James Wines (1932- )

American architect and sculptor. Founder of the design team SITE (Sculpture in the Environment), in 1969, he was concerned to fuse art and architecture, integrating both. The firm is best known for the Best Products Retail Stores, such as the Indeterminate Façade, Houston, TX (1974–5), and the Tilt Showroom, Towson, MD (1976–8), the latter with a front resembling a sheet of material lifted up to display the showroom behind. The suggestion of instability in apparently crumbling façades or irrational elements in SITE's work attracted much attention in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently Wines has been concerned with environmental problems, e.g. the decommissioning of Nuclear Power Stations.

Bibliography

• Kalman (1994)
• Jodidio (1993, 1996)
• SITE et al. (1980)
• Wines (1987)
• Wines et al. (1989)

SITE (Sculpture in the Environment). (American, founded 1970) and James Wines. (American, born 1932). Highrise of Homes, project, Exterior perspective. 1981. Ink and charcoal on paper, 22 x 24" (55.9 x 61 cm). Best Products Company Inc. Architecture Fund. © 2008 James Wines

Publication excerpt Matilda McQuaid, ed., Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 220 James Wines, a founding member in 1970 of the SITE (Sculpture In The Environment) architectural group, described the Highrise of Homes project as a "vertical community" to "accommodate people's conflicting desires to enjoy the cultural advantages of an urban center, without sacrificing the private home identity and garden space associated with suburbia." The plan calls for a steel-and-concrete, eight-to-ten-story, U-shaped building frame erected in a densely populated urban area. The developer would sell lots within this frame, each lot the site for a house and garden in a style chosen by the purchaser. The result would be a distinct villagelike community on each floor, with interior streets. A central mechanical core would serve these homes and gardens, while shops, offices, and other facilities on the ground and middle floors would provide for the residents' needs. Whereas urban skyscrapers are normally made up of identical, stacked, boxlike units, the Highrise of Homes would allow flexibility and individual choice. The wide variety of house styles, gardens, hedges, and fences described in this intricate rendering provides a sense of the personal identity and human connection that are generally erased by the austere and repetitive elements of architectural formalism. Placing the sociological and psychological needs of the inhabitant over the aesthetic sensibilities of the architect, Wines produces a merge of suburb and city, a collage of architectures collectively created by its inhabitants and by the art of chance. Developers considered Battery Park City, New York, as a possible location for the project, but it was never built. Bevin Cline

Related links Numbers in brackets refer to the number of works available in the online collection. Artist: SITE (Sculpture in the Environment) [2] About this artist James Wines [2] Department: Architecture and Design [1390] Classification: A&D Architectural Drawing [306] Date: 1981 DADABASE library search Printable view Create a version of this page to bookmark Find related products at M

Currents; Nature's Revenge On 5th Ave.

By ELAINE LOUIE

Published: April 7, 1988

LEAD: AT the new Williwear shop for men and women, James Wines has created an interior that he calls ''nature's revenge on Fifth Avenue.''
AT the new Williwear shop for men and women, James Wines has created an interior that he calls ''nature's revenge on Fifth Avenue.''
Mr. Wines was faced with a 2,500-square-foot space that was already in a state of disrepair. The columns were cracked, and so were the floors.
So, inspired by Angkor Wat, the ruin in Cambodia, Mr. Wines has translated rural decay to an urban setting. Now, in the pale gray shop that will open Tuesday at 119 Fifth Avenue (19th Street), vines of ivy burst through the floors, entwine the Corninthian columns, cling to the walls, wrap around mannequins and curl around the cash register. (The vines, actually grape, are real; the leaves are fake.) As startling as it is to be in an interior that resembles an exterior, the ambiance is remarkably serene. ''The shop feels like a garden and is a neutral background for the brilliant colors of the clothes,'' said Mr. Wines, a principal in SITE Projects Inc., a Manhattan architectural concern.
''We want to show our customers exactly how different artists that we work with have influenced us,'' said Laurie Mallet, above, the president and chairwoman of Williwear Ltd., and to do this, the store has a Friends' Corner. There, customers can buy Mr. Wines's new book, ''De-Architecture'' (Rizzoli; cloth, $40; paper, $25), and records by Peter Gordon, who has composed music for Williwear fashion shows.

Dangerous ideas: Architecture in the age of ecology
A conversation with James Wines

James Wines Photo by Emily Rowlands

February 23, 2005

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James Wines, professor of architecture at Penn State, shared his views on "green architecture" for the February 23 conversation of Research Unplugged, the first session of the spring season.
Building on the themes of his most recent book, Green Architecture, Wines discussed the challenges of creating environmentally-friendly architecture. In addition to teaching, Wines is founder, president and creative director of SITE, an architecture and environmental arts organization in New York City that takes a multidisciplinary approach to the fields of architecture, interior design, environmental art, landscape architecture, and graphic design.
Wines fears that most architects are too focused on the aesthetics or functionality of their buildings without regard for how the buildings affect the environment. "The construction of human shelter consumes one third of the world's energy," said Wines. "This is of particular concern to the United States because Americans consume a disproportionate amount of the world's resources," he added.
According to Wines, there are several ways that a building can be "green." Referring to images of buildings and public spaces, he illustrated that several different styles and types can fit the definition of "green." Buildings that use renewable energy, such as solar or wind, buildings that use water and foliage for cooling, or buildings that are built into the earth in such a way as to minimize dependence on electricity are all examples of "green architecture." One building he showed during his presentation was literally wrapped in recycled water. "This piece of architecture engages all the senses," said Wines. "You can hear it, touch it, feel it, and smell it."
Wines also used examples of urban planning that allows for — or better yet, encourages — people to walk or ride bicycles as another important means for creating public space that helps preserve the environment. He specifically noted the university campuses in Irvine, California and Toronto, Canada.
An often overlooked aspect of green architecture is recycling buildings — renovating and retrofitting them for a new life, as Wines described it. "However, a building must be aesthetically pleasing to begin with for tenants to want to renovate," he said. "Architecture must never abandon its artistry so that buildings can have a longer life." He noted that his own building at Penn State (much to his chagrin) will be demolished this summer as his department is moved to a new facility.
Architecture — the buildings we use every day — is an integral part of our lives. As such, Wines believes that the creation and use of more "green" architecture in our buildings and public spaces is vital for our planet's sustainability and our local communities' health.

—Christian Anderson

James Wines, B.A., is professor of architecture at Penn State and president of SITE, an architecture and environmental arts organization in New York City; juw3@psu.edu. Christian Anderson, cka108@psu.edu, is a graduate student in higher education. He is a member of the Research Unplugged Committee.

Brinker International’s “Chili Pepper” building in Aurora, Colorado. This project was envisioned by Chili’s as a landmark building representative of the concept’s unique ability to establish and maintain the Chili’s culture for twenty years. Designed by world-renowned architect James Wines of SITE Environmental Design, the unusually shaped Chili Pepper building was a challenge to obtain design approval by the City of Aurora. Working closely with the City Design Staff, HDGroup principal negotiated a resolution allowing Brinker to construct this landmark building that continues to give pause to unaware automobile passengers who glimpse its façade high above the roadway.

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We believe in you. If you have a vision, we’ll help get you there.


In what is arguably the most hyped New York City dining opening since Mary's Dairy, Danny Meyer's Shake Shack throws open its shutters July 1. Sited in the middle of Madison Square Park, Shake Shack's menu includes burgers, fries and hot dogs, but the star is custard, which was sampled out this weekend (vanilla only) for $1 a scoop. We stopped by for a taste, and can report this: it's custard-riffic! (As for the shack itself, it's reminscent of a Titanium Powerbook; architecture by the legendary James Wines of SITE Architecture, and signage by Pentagram.)
· Dairy Kings [NYMag]
· Shake Shack Announcement Ceremony [nyc.gov]
[inside: more Shake Shack photos!]

Filed under Manhattan: Gramercy/Flatiron District, Restaurants,

Best Products Inc had showrooms across the country, but Houston’s “Indeterminate Façade Showroom” (opening in 1975) was the most famous. “One survey found that photographs of James Wines’s Houston building appeared in more books on 20th century architecture than photographs of any other modern structure,” writes Diebold Essen for Magellen’s Log.

He recalls watching customers walk into to the showroom from a parking lot, “Observation: nobody, not one single customer, looked UP. Nobody paid attention to the building. People drove in, parked, got out, went in, bought, came out, left, with never a glance at the extremely indeterminate facade. Even after all these years, I’m still not sure what to make of that universal indifference to one of the few truly–and intentionally–funny buildings in the world.”

James Wines (1932- ) is an American architect associated with environmental design. Wines is also an architectural and design innovator, a product designer, and an educator. Wines explicitly expresses his own "concern for the Earth." Having written at length on new modes of architecture, design, and planning, he has also provided succinct critique of the status quo in statements like:

The [20th] century began with architects being inspired by an emerging age of industry and technology. Everybody wanted to believe a building could somehow function like a combustion engine. As an inspirational force in 1910, one can understand it. But as a continuing inspiration in our post-industrial world, or our new world of information and ecology, it doesn't make any sense.

--from the film Ecological Design

James Wines graduated from Syracuse University in 1956. He became a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome that year and was bestowed a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962. Wines founded SITE, Environmental Design^[1] in 1970. Wines has been the designer of more than 150 architecture, environmental-art, interior-design, public-space and landscape-architecture projects, including ones sponsored by numerous large corporations (e.g., Swatch, MCA Universal, MTV, Nickelodeon, Williwear, Isuzu, Disney, Costa Coffee, Carrabba's Restaurants, Saporiti Italia, Brinker International, Allsteel, Ranger Italia, Reliance Energy Corporation). His municipal clients have included the cities of Hiroshima, Yokohama, Toyama, Seville, Vienna, Vancouver, Le Puy en Velay, Chattanooga, and New York City. As an educator, Wines originally held adjunct positions at the New School for Social Research (1963-65) and a number of other institutions. In 1974, he taught as an Associate Professor of Fine Art in the New York University Department of Art and Arts Professions. This was followed by visiting professorships at Dartmouth, University of Wisconsin, New Jersey School of Architecture, and Cooper Union Design Center. He was chair of the Environmental Design department at Parsons School of Design from 1984-90. After teaching at Domus Academy in Italy and at the University of Oklahoma, he became a professor of architecture at Pennsylvania State University (1999 to present). Wines has received a number of fellowships and grants including the Fulbright Distinguished Professor Grant to the University of Toronto (2004), National Endowment for the Design Arts — critical writing on architecture (1992).

See also

• Green building
• Soft energy path
• Plop art (term coined by James Wines in 1969)

Books

• Architecture of Ecology - Architectural Design Profiles 1997
• Green Architecture 2004

References

1. ^ SITE, Environmental Design Official website

Paul St George

Paul St George
A number of interweaving themes emerge from these selected projects. One is a study of the history of visual culture (Classical Roman and late Victorian). Both eras are well known for their rich successes, but also hide a number of overlooked or incomplete projects. Paul St George has uncovered and is completing a number of these, including the Telectroscope and Travelling curves.
Another persistent theme is the use of photography and chronophotography to picture time. This is developed in the Chronocyclography, Trackorama, Supermoment and Chronopan projects, but also in curating the Sequences exhibition and in editing the imagetime series of books.
The third theme is the exploration of ambiguity. This has produced the highly collectable Minumental sculptures, Carpet Castle and the ultimate, two for the price of one, Rabbitduck.



http://www.paulstgeorge.com/




英國觀念藝術家英保羅‧聖喬治以不靠網路視訊的特殊光學連線方式，打造成「電傳照相機」（上）。在美國紐約市布魯克林區的兩位美國女學生，22日透過管狀的「電傳照相機」，可以看到遠在英國倫敦的親戚（中央圓形影像），同時也能跟他們以手機通話。

（美聯社）

Johnson & Johnson's Big Design Challenge

J&J Chief Design Officer Chris Hacker is a man with a mission: to bring sustainable design to corporate America

by Mark Lamster

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Chris Hacker Mark Mahaney

The apparently simple repackaging of J&J's flagship brand keeps the iconic teardrop but adds cleaner type and tinted bottles. Mark Weiss

Big box stores considered Band-Aid's previous cardboard bulk package to be forbidding. The new version features a set of interlocking plastic cases—and is now stocked by stores such as Costco. Mark Weiss

Johnson & Johnson acquired the Rembrandt brand in 2005, revamping the product line before relaunching it last May. Mark Weiss

To look at him, you probably wouldn't peg Chris Hacker as a former flower child, especially if you caught him dressed head-to-toe in black, stepping into his glass-enclosed office at the recently completed New York branch of one of America's most prominent Fortune 500 companies. Ask him to talk about his job as chief design officer of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), the $61 billion New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company, and he will begin by telling you, in the kind of corporate-speak no counter-culturist would condone, about his goal of "creating transcendent consumer experience." From anyone else the phrase might seem canned, but Hacker has an infectious energy that makes anything he says sound genuine. After an hour of conversation, you'll walk away convinced he's just the man to bring sustainable design to corporate America.

"It was a foregone conclusion that I would be a creative person," says the 57-year-old Hacker, a cherubic bear of a man who grew up in Ohio and studied design at the University of Cincinnati. His father and grandfather were commercial artists, and he has two brothers who practice architecture. "I grew up a hippie," says Hacker, who was inspired to choose a career in design after he got a taste of humanistic futurism at Expo '67, in Montreal. But he set aside his interest in flower power in the 1970s, when he discovered "there wasn't a real way to express that and also make money."

Hacker built his career with stops at JC Penney (JCP), Steuben Glass, Dansk, and Henry Dreyfuss Associates. He finally got a chance to apply his interests in sustainability when he was hired in 2000 as the design director of Aveda, the eco-conscious cosmetics brand founded in 1978 by Horst Rechelbacher, affectionately described by Hacker as "a crazy hairdresser who wanted to build a brand that could save the planet." An overambitious goal, perhaps, but during Hacker's five years at Aveda—which uses anywhere from 80 to 95 percent post-consumer recycled materials in its packaging—the company's sales tripled, he says.

By 2005, Hacker's success at Aveda had caught the attention of Johnson & Johnson and had convinced its higher-ups that a new focus on sustainable design might be profitable. He was hired that year by consumer products chairman Colleen A. Goggins. "The company was thinking through its strategy and realized there was a missing part of its competitive advantage. That part was design expertise," Hacker says. Before he came to Johnson & Johnson, almost all of the company's design was outsourced from its home base in the Jersey suburbs. Hacker changed that, establishing a 120-person think tank in a pristine office just a few floors above Martha Stewart's in New York's Starrett-Lehigh Building. "The notion really was that we needed to do this in a place where we could attract great designers," he says.

Hacker has always had the support of management, but changing the company's approach to design hasn't been easy. "We're bringing a problem-solving process to our marketing partners that they aren't used to," he says of his centralized approach. "It's been a challenge."

The experiment is already paying off. "We spent less on design in 2007 than in 2005, and we've increased the sales of the projects we've worked on," says Hacker, citing as examples new packaging for the Aveeno brand of skin-care products, which uses 30 percent post-consumer materials, and a redesigned Clean & Clear acne kit. (He declined to provide sales figures for this story.) The key to growing sales, he adds, is not to load up the packaging with "marketing bullets," but to "think about what motivates the consumer to take the product home."

Hacker's team handles most of J&J's design work, but with the company's enormous portfolio of brands, ranging from Acuvue to Wart-Off, he hasn't been afraid to seek help from some of the field's most creative practitioners. New York designer Harry Allen's revamped First Aid kit, in streamlined white plastic, will soon be coming to a drug store near you. Also in the works: a new Tylenol bottle from Yves Béhar, a "skin-care analyzer" from Antenna Design, and new boxes by Stephen Doyle that Hacker hopes will "change the way people think about Band-Aid."

Hacker also hopes to change the way designers and corporations think about sustainability. "Everything we do is as sustainable as we can make it," he says. "It's part of the process, but it's not the definition. We're designing to create positive consumer experience, and while we do that—by the way—we're also making it sustainable. I'm on a mission to tell designers that sustainability has got to be a part of what they do."

To that end, he's implemented a phased design process, developed at Aveda, that begins with the investigation of new production and material technologies, specifies recycled and biodegradable materials wherever possible, and makes every effort to patronize facilities powered by renewable energy. "The logic is to establish a set of sustainable guidelines to let us work on the things we can work on," he says.

That may not satisfy hard-core environmentalists, but it's undeniably a new direction for consumer-goods companies like J&J, and a smart move as well, says Marc Gobé, president of New York-based think tank Emotional Branding. "Green has become an important aspect of consumer choice, and if your company already has strong brand values, like J&J does, this is what consumers are expecting," Gobé says. For Hacker, the fight is more personal: "You can't stay on the sidelines and not get involved," he says. "As an activist for the cause of environmental sustainability, I believe that if I don't come to big companies and try to help them become better, then it's hard to complain."

Provided by I.D. Magazine—The International Design Magazine

Moore in America

Giants Amid the Blooms

Librado Romero/The New York Times

One of 20 Henry Moore sculptures at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. More Photos >

By RANDY KENNEDY

Published: May 23, 2008

AS summer approaches and the euro and pound remain mightier than the dollar, New York City seems to have been recolonized by Europeans over the last few weeks. But one group of visitors that arrived recently from Britain for a brief change of scenery did not travel the normal way, slogging through the purgatory of airport customs. Most of them arrived at Port Elizabeth in New Jersey in the holds of cargo ships. And at least one made its way into the Bronx strapped to a low flatbed truck so big that it had to wait until the middle of the night to cross the George Washington Bridge, stopping traffic with its greenish biomorphic bulk, like something bound for a government lab at Area 51.

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Librado Romero/The New York Times

Henry Moore’s “Draped Reclining Mother and Baby” (1983), in the Rock Garden of the New York Botanical Garden. More Photos »

The city is no stranger to these kinds of tourists, having hosted its share over the last few decades. But the New York Botanical Garden’s “Moore in America” exhibition, which opens Saturday with 18 of Henry Moore’s big, beloved bronzes (and two more in fiberglass), is the largest outdoor collection of his work in a single location ever presented in New York, or anywhere else in the country. And it serves as the garden’s announcement — after it dipped in its toes with a crowd-pleasing show of Dale Chihuly glass works in 2006 — of its intention to venture more ambitiously into the art world as a way of opening people’s eyes to the garden not simply as a nice, blossomy place to spend a summer afternoon but also as a museum in itself, one of flora.

“It opens up the gardens to new audiences who might not be all that into plants or into gardening but who are into human creativity,” said Todd Forrest, the garden’s vice president for horticulture, riding one recent sunny morning on the back of a golf cart as Moores were being trucked into place all across the garden’s 250 acres.

“And by bringing in art, we show them that the garden — that these kinds of gardens — are in themselves works of art,” he continued. “They’ve been designed and constructed and conserved in much the same spirit.”

In choosing Moore, one of the most revered and familiar sculptors of the 20th century, the garden may be taking few risks. But Mr. Forrest and officials at the Henry Moore Foundation, in rural Hertfordshire north of London, said that the landscape, with its combination of highly choreographed planting, natural schist formations and native forest, was such an ideal fit for the work that it seemed the logical choice for the garden’s first ambitious exhibition.

Moore, who died in 1986, most likely would have approved. “Sculpture is an art of the open air,” he once said. “And for me its best setting and complement is nature. I would rather have a piece of my sculpture put in a landscape, almost any landscape, than in, or on, the most beautiful building I know.”

The Botanical Garden is not just any landscape, of course, and so as early as two years before the exhibition was to open, Anita Feldman, the curator of the Moore Foundation, began visiting the north Bronx and wandering the garden’s hills and fields to decide which pieces from the foundation’s collection would work best, and to figure out where those works would sing.

At the time, many of the pieces she had in mind were scheduled to be shipped to a slightly larger show of Moore’s work that opened last year at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in southwest London — appropriately, perhaps, given that those historic gardens were the inspiration for the one that was founded in the Bronx in 1891. (After the New York show closes on Nov. 2, the pieces will head to the Atlanta Botanical Garden, completing a kind of greatest-hits international garden tour.)

The placement of sculptures in such traveling shows is always a negotiation, never purely a matter of aesthetics. Mr. Forrest naturally wanted to use the works to showcase all the garden’s parts, even the Children’s Adventure Garden, “which I specifically did not want to use,” Ms. Feldman said — for practical reasons: the high probability of a sculpture becoming a set of monkey bars. But the two sides compromised with a 1949 piece, “Mother and Child,” that could be hidden somewhat in a bank of ivy.

Ms. Feldman also had visions of placing a large seedpod-shaped piece called “Large Totem Head” (1968) almost in the embrace of one of the oldest trees in the Botanical Garden, a towering black oak near Daffodil Hill, so that the sculpture could play off the totemic power of the tree. But the weight of the piece might have damaged the oak’s roots, so the sculpture was recently lowered into place well in front of the tree.

Even with such compromises, Ms. Feldman said, the garden proved to be a kind of wonderland for a Moore aficionado. A 1975 work called “Three Piece Reclining Figure: Draped” found a home in a section of ornamental conifers (near the Rose Garden), which ring the sculpture almost as if it were a lone performer being watched by an audience of eccentric spruces and sequoias and cedars.

“I think probably it’s the best site we’ve ever found for that piece,” Ms. Feldman said. “All the sudden you come up on this little glade, and it’s just so, so nice.”

Another piece, “Goslar Warrior” (1973-74), of a reclining figure with a shield, was placed on the Visitors Center Cafe Lawn so that the warrior seems to be staring up admiringly, or warily, at the height of a soaring Himalayan pine close by. The statue’s curve picks up beautifully on the curving branch of an Austrian pine behind it, and its long horizontal lines echo a flat hilltop and dark elongated rock formation in the distance.

“Nothing here is accidental,” Mr. Forrest said, exaggerating only slightly.

The heavy lifting and slow, methodical lowering of the pieces was handled by Frank Mariano, whose family’s company specializes in moving sculpture and has hoisted pieces by Rodin, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein and Roxy Paine, and many, many Moores, over the last few decades. Resting on a bench between hoistings, Mr. Mariano, who has become a well-versed amateur sculpture critic in his job, said he had a particular affection for Moores and had rarely seen them in such a symbiotic relationship with a setting. “Kind of knocks you over,” he said. (He described the actual lifting job for the exhibition as a relative breeze. “We had to take three huge Moores off the side of a mountain once,” he said. “Literally off the side of a mountain.”)

Ms. Feldman said she was very happy the pieces had found such a good spot in the Bronx for the next five months, before many of them migrate south to Atlanta for the winter. “But I must say, they’ve been on the road a long time,” she added, sounding like a worried mother. “And after that, they really do need to come back home to England.”

“Moore in America” opens on Saturday and continues through Nov. 2 at the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx River Parkway and Fordham Road, the Bronx; (718) 817-8700, nybg.org.

Dance

Rauschenberg and Dance, Partners for Life

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Ashley Chen, center, of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in “Interscape” (2000), in front of a backdrop designed by Robert Rauschenberg. More Photos >

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

Published: May 14, 2008

Something inherently theatrical about Robert Rauschenberg’s talent — always evident in his radical feeling for color, light, composition and new ingredients and juxtapositions —prompted him to his boldest and freshest conceptions when he worked onstage. From the early 1950s until 2007 he designed for dance. And in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when he first came to fame, he was recurrently (at times constantly) occupied in dance theater.

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Robert Rauschenberg, American Artist, Dies at 82 (May 14, 2008)

Times Topics: Robert Rauschenberg

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Members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in “Minutiae” (1954). The choreography has not survived, but Robert Rauschenberg’s décor has. More Photos »

Andrea Merola/ANSA

Mr. Rauschenberg, left, with Mr. Cunningham in 2000. More Photos >

When he won the international grand prize at the Venice Biennale in 1964, he said he regarded the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as his biggest canvas. Although the remark offended some in Cunningham circles (primarily the composer John Cage, who seems to have felt it sounded too proprietorial), it was completely justified. At that time there was no better place to see the range of Mr. Rauschenberg’s inventiveness than the Cunningham repertory.

Mr. Rauschenberg wasn’t just the designer of most pieces Mr. Cunningham had choreographed in the previous 10 years; he was also a permanent colleague. He toured America and, in 1964, the world as stage manager to the Cunningham company, adjusting the lighting and costumes, making several of the dancers into his long-term friends, helping turn the itinerary of a dance company into a fulcrum of ideas.

In 1954 Mr. Rauschenberg was the first stage designer to follow the principle of artistic independence already established by Mr. Cunningham and Cage. All he needed to know was which dancer to design costumes for, and if Mr. Cunningham had any further specifications. So when Mr. Cunningham asked (in 1954) for décor around which the dancers could move, Mr. Rauschenberg placed a large red free-standing combine center stage in “Minutiae”; though the choreography has not survived, the décor is still used in some Cunningham Events.

Sometimes Mr. Cunningham gave not specifications but poetic clues. For example, for “Winterbranch” (1964) he said to Mr. Rauschenberg, “Think of the night as if it were day.” Mr. Rauschenberg’s response was to think of images like being caught in the headlights of a car, and he made all-black costumes and lighting that sometimes threw the stage into darkness while viewers were shielding their eyes from the light.

When Mr. Cunningham was experimenting with new definitions of stage space in “Summerspace” (1958), suggesting both that the stage was just a section of a vaster landscape and that the mood was that of a summer idyll, Mr. Rauschenberg responded with impressionistic pointillism. The costumes of the dancers matched the backdrop view in near camouflage, and the work evoked scenes by Monet and Seurat while also suggesting a wildlife documentary.

In “Crises” (1960) the dancers wore single-color all-over tights that glowed fiercely against the surrounding blackness. In such works Mr. Rauschenberg also became one of the all-time masters of theatrical lighting.

Mr. Rauschenberg had come to know the young Paul Taylor in 1953, while Mr. Taylor was a Cunningham dancer. When Mr. Taylor began to choreograph in the succeeding years, Mr. Rauschenberg was his designer; works like “Three Epitaphs” (1956, all-black costumes again) survive in Taylor repertory today. In the 1960s Mr. Rauschenberg was involved in the radical dance-theater experiments at and around Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and was close to Cunningham-connected experimentalists like Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber and Steve Paxton; he even choreographed himself.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s full-time connection to the Cunningham company ended with its 1964 world tour. Though he and Cage had stimulated each other profoundly and were in many ways like-minded, their egos had clashed; Mr. Rauschenberg’s “my biggest canvas” remark sounded like colonization in a dance theater where the point was independence.

But others led him back to dance theater, nobody more beautifully than Trisha Brown. Her “Set and Reset” (1983) was an instant masterpiece, largely thanks to Mr. Rauschenberg’s astonishingly imaginative designs. Three screens simultaneously broadcast separate video collages in black and white (more than 20 years before a video component became the norm in new choreography), while the dancers rippled around the stage in part-translucent costumes marked with gray and black figures that resembled newsprint.

Mr. Rauschenberg and Mr. Cunningham did collaborate again — though collaboration may have always been too tight a word for the freedom they gave each other — on several pieces over the decades. The last of these was only last October, “XOVER”(pronounced “Crossover”), which had its premiere at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College. (It has yet to be seen in New York or most other cities.) The white costumes against a largely white backdrop recall the all-white paintings of 50 years before; the nonwhite parts of the backdrop, combining silk-screen photography and painting, connect isolated images (a bicycle, a fence, an industrial view) with beautiful color and details of light.

More glorious yet — the most marvelous Rauschenberg stage designs I have seen, and supremely theatrical — were what he made for Mr. Cunningham’s “Interscape” (2000). This work begins with a black-and-white curtain that is already a classic Rauschenberg collage of eclectic images: it proves translucent, and lighting allows the dancers to be seen warming up onstage.

When that curtain lifts, however, the backdrop is a full-color version of the same collage, so that we seem to have gone from a shadow realm to a new plane of more intense being, in which the main choreography occurs. Each costume was individual (Mr. Cunningham said he knew the dancers were happy from the noises he could hear them making as they returned from their fittings) and demonstrated Mr. Rauschenberg’s extraordinary feeling for color combinations. (One stinging green hangs in the memory.)

Impresarios have occasionally assembled programs that illustrate “Picasso and the Dance,” but Mr. Rauschenberg’s work for dance was far more prolific than Picasso’s, as a whole season could be presented to demonstrate. If only that could happen, its range of designs — from “Three Epitaphs” to “Summerspace,” from “Set and Reset” to “Interscape,” from “Crises” to “Glacial Decoy” (another Trisha Brown collaboration) — would easily establish his place in the forefront of architects of theater.

Nano (Tata)

Inside the Tata Nano Factory

印度的國民車Nano的團隊設計

紐約時報報導的中國藝術品市場的情仇

An Auction of New Chinese Art Leaves Disjointed Noses in Its Wake

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: May 7, 2008

SHANGHAI — Sotheby’s auction house called it the “most important collection of contemporary Chinese art to ever come to market” — some 200 works by some of China’s hottest names.

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Miranda Mimi Kuo-Deemer for The New York Times

Feng Zhengjie, one of the painters in an April Sotheby’s sale.

Sotheby's

“The Living Word” by Xu Bing.

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Sotheby's

“Bloodline: The Big Family No. 3” by Zhang Xiaogang.

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Sotheby's

“Chairman Mao With Us” by Zeng Fanzhi.

And when the first half of the trove, called the Estella Collection, went on the block in April in Hong Kong, it brought in $18 million and set some record prices for artists, like $6 million for a canvas by the Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang.

But the sale of the works has stirred indignation among many of the artists and their dealers and some curators.

Those artists and curators say that as the collection was being formed, they were duped into thinking that a rich Westerner was putting together a permanent collection and would eventually donate some of the works to leading museums.

Instead, they say, the buyers were a group of investors who quickly cashed in by selling the works last August to the Manhattan dealer William Acquavella, who is in turn selling them through Sotheby’s. (The second half of the collection is to be auctioned this fall in New York.)

Some of the artists say they sold works in the Estella Collection at a discount in the belief that the collection would gain long-term renown and help enhance their reputations.

“I feel cheated,” said one of the artists, Feng Zhengjie, 40, known for his gaudy portraits of fashionable, lushly made-up women. “I can’t believe it ended up like that, just for an auction.”

Michael Goedhuis, the New York dealer who formed the collection for the group of investors, said he never misled anyone and had expected his investors to hold onto the works.

“The story was the same to everyone: this is a collection we intend on keeping intact,” said Mr. Goedhuis, who traveled to China for more than three years to collect the pieces. “There was a change of direction for various reasons. It was a big surprise and it was out of my control.”

Mr. Goedhuis declined to identify his investors, but The New York Times has already named two: Ray Debbane, president of the New York investment firm Invus Financial Advisors, and Sacha Lainovic, a co-founder and managing partner at Invus. Neither Mr. Debbane nor Mr. Lainovic returned telephone calls seeking comment.

Mr. Goedhuis said that in any case the artists had no reason to complain because they had benefited from the exposure. “They’re riding the wave,” he said.

In a statement issued last week, Sotheby’s acknowledged that in the final weeks before the sale it “became aware that a few artists had sold their works with a different expectation about what would happen to them in the future.” It said it hoped “the international exposure during this exciting time in the market would be helpful in furthering their careers.”

Aggravating the controversy, the auction was announced just after the works had been exhibited at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark, from March to August of last year. Had they known the Estella Collection would quickly be sold, officials at the Danish museum said, they would never have organized the exhibition.

“We seriously regret that it turned out to be mere speculation, and there was dishonesty,” said Anders Kold, the curator of the show, titled “Made in China.” “We didn’t have that information, and so as a consequence, we went on with it.”

To retain the public trust and ensure that they are not used as marketing tools, museums generally try to avoid exhibiting private collections that are soon to be sold.

The show also traveled to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, closing there shortly before the April auction in Hong Kong. "At the time that the museum made arrangements for the exhibition, there was no indication of any intention to sell the collection,'' the Israel Museum said this week in an e-mail. "The museum learned of this development only toward the end of the showing.''

The conflict suggests the tensions that have arisen between artists, curators, galleries and museums around the world since the booming art market became global. The challenges are particularly acute when it comes to China, which has become a magnet for some of the world’s biggest galleries, museums, collectors and art market speculators, but is relatively new to the game.

Chinese artists who a few years ago were selling works for just $10,000 each are suddenly signing deals with international galleries and seeing their works fetch $500,000 or more at auction. Indeed, Art Market Trends 2007 reported that last year, 5 of the 10 best-selling living artists at auction were born in China, led by Mr. Zhang, 50, whose works sold for a total of $56.8 million at auction last year.

“It’s amazing,” said Fabien Fryns, a founder of F2 Gallery in Beijing. “I think there’ll be a $20 million painting some time soon.”

Mr. Goedhuis, a former antiques dealer, said that last August’s sale to Mr. Acquavella was hugely profitable for his investors. But he declined to say what they paid for the works or what they sold them for. Art market experts have put the Acquavella acquisition at around $25 million.

Sotheby’s is a stakeholder in the Estella Collection auction. That the first half of the collection has sold for far above the estimate suggests that Mr. Acquavella and the auction house have invested wisely.

Mr. Goedhuis said his investors’ “original concept” was to “build the pre-eminent collection of Chinese contemporary art as the basis of a great book.”

One indication of the seriousness of the project, he said, was a decision to hire Britta Erickson, an independent scholar and a leading authority on Chinese contemporary art, to help select works and write essays for the book, “China Onward,” which was published by the Louisiana Museum in Denmark.

But Ms. Erickson now says that she too was misled into thinking she was working for a serious, long-term collector.

“I believed that it was to be a personal collection being assembled for the long term, with perhaps some pieces to be donated to museums,” she said in an e-mail message. “I am sorry I was misinformed.”

She added, “The art world cannot function without trust.”

The artist He Sen, 40, who paints photographlike images of young women, also said that Mr. Goedhuis had assured him that a long-term collector was behind the Estella Collection and that some of the works might end up in a museum.

He said that one painting that he sold to the collection for about $60,000 went for more than $200,000 at the Hong Kong auction.

“Many artists, including me, were convinced by him, gave our best works to Michael, some even at a relatively cheap price,” Mr. He said of Mr. Goedhuis. “Then it turned out to be an auction. We feel sold out by him.”

Mr. Feng said his works were auctioned at Sotheby’s for 5 to 10 times the price he gave Mr. Goedhuis.

Mr. Goedhuis said that in turning to Mr. Acquavella, he had hoped that the Las Vegas casino tycoon Steve Wynn, a major collector with interests in Macao, one of China’s special administrative regions, would emerge as a buyer of the entire collection. In the end Mr. Acquavella bought it himself, without restrictions. Then he put it up for auction.

“That’s what I do,” Mr. Acquavella said. “I buy and sell.”

Mr. Goedhuis said he had since tried to convince the artists that the Estella Collection’s brief history was a boon to them.

“ ‘You only benefited from this,’ ” he said he told some of the artists after the auction was announced last fall, and he began fielding complaints. “ ‘You’re in a wonderful scholarly book and you’ve been exhibited in two fine museums.’ ”

He also offered his own scathing critique of the artists, remarking that they had profited so much from the boom that they could afford to build huge studios and homes.

“The problem is everyone is buying and flipping, and the artists are also flipping,” he said by telephone from Beijing. “It’s a Wild West out here.”

NYTimes.com/TMagazine

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