RICHARD HAAS 4/18/14

Richard Haas is first and foremost an artist, muralist and printmaker, but has been called a magician, an illusionist and a seer; words that make perfect sense when you see his recent exhibition titled: PROJECTS & PROPOSALS-HYPOTHETICAL, UNREALIZED, DESTROYED 1975-2013. I am a native New Yorker, daughter of an architect involved in building Middle Income-Cooperative Housing (Penn Station South, Coop City, Seward Park, The Amalgamated, etc.) whose spirit was frequently deflated by the architectural transformations in the city. Often careless, downright ugly, indifferent to historical tradition and the relationship to the community, au-courant structures spring up driven by the financiers and real estate power brokers having access to politicians who then make crucial decisions as to a building’s life breath and eventual demise, paving the way for “new growth” on the streets where we live.

In a microcosm we see one man’s personal struggle with many of these issues. Paul Goldberger the eminent Architectural critic wrote, as early as 1978 that:

“The art of Richard Haas is at once entirely realistic and quite fantastic…. He imagines architectural elements and then paints them in situations where they achieve a reality, almost a life of their own… When in his large outdoor and indoor works Haas chose to ignore the existing structural style, an entire world of imaginary and fantastic architectural space was made possible. The mural on the Boston Architecture Center, painted on the back of a “brutal style” building became a cross section cutaway of an 18th Century pantheon. A small cubical lobby interior in Chicago became an interior similar to San Miniato in Florence…”

And in 2013 in an interview with Richard Haas on CBS Sunday Morning, we get some background on his one-man “urban renewal” struggles and dreams. At the end of the interview, in answer to the question - what do you want your legacy to be?  Haas responds that he “likes the idea of making enough work… so that “some of it, only some of it will stick around.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AYRImFtTvc

Photographs in the show are overlaid with graphite, pencil, gouache, including several aquatints and etchings of BEFORE and AFTER PROPOSALS, HYPOTHETICAL PROPOSALS, and REALIZED AND UNREALIZED plans which are mesmerizing to see, and at the same time have a gripping poignancy as we look at the accompanying text and see the word DESTROYED crying out at us, the building having been either torn down, along with Richard’s mural or painted over - after being part of the cultural landscape for many years. There are 28 pieces in the show – all rich in humor and pathos. Some examples: HYPOTHETICAL PROPOSAL: Tomb from Petra on building Façade near 9^th Ave. and 33^rd Street; BEFORE AND AFTER SHADOW SERIES: To paint the shadow of the Old Madison Square Garden on a wall on 23^rd Street; HYPOTHETICAL PROPOSAL: A portion of the Wailing Wall on the side of a church near the corner of 33^rd and 9^th Avenue.
Images: http://tinyurl.com/krwmoqb

 From the first moment I saw the BEFORE and AFTER SHADOW SERIES, I was an enthusiast. Seduced by the beauty of his design, the quirky humor conflated with a trenchant political outlook, addressing contemporary issues or evoking memories of buildings that once were rooted on those grounds, dignified and secure in their construction and connection with the earth, and now forgotten/wiped out – a reminder of our own fleeting life cycle.

FXFOWLE

FX FOWLE ARCHITECTS

22 West 19^th Street, NYC11^th fl. 

April 17-June 13, 2014

Gallery Hours: M-F 9am-5pm.