Crossing Through Colors
At lunch today I strolled over to the Arts Club of Chicago with my camera to snap some pictures of Daniel Buren's installation, Crossing Through Colors. Situated in the Club's lobby and ground floor gallery space, the full-height, colored plastic panels were a bit disconcerting when I first saw them a couple weeks ago, but on this trip I moved slowly, took my time, and found the effect of colored light extremely powerful and the perfect antithesis of Vinci Hamp's dignified building design and the iconic lobby stair by Mies van der Rohe, salvaged from the Club's previous home.
Click the image below for my Flickr set and slideshow of Crossing Through Colors. See also Edward Lifson's post on the installation.
Click the image below for my Flickr set and slideshow of Crossing Through Colors. See also Edward Lifson's post on the installation.
Ever read his early writings? One would never imagine his goal is to be simply decorative with color, yet that is what I read in reviews. Just Coloring...I mean, we ask more of that from good designers. Why does Buren now get away with it? A simple interior color scheme... Sorry, thats not even the level of art he was claiming to aspire to back twenty years ago. As for the link you suggest we read, it just tells us this is beautiful because ... its colorful. What happened to writing on arts, is in some way linked to the question - is that it?
ReplyDeleteNo, I haven't read anything by the artist. In fact, I'd never heard of him until this installation, though some of his previous work strikes me as familiar.
ReplyDeleteI think I understand where you're coming from on his current work, though I might argue that this installation is not solely about color but also the physical impact of it on the space and one's movement through the space. What was once an open area now has only a few linear pathways between the turned panels. Furthermore, the 45-degree position of the panels creates diagonal paths that are sometimes ubobstructed but many times interrupted and requiring one to turn ninety degrees into another diagonal path.
If we assume that Buren's focus was/is on new interventions relating to historical structures, this installation tries to relate to Miesian universal space via color and prescribed paths, two things that seem to go against they typical Mies project. Granted that the Arts Club is by John Vinci and not Mies, this building is designed around the Mies stair from the Club's previous home and does embody many of that master's ideas. For example, the dining room upstairs is completely free of columns, a relatively long span and noticeable when eating there.
So perhaps Buren is using his installation to comment upon that outdated mode of designing and even its embrace by his successors, though of course I can't say for sure. But having been there a few times, the impact of the installation is undeniable and most likely needs to be experienced to be appreciated.