Frank Gehry an Old Roads Artist?

March 20, 2007

Should Frank Gehry be credited as an Old Roads artist? Not too many months ago I would have answered strongly in the affirmative. My fascination with Gehry dates back to the summer of 2001 when I walked through Frank Gehry, Architect, an exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Gehry's early "drafts" for buildings were displayed there.. from jagged scribblings to pieces of rubbish piled on top of one another. His work represented the extension of the abstract style of artists like Pollack and Rothko into the solid forms of architecture. I always like these transfers of artistic method from medium to medium..

Last fall we watched Sketches of Frank Gehry.. and that was a turning point for us. With Sydney Pollack directing, this documentary placed Gehry squarely within a Hollywood and celebrity context of which I had previously been unaware. Then there was Michael Eisner talking about the design of Anaheim Ice in California:

I was looking for the next generation of American architects… and he was on the list of architects who were pushing the envelope. We bought a hockey team. We needed a practice rink. He designed for us the hockey rink in downtown Anaheim.

Now I know it is usually wrong to judge an artist for who appreciates their work.. but in this case I find it hard to resist. Here is Eisner commenting on the style of Anaheim Ice:

The inside is reminiscent of those hockey rinks that Frank grew up with in Canada; all wood, all trusses, it looks very traditional… like you could be nostalgic for being in Toronto in 1940-something...

At Old Roads we admire obsessive attempts to re-create or understand the past.. but this project by Gehry is different. It is the suggestion of a past, but not in fact an engagement with the past. It is a "making new" with only enough old stuff to stir up feelings of quaintness or nostalgia. It is the sort of use of the past with which a Disney executive could feel at ease.

This past Sunday Emily pointed out the glossy advertisement on the back cover of the New York Times Magazine.. and what do I see but an advertisement for a line of Gehry-designed jewelry, done in association with Tiffany & Co. The tag line for the Gehry collection is "Beauty without Rules" (see official introduction to the collection here). The collection does not strike me as a natural expansion of one medium into another.. rather the expansion of a brand name into a new product. I am uncomfortable with that.. and it has brought about a shift in the way we see Gehry and his larger artistic project. From now on we will be leaving Gehry to the millionaires who can afford his ice rinks, concert halls, and jewelry.