originalmente postado em http://notasurbanas.blogsome.com/2010/10/11/imagem-acumulada-a-tal-ponto-que-se-torna-capital/
Do mesmo livro citado aqui, agora sobre o mestre-de-obras.
Long ago in “The Social Bases of Art” [1936] Meyer Schapiro argued that the Impressionist painter was the first artist to address the new modern world of speed and surface. “For this individual,” Schapiro wrote, “the world is a spectacle, a source of novel pleasant sensations, or a field in which he may realize his ‘individuality’, through art, through sexual intrigue, and through the most varied, but non-productive, mobility.” So it is still today — for our privileged artists, architects and patrons — only more so. Yet “such an art cannot really be called free,” Schapiro cautioned, “because it is so exclusive and private”; to be deemed free at all, its “individuality must lose its exclusiveness and its ruthless and perverse character”.
In a similar way Gehry evokes an individuality that seems more exclusive than democratic. Rather than “forums of civic engagement,” his cultural centers appear as sites of spectacular spectatorship, of tourist awe. In The Society of the Spectacle [1967] Guy Debord defined spectacle as “capital accumulated to the point where it becomes an image.” With Gehry and other architects the reverse is now true as well: spectacle is “an image accumulated to the point where it becomes capital.” Such is the logic of many cultural centers today, as they are designed, alongside theme parks and sports complexes, to assist in the corporate “revival” of the city — that is, of its being made safe for shopping, spectating, and spacing out.
FOSTER, Hal. “Master builder” in Design and Crime (and other diatribes). Londres: Verso, 2002, pp 41–42.
•••
À esquerda: garrafa de uma edição especial da vodca Wyborowa desenhada por Frank Gehry. Faz parte de uma campanha de marketing/branding mais ampla promovida pelo governo do país com o fim de divulgar internacionalmente a indústria polonesa.
Curiosamente trata-se de uma estratégia comercial similar a das Havaianas brasileiras: internamente um produto corriqueiro e considerado popularesco, é promovido como algo sofisticado e caro fora do país. Os poloneses não consideram esta particular marca de vodca como a melhor de seu país (trata-se mesmo de um produto não muito caro), mas será vendida nos EUA como algo luxuoso e de alto padrão.
Pelo visto a estratégia deu certo, pelo menos em terras onde as elites imitam os hábitos sofisticados de fora.
•••
imagens: 1: Being Frank; 2: Wyborowa package by Frank Gehry.
arquitetura em notas 