Andrew Gruft (1937-2021)

The life of Andrew Gruft was celebrated last night at Cecil Green Park House, a big ass Edwardian era mansion designed by Samuel Maclure in 1912. In my dozen or so conversations with Andrew (a UBC Professor of Architecture for many years), I never knew what he thought of Edwardian mansions, though I suspect he had an understanding of them and might well have discussed them on a case by case basis, looking at each design and structure on its own terms, judging its success or failure on those terms.

And of course in my careful approach to a discussion of what Andrew might think about anything I feel myself bracing for his sudden presence, to tell me, No Turner, you're full of shit again. Stop standing outside yourself like that, disembodied. What were you feeling when you left the road and walked down the path? Did you feel the embrace? Did it feel yours? Don't me give me this crap about objectivity. Come alive, man!

There were four speeches last night. The first one from a daughter-in-law; the last one from Claudia Beck, Andrew's partner and wife for many years, and with whom he founded an important gallery and built an equally important art collection; and in the middle, a speech by Chris Dikeakos and one by Sarah Milroy, both of which were loving, funny and insightful. It was Sarah who reminded us of Andrew's two voices, what she calls "The Chainsaw" and "The Turtle-Dove." The chainsaw voice was the sparring voice, the one that scared me the first time I heard it because I took it personally; the turtle dove was softer and reserved for concerns over one's health or a stalled project, sometimes as a follow up to the chainsaw voice for those who appeared to take the chainsaw voice personally.

The event ran from 6pm to 11pm, but I left after the speeches, not wanting to eat or drink their words away, wanting to contemplate them instead and, I guess, speak to Andrew in my own mind, the sun having finally come out in full, so high in the sky at that, casting its rays onto things it touches only a few long days a year. Like this maple tree just north of UBC's Main Library, which I stopped to stare at because that's where Andrew was, where I could talk to him, hear what he had to say.

Penn and Tell 'er

Jacques Cossart was a French Huguenot who came to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1662. His descendants eventually changed their surname to Cassat, then Cassatt, after Robert, a stock broker/land speculator, decided he needed the extra "t".

Name changes were popular in North America during the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly among those wanting to "fit in" with the Anglo hegemony. Another reason concerned those looking to distance themselves from liability -- a local 20th century example being Ace Gallery's Douglas Chrismas, who dropped the "t" (in Christmas) after the practice of selling the same Rauschenberg three times (at once) became problematic. 

Robert and his wife Katherine Kelso Johnston had seven children, two of them well-known. One was Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), a respected painter in the Impressionist tradition; the other was A. J. Cassatt (1839-1906), the seventh president of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the visionary behind Penn Station (1910-1963), what he imagined would be a "pathway into New York City" and a "depot of the Gods."

I am not sure why Penn Station was torn down after only 53 years of service. Surely money had something to do with it, the land being worth more than what it was being used for (the current site includes that cash mill known as Madison Square Gardens). The wider availability of air travel (over rail travel) supplied further justification, as did the symbolic "need" to update a city that, after World War II, emerged as the seat of Modernism and made this Neo-Classical Gothic structure more a view to the past than a "pathway" to the future.

The last and best known pictures of Penn Station were taken by Walker Evans and stand as an example of "salvage anthropology" (documenting that which is about to be destroyed). A more recent example does not yet have a name but comes to us as contemporary (modern) art: Stan Douglas's Penn Station's Half Century (2020).

The Revolution Will Be Hypothesized (Model of a Monument as Modernism)

Vladimir Tatlin called it Monument to the Third International (1920). A model was built, but its tower was never realized. Indeed, it was only after Russian-style Soviet Communism began to wane (the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968, aka Prague Spring) that larger models were constructed. Which makes sense given that the tower was based on a ruin -- like religion was said to be a ruin in countries that called themselves communist.

On that note, the world's first tower (Genesis 11: 1-9) was the Tower of Babel. Built after the Great Flood, this tower would enable a united human race to enter heaven without having to die first. God looked down on this tower and, as punishment, assigned human beings different languages and scattered us around the world. The assumption here is that we would never develop communication and transportation systems that would allow us to come together, try something like this again.

God had so little faith in us. But we showed him, right?

Right?

Mash Up

Last week the VAG opened its all-hands-on-deck, four-floor Mash Up: the Birth of Modern Culture. I have not yet seen this massive exhibition, but my heart is with the gallery's indefatigable preparitors, who, if this were Soviet Russia fifty years ago, would be rewarded for their work with a week at a dacha on the Kavkazskaya Riviera.

Speaking of mash ups, below are three images.

The first is an architectural rendering of the new Polygon Art Gallery in North Vancouver:

The second is the design concept for the new Vancouver Art Gallery:

And the third is a mash up (completed in 2013) of the first and second images -- the current Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City: