The Philip Johnson Glass House: An Architect i by Rizzoli International Publications

CHAPTER 2 : 1960–1979

The year 1960 saw the arrival of another curator and gardener to the Glass House estate: David Whitney. Thirty-three years younger than Johnson, he moved from RISD to New York City and New Canaan to partner with the architect in life and in the evolution of the Glass House. Thanks to Whitney, artists joined the architects at Johnson’s famous Glass House salons. Fashion photographer David McCabe was an interloper when he photographed there in late 1964 for A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol. As remem-bered by McCabe for the Telegraph in 2011: “Oh, he’s so fabulous, wait till you see his house,” Andy told us. “It’s been in all the magazines.” The Glass House! You know, the Glass House, Philip Johnson’s Glass House. “It’s holding an open house on Sunday,” he said, as if it had a life of its own. An icon of modernism—and its creator, Philip Johnson, had invited us (or so Andy said). And so, on the chilly Sunday afternoon in the winter of 1964–65, we go out to Connecticut to see Philip the Brazen in his famous glass slipper. Andy is already out there somewhere in the manicured wilds of Connecticut. Not the least of today’s agenda will be a photo op for Andy, the Glass House being essentially another stage set. Early in the morning, we get to the Glass House. It is a cold, gray day. The Glass House has a fieldstone wall and a well-behaved lawn, too, just like all the other saltboxes and faux plantation houses—yet it stands out against the bland New England landscaping like a postcard of itself. Andy is nowhere to be seen. We are stumbling around the place. There are people in the Glass House, but we don’t know them, and they look very imposing. On top of this, we don’t really know if Andy has told them we’re coming, Andy being Andy. Plus, we don’t see Andy in the Glass House, and you can see everyone inside quite clearly, like figurines under a bell jar. It isn’t a conventional house with a front door and a bell. With glass walls you don’t need a bell. Your alien presence on the immaculate green lawn is the bell. Unsure what we should do, we bump into one another like kinetic garden ornaments set in motion for the amusement of the people on the other side of the invisible wall. The Glass House looks oddly formidable. The common wisdom about people in glass OPPOSITE LOREM IPSUM DOLOR. CONSECTETUR ADIPISCING ELIT.

houses feeling exposed is here turned on its vitreous head. It is we, the peasants gawking at the modernist symbol, who feel vulnerable and want to hide.

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This might describe a typical gathering at the Glass House when Johnson worked fulltime in Manhattan and came to New Canaan only on weekends, convening

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... evidence of moss and mildewing, gold leaf has flaked badly. […] An allowance of $10,000 should be provided if this is the case. However, there is a question as to whether or not the architect’s intention may have been to allow the pavilion to deteriorate, thus acquiring the character of a ruin. Years later, Johnson claimed to have “cleaned it up” for the National Trust, acknowledging it had become “pretty bedraggled.” The Pavilion was reached by a set of railroad-tie steps to a zigzag path, yielding alternating views of the Glass House and the Pavilion and pond. When the wood deteriorated, against Johnson’s end-of-life instructions, the steps were removed, thereby denying an element of the processional experience. The path led to a bridge across a running brook and the final way to the Pavilion was fixed by a woodchip path with metal edging, which is missing today. A naturally occurring stone bench excavated on the property was laboriously positioned in several locations before ending up by the zigzag path. Such Herculean tasks were usually scheduled for the winter, when the ground was frozen, to protect the land from unsightly tire tracks and ruts. Photographers and workmen remember being discouraged by Johnson from walking the same path twice to keep manmade tracks to a minimum. Characteristically, he also instructed the workmen to take care to preserve the lichen on the rocks. It has been suggested that the stone bench was known to sculptor Scott Burton and inspired the Pair of Rock Chairs (1980–81) in the MoMA Sculpture Garden. A byproduct of Johnson’s friendships with Alfred Barr, David Whitney, and gallerist Leo Castelli , among others, was the formation of a personal art collection of twentieth-century art, mostly by younger artists he came to know and support. “I was attracted to him originally because he was the only architect I knew or heard about who was interested in contemporary art, that was having anything to do with living artists who were pushing their work forward into the unknown,” said Frank Gehry. “He was both a supporter and a collector of those works.” Johnson himself admitted, “I feel akin to these people. They have the same attitude toward art that I have about architecture—no rules, a new contact with real life, a new way of looking at old buildings, old things and common OPPOSITE LOREM IPSUM DOLOR. CONSECTETUR ADIPISCING. TOP LOREM IPSUM DOLOR. CONSEC-

objects.” When the collection outgrew his Manhattan office, Johnson designed

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an innovative tumulus-cum-berm-style gallery for the Glass House property

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in 1965 with an entranceway alluding to the Temple of Atreus at Mycenae.

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A consummate museum man, who by his own admission was overwhelmed by gallery spaces packed with art, Johnson chose to live in the Glass House with just one painting and two sculptures and nature as his wallpaper. For his private art gallery, the architect devised a clever but ultimately impractical system of rotating panels allowing just six pictures to be viewed at one time CHAPTER 2 : 1960–1979 © 2016 Skira Rizzoli. All Rights Reserved

for minimum viewer fatigue and maximum storage potential. Sculptures were on casters and moved as needed to avoid the swinging Rolodex of pictures. Lev Zetlin & Associates engineered the project, which included the elegant Japanesque eyebrow bridge that crosses the ravine on the walk to the gallery. The firm also helped with the 10’ x 20’ wooden Moon Viewing Platform cantilevered west over a fieldstone wall opposite the entrance, which was integral to the architecture of the gallery. Constructed of railroad ties bolted to a concrete foundation, like the steps to the Pavilion, it deteriorated and was removed after the architect’s death, effectively erasing a subtle Johnsonian folly. Press coverage and house tours followed the completion of the Painting Gallery. Johnson’s mother, his sisters, and an aunt graduated from Wellesley College, doubtless the reason the Glass House was on the exclusive Southern Connecticut Wellesley Club tour of eight Homes and Landmarks in New Canaan held on October 13, 1965. The handout for the tour noted that the: ... art gallery built, like the tombs of Mycenae, below ground, will be sufficiently near completion in October to permit appreciation of a dramatic and functional new concept in museum architecture. The same year found Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon, an architecture buff, on the property at a luncheon for ten hosted by Johnson. In 1966, The New Canaan Historical Society was the beneficiary of a Private Showing of the Philip Johnson Art Gallery scheduled for May 20 from 8 p.m. to midnight to allow a view of the full moon from the Moon Viewing Platform. Ticketholders received a brochure with directions to the property and instructions: “There will be signs and police officers to show you where to park; … To walk through the grounds, it is suggested that women wear walking shoes and avoid spike heels.” As explained: The new Gallery, unique in many details, may well become as renowned throughout the world as is the Glass House. It will not be open to the public generally. Philip Johnson’s personal collection of paintings will also be of great interest. Many have been shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in other museums in the United States and Europe. TOP LOREM IPSUM DOLOR. CONSECTETUR ADIPISCING ELIT.

Robert Bart’s 1964 untitled aluminum assemblage was initially installed outside

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the Painting Gallery before being donated to MoMA in 1969. Mark di Suvero’s

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wooden Ladder Piece (1961–62) was positioned between the bridge and the Painting Gallery, where it quickly deteriorated. A stone entrance gate on the north side of the Painting Gallery is perhaps a short-lived sculpture if not a

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Johnsonian folly or maquette. The most exclusive fundraiser hosted by Johnson

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was the ‘happening’ held on June 3, 1967, to benefit the Merce Cunningham

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Dance Company. For this singular event, costing $75 a head, the meadow below

the Moon-Viewing Platform became an outdoor theater and picnic ground with a stage for the dancers built by Johnson’s dedicated contractor, Louis Lee and Co. According to Vogue magazine’s illustrated recap, it was an evening of: Balloons. Ballet. Boogaloo. […] Guests moseyed through the house and the unique underground museum, watched the Cunningham dancers perform to a John Cage score especially composed for this evening and orchestrated for viola, tam-tam (a gong), radio, and three automobiles—windshield wipers, engines, door slams, and all. After the performance when dark fell, people, provided with supper baskets and bottles of Beaujolais, picnicked on the lawns and meadows, then took over the dance platform to the frantic sounds of the Velvet Underground. Rare footage shows white-jacketed bartenders at well-stocked bars, men in suits, women in miniskirts, flickering torches, and Andy Warhol in a beach chair awaiting the performance. It also captures a neighbor complaining audibly about the cacophony of the John Cage composition. “Furious about the police,” Johnson wrote to Andy Warhol on June 12. “Music was glorious and would have been glorious. You were wonderful to do this for Merce. I only hope you get your reward 16

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this side of heaven.” Johnson continued to collect and site sculpture outdoors at the Glass House. A 1971 installation of eight painted metal boxes by Donald Judd was in the north meadow until at least 1979 when they were noted by the New Canaan Historical Society as needing repainting in a color described by Johnson as ”rusty red.” Carl Andre (b. 1935) was invited to design a permanent earthwork for the property in 1966, submitting a proposal for a spiraling 52-foot circular sod ramp, which was never executed. The only site-specific sculpture on the property today is the concrete cylinder designed by Donald Judd (Fig. 87-88). The artist’s first sited work, it was cast in TOP LOREM IPSUM DOLOR. BELOW CONSECTETUR ADIPISCINGCONSECTETUR ADIPISCING ELIT. OPPOSITE LOREM IPSUM DOLOR. CONSECTETUR ADIPISCING ELIT.

1971 at the base of the new serpentine driveway where its form echoes the columnar Glass House chimney and its undulating rim expresses the uneven terrain. The casting was flawed when one of the two cement trucks arrived too late to pour in tandem. According to Yale graduate and engineer Port Draper, who oversaw construction and maintenance at the Glass House from 1968 until 1995 [?],

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Johnson graciously accepted the results and refused to have the piece recast.

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It is possible the Carl Andre proposal of the same diameter was meant for that

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location. At some point, a three-piece Robert Morris (b. 1931) sculpture, Untitled