McElheny, Mies, & Modernism

In this week’s Art:21 video and interview The Alpine Cathedral and the City-Crown, artist Josiah McElheny references a number of modernist figures and projects, from architects Bruno Taut and Mies van der Rohe to the failed Chicago housing project Cabrini-Green. See what he’s talking about in these videos on YouTube:

VIDEO | Josiah McElheny presenting at MoMA
The lecture that Josiah McElheny gave at MoMA on the topic of “Artists and Models” is a condensed overview, with the artist riffing on Isamu Noguchi, Buckminster Fuller, and other modernist icons.

VIDEO | Farnsworth House
This all access tour of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House illustrates some of what Josiah McElheny means when he says about Modernist architecture that “you have to live like the building tells you to live.”

VIDEO | Mies on Architecture Island
Did it take virtual reality to realize the utopian ideals of modernism? Take a Second Life tour of Mies van der Rohe’s Fansworth House on Architecture Island (The Homestead).

VIDEO | Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
Art:21 artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Season 4) brings a sinister edge to modern architecture in Climate (2000), filmed in Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago.

VIDEO | Cabrini Green: Past and Present
Josiah McElheny’s question “how do you both believe in utopia…and at the same time keep it within limits?” can be felt in this homemade video when the narrator states that Chicago’s Cabrini-Green “started out as a place where poor people had hope.”