Guggenheim Bilbao: The Building

I'm afraid I cannot sing the praises of this building. I do not care for it, nor for Frank Gehry's architecture in general.

(For what I am about to say, I beg the indulgence of my docent friends who volunteer at the Weisman, the Gehry-designed art museum in the Twin Cities. Likewise my other friends and family members who take an interest in art and architecture. I don't mind it when people disagree with me; I only hope they won't mind it when I disagree with them.) 

I believe I understand pretty well what Gehry is trying to do, and I think he does it successfully -- and I don't like it. I don't think it's good. I think if you want to whisk away conventional notions of beauty and unity, you should find an alternative that provides a new kind of aesthetic pleasure rather than the aesthetic equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. I think if you're going to demolish conventional shapes and structures, you need to replace them with something that doesn't look like a piece or a pile of...junk.

I'm aware of the claim that Gehry's work is just being playful. I don't buy it. In fact, the main vibe I pick up is contempt for the taste of the average viewer. His designs say, "I know ordinary people will hate this. OK then! I want to punish their eyes every time they see it!"

Not all of Gehry's buildings are equally awful, and the Guggenheim Bilbao isn't the worst. (That might be the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, which wants to be so bad that it's good but succeeds only in being really, really bad.) And I acknowledge that Gehry's buildings present a multiplicity of views, not all of which are uniformly horrible. For example, this bit of the Guggenheim hangs together fairly well, at least to my taste:

(Yes, I understand that Gehry's intention, in the building's entirety, is the opposite of "hanging together." I only wish he were not so misguided.) 

After we got off the tram that deposited us nearby, Karen and I had to walk all the way around the building before we could find the entrance. Seems to me that's a failure of function; I know Gehry doesn't care about function, but he ought to. Inside, I found myself reminded of cancer -- structural elements lacking rhyme or reason, proliferating out of control.

What a waste of resources. Disregarding function in order to create something like the Sydney Opera House may be worthwhile, if the result is beautiful enough. The Guggenheim Bilbao isn't.

Rant over. Thank you for reading. Assuming you got this far.