Art

Architecture and Fine Arts

An unusual liaison between INMC and Frankfurt am Main

By Dr. Manfred Sack

We often dream that architects were interested in the fine arts - in their buildings. However, they seldom bother about such things. This is due to the fact that on the one hand, pictures and sculptures bore them, on the other hand they consider their building projects to be works of art in their own right and all artistic additions to be competitive, if not interfering additions. Sometimes - to favour their clients and without any knowledge ‑ they turn to hit lists of the art market; sometimes the prices cause them and their client to wince, then they return to the regional league. There are many explanations for this situation we observe all around us. One is to be found at our uni­ver­sities: The subject of „fine art in architecture“ is not covered by the curricula, it is not on the syllabus. How can, therefore, an architect develop a secure and committed dedication for it, let alone, see a necessity, if he does not develop an appreciation of art by himself?

And the clients? Are they any better? There are those who have absolutely no sense of art and consider it to be a waste, there are others who consider works of art mainly as an investment, and only a few, paintings, graphics, sculptures are a personal pleasure which they wish to impart on their staff and guests, who secondly feel a sense of pride, where possible, or thirdly even see a symbiosis between their building projects and the artworks. The fourth am­bition is so rare that one can only have admiration for it: for a thematic vision which was inspired by the offers of architecture and which relates expressly to what is taking place in the building itself, as in the INMC: it relates to the ceaseless communication, processed by supercomputers and servers, orderly and thereby abstracted to the extreme, communication, which individuals maintain among each other in over two hundred countries in the world.

A wall-filling 72 m² screen with information and signals indicates what is occurring  here under the heading of communication: in other words under­standing, contact, relationship, connection, but even this relies finally on in­tangible symbols which can only be decoded by experts. Slowly the wonder­ful idea immerged of making the abstract processes concrete: with the help of art. The idea coming from an architect with artistic experience was to display in his building the „basic functions of global communication between individuals” in whatever form, that is to reflect them in artworks.

There was one conditional, however, that artworks were not to be fixed to the building, not installed “permanently” but rather exchangeable or so they could be relocated or sold under certain circumstances. And the theme? For the architect that was the subjects of communication, quite simply: People. He did not need long to realise this and develop a concept. He could hardly have found a more suitable one. The theme, in fact, offers unlimited interpretations, artistic variations, technical design forms. Its repetitiveness does not lead to weariness, but it opens ‑ on the contrary ‑the chance of unlimited, often surprising diversity. This can be experienced by each individual viewer in the most direct way with both of the six metre wide, one-and-a half metre high boards on which the photographer Roland Fischer has collected hundreds of “Multicultural Heads” of Frankfurt Airport. Even more exciting this happens when it comes to the pictures and sculptures which, as if incidentally, at the same time feature a central characteristic of the company: Internationality.

It seldom happens that the theme „Art on Architecture” (definitely “in the architectural object”) is dealt with so temperamentally and so invitingly as here under the Frankfurt telecommunications tower at the INMC of Telekom. The discussions between principals, architects, public authorities and citizens are usually crippling. It first became a political issue after the endless havoc left behind after World War II, and as the breathless restoration of the country marked by poverty, later the huge mass accommodation building projects driven by the big corporations, had produced a utility architecture which was soon condemned as “building industry functionality”: as an architecture limited to its rational, utilitarian and financial advantages, finding all artistic efforts in building to be annoying, favouring trouble-free production of architectural objects. What they denied in emotional value throughout the country, namely a minimum of aesthetic added value and an adequate, proportionate urban planning, and spatial culture, should now be covered up by fine art, by so-called “Art on Architecture”. This is the explanation for the many thousands of artworks, of sculptures, mosaics, frescos, fountains in, on, at and around architectural objects.

These efforts never had any appeal for the knowledgeable, after the German Bundestag (the Lower House of the German parliament) issued a directive in 1950 whereby one half to two percent of a project value were to be (not obliged to be spent) spent on "Art on Architecture" in all cases of buildings financed from state funds - and later buildings financed from public funds. This was firstly to help local artists to earn a living, secondly to enhance the appearance of the poor architecture. The names invented for this indicate how seldom it was crowned with success: camouflage paint, façade cosmetics, two-percent art, charity or cup of mercy for artists, social fund for local artists etc. There was a lot of mediocre art among it, a lot of decorative work, often pitifully naive.

One day, from the weariness of this “Art in Architecture” new ideas emerged, which were no longer satisfied with the classical appearance of art - with pictures and sculptures - but included the landscape: art between architectural objects.

At the same time, however, a longing for “Integrative Artwork” grew. For this had not normally been aimed for, in spite of the, after all well-meant, “Art in Architecture” programme: the cooperation of artists, architects and principals. In the “National Survey” (No. 30) which was undertaken among three thousand Swiss architects, more than half of them said they could have integrated artwork in their buildings - and they would have done so, had they been able to include this in their design plans in good time. Should an early signal be given, therefore, also by the client? Should he perhaps be given a strong push? Must he first possibly need to be convinced in the first place?

In Germany there was a sudden break for “Art in Architecture” - through discontentment with the provincial monotony of artworks, stuffy traditionalism as with smarmy modernism. It had begun with huge wall paintings on firewalls and gables, where previously often the washed-out remains of advertising posters were still to be found. Soon we saw all kinds of colourful, figured paintings also on bunkers, great bare facades of warehouses, sales outlets and gymnasiums. It almost gave the impression of looking into the soul mirror of the urban citizen. Richard Haas, one of the most renowned façade painters between Chicago and Munich, saw in all this merely “a form of urban surgery which encroaches on the undesirable and ugly distortions“. The most primitive and often unbearable expression of this dissatisfaction was soon the uncontrolled graffiti which degenerated, often without the slightest aesthetic ambition, into mere possessive wall besmirching.

In these years, the seventies, two German cities, Bremen and Hanover, developed a new idea, which would extend the “Art in Architecture” into “Art in the City”. The Hanover plan was now “to change the city by artistic items and events”; in Bremen, in turn, the community council decided to consolidate the budgets for “Art in Architecture”, to add the same amount from municipal funds and to call it from then on “Art in Public Locations”. It was a pioneering act, as the streets had lost most of their attractiveness, which Walter Benjamin described in his essays as “The Housing of the Collective Community”. The cities were, as the Bremen Culture Senator wrote in 1993, “no longer either living landscapes nor homely rooms” but rather “functional utility buildings in which even the last remaining urbanity of alleged logic has been sacrificed”. That was the reason for the efforts “to make the city once more a place for discoveries and experience, of self-decisive activity and behaviour and an 'arguing public': She wanted to place art at the level of a social experience.

Was it, therefore, something different, which caused principals, investors, tenants ‑ mainly of administrative buildings ‑ to want to have art in their buildings for the last one or two decades? It was pictures and sculptures which no longer were ascribed with their individual, private passion or mood; they were now motivated by other motifs. Among these were the understandable intention of drawing attention to themselves and the institution (the company), to assert their particular claim, also the striving to cause their customers and the public to remember them, and to their reputation for education and sophistication. This also included the hope of doing their own staff a favour, thus to show them respect: Of course this involved also the joy of ownership, not least the associated hope of having a treasure which would probably increase in value, but lastly also the assumption that with this cultural display of identity they would promote themselves, thus acquiring trust.

All of a sudden hotels of a certain type began noticeably not only to furnish their foyers, lounges, restaurants and guest rooms with selected modern - or fashionable - designs, but also with artworks of one or more contemporary artists; as also doctors, lawyers, estate agents displayed their interest in art on the walls of their waiting rooms and hallways, partly for psychological or therapeutic reasons; newspaper publishers, fascinated by art, sent their art critics out to studios, galleries and auction houses to give their publishing houses a stimulating kick - and, along the way, to amass an ambitious collection. It became almost a fashion to display one’s one prosperity, giving the impression that not only had someone lost his heart to the arts, but also developed a good head for calculating its value.

Meanwhile there is hardly a bank which neglects the chance of using artworks to prove its soundness. However, there are few enterprises such as INMC in Frankfurt am Main who, at the same time, stake their claim not only to accumulate art but also to select pieces with such prudence to have them hung and exhibited so that architecture and fine art thereby form a type of association or partnership, arranged as closely as possible - and thereby even to make us believe that from now on, the one without the other would lose aesthetic and also space-creative, formative and distinguishing as well as stimulating power. It is fortunate for the artworks in the INMC that they have their 'stages' for their appearance provided by this architecture with the galleries and the glass hall, extensively bathed in light.

This is exactly the proper purpose of artworks, whether they populate public spaces or the interiors of buildings where people work or go in and out: to loosen up, but at the same time to generate visual connections which stimulate curiosity arousing the enjoyment of fine art, provoking and creating associations and providing a memorable location. They, as we see here, stimulate people to build a relationship with the exhibits, whether it be figures, paintings or graphics, whether it be heads of a surprising diversity, faces to look into.

They cause us to stop and think, to contemplate, they make us wonder or make us laugh - and they finally, and also for this reason, facilitate orientation in the building. Oh, this cleverly and complexly composed Marilyn Monroe, wasn’t it hanging…? No…wasn’t it in the gallery on the first floor on the left?

Artworks should never give the impression, neither in public exterior locations nor in interiors, as if they were just placed there without any particular motive, but they are to show intentional creation, give the impression of existential, necessary commodities: artworks that exercise fascination and make friends by daily encounter. And there will always be friends among them who are liked, who one possibly dotes upon and others who leave one cold, meaning the ones with whom, as in everyday life, one has difficulties. Such a complexity of relationships, which is nothing but communication, succeeds all the more intensively the more the hope for a siblings-like relationship between architecture and fine art is fulfilled - with the hope that this will proceed without jealous affairs.

There are not many examples of a successful outcome - one of them, how­ever, is the international Telekom exchange at the foot of the tele­communica­tion tower: one building, one theme, one claim to quality, one space-art com­position. All this was realised based on the very courageous decision to fulfil the idea of the architect dedicated to the arts, and thus to prove that it is not just a pipe dream: the symbiosis of fine art and building art which has been dreamed of since ancient times - together with the visualisation of what is going on inside the building.

What it means is the alliance of the self-assured, light manipulating, multifacet­ed architecture with a temperamental collection of ambitious, associatively placed pictures and sculptures whose themes are so commonplace as it has a special significance in its location: the human being who, as he is a social creature, needs an equivalent creature with whom to communicate, that is, to be able to exist.

No small aspiration when one considers what occurred to the Frankfurt newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” at a lively party, namely that “the mentality of the free city of Frankfurt, which has never been exposed to the frivolous moods of the pompous princes until today” has now become totally respectable and remains so “even when a serious matter such as money is concerned”. Sometimes, however, it does flow, for example for such a distinguished intoxication of the senses which artwork almost incidentally produces in the high rooms of such an ambitious building - and generate an inimitable atmosphere.

Biography

Manfred Sack, Dr.-phil., Dr.-Ing. E.h.
born 1928 at Coswig (Anhalt);

Degrees in music science and art history from the 'Freie Universität' of Berlin; from 1959 to 1993 editor of the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT in Hamburg. Thereafter until 1997 feature writer; articles mainly about architecture, urban development, landscape planning and design as well as entertainment and photography. Member of the 'Freie Akademie der Künste' (Free Art Academy) Hamburg and the 'Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste' (Academy of Sciences and Arts) Vienna/Salzburg, Austria.
Numerous books published, several awards.