Author Archives: Lucas Zwirner

“Naked children have never played in our fountains,” Robert Venturi wrote in his 1972 book “Learning from Las Vegas,” explaining the difference between American and European artistic and architectural expression. But if classic modes of beauty aren’t American, then how should architects make beautiful and inherently American buildings? The beginning of Venturi’s answer: embrace the »

“It’s like a Thomas Pynchon novel,” Volunté Morceaux said of his new show, “Forces de Nature,” currently up at the Hull’s Gallery on Whitney Avenue. But the show is more like a collection of all the annoying, arbitrary and incomprehensible moments in a Thomas Pynchon novel, without any of the conceptual and creative ingenuity. The »

After walking twice around political science professor Edward Tufte’s GRD ’68 show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield Conn., I could not help but ask myself this simple question: how can modern sculptors continue to make challenging art? It’s not that Tufte’s show is bad — as a first attempt at large-scale public »

Richard Serra ’62 ART ’64 received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Yale this spring. While his installation in the sculpture garden at the Yale University Art Gallery has been on display since 2006 in this location, this sculpture, as well as his other works, demands multiple interpretations. It is now, in 2009, as »