Stephen Gerard Dietemann Design

Architecturally speaking, the present appears to be a disappointment. If you doubt this just look at the work done by Berkshire painters.

Why is it, I ask myself, that when local painters choose to paint the man-made environment of the region they focus almost exclusively on the colonial farm houses and barns, Victorian mansions, and nineteenth century urban brownstones? There are almost no images of gas stations, McDonalds, ‘K’ Mart, Ford dealerships, car washes or Radio Shacks despite the fact that these structures are everywhere. Almost no images of our ubiquitous parking lots or malls, our Grand Unions or our ‘Butler’ buildings appear on canvas. This lack of contemporary architectural color is not unique to the Berkshire region; with the exception of a handful of well-known artists who are engaged primarily in ironic or theoretical exercises – Ed Rusha, David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Richard Estes (representing the ongoing ‘super-realist’ school) – American painters in general seem to have given up on the man-made landscape as their muse for at least half a century. In the galleries of Great Barrington and Lenox this translates to paintings of buildings along Main Street or Railroad Avenue as well as some from the nineteenth century neighborhoods nearby and the outlying farmhouses, but few, if any, of the many newer buildings along Route 7 between the river and Stockbridge. Interestingly, if you were to ask many of these painters to name the artists who they most admire, Edward Hopper would surely be at the top of every list. This would be, of course, the same Edward Hopper who did not hesitate to paint the coffee shops, elevated trains, urban rooftops and water tanks as well as the gas stations of his own era, a fact most of his contemporary admirers would readily acknowledge. Hopper – and many other painters living in the first half of the nineteenth century – diligently and without apology or irony searched for and occasionally found poetry and mystery in the man-made world of the times. When, and why, did the man-made world lose its power to inspire?

The simple answer is that artists today do not make the same connection with many of the buildings which have been built within the last fifty years. The reason for this is also simple. First, many of the newer structures are conceived with short-term monetary gain as the primary design criteria. These structures, including malls, McDonalds, gas stations and many of the other newer buildings along Route 7 in Great Barrington possess an almost theatrical feel, like individual, temporary stages designed for only one act. They purposefully avoid the solidity that characterizes most of the older structures lining Main Street or Railroad Avenue. Second, they ignore the context within which they are placed; each structure appears as an island unto itself, a decorated box surrounded by asphalt The language of architecture -- mass, form, material, texture and color -- serve primarily as self-advertisement, an obnoxious ‘hey-look-at-me” attitude. The older structures were purposefully designed to fit harmoniously with adjacent buildings, recognizing the value of a neighborhood identity. Some may see buildings like McDonalds as examples of ‘individualism’ but I see them simply as ‘lonely’, more petulant than individual. Fourth, these structures are designed to be temporary. Watching the ‘new’ McDonalds being built right next to the ‘old’ McDonalds on Route 7, which was then torn down in turn, drove this point home for me with a vengeance. These are disposable buildings, designed to conform first and foremost to profit and depreciation tables.

Disposable, isolated, petulant, garish. These are the adjectives that describe many of the structures of our age. The premise of this column is that our buildings tell us about ourselves, our attitudes and our world-view. Often they tell us things than we may not want to hear. In turn our artists appear to be revealing, often unintentionally, our collective discomfort with what we are building. In my last column, writing about an old building in my home town of North Chatham currently searching for an identity, I noted that our age is engaged in a “tug of war” with itself. I wrote that one, “must be wary of any age, such as our own which looks with too much longing toward the past”. Except, of course, when the past offers solutions the present appears unable to find elsewhere.