BACK TO THE FUTURE: FRANK GEHRY’S GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM BILBAO CONTEXTUALIZED
Eric Yieh
T rose, a whale, a ship, and a modern-day Marilyn Monroe— these comparisons and others have been drawn to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (see Figure 1), a building whose unconventional synthesis of architecture, sculpture, and iconography seems to defy conventional description. At its apex, smooth, sinuous forms of titanium and limestone flow towards a center point—tilting, twist- ing, and spiraling upward in an explosion of glass and metal. At ground level, it appears even more futuristic; its staggered, free- formed volumes seem to generate their own shadows and brilliant reflections while its iridescent titanium panels almost blur the boundaries between liquid and solid. Set against the post-industrial backdrop of Bilbao, a city marked by a rigid rectangular geometry and drab colors, the museum could seem almost out-of-place, even anachronistic. Yet it appears
perfectly at home, convey- ing feelings of ease and fa- miliarity. Not without con- troversy, the museum has been an object of cultural debate since its conception. However, under the appar- ent competing chaos caused by its juxtaposition of frag- mented volumes and curved forms lies a compas- sion for the rich Basque culture and a consciousness that reflects the building’s
Figure 1. Gehry, Frank, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 1997. Source: http:// www.artnet.com/magazine/news/cfinch/ cfinch8-24-2.asp
6 The Boothe Prize Essays 2003
regional contexts. Frank Gehry, the building’s architect, never allows the modernist tendencies of his building to dominate the city’s landscape; rather, his rich architectural language faithfully represents the city by expressing the past and present character of its people and culture. By integrating elements of the region’s artistic, political, and architectural past, Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao demonstrates a distinct historical sensitivity to its surroundings, preserving the city’s cultural identity while trans- forming it from a destitute nineteenth-century shipping port into a prominent twenty-first century tourist destination.
Bilbao, the economic and social center of a region known more for political instability and terrorism than for its fine art, would seem an unlikely location for the Guggenheim Foundation’s lead- ing overseas franchise. Located along Spain’s northern border, the Basque region had always been a fiercely independent province. As the oldest indigenous ethnic group in Europe, the Basque people lived uninterrupted in the same region since the beginning of recorded history. Situated in the remote Pyrenées Mountains, they fought against the evils of foreign influence and the threat it posed to their traditions and rural way of life. In an effort to preserve the homogeneity of their culture, they refused to share their language with outsiders or to marry outside of their ethnicity, and for much of their history, they succeeded in this endeavor, enjoying strong degrees of autonomy. However, the victory of the Nationalists under Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s brought an end to this seclusion, as the independent Basque province was absorbed by Spain. Afterwards the victorious Franco used the brutal power of his government to wipe out all vestiges of cultural nationalism in the Basque areas by prohibiting the use of their language and all other expressions of Basque culture. The resulting humiliation and desperation of the Basque people gave rise to violent outbursts. In response to Franco’s restrictive policies, the terrorist separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) demanded that the Basque Country be allowed to secede from Spain. ETA advocated an armed struggle to achieve independence, a movement marked by the routine assassination of Spanish politicians, policemen, judges, and soldiers. Following Spain’s return to democracy in 1980, the Basque region was granted limited autonomy, but ETA terrorism continued nonetheless. In its campaign to win self-determination for the Basque homeland, ETA killed over eight hundred people over the course of thirty years,
marking the Basque region as a land of rampant violence and bloodshed (Myers).
The issue of Basque autonomy also played an important role in Spanish politics as a leading source of national conflict and debate. The Basque government itself was divided on this front, its parliament split into two main camps—the Basque Nationalist Party, who advocated a peaceful means of achieving independence, and the Spanish Socialist Party, whose loyalties belonged to the Spanish government. The Nationalist Party dominated Basque politics due largely to its policy of moderation, which was expressed, above all, by its opposition to violence. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the party kept its distance from ETA by refraining from explicit claims for independence and refused to negotiate with the separatist group until it renounced its violent ways (Gutierrez 20). However, even as terrorist activity appeared to be waning in the 1990s, the Basque region continued to struggle with an image of violent political strife. Thus in its endeavor to reform the city through international tourism, the Guggenheim franchise in Bilbao had to overcome the city’s troubled history and terrorist threat.
Under the leadership of the Nationalist Party, the Basque government explored ways in which it could move the country away from the de-industrialization and crippling terrorism that had effectively devastated its local economy. Eager to renounce the violence of ETA, it recognized the need to reform its problematic image and sought to reshape the region’s public identity with a visible architectural icon. A flourishing shipbuilding city for centuries, the Bilbao of the 1980s was in economic tatters. At the time, it faced accumulated debts, a 25 percent unemployment rate, industrial pollution, and outmoded steel and iron trades (Bradley 50). The severe decline in the city’s industries gave way to social and economic crisis, contributing to a state of despondency and mounting frustration among the local population (Baniotopoulou 3). However, in crisis, Nationalist Party officials saw an opportunity. As part of an ambitious urban renewal scheme, they proposed to redevelop Bilbao’s cultural sector with a leading museum of modern art, one that would transform the city into one of the world’s premiere tourist destinations. As laid out at its conception, the museum would help the Basque people stimulate their recession-plagued economy while serving multiple symbolic purposes: it would dispel stereotypes of the Basques as intolerant and resistant to change, signify Bilbao’s passage from an industrial
Eric Yieh 7
8 The Boothe Prize Essays 2003
past to a post-industrial future, and establish the city as an emerging European cultural center. To carry out this plan, government leaders collaborated with the Guggenheim Foundation in New York to secure a world-renowned collection of modern art, one that would bring Bilbao the cultural prestige and steady stream of tour- ism it would need to establish itself as a leading European center of art. Fully aware of the importance of the museum’s architecture in creating a landmark for Bilbao, Nationalist Party officials requested a building so striking and distinctive that it would be inseparable from the city itself, a building “that is for the Basque countries what Sydney’s Opera House is for Australia” (Romoli 122). At the same time, they were deeply concerned with the pres- ervation and promotion of Basque national identity, and the build- ing had to reflect both its natural setting and the character of the local culture. Thus, the design had to be modern while blending into the visual fabric of Bilbao, a city dominated by the industrial architecture of the nineteenth century. Among competing projects, Frank Gehry’s design for the museum was the only one to meet the specified criteria; its unique combination of futuristic appeal and distinct cultural sensitivity was exactly what the city of Bilbao needed to emerge as a cultural force in the twenty-first century.
But many of the city’s locals could not appreciate or see a need for the structure that architecture critics now hail as the greatest building of the twentieth century. Among Bilbao’s diverse population, various factions had different reasons for opposing the museum’s construction. There were those who questioned the appropriateness of spending so much on a prestige project in an area of high unemployment. “A lot of people felt it was better to spend the money on ailing industries, or building hospitals, not on culture,” said Juan Vidarte, who directed the museum’s construc- tion (Golub). Others cited Bilbao’s lack of tourist appeal, tiny art audience, and undeveloped cultural infrastructure in arguing that the museum’s vast expense was unlikely to alleviate the Basque region’s severe political and economic difficulties (Bradley 52). Arts groups whose government support was cut to finance the Guggenheim also protested. When it was made public that the international art gallery would require 80 percent of the government’s culture budget, there was a public outcry from local artists, writers, actors, and journalists who saw the new Guggenheim as part of a strategy that favored tourism and commercialism over the needs of working class Basques, the very people the museum
Eric Yieh 9
was intended to benefit most (McNeill 489). At the same time, many of the city’s inhabitants were offended by the secrecy of the nego- tiations and understandably troubled by their lack of input in the city’s renovation plans. As one native said, “the negotiations were conducted in secrecy, at the margin of public debate. There were a lot of things we didn’t know” (McNeill 479). The overriding concern was that the Basque were “all too ready to be seduced,” that they
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กลับสู่อนาคต: FRANK GEHRY GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM บิล CONTEXTUALIZEDEric Yiehโรส T วาฬ เรือ และความทันสมัยมาริลีนมอนโร — เปรียบเทียบเหล่านี้และอื่น ๆ มีการออกสู่บิลเบาพิพิธภัณฑ์ Guggenheim (ดูรูปที่ 1), อาคารสังเคราะห์กระเป๋าของสถาปัตยกรรม ประติมากรรม และประติมานวิทยาน่าจะ ท้าทายคำอธิบายทั่วไป ที่ของ apex ราบรื่น sinuous รูปแบบของไทเทเนียมและหินปูนไหลไปยังจุดศูนย์กลางคือเอียง กำลังบิด และวนเวียนขึ้นในการกระจายของแก้วและโลหะ ที่ระดับพื้นดิน ปรากฏขึ้นมากมาย ความเหลื่อมกัน ฟรี-รูปแบบไดรฟ์ข้อมูลที่ดูเหมือนจะ สร้างเงาของตัวเอง และสะท้อนสดใสในขณะที่ติดตั้งของไทเทเนียมสวายเกือบเบลอขอบระหว่างของเหลวและของแข็ง ตั้งเป็นฉากหลังอุตสาหกรรมของบิลเบา เป็นเมืองที่ทำเครื่องหมายด้วยรูปทรงเรขาคณิตสี่เหลี่ยมแข็งสีหญิงโสเภณี พิพิธภัณฑ์อาจดูเหมือนเกือบหมดของสถานที่ แม้ anachronistic ยัง ปรากฏอย่างที่บ้าน กำลังถ่ายทอดความรู้สึกง่ายและ fa miliarity ไม่ไม่ มีคอน troversy พิพิธภัณฑ์แล้ววัตถุของวัฒนธรรมอภิปรายตั้งแต่ความคิดของ อย่างไรก็ตาม ภายใต้ appar-เอนท์ วุ่นวายแข่งขันสาเหตุของ juxtaposition frag-mented วอลุ่ม และโค้งอยู่ฟอร์ม compas-sion บาสก์วัฒนธรรมและจิตสำนึกที่สะท้อนของอาคารรูปที่ 1 Gehry, Frank บิล เบา Guggenheim Museum, 1997 ที่มา: http:// www.artnet.com/magazine/news/cfinch/ cfinch8-24-2.asp6 The Boothe Prize Essays 2003regional contexts. Frank Gehry, the building’s architect, never allows the modernist tendencies of his building to dominate the city’s landscape; rather, his rich architectural language faithfully represents the city by expressing the past and present character of its people and culture. By integrating elements of the region’s artistic, political, and architectural past, Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao demonstrates a distinct historical sensitivity to its surroundings, preserving the city’s cultural identity while trans- forming it from a destitute nineteenth-century shipping port into a prominent twenty-first century tourist destination.Bilbao, the economic and social center of a region known more for political instability and terrorism than for its fine art, would seem an unlikely location for the Guggenheim Foundation’s lead- ing overseas franchise. Located along Spain’s northern border, the Basque region had always been a fiercely independent province. As the oldest indigenous ethnic group in Europe, the Basque people lived uninterrupted in the same region since the beginning of recorded history. Situated in the remote Pyrenées Mountains, they fought against the evils of foreign influence and the threat it posed to their traditions and rural way of life. In an effort to preserve the homogeneity of their culture, they refused to share their language with outsiders or to marry outside of their ethnicity, and for much of their history, they succeeded in this endeavor, enjoying strong degrees of autonomy. However, the victory of the Nationalists under Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s brought an end to this seclusion, as the independent Basque province was absorbed by Spain. Afterwards the victorious Franco used the brutal power of his government to wipe out all vestiges of cultural nationalism in the Basque areas by prohibiting the use of their language and all other expressions of Basque culture. The resulting humiliation and desperation of the Basque people gave rise to violent outbursts. In response to Franco’s restrictive policies, the terrorist separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) demanded that the Basque Country be allowed to secede from Spain. ETA advocated an armed struggle to achieve independence, a movement marked by the routine assassination of Spanish politicians, policemen, judges, and soldiers. Following Spain’s return to democracy in 1980, the Basque region was granted limited autonomy, but ETA terrorism continued nonetheless. In its campaign to win self-determination for the Basque homeland, ETA killed over eight hundred people over the course of thirty years,marking the Basque region as a land of rampant violence and bloodshed (Myers).The issue of Basque autonomy also played an important role in Spanish politics as a leading source of national conflict and debate. The Basque government itself was divided on this front, its parliament split into two main camps—the Basque Nationalist Party, who advocated a peaceful means of achieving independence, and the Spanish Socialist Party, whose loyalties belonged to the Spanish government. The Nationalist Party dominated Basque politics due largely to its policy of moderation, which was expressed, above all, by its opposition to violence. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the party kept its distance from ETA by refraining from explicit claims for independence and refused to negotiate with the separatist group until it renounced its violent ways (Gutierrez 20). However, even as terrorist activity appeared to be waning in the 1990s, the Basque region continued to struggle with an image of violent political strife. Thus in its endeavor to reform the city through international tourism, the Guggenheim franchise in Bilbao had to overcome the city’s troubled history and terrorist threat.Under the leadership of the Nationalist Party, the Basque government explored ways in which it could move the country away from the de-industrialization and crippling terrorism that had effectively devastated its local economy. Eager to renounce the violence of ETA, it recognized the need to reform its problematic image and sought to reshape the region’s public identity with a visible architectural icon. A flourishing shipbuilding city for centuries, the Bilbao of the 1980s was in economic tatters. At the time, it faced accumulated debts, a 25 percent unemployment rate, industrial pollution, and outmoded steel and iron trades (Bradley 50). The severe decline in the city’s industries gave way to social and economic crisis, contributing to a state of despondency and mounting frustration among the local population (Baniotopoulou 3). However, in crisis, Nationalist Party officials saw an opportunity. As part of an ambitious urban renewal scheme, they proposed to redevelop Bilbao’s cultural sector with a leading museum of modern art, one that would transform the city into one of the world’s premiere tourist destinations. As laid out at its conception, the museum would help the Basque people stimulate their recession-plagued economy while serving multiple symbolic purposes: it would dispel stereotypes of the Basques as intolerant and resistant to change, signify Bilbao’s passage from an industrialEric Yieh 78 The Boothe Prize Essays 2003past to a post-industrial future, and establish the city as an emerging European cultural center. To carry out this plan, government leaders collaborated with the Guggenheim Foundation in New York to secure a world-renowned collection of modern art, one that would bring Bilbao the cultural prestige and steady stream of tour- ism it would need to establish itself as a leading European center of art. Fully aware of the importance of the museum’s architecture in creating a landmark for Bilbao, Nationalist Party officials requested a building so striking and distinctive that it would be inseparable from the city itself, a building “that is for the Basque countries what Sydney’s Opera House is for Australia” (Romoli 122). At the same time, they were deeply concerned with the pres- ervation and promotion of Basque national identity, and the build- ing had to reflect both its natural setting and the character of the local culture. Thus, the design had to be modern while blending into the visual fabric of Bilbao, a city dominated by the industrial architecture of the nineteenth century. Among competing projects, Frank Gehry’s design for the museum was the only one to meet the specified criteria; its unique combination of futuristic appeal and distinct cultural sensitivity was exactly what the city of Bilbao needed to emerge as a cultural force in the twenty-first century.But many of the city’s locals could not appreciate or see a need for the structure that architecture critics now hail as the greatest building of the twentieth century. Among Bilbao’s diverse population, various factions had different reasons for opposing the museum’s construction. There were those who questioned the appropriateness of spending so much on a prestige project in an area of high unemployment. “A lot of people felt it was better to spend the money on ailing industries, or building hospitals, not on culture,” said Juan Vidarte, who directed the museum’s construc- tion (Golub). Others cited Bilbao’s lack of tourist appeal, tiny art audience, and undeveloped cultural infrastructure in arguing that the museum’s vast expense was unlikely to alleviate the Basque region’s severe political and economic difficulties (Bradley 52). Arts groups whose government support was cut to finance the Guggenheim also protested. When it was made public that the international art gallery would require 80 percent of the government’s culture budget, there was a public outcry from local artists, writers, actors, and journalists who saw the new Guggenheim as part of a strategy that favored tourism and commercialism over the needs of working class Basques, the very people the museumEric Yieh 9was intended to benefit most (McNeill 489). At the same time, many of the city’s inhabitants were offended by the secrecy of the nego- tiations and understandably troubled by their lack of input in the city’s renovation plans. As one native said, “the negotiations were conducted in secrecy, at the margin of public debate. There were a lot of things we didn’t know” (McNeill 479). The overriding concern was that the Basque were “all too ready to be seduced,” that they
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