The Wright auction house is offering the Louis Kahn-designed Margaret Esherick House for auction as an objet d'art. This isn't a fluke. The first time Richard Wright did this, he turned a $1.5 million Pierre Koenig house (details in the continuing page) into a $3.19 million bid-fest. One assumes, since he is so eagerly entering the market again, that this approach is more than a little profitable for Wright.
Koenig's Case Study House #21—by which, in 1958, the newly emerging architect demonstrated that steel framing could convert what was considered an unbuildable lot into an elegant, Modern, two-bedroom jewel with views out to surrounding reflecting pools and L.A. beyond—became in 2006 the first property sold as art rather than real estate, according to Wright.
Arguably, this is too fine a point, since Christie's sold Philip Johnson's Rockefeller Guest House for 11.1 million in 2000 and Sotheby's sold Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House in 2003 for $7.5 million. Both took advantage—as does Wright—of the auction-catalogue cachet to ratchet prices beyond the appraised real-estate value of the properties.
On the facade of it, this seems at least an interesting phenomenon; perhaps a revelation. Architecture as a transcending experience is hardly new. But is it so transcending to have architecture devolve to the realm of mere art?
Comments (1)
"Devolve"??? Silly choice of word.
"Mere art"? an even sillier choice.
Perhaps Doug Gordon was thinking of a symbolic descent from the Mother Art status bestowed by Ruskin and Blomfield at different times. But he is beautifully tongue-in-cheek, isn't he?
The Esherick house is one of the most serenely gentle of all Lou's works and has an aura of ascetic peace about it. As with many of Kahn's works it transcends mere building and thus is a real work of architecture, i.e.
a building which is a work of art.
A more important question is raised by Doug's query, however.....is one auctioning the artist or the art?
Obviously the answer in this case is both. But just because a work is by Kahn does not indicate that it is of great aesthetic value. Our beloved Lou produced a few real clunkers, too, not the least ugly of which is his unmentionable brick office building in Kathmandhu. Let someone just try to auction off that beauty, that is if it has not been razed in the interest of putting up some architecture.
Patrick J. Quinn.
Posted by Patrick J. Quinn, FAIA | March 28, 2008 5:46 PM
Posted on March 28, 2008 17:46