Through the Looking Glass: Drawing and Transparency in the 1970s

“The transparency essay,” as it is known in schools of architecture around the world, remains required reading in many programs. With it comes the trap of conflating theoretical exegesis and design methodology – a danger that increases in inverse proportion to the age and experience of the audience. As Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky construct a complex relation of ideas expressed with sophisticated and nuanced language they resort to verbal and visual slights of hand – creating an articulate, albeit problematic architectonic frame around the early paintings of Picasso, Leger, Ozenfant, and Le Corbusier. I examine how Rowe and Slutzky tell their story of transparency, the structure of which is fundamentally obtuse and mythic, yet is delivered as if it were the product of a transparent and logical imperative, free from belief systems and subterfuge. To help illuminate this argument I focus on the discourse surrounding the “Modernist” or “Cubist” garden in early twentieth-century France – specifically the work of the architect and garden designer, Gabriel Guévrékian. During the last twenty years, evaluations of Guévrékian’s designs of gardens were criticized and largely discounted, owing to the relatively transparent influence of “the transparency essay.” If the received view of such a relatively obscure figure as Guévrékian can be so substantially manipulated by the undiminished provocations of Rowe and Slutzky’s essay, this suggests the necessity for further exploring how their text has created other modernist myths, that remain concealed behind, what Levi-Strauss called, “a veil of belief.”

de-arq Journal of Architecture, 2017

This article evaluates the dilemma between intentions and outcomes, based on the transparency debate that has recently resurfaced, by undertaking a critical reading of essential architectural history texts. Using the New National Gallery by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in Berlin, as the central focus, it argues that, in reality, transparent buildings do not always allow clear vision, free flow, circulation, connection, and accessibility. As a result, the building challenges modern notions by presenting glass as an ephemeral and temporal reflective screen and a condensed opaque veil due to its context and content.

interartive, 2013

This article evaluates the dilemma between intentions and outcomes, based on the transparency debate that has recently resurfaced, by undertaking a critical reading of essential architectural history texts. Using the New National Gallery by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in Berlin, as the central focus, it argues that, in reality, transparent buildings do not always allow clear vision, free flow, circulation, connection, and accessibility. As a result, the building challenges modern notions by presenting glass as an ephemeral and temporal reflective screen and a condensed opaque veil due to its context and content. *"Este artículo evalúa el dilema entre las intenciones y los resultados, basado en el debate de transparencia que recientemente ha resurgido en la realización de una lectura crítica de los textos esenciales de la historia arquitectónica. Utilizando como enfoque central la Nueva Galería Nacional de Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, en Berlín, se argumenta que, en realidad, los edificios transparentes no siempre permiten una visión clara, flujo libre, circulación, conexión y accesibilidad. Como resultado, el edificio desafía las nociones modernas al presentar el vidrio como una pantalla temporal y efímera y un velo opaco condensado, debido a su contexto y contenido."

Getty Research Journal, 2018

This essay discusses the development of abstract painting in the twentieth century through the lens of artistic process. Before the invention of pressure-sensitive tape in the United States in the 1930s, abstract painters were limited to creating the straight edges of geometric forms by either applying paint freehand or by using tools such as straightedges and ruling pens. But whether abstract artists embraced the use of such aids, which resulted in a more industrial aesthetic, depended initially on whether they considered their artworks agents of spiritual cognition, as Wassily Kandinsky did, or agents of social transformation, as Aleksandr Rodchenko maintained. After tape became more widely available in the late 1940s, Piet Mondrian and Barnett Newman incorporated it into their respective repertoires. While Mondrian never used tape for painting his bands, Newman developed such a mastery of applications that he effectively voided the dichotomy of earlier ideological debates. The essay also addresses technical issues in the work of Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Harry Holtzman, Burgoyne Diller, Mark Rothko, Bridget Riley, Jo Baer, Agnes Martin, and Richard Lin.

International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, 2024

The boxes drawn by José Pedro Croft are the expression of dismantling geometry, archetypes, and the observation system, which is a successive process of interference, ambiguity, and unstable balance. In the expanded field where space, object and landscape merge, Croft's drawings open windows and screens, in a paradox of mirrors, reflections and composition of voids. At the intersection between sculpture and architecture, the dimensions of the box-house-body are integrated, and the cut of the shape that goes beyond the sheet amplifies the visual field that invites us to enter. These two-dimensional spatial constructions, to which scale effects are not indifferent, are called architectural stains. Common compositional parameters and strategies can be identified in these stains: a) faces, solids and polygonal boundaries, b) space topography and sequence of planes, c) visual density and organisation of weights and masses, d) structural forces and surface-membrane cut-out, e) centre-periphery tensions and margin blurring, f) colour planes and grid accumulation, g) graphic impurity and visible brushstrokes, h) transparencies and overlapping veils, i) depth and tonal gradation, and j) abstraction of gesture and visual plasticity. A pedestrian action where transparency sections the observer, spatialises the body and interferes with the perspective. The segmentation of the axonometries, the rupture with the vanishing point, the alteration of the coordinates and the multiplication of infinities accentuate the experience of discontinuity. Movement is installed, with rhythms and rotations, in a dialogue that praises deviation and promotes the mixture of media and chromaticism, which intersperse drawing with etching, water-ink and dry point techniques. Through the influences of Malevitch, Morris, Smithson and Judd, a legitimate visual simplicity appears founded on the economy of elements and the minimalism of serial constructions, repetitions and binary concepts.

Science and Art

The MIT Press eBooks, 2005

Prior to joining Loughborough, Kevin spent over eight years working as a design consultant for a number of different companies and industries. Kevin's last industrial position was with the Production Engineering Research Association, where he spent four years managing a multidisciplinary team, including 3D digital artists, web/multimedia designers and real-time virtual reality designers.

2019

Paul Klee hat beim Malen und Zeichnen häufig beide Seiten des Bildträgers verwendet. Bis heute konnten in Klees rund 9,600 Arbeiten umfassenden Œuvre, etwa 570 solcher beidseitig bearbeiteten Bilder identifiziert werden. In der Klee-Forschung sind diese beidseitig bearbeiteten Bilder trotz ihrer bemerkenswerten Quantität weder vollständig erfasst noch systematisch analysiert worden. Im Artikel wird der Versuch unternommen, Klees dynamische Kunsttheorie, das Kunstwerk nicht vom statischen Gesichtspunkt des Vollendeten aus, sondern vielmehr als organisch-dynamischer Werkprozess zu verstehen, kunsthistorisch nachzuweisen. In der systematischen Analyse der Vorder- und Rückseite der beidseitig bearbeiteten Bilder und deren Bezogenheit aufeinander soll der vom Künstler proklamierte Begriff des «dynamischen Schaffensprozesses», des Primats des »Werdens über dem Sein«, kenntlich gemacht werden.

2016