Stephen Gerard Dietemann Design

The fine art students seemed to have it so good. From where we architectural students sat (constantly) in Sibley Hall at Cornell University, they appeared to have a largely voluntary workload, lots of social events called ‘receptions’ and the sole academic requirement appeared to be self-expression. Watching them file out of a reception at the newly constructed Johnson Museum of Art, many with plastic wine glasses still in hand, we were very unhappy indeed, especially when, as was often the case, yet another ‘all-nighter’ loomed before us. Worse still, for many of us who considered ourselves artists as well, this incongruity of lifestyle and obligations seemed inexplicable; were we not also trying to create this elusive thing called ‘art’? As for me, Michelangelo Buonarotti had been my hero since I was fifteen and I knew that he had created works of undeniable power and creativity in both fields. By my adolescent reasoning, if he could sculpt “David”, design St. Peter’s Basilica, and complete the Sistine Chapel frescos almost single-handedly, well, so could I; in fact, that should be the point of my tenure in college. So then why weren’t the artists and the architects working -- and socializing -- together?

Of course, twenty-five years later I understand for better or worse that creating divisions and categories – intellectual turf, if you will -- is what the academy does. And human beings like Michelangelo can almost be viewed as what physicians call a “singularity” – an event so rare that it requires an explanation beyond available explanation. Still, my initial collegiate questions about the de facto separation of artist and architects are valid; there is, in fact, much common ground. Fundamentally, to varying degrees, the byproduct of both disciplines alter, even disrupt, the visual fabric of our lives. Both fine artists and architects use surface, texture, mass and color to accomplish their ends. Both are dependent on the physical possibilities and limitations of the materials they employ; technique, I tirelessly tell my fine art students, is always at the service of vision. Most importantly, while the common perception of art and architecture is a (portable) painting and (fixed) building, in reality the spectrum is continuous, even if we discount the ‘visionaries’ on both sides who relish mixing things up. Architects like Jim Wines of SITE, Stanley Tigerman and Frank Gehry create architecture that presses both playfully and/or forcefully into the domain of the fine arts with a focus on the personal and the random, while artists like Scott Burton, Robert Stackhouse, Richard Serra and Jene Highstein deal directly with the issues of space and place, two issues critical to the definition of architecture. In fact, given any aspect of any definition of the categories ‘visual arts’ and ‘architecture’ I can probably find you someone from the ‘opposing’ camp who is deeply involved with that definition. This, in my opinion, is where the fun is. Fortunately, we don’t have go far to see an example of this cross-pollination.

From June 17 to July 28, Wolfgang Stockmeier, an architect and artist, and his wife Jennifer Millman-Stockmeier, an artist, will be presenting “Alles Paletti” at the Spencertown Academy in Spencertown (Austerlitz), New York. By way of full disclosure, I am the curator. While I have curated many exhibitions of painting and sculpture, I have always wanted to return to the intersection of fine art and architecture; Stockmeier and Millman Stockmeier’s public work was a natural fit. I had seen their intriguing ‘Private Eye’ exhibition set in the streets of Hudson in 1999 and greatly enjoyed the reorientation that their many red ‘booths’ allowed. This mingling of the public (space) and the private (view) placed this work directly in the nether world between rigid definitions of fine art and architecture. Their current modifications to the Hudson Opera House windows will make each passerby aware of contrasting architecture ‘languages’, commingling the familiar, traditional nineteenth century architectural window details with a new, contemporary visual imagery.

“Alles Paletti” is a German expression meaning, “everything is under control”. The pristine, nineteenth century beauty of the Spencertown Academy will be the setting for an installation consisting of five sculptural assemblies composed of painted industrial wooden pallets. These assemblies will be placed in and around the building, but the building itself is not so much an exhibition space as it is a participant in the installation. In fact, these pieces are site specific; they interact intimately with the specific form, color, details and space of this building. The solid, immutable nature of the building itself is contrasted with the dynamic, playful motion of the palettes. As a result the viewer is made unavoidably aware of the overall context; the building and the sculpture act together while existing as integral components of a larger assembly.

It is a point of convergence between disciplines, an exhibition that obviates the distance between fine art and architecture.