Michael Graves
Page 34
20 KN 9/2/16.
21 MF 5/4/16.
22 The name change would take place later, in 1983. Linda Kinsey notes.
23 MG 5/6/13.
24 MGMD.
25 MG 4/29/13.
26 See Walter Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture (New York: Collier, 1962).
27 As recounted by the designer Matteo Thun in Katrina Israel, “Memphis Revival: The 1980s Design Movement Gains Fresh Momentum with New Shows and Fashion Collections,” Wallpaper*, May 19, 2014.
28 AA 8/27/15. The interview was conducted for my article “A Much-Watched Kettle,” Disegno, no. 9 (Autumn–Winter 2015), from which much of this material is taken.
29 MG 4/29/13.
30 AA 8/27/15.
31 MG 5/6/13.
32 AA 8/27/15.
33 Ibid.
34 Donald Strum interview 11/18/16.
35 Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Picador, 1981), 5.
36 MG 8/29/13.
37 RAMS 3/2/16.
38 KN 9/2/16.
39 Charles Jencks, “Michael Graves (1934–2015),” Architectural Review, March 21, 2015.
40 CJ 11/10/16.
41 KH 6/25/16.
42 MG 2/17/15.
43 Ibid.
44 Featuring ninety-seven original drawings by Michael, the Gatsby book appeared in a limited edition of only three hundred fifty copies. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (San Francisco: Arion Press, 1984).
45 Diane von Furstenberg, Diane: A Signature Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 178.
46 MGMD; MG 8/29/13.
47 MG 8/29/13.
48 See David Lehman, The Last Avant-Garde (New York: Anchor Press, 1999). The parallels between Graves and Koch (pronounced coke), with whom the author studied as an undergraduate, are extraordinary. Both favored free-form abstraction in the 1960s, but moved toward an explicitly narrative formalism in the mid-1970s; both used historical quotation to semicomical effect; and both were esteemed as much for their commitment to undergraduate education as for their creative output. Although ten years Michael’s senior, Koch lived in Cincinnati as a young man, was educated at Harvard, moved to the West Village after graduating, spent key years with his first wife in Italy (an experience he too fetishized in his work), and upon his return to the United States took a post at an Ivy League college, becoming affiliated with a group known as the New York School—an appellation sometimes applied to the Five. Capping off the list of remarkable similarities, the poet suffered from a disability that was almost a perfect analogue to the architect’s lazy eye, affecting the faculty most essential to his craft: Koch had an incurable stutter. Koch died in 2002, and according to Michael, the two men never met.
49 MG 8/29/13.
50 JHD 6/15/16.
51 KN 9/2/16.
52 JHD 6/15/16.
53 KN 9/2/16.
54 Grace Glueck, “Graves Named to Design Addition on the Whitney,” New York Times, October 18, 1981.
55 David A. Jones interview 8/11/16. The company did not go into health insurance, for which it is best known today, until the building was nearly complete.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 MG 5/6/13.
59 Peter Hague Neilson interview 9/2/16.
60 MG 8/29/13.
61 “The Humana Building,” promotional pamphlet from Humana Inc., Department of Public Affairs, 1985, 5.
62 MG 5/6/13.
63 DAJ 8/11/16.
64 Blackwood, Beyond Utopia.
65 Paul Goldberger, “An Appraisal: The Humana Building in Louisville: Compelling Work by Michael Graves,” New York Times, June 10, 1985.
66 Julie Iovine, Marisa Bartolucci, and Raul Cabra, Michael Graves: Compact Design Portfolio (New York: Chronicle Books, 2002), 11.
67 Paul Gapp, “Humana’s New Tower in Louisville Done In by Silly, Pointless Façade,” Chicago Tribune, August 4, 1985.
68 Glenn Rutherford, “Readers’ Reactions to New Humana Edifice,” Louisville Courier-Journal, February 17, 1985, 3.
69 Karsten Harries, “Modernity’s Bad Conscience,” AA Files 10 (Autumn 1985): 55; Vincent Scully quoted in “The Humana Building” pamphlet, 4.
70 Kenneth Powell, Graves Residence (New York: Phaidon, 1995), 13.
71 MG 5/6/13.
72 FL 3/4/16.
73 MG 8/29/13; FL 3/4/16; KH 6/25/16.
74 SS email.
75 MG 8/29/13.
76 PW 11/16/16; SS email.
77 GG email; Rebecca Billman, “Obituary: Ray R. Roush, Leading Architect,” Cincinnati Inquirer, July 20, 2002.
78 MG 8/29/13.
79 Hilton Kramer, “The Whitney’s New Graves,” New Criterion 4 (September 1985): 1; Michael Sorkin, “Save the Whitney,” Village Voice, June 25, 1985.
80 Quoted in Carlton Knight, “Michael Graves Shakes Up Manhattan with His Museum Add-On,” Christian Science Monitor, November 12, 1985.
81 Ibid.
82 Quoted in Albena Yaneva, The Making of a Building: A Pragmatist Approach to Architecture (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), 94; Paul Goldberger, “An Appraisal; A Daring and Sensitive Design,” New York Times, May 22, 1985.
83 Yaneva, The Making of a Building, 93.
84 Martin Filler, “The Sum of Its Arts,” House & Garden 157 (August 1985): 80–81.
85 Quoted in Douglas McGill, “Expansion at Whitney: The Debate Broadens,” New York Times, November 26, 1985.
86 MG 8/29/13.
87 Paul Goldberger, “Architecture of a Different Color,” New York Times, October 10, 1982; KN notes.
88 KN notes.
89 Robert A. M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tishlove, New York 2000 (New York: Monacelli, 2008), 757.
90 The Time Warner Center took so long to build that the firm had actually reverted to a Modernist mode by the time it was completed in 2004.
91 Paul Goldberger, “Architects Meet to Note Failures of Modernism,” New York Times, December 11, 1980.
92 MGMD.
93 MG 8/22/13.
94 “Non posso essere post-moderno perché mi vanto di non essere mai stato moderno.” Quoted in Alberto Stabile, “Quell’Architetto—Poeta Che Incanta L’America,” La Repubblica, June 10, 1987.
95 MM 6/8/16.
96 Reinhold Martin, Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 171.
97 Diamonstein-Spielvogel, “American Architecture Now: Michael Graves.” On this subject of figurative versus abstract “balance,” Michael was given to citing the poet Wallace Stevens, though his paraphrasing was sufficiently liberal as to leave the exact source unidentifiable.
98 Goldberger, “Architecture of a Different Color.”
99 The Charlottesville Tapes (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 127.
100 LK 12/28/15.
101 MF 5/4/16.
102 Blackwood, Beyond Utopia.
103 Ibid.; Richard Klein, “In the Race to Challenge Glass Boxes, Michael Graves Is Building a Solid Lead,” People, February 8, 1982.
VIII · THE HOUSE, THE TOMB, AND THE TEAKETTLE
1 Suzanne Slesin, “Architect Tries on New Shoes,” New York Times, November 26, 1987.
2 Nancy Levinson, “Notes on Fame,” Perspecta 37 (2005): 20.
3 Quoted in Stern, Fishman, and Tishlove, New York 2000, 958.
4 MG 8/29/13.
5 MG 2/17/15.
6 PE 2/25/16.
7 MG 5/16/13.
8 James B. Stewart, Disneywar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 67.
9 Chuck Mirarchi, “A Look Back: Walt Disney World’s Swan and Dolphin Hotels,” http://blog.wdwinfo.com/2015/05/05/a-look-back-walt-disney-worlds-swan-and-dolphin-hotels/.
10 MG 8/29/13.
11 Stewart, Disneywar, 67.
12 Related by fellow Disney historian Jim Korkis in Mirarchi, “A Look Back.”
13 Alan Lapidus, Everything by Design (New York: St. Martin’s, 2007), 188.
; 14 Paul Goldberger, “Disney Deco; and Now, an Architectural Kingdom,” New York Times, April 8, 1990.
15 Leon Whiteson, “A New Hotel Reflects Company’s Ambitious Plan to Tap Some of the World’s Most Innovative Designers,” Los Angeles Times, January 25, 1990.
16 Michael Eisner interview 5/17/16.
17 Ada Louise Huxtable, “Inventing American Reality,” New York Review of Books, September 3, 1992.
18 Ibid.
19 CJ 11/10/16.
20 MG 8/29/13.
21 Ibid.
22 MG 5/6/13.
23 Stern, Fishman, and Tishlove, New York 2000, 959.
24 MG 8/29/13. The architect Richard Gluckman did succeed in carrying out a limited renovation of the uppermost floor.
25 PE 2/25/16; KN 9/2/16.
26 MG 8/29/13.
27 Paul Goldberger, “Raising the Architectural Ante in California,” New York Times, October 14, 1990.
28 MG 5/6/13.
29 Quoted in Muriel Emanuel, Contemporary Architects (London: Macmillan, 1980), 331.
30 SH 5/20/16.
31 MGMD; MG 8/29/13.
32 Levinson, “Notes on Fame,” 20.
33 Mary McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism,” Assemblage 8 (February 1989): 23.
34 Ibid., 30.
35 Deamer, “Michael Graves: Bodybuilder?,” 19.
36 Pierre Chabard, “Alan Colquhoun in Conversation with Pierre Chabard,” AA Files 67 (2013): 143.
37 Blackwood, Beyond Utopia.
38 Herbert Muschamp, “Graves’s Progress from Paper Visions to Giant Teakettles,” New York Times, January 14, 1999.
39 Quoted in Gaile Robinson, “Michael Graves’ Designs Are Right on Target,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 21, 2000, 95.
40 Quoted in Jo Ann Lewis, “It’s Postmodern,” Washington Post, March 27, 1994.
41 The feature was accompanied by a book, Charles Jencks, Kings of Infinite Space: Frank Lloyd Wright and Michael Graves (London: Academy Editions, 1985).
42 Jencks, “Michael Graves (1934–2015),” Architectural Review.
43 Stan Allen, “Michael Graves (1934–2015),” Art Forum, May 1, 2015, www.artforum.com/passages/id=51897.
44 MG 8/29/13.
45 Brian Klipp interview 7/14/16.
46 Ibid.
47 Herbert Muschamp, “A Wonder World in the Mile High City,” New York Times, May 7, 1995.
48 Brian Klipp interview 7/14/16.
49 Kenneth Powell, Graves Residence (New York: Phaidon, 1995), 13–14.
50 MG 5/6/13.
51 FL 3/4/16.
52 Ibid.
53 Patrick Burke eulogy 4/12/15.
54 PE 2/25/16.
55 MM 6/8/16; CC 5/16/16; SH 5/20/16.
56 Paul Goldberger, “The Whitney Paradox—To Add Is to Subtract,” New York Times, January 8, 1989; Paul Goldberger interview 1/18/17.
57 MG 8/29/13.
58 Joan Ockman, “Bestride the World like a Colossus: The Architect as Tourist,” in Architourism: Authentic, Escapist, Exotic, Spectacular, ed. Joan Ockman and Solomon Frausto (New York: Prestel, 2005), 161.
59 KF 6/16/16.
60 Patrick Burke eulogy 4/12/15.
61 MG 5/16/13.
62 Thacker’s technical title was “vice president of cause marketing,” a post created by the company to identify opportunities like the Washington Monument initiative that could elevate Target’s brand profile. Linda Kinsey notes.
63 RJ 4/29/16.
64 DS 11/18/16.
65 RJ 4/29/16.
66 MG 8/29/13.
67 Jacqueline Trescott, “Washington Monument to Be under Wraps,” Washington Post, October 17, 1997, A1.
68 The author was attending high school in the capital at the time and can attest that this was the view universally held by seventeen-year-old boys.
69 Jencks, “Michael Graves (1934–2015).”
70 MG 5/6/13.
71 Rob Van Varick interview 9/2/16.
72 Daniel Naegele, “We Dig Graves—All Sizes,” Harvard Design Magazine 12 (Fall 2000): 100.
73 Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library archivist emails.
74 MG 2/17/15; Elizabeth Diller interview 1/10/16. Ralph Lerner, the dean at the time, died in 2011.
75 BG 11/11/16. The office is now known as Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
76 MG 2/17/15.
77 KN notes. With Michael’s retirement from the faculty, his firm was eligible to design campus buildings for the university and was selected for a pair of projects in the mid-2000s—including the Wu-Wilcox Halls renovation and addition, an expansion of Robert Venturi’s Gordon Wu Hall.
78 Barry Bergdoll interview 12/14/16. Rowe died in 1999.
79 Lynn Min interview 12/5/15.
80 Patrick Burke eulogy 4/12/15.
81 Quoted in Ilene Dube, “Michael Graves—Drawn to Design,” Princeton magazine, April 2015, 17.
IX · THE SKY AND THE FRAME
1 MG 8/22/13.
2 Ibid.
3 DBG 12/2/16.
4 ML 11/18/16.
5 MG 5/6/13.
6 MG 8/22/13.
7 MG 8/29/13.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 RVV 9/2/16.
11 DS 11/18/16.
12 MG 8/29/13.
13 RVV 9/2/16.
14 ML 11/18/16.
15 PE 2/25/16.
16 RM 2/29/16.
17 MG 8/29/13.
18 ML 11/18/16.
19 John Hockenberry, “The Re-education of Michael Graves,” Metropolis, October 2006, 123–27.
20 ML 11/18/16.
21 Quoted in Barbara Sadick, “Famed Architect Michael Graves, in a Wheelchair, Widens His Design Focus,” Washington Post, July 14, 2015.
22 Quoted in Bryan Appleyard, Richard Rogers: A Biography (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1986), 328. Banham is paraphrasing the sculptor Horatio Greenough.
23 MG 5/6/13.
24 ML 11/18/16.
25 Amelia Taylor-Hochberg, “Deans List: David Mohney of the Kean University’s Michael Graves School of Architecture,” Archinect.com, December 16, 2014, http://archinect.com/features/article/116056065/deans-list-david-mohney-of-the-kean-university-s-michael-graves-school-of-architecture.
26 See especially Michael Gotkin and Paul Makovsky, “The Postmodernist Watchlist,” Metropolis, November 2014, 74–94.
27 Recalling the conversation years later, Goldberger qualified the remark, calling the health-care work “a key part of [Graves’s] oeuvre.” PG 1/18/17.
28 “Michael Graves: The Past as Prologue,” event sponsored by the Architectural League of New York, November 22, 2015.
29 DBG 12/2/16.
30 PE 2/25/16.
Index
Italic page numbers refer to illustrations within the text; those in the color plate section are labeled accordingly.
Abbey, Bruce 100
Abramovitz, Max plate 42, 74–75, 160
Absolut Vodka 173
Abstract Expressionism 50, 58, 79, 94
Acropolis 75, 95, 109
Ad Hoc Committee to Save the Whitney 165
Agrest, Diana 113
Alberobello 51–52, 75, 95
Alberti, Leon Battista 73
Alchimia 152
Alessi, Alberto 156
growing product line of, 181
salt and pepper shakers of, 191
teakettle of, plate 34, plate 35, 3, 14, 152–53, 164, 173, 180, 192–93, 205
Alexander House plate 16, 103
Allen, Stan 185
“Amenable Shelter, The” (Graves) plate 1, 51
American Academy, Rome 64, 66–71, 74, 91, 101, 116, 137
American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York 139
American Institute of Architects (AIA) 119, 141, 146, 182, 190, 193
American Life Building plate 42, 160
Amsterdam 77
Anderson, Lennart 79
Anderson, Stanford 91–92<
br />
Ando, Tadao 170–71
Annunciation (Botticelli) 175
Answered Prayers (Capote) 155
Architectura, De (Vitruvius) vi
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board 203
Architectural Digest magazine plate 29
Architectural Forum magazine 59, 62, 108
Architectural League of New York 91, 148
Architectural Record magazine 146
Architecture of the École des Beaux Arts, The (MoMA exhibition) 148
Architecture without Architects (Rudofsky) 52
Arcibasilica di San Giovanni 72, 78
Armstrong, Thomas N., III 158–59, 164, 180
Art Deco xi, 120, 128, 151–52, 167
Arthur Erickson Associates 140
Ashbery, John vi, 158
Asplund, Gunnar 113, 163, 185, 226 note 58
Asplund Problem 113–16, 124, 225 note 8
AT&T Building 139, 142
Athens 37, 75, 95, 109
Austria 77
Autodesk 173
Aventine 181
Avery Library 228 note 19
Bachelard, Gaston 101
Balkans 74, 76
Banham, Reyner xi, 185, 204
Barcelona Pavilion 44
Barnes, Edward Larrabee 65, 88, 165
baroque 57, 163
Barozzi da Vignola, Giacomo 73
Barthes, Roland 116
Basel 77
Basilica of Maxentius plate 5, 72
Baths of Caracalla 67
Bauhaus 44, 54, 56, 80, 84, 150, 154, 193
Beaux Arts xi, 29, 43, 56, 68–69, 85, 117, 148, 160, 194
Belluschi, Pietro 143
Benacerraf House plate 15, 99–100, 103, 106, 110, 118, 120
Bergamo 75
Bergdoll, Barry 194
Bergen, Candice 161
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 177
Biedermeier furniture 129, 153, 163
Big Sleep, The (film) 155
Birksted J. K. 39
Bloomingdales 155
Boone, Daniel 18
Botticelli, Sandro 116, 175
Boullée, Étienne-Louis 177
Bramante, Donato 72
Braque, Georges 79
Brenner, Douglas 146
Breuer, Marcel
European Modernism and, 54
lack of communication by, 166
Meier and, 64
Mies and, 54
Nelson and, 63–64
Modernism and, 159