Frank Gehry, Bus Stop Braunschweiger, Hanover, Germany, 1990-4
The artists always told me that they didn’t want sterile white rooms; they wanted something to work against. But museum curators and directors just want the white cube because it’s easy to do and they don’t have to think. They just go and put it up and get out, and it’s cheap to change from show to show. Some stuff just dies in that environment.
Frank Gehry, On the Installation for Billy Al Bengston’s Exhibition at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA, 1968 / 2012
What we were trying to do was to make chicken salad out of chicken shit because we were forced to do so. Studios function that way. A studio is a place where you can take a piece of shit and think of how to fix it.
Billy Al Bengston, On Frank Gehry’s Installation for Bengston’s Exhibition at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA, 1968 / 2012
Paintings are secondary until you sit down and look at them. When I was younger, I thought I was making something new, but the only thing I was doing was reinterpreting the materials and making a decorative object that didn’t have a specific meaning. Paintings are primarily decoration until you sit down and look at them, and most paintings, if you put them in the wrong light, don’t look how they were intended. If a painting needs a light fixture or if it needs a certain wall or something, then it is another thing entirely. So my thinking was to make something that does not need any specific kind of light.
Billy Al Bengston, On Frank Gehry’s Installation for Bengston’s Exhibition at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA, 1968 / 2012
The experience of going to a museum is a totally synthetic situation—walking around, looking at things, standing on your feet. The best a museum does is to put in one these uncomfortable benches in the middle where they don’t belong.
Billy Al Bengston, On Frank Gehry’s Installation for Bengston’s Exhibition at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA, 1968 / 2012
At the time nobody walked around a museum with earphones, and there was no definition of what everything was or meant. Today, everything is spoon-fed, but in those days you had to look. Today, nobody looks. They just listen and walk around and bump into other people.
Billy Al Bengston, On Frank Gehry’s Installation for Bengston’s Exhibition at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA, 1968 / 2012
I had a funny notion that you could bump into architecture without realizing it was 'architecture', and I deluded myself to that idea for some time.
Frank Gehry, “American Architecture Now,” 1980
Richard Serra and I are working on a bridge. A bridge is everything. Talking. A space between. A very Oriental philosophy. It's mind-boggling what a bridge is.
Frank Gehry, “American Architecture Now,” 1980
It's very hard to change your aesthetic. I don't know how to do it. It's an elusive quest that I want to take.
Frank Gehry, “American Architecture Now,” 1980
I guess I approach architecture more scientifically, like there are going to be breakthroughs and you are going to create more information. It's adding information to the pot, not necessarily regurgitating other, older ideas.
Frank Gehry, “American Architecture Now,” 1980
Minimalism and simplicity get conflated. The Barcelona Pavilion is minimal and probably considered simple. But the connection to roof to wall if you do the forensics is very complicated and not simple. Simple is a thought, a word, a smell. Minimal is mostly complicated.
Frank Gehry, “Post-it Note for Hans Ulrich Obrist,” 2015
nickkahler reblogged
Frank Gehry, Model of Temple Shack, 1985 (via archiveofaffinities)