Wouter Davidts

Triple Bond is not a book about museum architecture.
That is, not only. While the fourteen essays gathered in this
volume focus on the architecture of museums built over
the past five decades, they also concentrate on larger developments
in art within that same timeframe. Likewise Triple
Bond is not exclusively about art and architecture either.
Even though it deals with the dialogue between the disciplines
and practices of art and architecture, it contemplates
just as much the changes within that very institution
where the dialogue has been taking place most intensely:
the museum.
With this collection of essays Wouter Davidts advances
the tenet that art, architecture, and the museum are engaged
in a complex yet inevitably historical relationship with
one another, that is, they are triply bound to each other.
The book is divided into four parts: Platforms, Artists,
Buildings, and Exhibitions, and contains case studies of
the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans
Van Beuningen, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Temporary
Contemporary, p.s. 1, as well as the Antwerp Museum
aan de Stroom (mas). It offers in-depth analyses of the
understanding and use of museum and exhibition space by
such widely acknowledged artists as Marcel Broodthaers,
Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta-Clark.
Finally, it critically assesses contemporary responses to the
spaces of the museum by the artist collective superflex at
the Van Abbemuseum and by the assorted artists participating
in the Unilever Series at Tate Modern.

Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space is a comprehensive publication with both visual and written essays on the work and practice of Antwerp-based architect and urban planner Deleu and T.O.P. office. It brings together, for the first time, an international group of artists and scholars in an effort to chart this intri­cate body of work, and to situate this practice within a broader historical and theoretical framework.

The bookproposes a conceptual topography, articulated upon seven lemmas: imitation, architecture, sculpture, mobility, scale, depiction and manifesto. A portrait, a catalogue of the works, exhibitions and writings (1967-2011), as well as an exchange about the future prospects of T.O.P. office complete this unique and groundbreaking volume.

With contributions by Maarten Delbeke (NL/BE), Aglaia Konrad (AUT/BE), Teresa Stoppani (K), Kersten Geers (BE), Felicity D. Scott (US), Luc Deleu (BE), John Macarthur (AU), Marjolijn Dijkman (NL), Guy Châtel (BE), Metahaven (NL), Stefaan Vervoort (BE), Manfred Pernice (DE), Wouter Davidts (BE), Koenraad Dedobbeleer & Kris Kimpe (BE), and Isabelle De Smet & Steven van den Bergh (BE).

The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work is an original collection of essays on the artist’s studio as key trope, institutional construct, and critical theme in art of the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century. This book ambitiously questions the many assumptions that underlie the popular and international discussions of the so-called post-studio era. Instead of upholding the accepted wisdom or narrative that the arist’s studio has fallen, it traces its shifting nature and identity in postwar art production and art criticism, across media and geographies. The essays are devoted to artists at work, or to individual artists and their understanding and use of the place of work (Eva Hesse, Mark Rothko, Olafur Eliasson, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris, Daniel Buren, Martin Kippenberger, Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades, Jan De Cock).

Editors: Wouter Davidts & Kim Paice

With contributions by Wouter Davidts, Julia Gelshorn, MaryJo Marks, Kim Paice, Kirsten Swenson, Morgan Thomas, Philip Ursprung, Jon Wood.

Designed by Metahaven, Amsterdam

CRACK: Koen van den Broek is published on the occasion of the exhibition Curbs & Cracks by Koen van den Broek at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent in the spring of 2010 (www.smak.be). The publication does not serve as a conventional catalogue but as a proper discursive and visual project alongside the exhibition. It is the first substantial study of the work and practice of van den Broek, opening up different theoretical and conceptual perspectives.

A wide range of contributors has been invited to discuss particular topics within the work of van den Broek, based on their proper backgrounds and expertise as writers, academics and artists: the legacy of abstract painting (Andrew Renton, Goldsmiths, London), the collaboration with John Baldessari (John Welchman, University of California, San Diego), film as a source of inspiration (Merel van Tilburg, Université de Génève), the role and meaning of photography (Dirk Lauwaert, Brussels), exhibition strategies (Liesbeth Bik en Jos Van der Pol, Rotterdam) and the representation of landscape and architecture (Wouter Davidts, VU University Amsterdam).

The book is compiled by Wouter Davidts and designed by Metahaven (Amsterdam).

Publisher: Valiz, Amsterdam (www.valiz.nl) and Lannoo, Tielt (www.lannoo.be)

Out of Print since 2011.

See also:
www.valiz.nl
www.koenvandenbroek.org

This cd-rom publication contains the proceedings of the conference Museum in ¿Motion? that took place on 12 & 13 November 2004 at Museum Het Domein in Sittard and at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The cd-rom is shell to a fully-fledged book. You can either navigate through the papers on a digital level or choose to create a material copy by printing them. The event was jointly organised by the Jan Van Eyck Academie Maastricht, Museum Het Domein, and the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning of Ghent University (UGent).

Although new museums sit amongst the most prestigious and important commissions for the contemporary architectural discipline, there is no substantial discourse within architectural theory on museum architecture. The concepts employed in discussions around museum architecture tend to be reductive and simplistic, such as the provocation that museums need to be built ‘for art’.

Bouwen voor de Kunst? both weakens and nuances this statement. I argue that the common tendency to conceive of museums primarily as buildings immediately reduces the issue of museum architecture to the relation of art to architecture, negates the complexity of the museum’s architectural programme and underestimates the role of the institutional interface between the two disciplines.

The chapters do not offer an architecture-critical discussion of recent museums, but an architecture- and art-theoretical examination of the museum institution. The statement that museums need to be built for art is assessed by an in-depth analysis of a series of artistic practices that have led a critical investigation of art’s place in the museum (Minimal art, Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark and the Alternative Spaces Movement). The resulting research into the spatial and architectural preoccupations of these artists then serves as a theoretical framework for an analysis of the shift in architectural programme between the Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. Davidts reveals that this shift – between the built to the reconverted factory – leads to crucial changes in the translation of the institutional program of the museum of contemporary art – the relentless aspiration to act as a site of artistic production – into the architectural brief.

In Bouwen voor de Kunst? I demonstrate that the museum never delivers a home for art, but a stage on which where artworks are granted the possibiltiy to lead another life than that of their so-called authentic moment of production, to gain meaning elsewhere.

Bouwen voor de kunst? is the book-version of my PhD (GHent University, 2003).

Paperback.

In the 13th issue of the American Architecture journal Any of 1996, devoted to the museum architecture in general and the Tate Modern project in particular, editor Cynthia Davidson asked the provocative question “What kind of ‘new’ museum for the 21st century can be considered serious architecture if it is just and adaption of an old power station, of another former industrial space as a place for the display of art?” Davidson regretted the fact that wishes for urban regeneration were given preference over ambitions for architectural experimentation: “Is architecture willing to become a kind of bandaid that is simply applied, however artfully, to urban sores?”
Nearly two decades later Davidson’s shrewd question demands for critical reconsideration, if not in the least since the facts seem to have proven her wrong. In the past 15 years of its existence Tate Modern has internationally established itself as the most popular museum of modern and contemporary art, attracting the largest crowds ever seen worldwide. Despite the many skeptical, if not outright negative, reception by professionals of the new building and the inaugural collection display respectively, visitors have flooded Tate Modern’s spaces – amounting to a stellar 5,7 million visitors last year. The reconversion of the Bankside Power Station may not have been the most visionary project in either architectural or institutional terms – it ultimately recuperated the critical occupation of raw spaces devised by artists in the 1960s as a mere cosmetic display strategy of alterity – it did however emerge as one of the most prosperous projects in civic terms – unlike any other the museum has managed to draw in a public of different ages, distinctive cultural upbringing, and diverse ethnic backgrounds.
This essay attempts to reformulate Davidson’s question in the light of the current Transforming Tate Modern project, the long-awaited extension of the museum by Herzog & de Meuron. Where then should the primary challenges in terms of architecture for the ‘new’ museum for the 21st century be situated? What part of the architectural brief truly summons architecture today? Is it the gallery space, which needs to accommodate and display the arts and artists, or rather the social space, which is expected to welcome and activate the visitors and the public at large? Or could it be a mixture of both?
To this end it is mandatory to recalibrate the terms upon which current and future museum buildings projects can be assessed. With the advent of Tate Modern at the start of the 21st century the conditions have radically altered. Or even boldly stated, Tate Modern played a major role in altering those conditions. The traditional museum program of collecting, studying and publicly displaying artefacts has lost pride of place. The scholarly tenet of the museum has become far from obsolete, but it does have to contend with a rapidly expanding social vocation of public education and popular leisure. Ever more museum institutions have to fulfil both duties. Fathomably the museum designs have to follow suit.
This essay aims to evaluate the consequences of this seismic shift in in institutional policy and management for architecture. How does it affect the classical adagio that ‘museums should be built for the arts’? What is the position carved out by the Transforming Tate Modern project? How well does the building expedite the institution in confronting the demands of the 21st century?

For Play Van Abbe, an exhibition program that invited artists to question the function of the museum in the 21st century, the Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX commissioned professional welders to reproduce a specific artwork from the collection: Untitled (Wall Structure) by Sol LeWitt, 1972. Relying on the 1967 Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, in which LeWitt stated that “[t]he idea becomes a machine that makes the art,” SUPERFLEX argued that the geometric wall sculpture could be regarded as a piece of information waiting to be ‘liberated.’ FREE SOL LEWITT playfully tackled historical and present-day questions of authorship, authenticity, originality as well as the ensuing laws of copyright and usage.
Proceeding from the surprising omission of significant archival material on LeWitt’s relationship with the institution, this essay questions the project’s acclaimed critical engagement with the preservation and fabrication of collective cultural memory in the contemporary museum.

In April 2007, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam finally began the construction of a new extension, designed by the Dutch firm Benthem Crouwel Architects, after seventeen years of internal and public controversy. In the context of a global enthusiasm for museum refurbishment or renewal, this article analyses the new building for the Stedelijk Museum and asks if it will bring about the long-awaited salvation. Via a detailed analysis of a report of 2003 on the future of the museum on the one hand and of the building brief on the other, the article demonstrates that the new extension of the Stedelijk is not so much aimed at defining a new and challenging museum typology, but is plagued by a both pragmatic and nostalgia about a past period in its history, epitomised by the charismatic museum director Willem Sandberg. It shows that the regard for Sandberg’s role in the growth and development of the Stedelijk as an institution is inversely proportional to the respect he accorded to the Stedelijk as a building.

For Play Van Abbe, an exhibition program that invited artists to question the function of the museum in the 21st century, the Danish artist collective SUPERFLEX commissioned professional welders to reproduce a specific artwork from the collection: Untitled (Wall Structure) by Sol LeWitt, 1972. Relying on the 1967 Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, in which LeWitt stated that “[t]he idea becomes a machine that makes the art,” SUPERFLEX argued that the geometric wall sculpture could be regarded as a piece of information waiting to be ‘liberated.’ FREE SOL LEWITT playfully tackled historical and present-day questions of authorship, authenticity, originality as well as the ensuing laws of copyright and usage.
Proceeding from the surprising omission of significant archival material on LeWitt’s relationship with the institution, this paper will question the project’s acclaimed critical engagement with the preservation and fabrication of collective cultural memory in the contemporary museum.

Ever since the start of the firm T.O.P. office in 1970, Antwerp-based architect and urban planner Luc Deleu (°1944, Duffel, Belgium) has developed an intricate yet coherent body of work, consisting of architectural and urban plans, projects, and designs, theoretical models and databases, cartographic studies and schemes, as well as sculptures and monumental installations for museums, urban piazzas and roundabouts – navigating, as it were, through the respective fields of architecture, urban planning and the visual arts, all the while formulating unique and often revealing views on either disciplines.

In this lecture I will focus on an extensive body of sculptural projects and installations which Deleu started in the fall of 1980 and which he has consistently labelled as ‘lessons in scale and perspective’. In an interview in 1987, Deleu stated that this decision was fuelled by his desire to work with ‘two typical (...) and rather formal notions in architecture’. This turn to formalism was made consciously, he argued, since his work prior to 1980 was always termed ‘political.’

In his early career Deleu gained fame as the enfant terrible, the mandatory paper architect of the Belgian architectural community. With imaginative projects and conceptual proposals, most of which received significant critical acclaim within the art world, Deleu took up position against the self-indulgent and hypocritical nature of the disciplines of architecture and urban planning in general, and against the institutionalization and bureaucratic nature of the architectural profession in particular.

In my lecture I will argue that the lessons in scale and perspective can be put on a direct par with the ‘pamphletary’ works of the previous decade as they shift the overt dissidence of the architect’s activist work towards a critical revision of the scope and modes of address of architectural design. Paradoxically, this polemical endeavor first and foremost took place within the secluded realm of art.

“One thing that I am involved in about painting,” Barnett Newman mentioned in a 1965 interview with David Sylvester, “is that the painting should give man a sense of place: that he knows he’s there, so he’s aware of himself.” One of his main aims was to ensure that an onlooker became aware of his bodily presence and gained a sense of his “own scale” when standing in front of one of his large color field paintings. The work and figure of Newman present us with a series of intriguing paradoxes regarding size and scale. While Newman is often portrayed as a pioneer of big canvases, he developed a method of working in opposite size relationships. Large and wide paintings were consistently balanced out by small and narrow ones. In 1966 he indicated that he was “not involved in size for its own sake” but rather in moving his paintings “into a sense of large scale.” At the same time the artist, who was deeply invested in painterly abstraction, advocated for a renewed interest in subject matter, a concern that once again was intimately connected with scale: “[s]ize doesn't count. It's scale that counts. It's human scale that counts, and the only way you can achieve human scale is by content.” One of the most famous yet puzzling photographs of Newman show the artist and an unidentified woman standing in front of the painting Cathedra in his studio in New York in 1958, nearly touching the painting’s surface with their noses.  This talk will tackle this and other similarly staged photographs of Newman standing or sitting in front of his paintings as key documents to explore the intricate apprehension of the scale of painting that Newman’s work advances.