December 19, 2011

Dear Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission Members:

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial as proposed by Frank Gehry (described by Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post of December 18, 2011) does not represent the man and is the wrong memorial for the location.  

This design represents Gehry, not Ike.  The giant pillars and tapestries create an enclosing building-like structure where no building belongs, ruining an open space that has great potential.  The design is not so radical that it begs to be built purely on visionary merit. Architecturally its columns overwhelm the site and the walls reiterate structures used to define space in memorials built on open site areas: the Vietnam, the Korea, the FDR, and the World War II memorials.  The site for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial is part of the L'Enfant plan, immersed in the mix of monuments and government buildings close to the Capitol.  The Gehry enclosure diminishes the view of the Capitol that would be channeled between walls.  The Gehry plan is also an affront to LBJ and his memory, consigning the LBJ building to a backstage for the Gehry theater. 

An Eisenhower Memorial will work well in the space if it is conceived as an open Eisenhower Square with a central focus, such as a tower with a bell or a carillon.  The tower would provide ample surface for bas reliefs of Eisenhower in the two roles for which Congress requires him to be commemorated:  Supreme Allied Commander in WWII and two term President of the United States.  There would also be opportunity on the tower walls for some of his other roles, such as president of Columbia University and even "barefoot boy."

The existing open space in a future Eisenhower Square dedicated to a living memorial of plantings evoking important locations associated with Ike can remind the visitor of Ike's greater engagement:  Kansas, West Point, Normandy, and Gettysburg.   The living monument would link Eisenhower Square to the nearby Botanical Gardens and the Native American Memorial gardens, as well as to the Capitol grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmstead in a "chain of green" space enhancements signaling a commitment to egalitarian ideals and an open society.

Eisenhower the general was known for his ability to bring together, in working toward a common purpose, men such as Field Marshall Montgomery and General Patton, of large and fractious egos.  This is why Ike was chosen to be Supreme Allied Commander.   As president, Eisenhower was also a unifier: both the Republicans and Democrats wanted him to head their respective election tickets in 1952.  He worked with Congress to form bipartisan policies on Interstate highways, Atoms for Peace, the United Nations, and higher education.  The first Republican president to follow Roosevelt's New Deal, he did not try to repeal it. 

The Eisenhower Square site has potential to be viewed as symbolic of this record.  The surrounding buildings are strong and disparate, in need of a unification effort that a central tower with a bell or carillon could bring to them.   The tones of the tower would ring through the square and extend to the buildings, making them components of one space all working together in harmony.  The relationship of the memorial to the LBJ building is particularly important.  LBJ was Senate Majority Leader when Ike was President.  They accomplished much together, including the National Defense Education Act.  It is appropriate that the Eisenhower Memorial turn a congenial face toward the LBJ Department of Education building, not its backside.   A carillon tower with campus-like tones would be fitting to memorialize college-president Eisenhower (whose brother Milton was president of Johns Hopkins University).

Because LBJ also became our nation's president, the relationship between the memorialized Ike and the legacy of LBJ must be dealt with properly.  Here the Gehry plan fails.  Likewise, the relationship of the Ike memorial to the Wilbur J. Cohen Building must show accommodation to the New Deal tradition.  The relationship to the Air and Space Museum must reflect respect both ways: much of the hardware in that museum was produced by the military-industrial complex on which Ike kept a watchful eye.

Eisenhower Square with a bell or carillon tower would form the south end of an irregular line (history is never a straight line) at the base of the Capitol that extends from the Taft carillon tower on the north, through the Garfield Memorial and the Grant Statue, on to Eisenhower.  The idea of Taft and Eisenhower at opposite ends of the line should need no explanation.  The line through Garfield, Grant, and Eisenhower would link three military men who each became president.  Ideally, one of the bas reliefs of Eisenhower would look back at Grant; the leading general of the war that defined the 20th Century recognizing the general that led the military through the defining crisis of the 19th.

An Eisenhower Memorial such as the one I have described above is one that Ike himself would understand and appreciate, and would be a great addition to Washington.  It requires no promethean rearrangement of space or traffic patterns; it would memorialize Peace and Prosperity for all, the legacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower.  It was said during discussion of the World War II memorial, that it is our continued civic life with its freedoms that is the significant memorial to that war.   A living green monument bringing people together in an open public square that joins with and enhances the greater plan of the U.S. Capitol is a timeless reminder of our heritage as exemplified by Ike.  Such a memorial, which recognizes what bipartisanship and harmony can accomplish, would be particularly poignant and appropriate for our times.  It would be one last gift of Ike to his country.

Sincerely yours, 
Claudia Vess
Washington Artist

The review, of the work by artists Andy Unger, Donna K. McGee, Emily Lane and Frank Cappello,  is posted at http://thecabinetart.weebly.com/art-blog.html.  


Gallery B is operated by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District Board in partnership with the exhibiting artists.            

 ART COLOGNE 2011

The 45th annual Art-Cologne exposition held April 13 to 17 featured 200 galleries from 23 countries including 45 from Germany and 13 from the USA and had a renewed buzz.  The fair  renewed its support for "young" galleries and artists, emphasized talks and discussions in an Open Space forum with seating and artist books were displayed in cases in keeping with the 2011 theme of knowledge, books, stories and texts.  A retrospective of Belgian artist Pammenko's aircraft structures, including a Flash Gordon "Backpack", greeted visitors in the atrium.   The mix of sculpture, painting, installation, mixed media and work on paper was what might be expected from a large, international art fair. While there was not a kitchen sink, there was a wonderfully amusing stack of giant pots and pans sculpture by Robert Therrien (Gagosian & Spruth Magers/Berlin,London), which can be seen in the Vernissage-TV video coverage of the fair on YouTube. 

A majority of the galleries included works on paper;  sometimes they were tucked away.  An amusing, graphic baroque rendition of Amanda Lear's My Alphabet by Julian Goethe (Galerie Daniel Buchholz/Cologne) was on the wall.   "A stands for anything and B for bionic and Bach".   Book resculptor Carlos Garaicoa (Barbara Gross/Munich) used a copy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to create "Reason" (6x87x107cm).   Pages folded out and out were cut into diminishing frames until the centers were finally crumpled for the trash.  (photo)

Some of the exhibits could be mistaken for museum holdings. Smaller German Expressionist prints were available starting at EUR 10,000.   An Eric Hechel print of horses in a pasture that everyone seemed to linger on was priced at EUR 25,000 (Henze & Ketterer/Bern).  

Unexpected delights included two exquisite prints and a drawing by John Cage (Margarete Roeder/NYC).  The aquatint was made of 18 rectangular plates of various sizes individually inked and printed side by side filling the paper and creating an embossed white line at the plate borders.   Superb German works on paper (Penck, Baselitz, Bohrmann, etc,) collected by Fred Jahn (Munich) starting in the 60's were to be seen as well as younger artists collected by Matthias Jahn who also has a gallery in Munich, with the same careful eye.

Adding buzz, selected new artists had exhibition space and competed for an award. The reason to go such an art fair is, of course, to find something previously unknown.   Notable were deeply saturated watercolors, "Basic Attacks for Solving Situations", in banded "oscillating" patterns by Johannes Weiss (Lena Bruening/Berlin)  Paper was also integral to some installations  Artist-made wallpaper reproduced the wallpaper in a photograph of the young Eric Satie then hung on the wall.  In proximity, a remix of a Satie recording was playing only the blips and pops on a record player.  Walls built from corrugated and smooth lengths of paper woven into industrial-size textile 'fabric' set off a paper loom churning out the same material.  The installation by Michael Beutler (Baerbel Graesslin/Frankfurt am Main) slyly referenced the textile trade fairs held in the same building.

Contemporary artists using printmaking as a primary media included Peyman Rahimi (Eva Winkler Galerie/Frankfurt) who combines images of vintage photographs and photos from old newspapers, and silkscreens them with acrylic and lacquer to create a new vintage appearing image in which the sitter appears to moving, perhaps conversing with the photographer until it is time to hold still.   Like a time capsule, the sense of the past living concurrently in the present is captivating.  In photography, Aitor Ortiz succeeds in visualizing spatial intrigues reminiscent of Piranesi's Carceri in his Amorfosis series of 2008 on aluminum (Galerie Stefan Roepke/Cologne).  The view in #006, looks through a seemingly impossible filigree of scaffolding.  Light streams through arched church windows that create the experience of a palpable mystery.  An offset cross shape of sky created by the upper reaches of enclosing scaffolding in 004, evokes a powerful sense of man's inability to reach that divine state which appears just out of reach.

Few galleries featured only and or large paperwork. "Unto this Last" a woodcut triptych by Andrea Buettner (Hollybush Gardens/ London) of "St. Francis sermonizing to the birds" (two sheets @ 180x120cm), flanked by "Tears" scattered on a black field and an enormous loaf of "Bread /Pebble".  Part of an ongoing interest in convergences of artmaking and religious practice, the series, "The Poverty of Riches", Buettner selected the woodcut media because of associations with manual, daily labor. The overall contextualization seems more significant than the individual works which seem experiential witnesses of the artist's investigatory process.  "Haus mit Raumkristallen" a series of small drawings of suburban houses (21x 30cm) by Torsten Slama had wall power (Galerie Vera Gliem/ Cologne).   Octahedral crystal shapes with yellow tints indicating energy centers hover above the roofs of houses rendered in an architectural style with brickwork details.  The drawings radiate a utopian uber-calm and surreal unease, a solitary bicycle is seen inside an open garage, crystalline pyramids rest in manicured lawns with flowerbeds, surpassing his paintings in intrigue.

The expanded Art-Cologne was a huge success.  Sales were brisk.  A Tom Wesselmann painting "Smoker" sold for EUR 2.3m, and a drawing for EUR 42,000.   An Art-cologne press release reveals more sale information.  There was almost too much to see. The convention center is easy to reach by public transportation and during the fair a variety of cafés on site offer refreshment.  For printmaking cognoscenti, Cologne offers the additional pleasure of a visit to the Kaethe Kollwitz Museum and its an extraordinary collection perhaps the most complete anywhere. 

CCVess, All rights reserved. 

Art is seeing and understanding.
Art is  a way to discover that which is on the tip of the tongue, floating, sensed, known, but not yet put into words.    

Art is a process of discovering, investigating, parsing, questioning, testing, measuring conceptions, opening possibilities, rejecting dead ends, reshaping, reformulating and reassessing. 

Art is a record of thoughts, meanings, feelings and responses to news, society and the environment, communicated through an alphabet of color and materials.

Art is a witness and conveyor of culture that can be seen and re-seen.