[Preservation] takes place through a variety of tactics, including pure simulation.
Rem Koolhaas in Jorge Otero-Pailos, “OMA’s Preservation Manifesto” from Preservation is Overtaking Us, 2014
In a vertical layout with small floors, there is less research variety on each floor. Chance meetings in an elevator tend to terminate in the lobby, whereas chance meetings in a corridor tended to lead to technical discussions.
Henry Zimmerman, “On Creativity,” c. 2013
Architecture is monstruous in the way each choice leads to the reduction of possibility. It implies a regime of either/or decisions often claustrophobic, even for the architect. The notion of the Museum seems at the brink of a quantum leap. The very success of the museum as an institution - a pivotal center of contemporary society - threatens to engulf its prime function: the organised contemplation of art. A new conceptual framework must incorporate the additional roles and expectations that the museum has recently acquired. Educational, media-related and production sections of the museum sponsor a variety of equivalent experiences from video to research to public programs and performances that are centered around the art without necessarily involving a direct confrontation with the art object.
Rem Koolhaas, "On the MoMA Charette," 1997
Rankings create order where there is chaos. They enumerate the innumerable variety of the world and give us a small sense of mastery over our environment.
AP Studio Art Exam
The AP Studio Art Exam evaluates High School students based on three objective criteria:
- Quality: Overall Significance of the Works
- Concentration: Ability to Explore an Idea
- Breadth: Ability to Use a Variety of Artistic Techniques
The Category of Breadth is further subdivided into the following characteristics:
This evaluative criteria presupposes a defined scope of the creation of art itself, and curiously provides a critical filter to established artists on how to compare their works with others. Quality and Concentration seem to be innate criteria used by artists in the self-evaluation of their own work, but Breadth seems to be a category manipulated ad hoc relative to the given examination being undertaken by the artist. Thus, significant works of art, such as that of Ellsworth Kelly for example, may disregard many of these "Breadth" characteristics in favor of the specific introspection of an artistic idea. However, even the work of someone as abstract as Piet Mondrian can exhibit each of these characteristics to a surprising degree, which is nothing to say of the Old Masters, such as Johannes Vermeer or Caravaggio. However, like much of contemporary culture, we feel the need for several paradoxical situations:
- Objective Examination of Subjective Work
- Over-categorization and Over-classification
- Sequence of Predetermined Pedagogical Milestones
- Limited Conception of Artistic Paths
- Indifference to History and Theory
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