Autumn 2001 - the house on the hill
C97 Article
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| All images in this article: Jorge Pardo: 4166 Sea View Lane ;
photo Alex Sade; courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles |
Emma Mahony explores a unique project in Los Angeles by Jorge Pardo, where art and architecture are inseparable.
The house, broadly conceived, is all that humanity has added to the natural landscape.
Heidegger
Los Angeles might be best described as an enormous sprawling village with an anti-urban bias. It is a city which has been planned in a very fragmentary and uncohesive manner, described in the writings of the German exile Alfred Doblin as a "murderous desert of houses...a horrible garden city." 1
The Los Angeles of today has been fashioned from the Mojave desert. Given its improbable beginnings, it has come to be regarded as a 'generative city' in which anything is possible. Today it is still expanding, encroaching inch by inch upon the neighbouring desert. 'Newness' is an attractive commodity in a city where national heritage is an alien concept. In many respects postwar Modernism has become the foundation stone on which the cultural history of LA has subsequently been built. Domestic architecture, in particular, owes a considerable amount to this Modernist legacy which was imported to LA from the shores of Europe by a generation of exiles in the 30s (amongst whom were the famed architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler and their younger contemporaries Raphael Soriano, Gregory Ain and Harwell Harris). Since the 30s, various modifications on the standard format of the 'bungalow' - most notably the tract housing of the 40s and case-study homes of the 50s and 60s - have become the archetypal format for domestic architecture in LA.
Considering the significant role domestic architecture has played in shaping the urban fabric of Los Angeles, it is not so very surprising perhaps that the LA-based artist Jorge Pardo chose to build his own private domicile as a work of art. The house that Jorge built is a split-level Modernist bungalow, after Schindler and Ain, situated in the Mount Washington Hills area of Los Angeles; its title is the same as its address: 4166 Sea View Lane .
Prior to building 4166 Sea View Lane , Pardo's oeuvre included Modernist-influenced furniture, such as chairs, tables, desks, dressers, beds and lighting. In 1996 he furnished an entire restaurant at a Trade Fair in Leipzig ( Rosa ), with a collection of his bleached-wood tables and chairs and a selection of his pendant lamps. He has also built a Reading Room for the permanent collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and more recently he has customised a white sailboat which, instead of sailing around the world, can be see from time to time dry-docked in various art museums and galleries.
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4166 Sea View Lane raises a number of interesting questions with regard to its role. The first thought that comes to mind is what exactly does it purport to be - a house, a home, a piece of public sculpture, or a museum? If 4166 Sea View Lane is a work of art, what kind of work of art is it? Why build a house as a work of art? What relationship, if any, has it to its location and to other contexts? And what were Pardo's influences in terms of design, architecture and, most importantly, fine art?
Having been invited by MoCA (the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) to take part in their Focus exhibition series, Pardo proposed a project which addressed two concerns pertinent to him at the time - one practical and one philosophical. The former was a desire to build a home. He had acquired a site and, having previously published an edition of ten blueprints for a house, wished to realise the house outlined in the plans. His philosophical intent was, in his own words, "to make a work of art that a museum can't handle." The result was a proposal to build a house which, for a given period of time, would operate as a satellite venue for MoCA before becoming his home. 2 MoCA agreed and contributed a sum of about $10,000 towards the project, thereby validating it as a work of art commissioned by an art institution. Pardo raised the remaining $290,000, thereby making it his home.
First things first. Clearly, 4166 Sea View Lane is a building; exactly what sort of building it functions as is debatable. Between the eleventh of October and the fifteenth of November 1998, it was run as a satellite exhibition venue by MoCA. For that period of time it became a museum. In effect, Pardo brought the institution into his own private space. A collection of Pardo's hand-blown colourful pendant shape lamps, on loan from the permanent collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, were temporarily installed in the garage-cum-studio. The property was policed with uniformed security guards and official museums opening hours were enforced.
Private spaces have from time to time been converted into museological 'shrines' to their previously famous owners; however, it rarely happens the other way around. Not so in the case of 4166 Sea View Lane : when MoCA moved out and the temporary museum reverted back to being a house, Pardo moved back in. 4166 Sea View Lane once had public aspirations, now it is a private space. Or a least as private as a space which doubles as a 'public sculpture' can be.
Any thorough understanding of 4166 Sea View Lane must begin with an investigation into its immediate context - its location in Los Angeles amidst a postwar tradition of domestic architecture. Metaphorically Los Angeles could be read as a melting pot of architecture, design and artistic innovation. Since the 30s a strong tradition of domestic architecture has contributed to shaping the urban fabric of the city, a tradition which has subsequently and subtly influenced other fields of cultural production. Pardo, for one, attributes his interest in architecture to living in LA. He claims that, in the absence of a strong art-historical or painting tradition, LA artists have looked instead to an architectural one. For him the 'language of architecture' is a tool with which his practice can engage with a fine-art and particularly a Modernist tradition. "We have domestic architecture, but we don't have the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For me, what formed my understanding of space was experiencing rooms, places, houses." 3
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Where the sheer monumentality and 'placelessness' of public art can from time to time alienate its public, Pardo's 30,000-square-foot 'sculpture' is perfectly at home in its surroundings. It is quite simply a house situated amongst many other houses in a district in LA zoned for domestic housing. It is not completely out of context in its situation either. The Mount Washington Hills area is noted for its one-off architect-designed houses, built by, among others, John Lautner, Richard Neutra and Gregory Ain, and in keeping with the location, 4166 Sea View Lane employs a similar redwood vernacular to that of his neighbours' houses.
From a historical perspective, 4166 Sea View Lane quite evidently dialogues with a tradition of reductivist design. While paying homage to the utopian aspirations shared by Schindler, Neutra and Harris in the design of their steel-and-glass-framed houses, the design of 4166 Sea View Lane shows an awareness of their failings. The transparency of these original 'glass houses', coupled with their secluded settings - often in private woodlands - was meant to have the effect of connecting their inhabitants with nature but ironically served to alienate them. Pardo's solution to this problem was to invert the structure of the 'glass house', designing a 'U-shaped' house with a fortress-like exterior and almost completely transparent interior. Hence, when viewed from the street (and from the eyes of his 'prying' neighbours), 4166 Sea View Lane, looks like a low-lying timber bunker perched on top of a hill, but when viewed from the rear and from the privacy of the garden, the house is almost completely transparent. To such ends the perimeter is completely windowless, adhering to a classic hacienda-courtyard scheme but, in stark contrast to the 'closed' façade, the walls of the eight polished-concrete-and-redwood rooms facing outwards from the inside of the 'U' are glazed almost completely from floor to ceiling. According to Pardo, his intention was "to make a courtyard house that would look in on itself, but would also look out." 4
Although clearly indebted to certain conventions of Modernist architecture, there is a lot about the design of 4166 Sea View Lane which has little to do with architectural conventions but more to do with sculpture. The layout of the house is quite unusual. This, to some extent, is dictated by the site on which it is built. 4166 Sea View Lane is built in a roughly 'U-shaped' formation around a central landscaped courtyard. The curved base of the 'U' sits on the apex of a hill and the two extending arms follow the gradient of the hill downwards, which inside the house has resulted in a series of ramps and steps compensating for the slope. The flat roof slopes accordingly, which in turn dictates the height of the ceilings within, resulting in ceilings which range dramatically in height from seven to fourteen feet.
Rather then designing a house as a homogeneous unit, it appears that Pardo was more concerned with the individual shape, orientation and lighting of each of the individual rooms - which has resulted in a long winding chain of interconnecting rooms which twist and turn at awkward angles. Many of the rooms are built on more than one level and incorporate ramps and steps. A trip from the living room, which is located at the top of the site, to the garage-cum-studio which is at the lowest point, entails walking up and down steps, stairs and ramps through several other rooms and long narrow corridors.
Each of the rooms is orientated so as to benefit from natural lighting for the best part of the day. In addition to acting as a light source which literally floods the interior of the house with light, the glazed walls of the rooms permit views across the courtyard and into the rooms directly opposite. The studio overlooks the bedroom, the kitchen and the living room and vice versa. At night, when the lights are switched on, the house looks like a giant lightbox.
One thing is clear: Pardo's intention was not to build a house as "a boring Duchampian gesture"; he claims that he was more interested in designing an "interesting space" than he was in continuing the age-old debate about literal objects in the world being read as art. "The issue that I took on was to really design something. That seemed a lot harder, and its ramifications much more difficult to understand." 5 4166 Sea View Lane is a building which is completely conscious of both architectural and sculptural issues of space.
When Donald Judd, an older contemporary of Pardo's began renovating buildings in the 1960s - beginning with 101 Spring Steet, New York and culminating in the Judd complex in Marfa, Texas - his intention was to design spaces which would frame and contextualise his and other artists' work. In this respect Judd's renovations can be separated from their context (they function pure and simply as architectural containers); Pardo's cannot. When Pardo steps out of the gallery and builds a house which stands on its own in the world alongside other more ordinary houses, the framing device, instead of reinforcing the object's role as art, confuses it. The house is the work of art, it is inseparably both art object and art context. It is precisely in this grey area between being art and architecture, art and design and between art and life that Pardo's art occurs.
When artists dabble in design, architecture or other fields of culture, it has traditionally been read as a 'crossover', an attempt at breaching the boundaries between high and low, between art and life. It is a gesture which recollects the intentions of the avant garde when they first aimed at the reconciliation of art and social praxis through the abolition of artistic autonomy. Pardo presents another everyday object - his home - as art. But unlike Duchamp's found objects, 4166 Sea View Lane is not a readymade, it is a structure which has been very carefully designed by Pardo.
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Although Jorge Pardo clearly locates his practice in relation to other sorts of production - he employs the skills of other crafts and trades to his own ends - he quite openly admits that "the crossover is about the least interesting part of what I'm doing." According to Ann Goldstein, co-curator of 4166 Sea View Lane , "Jorge obliterates the distinctions between the disciplines, between art, architecture and design. I think his work comes out of a broader context." 6 Rather than attempting to effect a crossover between the fields of art and design, Pardo utilises the language of design to explore and question the conventional limits of sculpture. "Pardo is an artist who has a command of design and industrial material rather than a designer seeking alternative marketing strategies." 7
Whether 4166 Sea View Lane it is an expensive piece of outdoor public sculpture or a valuable property in a plush residential area, whether it is art or architecture, is not really the point. Pardo's main concern is not the 'artistic status' of his house; it is the question of "how, and to what end, a work of art makes itself visible as such." 8 To such ends he made 4166 Sea View Lane temporarily visible as an artwork by opening its doors to a museum public. But he didn't stop there - the whole concept of the house was designed to instigate thought, to prompt questioning. He says,
I just like looking at houses. One of the important things for me is an interestingly made space, and the transition you go through with it. What are you forced to see? What happens to you and how do you remember that? 9
Pardo employs a design vernacular to orchestrate situations in which the site itself becomes a place for contemplation and discussion. In this respect, the design and layout of the house has been meticulously planned down to the smallest details - nothing has been left to chance. He has said that he simply wanted there to be "something interesting in every room." "Something to detain the eye, to lead the viewer back to a more basic questioning of the space that surrounds us." 10 His inclusion of a sunken 'conversation pit' in the kitchen is an illustration of this way of thinking. Although pivotal to modern interior design in the 1960s, the concept of a conversation pit has long since lost its resonance, but for Pardo it takes up a whole new meaning, "it literalizes the discursive function of the house, transforming it into a site for discussion." 11
At every opportunity Pardo throws back the reading of his work to his audience, and, what it comes down to in the end is that its ultimate role is dependent upon their reading of it. He says, "I am very interested in what happens when people look at things, I am interested in mental operations." 12 By shifting the work's meaning from its author to its audience, Pardo succeeds to some extent where Duchamp and the avant garde failed: in redressing the status of the artist as individual creator. Through the introduction of the readymade to the gallery Duchamp attempted to lessen the impact of the category of individual creation. He instigated a method of practice where the work of art does not originate from the hands of its creator; it is simply bought or found. Paradoxically, through the subjective nomination of objects in the world as art, Duchamp reinscribes the individual as the subject of artistic creation. The reception of his readymades as works of art seems inseparable from a recognition of his individual authorship.
Viewed in a similar light, the acceptance of Pardo's furniture and his house as art would also appear to be contingent upon the recognition of his authorship. But, by virtue of his work inviting its spectators/users to furnish it with meaning, Pardo succeeds, to some extent, in redirecting the emphasis of its creation away from its author and back to its audience. Seen as something which is very much part of the 'real world' as opposed to something which stands apart from it, his work becomes a "phenomenon contingent on the viewer's physical interface both with the art object and its surroundings." 13
Pardo's work is both experiential and contemplative. An understanding of his practice demands a certain element of engagement on the part of his audience it is not just about seeing, it is also about being there and experiencing the environment. 4166 Sea View Lane is a very interesting space in so far as it is a rambling mess of interconnecting rooms and long narrow corridors on several different levels. It is certainly not conservative architectural fare - most architects would baulk at its awkwardness and unconventional layout. But Pardo's primary concern was not to mimic architectural conventions and build a home in the everyday sense of the word. Rather, he insightfully employs a design and architectural vernacular to orchestrate situations in which the site itself becomes a place for discussion and for quiet contemplation. Not unlike his Californian redwood Pier , which was temporarily located on the Aasee in Munster during the 1997 Sculpture Projects , 4166 Sea View Lane invites its audience to spend time experiencing the ambience of the work and, through it, its surroundings - an ideal shared by the aforementioned architects of glass houses, Schindler, Neutra and Harris.
Pardo's practice exists in the tentative space between art, design and architecture. He is aware that his work would not be as interesting were it to be read as design, furniture or architecture. To this end his practice maintains a level of ambiguity, it avoids classification and resolutely refuses to position itself on either side of fence which demarcates aesthetic formalism from architectural functionalism - better known as the art-versus-life debate. By building a traditionally functional object as a work of art, Pardo cleverly circumnavigates the problem. 4166 Sea View Lane is a building in which architectural, design and sculptural concerns are given equal breathing space. It is a functional living space which, despite and in addition to its intrinsic use-value, maintains a strong sense of aesthetic autonomy.
Rather than reading 4166 Sea View Lane as a new departure for Pardo's practice, this ambitious project could be seen as a final 'grand gesture', bringing his earlier work in design and architecture to a logical and eventual conclusion. "Locating this culmination in a single project resonates as fait accompli; it was probably only a matter of time before he got around to it." 14 A not unreasonable conclusion to reach considering that Pardo has lived in Los Angeles, a city with a strong contemporary climate for domestic architecture, for more than a decade - he claims that domestic architectural in LA has informed his understanding of sculptural space. Had 4166 Sea View Lane been built anywhere else other than Los Angeles, its reason for being may not have been so easy to reconcile.
1 Quoted in Erna Moore, Exil in Hollywood: Leben und Haltung Deutscher Exilautoren nach ihren Autobiographischen Berichten , Deutsche Exilliteratur seit 1933 Teil 1: Kalifornien , ed. Spalex and Strelka, Bern and Munich, 1976, p. 28
2 Jorge Pardo, quoted in Kate Bush, Design for Life , Frieze , issue 36, September/October, 1997, p. 56
3 Philip Hunter Dorohojowska, Welcome to the House that Jorge Built , LA Times Calendar , 11 October 1998, pp. 62, 82
4 Jorge Pardo, quoted in Fritz Haeg, Interview with Jorge Pardo, L.A. design , Index Magazine , May/June 1999, p. 14
5 Jorge Pardo, quoted in Haeg, op. cit., p.14
6 Ann Goldstein, Press Information, MoCA, Los Angeles, 1996
7 Michelle Grabner, Jorge Pardo: Living Without Boundaries , Sculpture Magazine , December 1997, pp. 38-41
8 Susan Kandel, Home Work , Art Forum , November 1998, p. 93
9 Jorge Pardo, quoted in Haeg, op. cit., p.14
10 Jorge Pardo, ibid, p.15
11 Jorge Pardo, ibid, p.15
12 Quoted in Christina Végh, The Tonality of Contradictory Settings , Parkett , vol. 56, 1999, p. 139
13 Jorge Pardo, quoted in Bush, op. cit., p. 57
14 Matthew Debord, L.A. Casual and N.Y. Critical = A New Urbanity , Siksi , Summer 1998, p. 60
Emma Mahony is an Irish curator based in London.
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