Today in class we finished the movie Sketches of Frank Gehry. This movie or documentary took us through the process he goes through for every work of art and building he creates.
He starts off his thought process by first getting inspired. His inspirations come from everywhere and anything even a garbage can. Once he gets inspired he makes scribble drawings or sketches. Once he has a good feel for how he wants his building to be he makes a replica out of paper with the help of his assistant and he tweaks it has he goes on. Then it is incredible to me how he can take these models and then actually bring them to life.
There are a couple things I really like about this guys work. For one he doesn’t let his building take full control over him, the people and the other buildings. Like he said he wants to “respect” the other buildings. A way he does this is to take similar patterns, rhythms and styles and incorporate it into his piece enabling all the buildings to flow beautifully together.
As far as the piece its self he uses a lot of metal. What I find clever is he gives it a cozy feel by adding rooms that contain wood. For me personally wood and metal are at opposite ends of the spectrum and I would never put them together. But Gehry did a phenomenal job at making it work well and actually changed my mind how I feel about putting together those two forms.
Another thing I liked about this movie and Gehry’s building is how it showed us the most modern someone could be. He broke rules but also followed the rules at the same time for his works of art. He is a man who is really capable of working in old and new ideas into his work. I found it funny how he discovered that he needed to start using a computer for his work because he got stumbled with a staircase in one of his buildings; but yet he still uses his paper models where as now a lot of architects use computers to figure out everything the building consists of. I feel that this video was a really good wrap up to our discussions and readings about modern art. It allowed us to have background knowledge to understanding the full potential of his work.
