Recommended Reading: Esther McCoy: Five California Architects: Los Angeles, California: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1987
Case Study Houses: The Complete CSH Program: isbn-10 3836510219
Barbara Lamprecht: Neutra: Complete Works: isbn-10 38312440
David Gebhard: A Guide to Architecture In Los Angeles and Southern California: ASIN: B0000E9VNW
After our romantic ride down Wilshire Boulevard, I thought today I might try to enlighten you on the history of architecture in Souther California. Now, now I know what your thinking, architecture in Southern California? There is such a thing? Well yes, and quite a rich history that has nothing to do with Hollywood or Disneyland. In fact, the history of architecture goes back to the days of the Spanish missions and represents some of the most bold experiments in the modern movement. Once again, Los Angeles Times architecture critic provides with our source. As with yesterday, I've provided you a recommended reading list. All the books I've mentioned are available at local bookseller or online. Check it out, buy it, read it, you'll be enlightened.
About two years ago, The Getty Trust (http://www.getty.edu) helped organize and fund more than five dozen exhibits on twentieth century art in Los Angeles called "Pacific Standard Time." The focus of the exhibit was the post-World War II period. The war years, in a number of ways helped fuel both cultural and industrial production. The Ferus Gallery opened in 1957 and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was completed in 1965. Now the attention shifts to architecture. This new, more modest exhibit, which opened yesterday April 9 and runs until mid-July, is called "Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.: (PSTP) The anchor exhibit is "Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future 1940-1990. Timeline-wise: the dates are fuzzy. Architecture, like any other form of art is fluid.
Mr. Hawthorne launches into his article by pointing out significant gaps and contradictions between the titles, the phrase "modern architecture in L.A.," and the years 1940-1990. What he is alluding to is the supposition that the modern movement did not exist in the city until 1940. The reality is far from. He rightly points out that modern architecture in Los Angeles began well before 1940 and continues up to today. True enough, the work of Charles and Henry Greene, Irving Gill, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and the master Frank Lloyd Wright is proof enough. On a side note, if you're in Southern California I recommend a visit to the Gamble House (1908) in Pasadena and MAK Schindler Center (1921) in West Hollywood. Thus, the new exhibit is focusing on Southern California architecture's middle age. Not that it's unexciting in any way but it ignores the history that came before and set the stage. Another aside, some of the architects who were part of this middle period were alumni of my alma mater the USC School of Architecture (Fight On). In conjunction, with this new focus on architecture, the Museum of Contemporary Art is mounting a group show opening June 2 called "A New Sculpturalism." (http://www.moca.org)
The choice of time frame, 1940-1990 and the inclusion of the words "modern architecture" suggests that the Getty hopes to uncover how the city was made modern. The can accomplish these goal all in one fell swoop. The time period overlaps the PST art shows mounted last year which covered the years 1945-1980. They can match the mid-century glamour with presentations of the Case Study House and "Jettisons" architecture. They can even find some space for an examination of the early careers of Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and their colleagues in what became know as the L.A. School, which did not emerge until the late 1970s.
While the mid-century period has been examined ad nauseum, the architecture in seventies and eighties remains underestimated not only in the work of the afore mentioned by also in the work of people such as Cesar Pelli, Charles Moore, Craig Ellwood, and Ray Kappe. Two shows chronicle this period: first the recently opened show at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, "A Confederacy of Heretics" (http://www.sciarc.edu) and "Everything Loose Will Land" curated by Sylvia Lavin at the Schindler House (http://www.makcenter.org). The title of this last exhibit is an amusing riff on the famous Buckminster Fuller epigram "If you tilt the world on its axis, everything loose with land in Los Angeles." However, Mr. Hawthorne right wonders what about the period before 1940?
This period begins in the late nineteenth century when midwesterners and east coast natives dazzled by images of perpetual sunshine and orange groves began to flock to Southern California,the ex-patriot German and Austrian architects that fled economic hardship in Europe, or the architects from the midwest and east coast that came here bringing with them inspiration from Europe, Asia (Japan), New York, and Chicago? The Greene brothers, who settled in Pasadena in 1893, fused their take on Craftsman Architecture with elements of Japanese Buddhist temple architecture they brought with them after a stopover at the Columbian Exposition. Then there were the years between 1910 and the Depression where the modern movement was propelled by Irving Gill, Richard Neutra, and Rudolph Schindler, outsiders who brought with them European modernism and fused with the locale. Gill is worthy of an extensive study especially when placed in juxtaposition with Austrian architect Adolf Loos. Gill's own work makes use of a stripped-down proto-modernism, evident in his work in the San Diego area and much lamented Dodge House in West Hollywood. Neutra and Schindler have been examined in every which way. Of course, the textile block houses of Frank Lloyd Wright and the work of his son Lloyd could make up an exhibit onto themselves.
Further, Mr. Hawthorne points that any study of the connections between pre-1940 architecture, urban planning, and politics would have to confront the missed civic opportunities-how Los Angeles failed to take control of the red-car trolley network as it gave way to the freeway system or create a comprehensive parks system. See William Deverell's book Eden By Design.
Perhaps it would've been nicer to present this new exhibit in more of a historic context so that visitors could see what came before in order to get a better sense of things. The SCI-Arc exhibit is an attempt to expand on the Getty show. Even better would be a more historically comprehensive show.
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