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Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

How McKim, Mead, and White celebrated a big commission

October 08, 2013 0

When the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White won the competition to design the Rhode Island State House in 1892, they made paper hats and costumes and conducted an "architectural mass" to celebrate the commission.

They marched around swinging a Venetian lamp like a censer and singing the following words to the tune of "Onward Christian Soldiers":

"Onward, All ye Draughtsmen,
Marching as to War,
With our office T. Square
Going on before.

We are not divided
All our office, we,
In all competitions,
Ours the Victory . . .

Foes may struggle vainly,
We will Vanquish all,
For they are not in it,
They will have to crawl.

Providence is with us
Thro' the darkest night;
In our blest profession
We're simply out of sight."
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Friday, March 15, 2013

Martin Rico Exhibition

March 15, 2013 0
The first-ever comprehensive exhibition of the landscape paintings of Martin Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908) is currently on exhibition at the Meadows museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

The exhibit features 106 works of art, including paintings, drawings, and sketchbooks, with sparkling views of Paris, Venice, and Madrid.


According to the museum, "Rico championed the technique of painting en plein air, famously painting while stationed in gondolas throughout the Venetian canals."


(Video link) The show is the fruit of a longstanding collaboration between the Meadows museum and the Prado in Madrid. It will continue through July 7.
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"Impressions of Europe: 19th-Century Vistas by Martín Rico"
Article on the show in Art Daily

Thanks, Fine Art Connoisseur magazine
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Thursday, January 17, 2013

Part 3: How the golden mean caught on with artists

January 17, 2013 0
After considering the Parthenon and Leonardo Da Vinci, let's see if we can continue taking a rational look at the claims about "phi," (or the "golden mean" or "golden ratio") that has been so popular with artists.

The story gets more complex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as artists begin to consciously adopt it in their work, and so it gets harder to separate fact from fiction. Let's start with what we know for sure.

One of the nineteenth century champions of the golden mean was German psychologist Adolf Zeising (1810-1876) who found the golden mean in nature, especially in branching patterns, leaves, and seed patterns. These manifestations of the ratio are acknowledged by even the most skeptical scientists.

Over the years scientists have found other places where the golden mean turns up. In 2010, the journal Science published a paper about how these numerical patterns appear in crystals at the atomic scale.

The golden mean appears most often in terms of numerical relations, such as the Fibonacci numbers that appear in flowerheads, seeds, and shells.

Zeisler promoted the idea that the golden mean could be found in the Parthenon and the works of Leonardo. He made broad claims that the golden ratio was: 
"the universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form." 
Whether or not Zeisler's ideas had a solid grounding in observable fact, they caught on with artists and mystics. 

A group of painters led by Jacques Villon and called "Section d’Or," (French: “Golden Section”) held exhibitions in Paris between 1912 and 1914. They included Juan Gris, Robert Delaunay and Giro Severini and several others, though not all used the mathematical principles. Later artists such as Salvador Dali also claimed to use golden mean principles. 

In the 1920s, Jay Hambidge, a student of William Merritt Chase, published a book called Dynamic Symmetry  which presented a grid system based on the golden mean. The system was picked up by artists such as Maxfield Parrish, whose preliminary drawing for the famous painting "Daybreak" is above. Here's one person's analysis of the structure behind Daybreak. 


Above: Architects' Data (German: Bauentwurfslehre) First published in 1936 by Ernst Neufert,

Golden mean principles were adopted in extremely different aesthetic quarters in the twentieth century. Many readers of this blog have encountered golden mean principles in the context of contemporary realist ateliers.

The methods were also embraced by the Bauhaus school (literally "House of Construction"), founded by Walter Gropius in Germany between World War I and II, and run by influential architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. 

The Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who championed the international style of building design, used the golden ratio and the Fibonacci series as a central tenet of his work and teaching. He described the patterns as:
 "rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages and the learned."
Many Bauhaus teachers emigrated to America, where their ideas about the golden section became incorporated in university art educations, where they are taught to this day. 
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Mythbusting the Golden Mean, Part 1

January 15, 2013 0
In architecture and design schools, it's common to hear the claim that "golden mean" geometry was used in the design of ancient buildings, especially the Parthenon. 


According to mathematician Keith Devlin of the Mathematical Association of America, this is a groundless myth, with no basis in fact whatsoever.



The golden mean (also known as the golden ratio or the divine proportion) refers to the relationship of 1:1.618..., an irrational number also known as "Phi." The ratio is found in nature, and has been championed in the last two centuries, but many other claims are unfounded.

Although Greek mathematicians knew about Phi, there is not a shred of evidence that any Greek architect used such a system as a design principle. Euclid's study of Phi occurred long after the Parthenon was already finished.

Devlin says:
"The oft repeated assertion that the Parthenon in Athens is based on the golden ratio is not supported by actual measurements. In fact, the entire story about the Greeks and golden ratio seems to be without foundation. Numerous tests have failed to show up any one rectangle that most observers prefer, and preferences are easily influenced by other factors. As to the Parthenon, all it takes is more than a cursory glance at all the photos on the Web that purport to show the golden ratio in the structure, to see that they do nothing of the kind. (Look carefully at where and how the superimposed rectangle - usually red or yellow - is drawn and ask yourself: why put it exactly there and why make the lines so thick?)"
In the examples above, the placement of the golden rectangle doesn't agree from one diagram to the next. In the top example, the sides of the rectangle hug the columns, and in the next, they're touching the edges of the pediment. In some, the bottom of some rectangles correspond to the bottom of the columns, while in others, they're several steps down the base. In the middle example above with the white lines, the source photo itself seems to be stretched vertically by about 15%.

According to University of Chicago math professor Phil Keenan, it doesn't matter how you arrange the diagram, because the lines in the Parthenon aren't straight or parallel anyway due to entasis and other factors. He says:
"One cannot define an exact rectangle on the front or back faces of the Parthenon. Even though the Parthenon is built to extremely accurate specifications, its curvature precludes rectangular measurements of any greater precision than about 1%. This built-in error precludes finding any Golden Mean rectangles, since the required accuracy is simply not attainable."

George Markowky elaborates:
"The dimensions of the Parthenon vary from source to source probably because different authors are measuring between different points. With so many numbers available a golden ratio enthusiast could choose whatever numbers gave the best result."
Keenan points out that, "the presence of the Golden Mean in the Parthenon was postulated by Adolf Zeising in the 1850s, and appears nowhere in ancient Greek architectural treatises."
Devlin concludes: "I am not convinced that the Parthenon has anything to do with the Golden Ratio."

Anticipating some questions and comments:
1. Does the golden mean appear in nature? Yes, and I'll get to that later in the series.
2. Is it a useful tool for composition or analysis? Sure, if it works for you. Busting this myth doesn't take away anyone's candy.
3. Do contemporary architects use it? Bauhaus training has reinforced both the myth and the practice.
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Friday, January 11, 2013

Bleecker and 11th

January 11, 2013 0
Yesterday in the West Village of New York City, a slice of afternoon light spotlit the brick apartments on the corner of Bleecker and 11th Avenue. 

What attracted me was the way the left tree was a dark pattern against the light building, while the central tree was a light texture against the cast shadow. Since my main interest was this tonal relationship, and since I only had a half hour to work, I limited my approach to a black and white wash drawing.


I'm sitting on a park bench holding the watercolor notebook on my knee. On the right is what the sketch looks like after about 10 minutes. At this stage I'm dropping in big tones over a rough perspective grid, careful to paint around the white of the branches and the windows.

For the big tonal areas, I use two Niji water brushes, one filled with water, and the other filled with Higgins Eternal ink. The light gray areas are the clear water brush picking up a little ink.


Here's a detail of a section the size of a postage stamp. After the big washes dry, I use a black watercolor pencil for the linear details of the windows, mullions, cornice details, and small branches.
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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Animated Architects

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