Of Murals and Men

Murals, murals everywhere.  When you have the space, why not?  We have seen that public art can help us reimagine or see in a different light those ordinary spaces we may pass by every day.  Check out the Flint Public Art Project, for example.  So it is in that vein we draw your attention to just one building in Lake Worth, directly across the street from City Hall.  Too much? We say, paint the whole city.  Too little, in fact.

 

 

Florida Art History, the Materios, & A Manufactured Controversy

       Generating a little controversy through art, whatever the medium, is quite entertaining, especially in a local arts scene dominated by the mundane.  So it was with much anticipation that I attended the recent exhibition of collector Phil Materio’s compendium of Florida art, as part of the West Palm Beach Downtown Development Authority’s series exhibiting on Clematis in the heart of West Palm Beach.

                “Foul play!”, shouted one pedantic local blogger, the self-styled “FireAnt” of the Broward/Palm Beach New Times.  It seems that this “FireAnt” felt that Materio’s exhibition violated “fair dealing,” as he is the husband of West Palm Beach City Commissioner Shannon Materio, and his exhibition may somehow generate business for Mr. and Mrs. Materio's McMow Art Glass business.

                We at the FAD blog compliment the anonymous “FireAnt” on his dizzying intellect – suggesting that somehow Mr. Materio was given preferential treatment for exhibition is surely worthy of a journalistic prize of some third world country or cow town. Bravo for Holmes-like deduction skills.

                For our purposes, and for our readers, who presumably are concerned more with the aesthetic than with scoring minor political points, we will judge the exhibit on its own merits. Spanning a range from 1890 to the present day, Materio’s collection was an impressive tutorial on the history of certain schools of regional Florida art.

                Included were examples of the Flagler-funded art colony of St. Augustine, the traveling Black artists dubbed the "Highwaymen", and tourist and local art ranging nearly the entire 20^th century.

        Some of the tourist art seemed to almost revel in its saleable tackiness:

      What exactly are we to make of number six in this set of tourist art from the 1920's to the 1940's?  To this critic, #6 calls to mind a nuclear meltdown at Hialeah Park.  Yet while this set of paintings might not exactly make the heart sing, Materio's historical notes explained that such works enabled artists to earn their living from painting and selling their finished products to tourists flooding Florida and searching for a little reminder of paradise to bring home.

      I most enjoyed the earliest paintings from Flagler-era artists in and around St. Augustine.  Flamingos and crocodiles call hotel art to my mind, but depictions of the winding Spanish influenced architecture of St. Augustine represent something more substantial and timeless:

        

      So in totality, Materio's exhibition was an enjoyable immersion into several schools of regional art in Florida.  Whether Materio had an inside track to display his collection (or if the exhibition generated publicity for his art glass business) is of no consequence: hopefully, the manufactured controversy surrounding his exhibition publicized even further - and generated higher attendance at - this impressive array of schools of art we may not have previously been aware of.  If such a refreshing experience is the consequence of benevolent cronyism, we at the FAD blog can only say, "More, please."     

Brutalist West Palm

   Visitors to the small downtown core of West Palm Beach are confronted with an incoherent jumble of visual and architectural styles to grab onto: faux Caribbean-style condominiums replete with the same pastel colors one might see in St. Thomas, Spanish colonial residences converted to offices, even a sprawling and depressing outdoor mall that is as unique as your local Wal-Mart.  (Cheesecake Factory? OMG!)

       Yet for all of the contrasting architectural styles comprising the relatively dull skyline, perhaps no hulk of metal, concrete, and glass provides as gripping a “stop and look” moment as the brutalist-style former West Palm Beach City Hall, opened in 1980.

          Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.  And some commentators and readers will undoubtedly agree with the co-founder of this blog: “That shit is ugly.”  One can imagine visitors to the city wondering how the hulking mass, just steps from the intracoastal waterway, was ever approved in this subtropical context.  Alternatively evoking the image of an alien fortress, a prison, or some other guardian of the security industrial complex, the concrete old city hall will, at the very least, not engender apathy – viewers will either love or hate the style.

          Brutalist architecture has come under fire from a wide variety of sources.  Theodore Dalrymple, contributing editor to City Journal, for one, critiqued an exhibition dedicated to noted iconoclast Le Corbusier, arguing that “A Corbusian building is incompatible with anything except itself,” and likening brutalism to a form of architectural totalitarianism.

          In some respects, Dalrymple is correct: the brutalist old city hall does not appear to be designed with any of its surroundings in mind, heightening the appearance of a self-contained fortress at odds with the world.  To give a further example of the stark isolationist feel of the old city hall, compare for example one of the designs submitted for a redevelopment of the site from Song & Associates:

This proposal could not be more different from the existing brutalist building: in the proposal’s rendering, you actually notice that the site is close to the intracoastal waterway.  The sloping angles appear to be designed to direct attention to, give better views of, and incorporate the natural beauty of the intracoastal waterway, Palm Beach, and the ocean into the site as a whole.  Overall, the proposal looks harmonious with its surroundings and is generally consistent with what we might imagine when imagining a warm South Florida hotel site on the water in an urban context.

                When confronted with the juxtaposition between the friendly hotel proposal and the harsh city hall, consider the two schools of thought: on one hand, we could rage that our civic buildings should generate a feeling of friendliness and welcome and symbolize our government’s openness.

                I, however, beg to differ.  Brutalism, for this author, in the context of a government or civic building such as the old city hall, is the architect’s way of demonstrating in as outspoken and outrageously confrontational a manner as possible, that our city/country/state is muscular, robust, and doesn’t take any mess.  The highlighting of concrete and the deliberate contrast to the building’s surroundings speaks to me of a confident, unapologetic view towards the world: we are Man, we have conquered our surroundings, we are stronger than nature.  We do not need to be coddled; we are permanent.  Of course, my view directly conflicts with critics like Dalrymple who complain that concrete “does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays” and rail against brutalism’s alleged destructiveness.

              But just as the cascading upper echelons of art deco skyscrapers call to my mind the expression of an age in which anything was possible, in which we reached ever upward in our quest to modernize and perfect, and in which man had proudly industrialized, (cf. Detroit’s Penobscot building, at right), I do believe brutalism has a place, even in subtropical, cheesy, and corrupt West Palm Beach.  And although critics of the building’s style can quibble about its aesthetic beauty, our discussion necessarily leads to a more substantive and practical question regarding the building's successor - the sprawling new city hall complex on Clematis St.:

Is it more “brutal” to have a unique and statement-making building to represent your city tucked away on a relatively sleepy lot, or was it in fact more brutal for politicians to spend $154 million (in a city with 18% of people living below the poverty line) inexplicably placing the new city hall complex smack dab in the middle of a main commercial strip, replete with Saddam Hussein palace-style bathrooms, in the face of popular discontent?  Which is the true symbol of oppressive and totalitarian architectural and site design – brutalist structures, or brutally insensitive and inane politicians?

FAD - Fashion of Palm Beach County

C.Z. Guest and Joanne Connelly, circa 1955, Palm Beach, Florida

Photo by Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Palm Beach County, is an untapped well for the fashion and art aficionado.  Palm Beach County ranks number nine out of counties with the most millionaires.  Where does one go to look at and be inspired by high fashion and art?  To an area with disposable income, an area like Palm Beach County.

Honestly, to find most of the millionaires in Palm Beach County one would need to venture to Palm Beach Island.  It has it's own culture of art and fashion. You can find fashion labels on Palm Beach Island, that you would normally only find in the big city.  Couture stores, Gucci, Pucci, Louis Vitton and the like are all located on this tiny sixteen mile island that has around 30,000 residents at most; during  snowbird season of course.

It's not just Palm Beach Island, West Palm Beach also has it's own flare when it comes to fashion and art.  Though West Palm Beach was once an area for the hired help, it has become an attraction for those who can afford vacation properties.  And those who can afford vacation properties, can also afford resort wear.

FAD will examine, highlight and focus on all aspects of fashion, art and architecture when it comes to Palm Beach County.  Not all fashion, art and architecture in Palm Beach County is created equal.

I am Giovanni aka Blamegirl and will be the fashion voice of this blog.  I have years of experience working in the fashion industry and will provide a unique voice when it comes to fashion in Palm Beach County.  I've recently relocated to the area from Texas and have observed a change in the fashion here.  

WELCOME

      Palm Beach County; home of transplants and natives of all kinds: east coasters, hippies, yuppies, snowbirds, billionaires, sleazeballs, immigrants, corrupt public officials, hangers-on, wannabes & never was’s, slicksters, hipsters, retirees, and freaks and geeks of all shapes and sizes.

     Into this cosmic slop of a melting pot we wade, having noticed the utter lack of erudite commentary on the bustling arts scene of our fair county.  In this vein we desire to highlight fashion, art, and architectural trends that may ordinarily be covered with only two or three lines in our local papers, or that may be ignored altogether.
     Viewed through the lens of someone relatively new to the local area, (having relocated here 5 years ago), I hope that my discussions will attract attention to the wide variety of artistic and architectural flourishes that we dwell among.  I plan to cover the totally overlooked unconventional and avant-garde scenes to the extent they exist, with a special emphasis on performance and guerrilla art, seeking out and championing absurdism in our daily lives.  Routine exhibition openings with the usual wine and cheese, as we know, grow stale.
     In contributing to the arts and architectural highlights of FAD Palm Beach, I am dedicated to the mission of installation artist Allan Kaprow, who declared “The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.”