Music Zimmer–Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Since I haven’t posted anything by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for a while, here’s a beautiful rendering by his wife Margaret of his proposal for a Glasgow music room:

Head to ArchDaily's post for the original.

Glasgow School of Art -- Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art of (designed 1906-7; completed 1909) was one of the twentieth Century's first true architectural masterpieces. Mackintosh designed it at the age of just twenty-eight.
That's a model (above) of the completed building, and a glimpse of the West facade (below).

I was devastated to discover over the weekend that the masterpiece by architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, his Glasgow School of Art, was destroyed by fire last week. 

The shell remains, but rooms are ravaged – and the architectural heart of the school, the library, is no more.

      

There is talk of restoration, but it’s hard to see what there is left to restore.

Devastating.

'House for an Art Lover' - Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Mackintosh's 'House for an Art Lover' was designed in 1901, but not completed until one-hundred years later. Therein, naturally, lies a story.  And now, we see the mark of his genius on work still superior to most produced today.  

Glasgow has never looked so sunlit, or so alive.

Pictures are from the Armin Grew Homepage.  Check out the house's homepage for more details.

Daily Record Building - Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1901

Brilliant Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh was designing and building tall, stunning modern buildings -- to use Louis Sullivan's phrase, buildings that were "comely in the nude" --long before the idea really occurred to too many others outside Chicago, and few of those rare geniuses were able to express their ideas as deftly as Mackintosh.

1901. Just think about that.

"But is it art?"

The famous Mackintosh 'ladder' chair by architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, left, and there's one in the location for which they were designed, at Hill House, Glasgow, right. (1903)

An ornamental bank teller's grille by architect Louis Sullivan below left, and the bank for which the ornament was designed, below right. (1908)

QUESTION: Is the chair, on its own, art? Is the ornamental grille art?

They're both very nice -- exceptional, in my estimation -- but is there enough in them on their own to be that "shortcut to our most deeply-held premises" which is the defining characteristic of art, particularly good art? Is their sufficient scope in a chair or an example of ornament to perform that role? Or are these things somewhat like a good and well-crafted phrase in a poem, or a peculiarly apt metaphor in a short story, or a telling chapter in a novel: things we can sometimes enjoy in their own right as well -- particularly if we know they came from and are part of the same theme as a major work -- but which we nonetheless know are part of an art work?

In other words, is it true to say that the ensemble is art -- the sum of all the parts -- but not the parts themselves, however attractive?

As they say in Glasgow, "What say you, Jimmy?" (My own answer, if you haven't guessed already, is of course suggested in the questions, but I've sketched it out a little more here and here.)

Oh, and the New York Times has a very brief piece on Sullivan's beautiful series of banks. And antiquarian Eric Knowles does the job for Hill House.

RELATED POSTS ON: Art, Architecture

Hill House - Charles Rennie Mackintosh

The drawing room of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's 'Hill House' outside Glasgow. Dating from 1902, Mackintosh's work brought British architecture into the modern world.

RELATED: Architecture

Glasgow School of Art -- Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art of (designed 1906-7; completed 1909) was one of the twentieth Century's first true architectural masterpieces. Mackintosh designed it at the age of just twenty-eight.

That's a model (above) of the completed building, the Library (below, left and right) and the West facade (left)

A film showing some of Mackintosh's work is available at this site. And a 3d 'tour' of Mackintosh's beautiful light-filled Hill House Drawing Room is available at this site. It's amazing what you find on the old Interweb when you decide to really look.