Aug
08
Architecture would be better off without Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid is the most famous woman architect in the world. Would women or, indeed, architecture, be better off without her pushily hard-won, global celebrity?

She established her studio in London in 1980. For nearly 14 years Hadid, absurdly, became famous for not having built anything. Her reputation was boosted by a clique of fawning admirers who saw in her uncompromising angles and, later, zoomorphic blobs a fearless repudiation of stuffy tradition.

The competition entry for Cardiff Opera House was her celebrated cause. This, with genius, managed to alienate both the left and the right. The former thought it elitist, the latter outrageous. It was, after years of well-publicised struggle, abandoned in 1995. She became a martyr to taste and sexism.

Read the full article at The Spectator

Oct
25
Jeff Koons’s latest achievement: a new standard in prolix, complacent, solipsistic, muddled drivel

Jeff Koons is, by measures understood in Wall Street, the most successful living artist. But he’s a slick brand manager rather than a tormented creative soul. The Koons brand includes a stainless steel bust of Louis XIV, a red aluminium lobster and balloon dogs, plus countless knock-offs of novelty-store dross.

It is tempting to think Koons a vulgarian and condemn his art as crapola, but to do so would be lazy. There’s no point in criticising him for his cynical exploitation of the credulous art market, since that is exactly his intention. Futile to damn him as vacuous; he’d be flattered.

All artistic achievement can be assessed in terms of skill, talent and genius. Koons has very little technical skill: his work is made by production-line assistants. He stands back from the process and the product. Duchamp? Warhol? Oh yes, we have been here before. The great Robert Hughes said that, so far as a sculptor’s skills were concerned, Koons would have difficulty carving his name on a tree.

Read the full article at The Spectator

Aug
29
Stem the tide of maleducati into wondrous Florence – or see it die

On this day in 2013, I am launching Florence in Peril, 47 years after its Venetian equivalent. Venice in Peril was founded to protect the Pearl of the Adriatic from the dangerously rising waters of the lagoon, toxically mixed with bureaucratic incompetence.

Florence in Peril is founded to save the City of the Flowers from a rising tide of gross and imbecilic tourism, also facilitated by local administrative muddle and an extra-virgin drizzle of greed. We need to get Florence (and Venice) sorted out before they sink. Delicate and evanescent beauty will otherwise eventually succumb to the vile and barbarous beast of mass tourism.

Criticism of visiting Florence may be unseemly from an Englishman, but then we are a nation of hypocrites. Still, the English have always had a passionate special relationship with this most gentlemanly and beautiful, if dour, of all cities. Indeed, at one point in the late 19th century, it was estimated that 100,000 anglophones – artistic and literary Brits and Americans – lived here.

Read the full article at The Telegraph

Feb
03
The crying game: the art and science of sobbing

‘Jesus wept”. But Voltaire smiled. The shortest sentence in the King James Bible tells us the Son of God was susceptible to intense human emotions: He was literally moved to tears by the death of Lazarus.

Weeping is what we all, divine or mondain, do in extreme emotional states. Or do we? By way of contrast, the sardonic agnostic French philosopher preferred to demonstrate his absolute control over circumstances. An ethologist once defined the smile as “the silent, bared-teeth, submissive grimace of primates”. Maybe, but in Voltaire’s case it was a profession of cold, superior intelligence.

Do we prefer to laugh or cry? We readily associate crying with weakness, distress or vulnerability, a loss of control, but its simple connection to sadness is not absolutely clear. Indeed, crying can also indicate joy, pride, boredom, religious ecstasy, frustration and pain. Jo Brand, in a forthcoming BBC Four documentary For Crying Out Loud, has asked whether we cry enough. Curious, perhaps, for one whose trade is laughter to encourage a wave of collective mass hysterical sobbing, but there is more to crying than a noisy snivel and a wet drip.

Read the full article at The Telegraph

Copyright © Stephen Bayley 2006-2022. All Rights Reserved