Lily (Lih-ting Li) Kostrzewa
“Afterthought from an interview with Frank Gehry”
“Making art is an act of love, making love to the world.” with those words, Frank Gehry summed up, highlighted, and confirmed his approach to his work. Since he first opened an architecture studio in 1964, Gehry’s unique style, evidencing a profound sense of beauty and energy wrapped around utilitarian structures, has thrust him into the elite ranks of architects. Some of the buildings he designed include the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Olympic Fish Pavilion in Barcelona, the Dancing House in Prague, and the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in the Las Vegas; the list goes on and on…
Growing up in Taiwan, with years of Chinese ink brush painting training, I felt an immediate connection to Gehry’s work. To me, his buildings are like large Chinese calligraphy. For me, he is not only a true artist but also one of the most important artists in my lifetime. Let me give you five reasons why Gehry is so important in my research:
- He redefined architecture to be a free, expressive form.
- Out-of-the-box thinking and boldness allow him to be an original artist in his own right.
- His persistence and devotion to art started at an early age with a pure heart for paintings he saw in museums. His consistent effort to push himself in his design led to a life without regrets, even as he reached his 90s.
- His blue-collar truck driver start leads him to communicate simply, straightforwardly, and unpretentiously, which leads him to a kind of design uniquely his—industrial raw style.
- His childlike curiosity allows him to challenge the complicated world.
Born in Toronto to Russian and Polish Jewish immigrant parents, the family moved to Los Angeles when he was 18—attending L.A. City College, he also worked as a truck driver. He bounced around in different courses until his fondness for art led him to take an architecture course. There, he found his calling. He received his Bachelors in Architecture from the University of Southern California. Two years later, he was accepted into the City Planning program at The Harvard Graduate School of Design. But ¾ of the way through Harvard’s program, he dropped out. Well, it seems his primary professor, and he could not agree on politics – the then hot-button issue of Cuban-US politics. His confidence in his ability was supremely evident as he left Harvard.
That confidence is still evident as he opened the 2018 Design Icon Award Interview, saying, “I am still working, redefining the architecture.” Then, he compared his design concept with Frank Lloyd Wright’s approach to these words. “I came from a poor background and was a truck driver as a kid. I tried to figure out ways to make the architecture industrial raw design. I don’t like expensive things. When I design stuff, I don’t add on every single detail. It is up to graduate assistants to do it. Not like Frank Lloyd Wright (etc.), designing everything like a straight Jacket, I called it. I build a container; everybody brings something to fit in the container.” Wright (1867 – 1959) was a famous American Architect from the early 20th century. I found it interesting that Gehry would comment on another titan of architecture (two great minds in two different generations). I wondered if Matisse would ever challenge Michelangelo over how church windows were designed.
Like all of Gehry’s admirers, I was eager to get answers when he was asked about his design strengths. I organize his words around three principles: the scale in his design, the experiment in his material use, and the curiosity to create something new. In Gehry’s answer to Marcich (the host of the 2018 Design Icon Award), “It is the detail of content and its scale; it is like building Jiu Jitsu blocks; you use its proportion as your advantage.” “Material – is a crucial factor; it makes you think about the options.” “If I know in advance what I am going to do, I have no interest in doing it. The most creative people are this way… You want challenges in this very complicated world.”
For me, these three categories represent: 1) scale is the element of proportion in fine art; you create a dramatic effect by enlarging the scale. An essential concept in modern art is “the bigger, the better”; big size produces power and energy to overwhelm viewers. 2) material is the element of texture and medium in fine art. In this modern age, so many new materials last for years, resulting in more and more options for visual stimulation. There is another concept in contemporary art – I call it “the newer the better”; the objects or surface of the art could be something new, something no one has thought of yet. And 3) curiosity is an artist’s temperament, i.e., to think out of the box. This critical concept in modern art is boldness – “the bolder, the better.” This is the out-of-the-box shocking effect that can silence or enliven critics.
Gehry is a true believer in art. For him, art is the common ground for conflict to result and for hearts to rest and enjoy. As one watches Gehry’s live interview, one hears his words being simple or brutally honest. And his mind quickly leaps into different quantum spaces. When Maricich asked Gehry about the remarkable things standing out in his life, he started with the remarkable scales of his building design and then jumped into a story he was very proud of. He told of how he made a design last year for a small music hall, The Pierre Boulez Saal Concert Hall, located at a school that trains young Middle Eastern musicians, uniting Arabs and Israelis through music, in the heart of Berlin, Germany. Gehry said that after listening to a concert, young musicians from Israel asked if he would be the designer for their new music hall, which turned a warehouse into a music building. “Now it fills up with people almost every night, and some of the most famous musicians in the world perform there. Anyhow, [it’s] the model that you can talk together with art better than you can talk together with politics.”
When Gehry was asked for advice from architecture students, he said something worthy of all the artists to hear. The Chinese have a saying, “When a person comes to the end of his life, he will speak truthfully.” this may be Gehry’s final public advice. ”Everybody is different, and every career will be slightly different. There are many roles in design, and being a supportive team member is an integral part of it. We need all the parts of the team. So, they need to find their niche. It usually happens very naturally. I think the most important is to be yourself. In my teaching, I often let my students write their signatures in my first class. I put them on the table to show that they’re all different. So I said you see the difference? That is how you are different. If you keep that in mind, you hold your direction doing your own thing, not on others’ shoulders, trying to see what they are doing. I don’t guarantee it will work out, but you will be satisfied by finding yourself. Sooner or later, someone else one day will find you.”
For a while, I thought about who Gehry was to me. Why was I so fascinated by his mind? To describe him in a few words, he is a person who is creative to the infinity – beyond something he could ever imagine – and almost obsessive in his quest towards a goal to reach the unreachable. I wish him a very happy 90s. (Gehry was born on February 28, 1929.)
