Lost Modernist is Found Anew

THEY emerge from archival boxes, their brilliance barely dimmed by time. Vivid reds butt up against acidic yellows and crisp, abstract lines give way to elaborate pastoral scenes. Precious remnants now, the textiles of Michael O'Connell are the physical legacy of a quixotic tale that unfolded in a patch of bayside Melbourne almost 90 years ago.

Liberated from their protective casings, these glorious folds of silk, linen and rayon have been gathered together from archives and attics in Australia and England, awaiting this moment when the man dubbed ''the lost modernist'' can be found anew.

O'Connell was a British soldier who fought on the Western Front in World War I before he arrived in Australia in 1920. During his 17 years here, he became a pioneering textile artist and champion of the burgeoning modernist movement.

Living - literally and metaphorically - on Melbourne's margins amid the gums and tea trees of Beaumaris, he established a rough camp made of little more than a tent and some scraps of furniture, and spent his days painting and growing flowers to sell. When a health inspector condemned the camp as a hazard in 1923, O'Connell was faced with what would be a life-changing decision: return to England with little to show for his time abroad or stay and build a home.

During the next two years, his innovation driven by a lack of money, O'Connell crafted a striking house and studio from handmade concrete blocks, dispensing with the architectural flourishes and traditional building materials of the time. The building of ''Barbizon'' was a defining period in which his skills as a craftsman and designer emerged.

Professor of architectural history and director of RMIT Design Archives Harriet Edquist says the Barbizon project was central to O'Connell's creative development.

''He got the feel of using his hands, of craft,'' she says. ''Before that he was mucking around. He was a watercolourist but he wasn't going to make his mark there.''

Edquist began researching O'Connell's ''wild and woolly'' life three years ago and next week releases her book on his work, The Lost Modernist. A related exhibition opens at Bendigo Art Gallery today. Co-curated by Edquist and the gallery's senior curator of collections and research, Tansy Curtin, the exhibition includes the length of linen that set Edquist ''off on this road'' in search of the O'Connell story.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/lost-modernist-is-found-anew-20111125-1ny4i.html#ixzz1f3lA4uN5

Old Winnipeg Airport Terminal a Modernist Gem

It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase "as pretty as an airport" appear -- Douglas Adams

- Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, might have felt differently about airports had he seen the new Richardson International Airport terminal that on Sunday welcomed its first visitors.

The new airport stands as an impressive welcome mat for our city, a symbol of modernity and progress. Its dramatic curving glass walls anchor the building to the prairie horizon and celebrate in a single sweeping view the light and landscape that define our province. It has space, colour and light in proportions that stimulate the visitor and inspire a feeling of pride.

That last sentence, although an appropriate description of the new building, was actually written in the Winnipeg Tribune in 1964 for the opening of the terminal it is replacing. The completion of the new airport has focused public attention on the fate of its familiar old neighbour, celebrated as one of the finest pieces of Modernist architecture in Canada.

The debate over the demolition of the old terminal highlights a broader question: Why should cities attempt to preserve elements of their built history?

Advocates of historic preservation are often criticized for being motivated by nostalgia while standing in the way of progress and growth. This can sometimes be the case, but successful cities are often able to capitalize on their architectural heritage as a way of attracting growth while enriching the character and livability of their urban environment.

Cities are like storybooks. The most compelling ones are those that weave together layers of complex narrative. We travel to places like Montreal and New York and are inspired by the rich texture of their streetscapes. The buildings narrate the stories of those cities, making them more interesting to visit, more comfortable to live in and more attractive to invest in.

The most interesting cities are those that maintain a rich mixture of buildings that represent different periods in history, knit together in an urban tapestry. It isn't loudly celebrated, but Winnipeg is lucky enough to be one of these cities. Our distinct collection of buildings uniquely illustrates the lineage of modern Canadian design throughout the last century.

Winnipeg's diverse assemblage of building styles has even piqued the interest of John Martins-Manteiga, director of the Toronto museum Dominion Modern, billed as "Canada's foremost archive of 20th-century Canadian architecture and design."
Dominion Modern is an institution that promotes and celebrates design through high-quality publications and sensational, almost theatrical exhibitions that inspire public dialogue and education.

Martins-Manteiga describes Winnipeg as a "tremendous city" with a "jaw-dropping inventory of 19th- and 20th-century architecture." He sees great potential to capitalize on this asset and celebrate the city's diverse architectural heritage on a national stage.

To read more of this content at The Winnipeg Free Press, click here.

India's Modernist Marvel

Is Chandigarh unique? There can't be too many cities in the world that have been designed from scratch to resemble a living organism, complete with head, heart, limbs and circulatory system. Le Corbusier, the Swiss-born modernist architect who was hired to design Chandigarh in 1950, is often described as a visionary, yet the north Indian city is also a tribute to his eccentricity.

To read more of this content at iol travel, click here.

The Other Father of Cubism

The Acquavella Galleries’ splendid Georges Braque exhibition is a 42-gun salute to this pioneering French Modernist. The first large Braque survey to be staged in New York in more than 20 years, it musters a vigorous if compressed account of more than five decades of art making, with 42 paintings and collages, almost all top-notch. More than half have been borrowed from American and European museums; the rest come from private collections and in several cases have not been on public display in quite some time.

To read more of this content at The New York Times, click here.

Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens

Scotland's creepiest building in £10m restoration scheme

St Peter's Seminary, a masterpiece of radical architecture, has lain derelict for 30 years and fallen prey to vandals.

An appeal has been launched to save a derelict building hidden in an overgrown wood in Scotland that is described as one of the greatest modernist buildings in Europe.

With its long, clean lines covered by graffiti and its concrete greyed with rainwater, St Peter's Seminary has lain in a state of ruin since it was abandoned by the Catholic church in 1980. The vast, crumbling building is accessible only by foot and, despite a number of restoration proposals over recent decades, it has been left to decay and to the vandals. It has been dubbed "Scotland's shame" and "Scotland's creepiest building", yet a plan to turn the ruin into a hotel in 2007 was dropped because of the cost of restoration.

To read more of this content at The Observer, click here.

A virtual 360-degree tour can be found here.

Landmark Elevator Coming Down

"Once hailed by a master of architecture, the slow demolition of the Ogden Federal Elevator has begun.

Built in 1915, the stark, hulking edifice was once featured in famed architect Le Corbusier's Vers Une Architecture next to the Parthenon; a symbol in concrete of the noble, functional prairie. Now it sits in a traffic black spot, sandwiched by a sewage treatment plant and the producers of asphalt shingles.

Located in the southeast of the city and within sight of Deerfoot Trail, the building is nearing its end. About a fifth of the structure has been razed.

Lamenting the loss of the historical monument, which was once a city landmark, the Calgary Heritage Authority has taken pains to photograph its inner silos.

"Ideally, we hate to see it torn down, but without any practical adaptive use for the building, it's hard for us to advocate for it to be saved," said Scott Jolliffe, the authority's chairman."


To read more of this content at the Calgary Herald, click here.