In 1997, a new art gallery opened in Bilbao, in northern Spain…a project to revitalise that city’s run-down port area. They’d chosen an American architect, Frank Gehry, who had recently won a major architectural award…
Gehry's work is a highly refined, sophisticated and adventurous aesthetic that emphasizes the art of architecture.1
Gerhy delivered Bilbao a landmark building that was to transform the city and take modern architecture to another level: the Guggenheim Museum.
In France, meanwhile, businessman and art-lover, Bernard Arnault, had just become a billionaire, having engineered the merger of Moët Hennessy and Louis Vuitton to create LVMH.
Arnault visited this phenomenon in Bilbao and decided he wanted one too, so he met up with Gehry. Who knew instantly what Paris needed:
Arnault loved it. Wanted it. Must have it. Got the government on board, figured out where it would be built, overcame the nay-sayers, and got it done. True, the total cost (€790 million) was more than seven times the original estimate but, you know, that’s architecture.
It opened in 2014…
..and is astonishing. You wander through thinking how did they even imagine this building, let alone create it? It’s as if he was raised on Red Bull: how else to explain these wiiings? A sheltering outer shell of thousands of individual sheets of glass, precisely curved and cut to shape; complex, intricate, levels and spaces. Computer-designed—impossible otherwise—using software Gehry adapted from the aerospace industry. Elegant and sophisticated and luxurious—even lunch—just as you’d expect from Louis Vuitton.
Once upon a time we built cathedrals, but now—thanks to Gehry, who regards his buildings as sculptures—we build sacred spaces for the arts. In such a bold and dramatic building, the art and its protective cocoon are intertwined, inseparable.
And the art was up to the task:
Giant—three dimensional—collages. Pop Art pieces from New York artist Tom Wesselmann.
We could, of course, have gone to that other gallery, the one offering kilometres of Christian propaganda paintings telling us how to behave and what to expect if we didn’t. It was wonderful, instead, to experience something so low-brow, so relatable, so joyful. In such a glorious building.
And so, if you’re making your way up the Rich List, and thinking of renovating, or maybe even a new build—and you’re not too bothered by budget—then you gotta get Gehry.
Because, as philosopher Alain de Botton puts it2…
Spending money well is no less a skill than making it.
Next week: In My Secret Life
In Art as Therapy
I love this joyful piece - makes me smile and remember that day as being delicious!
We MUST get a Gehry - I'm sure I can spend well!