RM No.
BS So which is your favourite?
RM They’re all OK. I found a sketchbook years ago in Paris. 9.5 x 12”. The paper’s not terrific, but it’s OK. I now have 109 books done. All the same size. You can put them away on a shelf.
BS It’s a bit like the collages. You find a form and stick with it. It sets a frame you play against, over and over again.
RM If you look carefully these collages are all different sizes.
BS But I can see a pencil line. What it tells me is that you draw a frame and then work within it. It’s very like architecture; it’s like having a site.
RM I sit there, and I think, well, I’ve done 5 x 7”, I’ve done 4.5 x 6”, now let me try something else. I think about those things – ‘I am going to use colour, I’m not going to use colour.’
BS For me your books are how many of us get to know you. I remember when I read your first book in 1984. That was after 20 years of work as an architect. What was that moment
like for you?
RM I was very fortunate because the designer was Massimo Vignelli, who had been a friend for a long, long time. Sitting with him and selecting the images… that dialogue was great. The whole process made you look at how to present work. Not how you do it but how you show it. Five Architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, and Meier took five years.
BS I can imagine, with those personalities.
RM It would be John Hejduk saying ‘I want colour,’ then Peter Eisenman would say ‘ I want colour too!’ For my second monograph we set up a format that seemed to work. On the third book, I wanted to change the grid and Massimo said no. Since then, we’ve kept the same grid.
BS That’s one of the striking features, through all four. The other person you worked with then was the photographer, Ezra Stoller. What was that relationship like?
RM It was great. He liked the work. I would go with him to photograph the building. We spent time together while we waited for the right light.
BS In the first book, in the introduction by Joseph Rykwert, he has a nice line about how style discovers you to a degree. Obviously you then take it through a filter. For me a huge part of that was always through an American construction technology: first with the lightweight wood structures in housing, but then even later with the panelised systems. Did you ever think of it in terms of the building, or did you think of it in terms of spatial…
RM It was more spatial. But I do remember shortly after the Smith House was finished, Jim Stirling was teaching at Yale. He used to come to New York and stay with me. One weekend he came and said, ‘Let’s see your house in Connecticut’. He came up and his first reaction was: ‘It’s wood! I thought it was concrete.’
BS So what do you think about architecture today?
RM It’s very different now. There are more public events, more public discussion, more public involvement. There’s also greater knowledge and more communication in various forms. The number of architectural publications is far greater now than back then.
BS Architects tend to not have the patience for 20 years of work before they do a book. Mies worked 40 years before his first book in 1946, you worked 20 years, but students today leave school and two years later have a book of their complete works.
RM That’s crazy. You go to the bookstore, you look around, and you can’t believe the number of monographs of people you’ve never heard of.
BS I’ve always thought the nicest thing, Richard, is that when you brought your work to Europe and to Germany you brought the avant garde back through a set of American
eyes.
RM It was. I remember, especially German architects came to me and said it wouldn’t be possible to do what we’re doing now if you hadn’t been there.
BS So what would be the greatest challenge for you now, after 40 years of practice?
RM Building here. Building in London.
