04. Paintings | Room 1

JEF7REY HILDNER | ARCHITECT · 1980-01-01T00:00:00Z

HOME  > 04. Paintings ♞ |  JEF7REY HILDNER | ARCHITECT — Q.F.B.   |  ARCHITECTURE IS A  VISION QUEST LEGACY LABYRINTH:   THE AESTHETIC & SYMBOLIC RECTANGLE “We bring to our projects the architecture of ourselves." ―Mikhail Bakhtin "The problem is to evoke the simultaneous presence of painting and architecture."  —Theo Van Doesburg "Great art is the outward expression of an inner life of the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.”  —Edward Hopper "I WORK ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE RECTANGLE:  THE AESTHETIC & SYMBOLIC RECTANGLE— THE  BATTLEGROUND  FOR THE EPIC CHESS GAME OF  FORM & STORY . "  — JEF7REY HILDNER,  HENRY TRUCKS — PAINTER : ancient myths meet modern landscapes _______________________________________________________________________________________ F eatured in the viewer above:  Room 1 in my museum of selective paintings—including three final slides of allied works that hint at the special galaxy I explore in my work as an architect-painter.  "My paintings are the secret of my architecture."  —Jef7rey Hildner,  Henry Trucks — Painter E xplore all the rooms in my  museum: Room 1 Room 2 Room 3 Room 4 Room 5 Room 6 Room 7 Room 8 + Room 9 The work I present in these rooms appears throughout my  essays and  books , where I explain my thought process—my aesthetic theories and symbolic themes.  _______________________________________________________________________________________ Notes: 1.   The asymmetric frames for  Daedalus   and  Ulysses  were fabricated by my former graduate student  Richard "Smoke" Atchison (University of Texas at  Arlington) from sticks of aircraft-quality aluminum that we found in a stockyard in Fort Worth. 2.  Many of my paintings are isotropic: I painted them so that they can be viewed in all four orientations. For example,  Garden of Daedalus's Return   and  Labyrinth ii , which I show vertically but principally painted horizontally. Or Daedalus , which also works turned 180 degrees, as you can see on my tribute page for Sho-Ping Chin, the owner of Daedalus . The rotation opens up new readings of space, depth, and horizon lines. And as you can see in Room 7, I oriented a color-shift giclée  of Daedalus  vertically  in the  Dante|Telescope Hous e  Lightwell .  In fact, I  oriented Daedalus  vertically  in an illustration for my 1987 ACSA conference paper " 7 Lessons of Painting for Architecture ." As  the painting's caption indicates, I  originally titled the painting  Field-Painting #9 . 3.   See more of my paintings on my YouTube video  Paint Space | Humarock, MA . I lived for a year, during 2011 and 2012, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, where I started a series of acrylic paintings that I feature in the video.  As you'll see, I painted outside. I don't include those paintings in this museum nor, as yet, in my essays and books. But I do include the paintings in 10. B-ROLL:  Humarock, MA :  Seaside Paintings . 4. Many of my paintings have been published  in The Christian Science Journal  and  Christian Science Sentinel — including a painting  featured in  TCSJ  January 2007,  Labyrinth  (as shown in  m y  Magazine Architect portfolio ). But  TCSJ  and CSS don't include artwork as part of the magazines' online archives. For example, i n Room 5, I show my MetaPainting Green Pastures —a color-shift remix of  Troy (Room 3).  Green Pastures was published as part of my three-page article by the same title in the October 2001 issue of the  Journal , but  only the text of the article appears on the Journal  website . In the December 5, 2011, issue of the Sentinel ,  my article included  Icarus  (Room 3), but the Sentinel  website only includes the text of  " Free the angel ." More recently, 2021, several of my paintings were published in  Peter Waldman's book  Connective Tissues , for which I created the  Epilogue, " LABYRINTH R.U.N. " 5. Also of note, the 40 x 40 in. MetaPainting that I show in  05. Buildings :  Dante|Telescope Hous e Collage — also known as   Ithaca Collage —was displayed at The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminster, New Jersey, in their 2010 International  Juried  Exhibition, "Art in Architecture." In Room 7, I show a color-shift variation. In 2012, I created the MetaPainting   Ithaca g , also known as Chess Lawn  (40 × 60 in.)— an  ink-on-canvas  giclée  based on  Ithaca  (16  ×  20 in.)— for the offices of the Fujitsu Corporation in Hamburg, Germany.  6. Early artwork paved the way for me to become a painter, including my architecture  drawings . I layer some of my drawings into my paintings — for example, my 1988 drawing Avant-Garde in my MetaPainting  Avant-Garde ix  and my drawing Silence: Monument to a Literary Architecture in  my MetaPainting  Silence: Labyrinth vi  —  Flamingo . Many of my paintings incorporate drawing media —especially pencil, including grease (China/wax), charcoal, and graphite.   But i n addition to creating pre-painting drawings, another major factor contributed to my evolution as a painter.   Long before I painted on canvases, I painted on walls. I painted my first mural in 1980 at Forbes College, Princeton University — Room 5:  Window . That Princeton mural came  15 years before I did my first painting on canvas — Room 2:  Spacecraft .  In between, in 1991, I began Dante|Telescope House,  where I created " 1:4:9 Observatory Chess Mural ," as well as murals that play supporting roles throughout the house, like the mural  associated with " The Idea of North: Telescope Luminaire No. 9 " and " Abstract Reality: Telescope Luminaire No. 8 ," which I show in Room 7. Z oom in to see the book associated with each luminaire. And then there's also the  major artwork of the house: the   Dante|Telescope North Star Monolith . 7.   As a muralist, I gave expression to my concept-theme "wall-as-canvas and canvas-as-wall" in various ways early in my architecture practice, most vividly before Dante|Telescope House in a special wide-screen wall I designed in 1987 for the entrance court to my office in Princeton. The project was published in  Architectural Record  ("Sources of Inspiration," February 1991, pp. 72-77), featured on the  cover  of  Architecture New Jersey  (Issue 2: 1990, p.14), and presented as part of my lead article on the theme of  Memory and Architecture  for  Oz  (Volume 12: 1990, pp.4-9), " The Writing of Architecture: Mnemosyne and the Wax Tablet ."  And the only really important part—the truly original artistic expression—was the wall.  The wall-as-canvas wall. In an otherwise conservative, familiar-looking building, the wall played the role of alien intruder. It was the  pièce de résistance , the  raison d’être —the agent of Russian Formalist strange-making : a disturbance. Both within the framework of the project and in my quest to find my unique voice. That wall embodied an artistic ideal I would later put into words in my 2023 book  Disturbance :  Beyond The Matrix  |  Toward An Architecture ZI :  “The artist  defamiliarizes  the world—makes things strange—and wakes us up.” A mural in stucco,  the metaphorical wall  severed all ties to my past — the same way  my painting  Flight Master  would do 23 years later in 2010. And  like a painting, I gave my  monochromatic wall-as-canvas  a title:  Gray Square, Brook, and Smoke .  The title evokes references to both nature and platonic ideals, juxtaposing the eccentric with the geometric. On the one hand,  I referenced the whimsical  physical context —the exterior  nearby babbling brook and the interior fireplace with its chimney flumes. On the other hand, I drew from the well of  art history: architect Le Corbusier's 1916 Villa Schwob's blank square and painter Kazmir Malevich's 1913 painting Black Square, which the Tate museum sums up as " the first time someone made a painting that wasn’t of something." The artistic coexistence of references to a natural world perceived by the five physical senses and an abstract world perceived by the intuitive powers of the mind, the world of ideas —sense perception and ideas partnering to conjure an original work of the imagination — reflects the duality identified in the title of Piet Mondrian's 1919 essay,  Natural Reality and Abstract Reality , (published posthumously as a book). I placed a copy of Mondrian's book-form essay on the bookshelf of one of the custom wall lamps, codesigned with my marvelous NJT student Paul DeStio. Each of the nine wall lamps includes a book I selected to convey a them of the house — and honor authors who have inspired me. I titled the wall lamp, and its associated mural, that includes Mondrian's book " Abstract Reality:  Telescope Luminaire No. 8 ." Natural reality and abstract reality sums  up a core principle of my paintings. Which is why I regard them as semi-abstract. And my buildings. Like the wall. Gray Square, Brook, and Smoke —a semi-abstract rectangle: what I call   The Aesthetic & Symbolic Rectangle of Art , where the gray square does mean something — represented my first  outward architectural expression of my inner life.  In Room 6, I show my MetaWall  as part of  a MetaPainting ( defined in  Note 10 )   titled   Homage to Theo Van Doesburg . 8.  All of which—my Princeton mural,  gouache and ink-wash drawings , published essays, including  " Drawing as Contemplation " ( Architecture New Jersey , 1990:4, pp. 11-13, 25),  and years of experience I gained realizing the completion of several published projects before (but most importantly)  Gray Square, Brook, and Smoke —prepped me for tackling  Dante | Telescope House  between 1991 and 1996 with a firm grip on theory, a practiced skillset, and a  clear vision of what I wanted to achieve. Remember: I didn't do my first painting on canvas  until 1995 — basically while doing the punch list for Dante|Telescope House. See also my viewer-friendly  presentation of "Drawing as Contemplation" in the Internet Archive  Wayback Machine . 9.   Slide 8 . " 1:4:9: Observatory Chess Mural ,"  24  ×  96  ×  216 in. (d: h: w).  Dante|Telescope House, 1991-1996. Silver Spring, Maryland. My photograph also features a view of my painting-like "North Star Telescope Rug," 72  ×  108 in. In Room 6, I show a slide that features  my preliminary study of the rug design: a  1994  gouache drawing —a drawing that  you can also see in my portfolio of drawings, which also shows a close-up of the actual  rug . Its  angled white bar points North. 10.   Slide 9 . Dante|Telescope North Star Monolith ,  18  ×  72  ×  162 in. (1:4:9 | d:w:h). C ommissioned by David Zlowe,  Dante | Telescope House   ( also known as   Zlowe House :  Architecture New Jersey , 1992: 4, p. 17)  won the "Blue Ribbon Award for Excellence in Design" from the New Jersey Chapter of The American Institute of Architects and was p hotographed by Yukio Futagawa for   Global Architecture Houses . Exemplifying the simultaneous presence of painting, sculpture, and architecture, the  Dante|Telescope North Star Monolith plays the leading role in the theater of this  diminutive project. The Monolith is the project's  heart and soul and mind , its most original, courageous thing. From the Monolith radiates everything else in the house. The painting-as-sculpture-as-architecture Monolith is a content-loaded expression of my concept of a literary architecture and an architecture that orients us in the world, both physically and metaphysically. An architecture no longer silent but verbal, no longer representing simply Abstract Form but also Symbolic Story, emerging from the depths of architecture's ancient origins, which flow from literature and astronomy. Evoking via Dante the truth that the first buildings were books and the first books were buildings —evoking  reference to Dante's  Divine Comedy  and Giuseppe Terragni's 1930s unbuilt architectural homage, The Danteum — to which my Monolith is an homage in turn . . . ultimately, reminding us that  we are on a cosmic journey through an enigmatic architecture beyond this mortal sphere . Evoking via the steel-beam Telescope that sights the North Star the truth that the first architects were astronomer-priests — spiritual stargazers — who sought to grok the reality of the Form & Story of the World and give artistic expression to their vision. The architecture-as-sculpture-as-3D-painting  Dante| Telescope  North Star Monolith dwells in the Shadow Zone: a band of poetic space — sacred space. Marked out by a modern-day spiritual stargazer  for the observation and contemplation of reality.   In  an ordinary suburban neighborhood, t he alien 1:4:9-proportioned Monolith —shaped by the square of the first three integers — erupted like a volcano struck by the lightning of Form & Story. A  disturbance in the fabric of architecture. A strange shard of something mythic, cinematic, dreamlike. 11.   Slide 10 .  Vision Quest: Orion ii | Daedalus 9   is a  color-shift version of the digital collage I created for page 9 of  Henry Trucks . The collage is based on  a painting I show in Room 3— Troy , 1998—and a  vision of  Daedalus 9: The Labyrintheum —my dream house, previewed throughout  Henry Trucks  and revealed  more fully in   Toward An Architecture AI  |  2023   and  Disturbance .  But  i nstead of  calling this type of artwork a digital collage or digital remix — the terms I used in  Henry Trucks — I recently coined a new term: "MetaPainting." Which I define as follows. MetaPainting:  a digital transformation of my original painting, often reflecting a change of color, proportions, and the integration—collage—of a drawing, quote, or image of my architecture, built or imagined. Derived from my original paintings, MetaPaintings deepen my artistic exploration. They conjure something new. Through the alchemy of digital tools, MetaPaintings reimagine the world and further my vision quest. 12. I asked  Gemini to interpret the meaning of my assertion on  Vision Quest: Orion ii   Daedalus 9 : "ART IS A NAKED VISION QUEST"  — JEF7REY HILDNER | THE ARCHITECT PAINTER GEMINI: Jef7rey Hildner's assertion, "Art is a naked vision quest," is a poetic and profound statement that suggests several layers of meaning, particularly coming from an architect. Let's break down what it might imply: "Vision Quest":  This term immediately evokes a spiritual or transformative journey undertaken to gain insight, purpose, or a deeper understanding of oneself and the world. Traditionally, vision quests involve solitude, introspection, and a seeking of profound truth or revelation. When applied to art, it suggests that the creation or experience of art is not merely an aesthetic pursuit but a quest for fundamental insights. "Naked":  This is the key adjective that amplifies the meaning. "Naked" implies: Vulnerability and Exposure: The artist is stripped bare, without pretense, defenses, or distractions. There's an honesty and rawness to the experience. Unfiltered and Unadorned: The "vision" is not obscured by conventions, societal expectations, or superfluous embellishments. It's about seeing things as they truly are, or as they are truly felt, without artificiality. Essential Truth: It suggests a direct, unmediated encounter with a core truth or reality. The "vision" isn't superficial; it's fundamental. Authenticity: The quest is driven by genuine impulse and a desire for authentic understanding, rather than external validation or commercial success. "Art is . . . ":  The verb "is" posits a fundamental identity. Art  is  this type of quest; it's not merely  like  one. This means the very essence of art lies in this process of raw, unmediated seeking and revelation. Summary At its core, Hildner's statement suggests that art, at its most profound level, is an intensely personal, vulnerable, and unvarnished journey of discovery. It's a search for fundamental insights or truths — a quest undertaken to find and confront reality. I deally, that journey  culminates in a truly original expression of art.  _______________________________________________________________________________________ "JEF7REY HILDNER,   THE ARCHITECT PAINTER WRITER,  follows his inner  North Star  through the magical Labyrinth of  Imagination,  Composition, Character, Style —   Control and Soul, Move & Meaning.  A lifetime of creativity fuels his quest:  to render — through Art — the Form & Story of the Architecture of the World ."  —ChatGPT _______________________________________________________________________________________ Deep Archive In addition to the nine-room museum presentation of my paintings, I created a Deep Archive to  vault Max-MB Master Files ,  including: 1.  Paintings: Full-Size Digital Captures —museum-quality photography produced in professional studios 2.  MetaPaintings: Full-Size Giclées —crafted for juried exhibitions, institutions, and private collections _______________________________________________________________________________________ To learn more about my Vision Quest ― my  fascination with the myth of  Daedalus and the Labyrinth   and shift to the brave new world of  AI ― see also : Vision Quest | Daedalus 9: The Labyrintheum   Vision Quest: LIVE B.R.A.V.E. | The Middleton Memorial   LABYRINTH R.U.N.   VE9 | Visual Ef9ects Studios  —  Dream Galleries  + 05. Books ♞|7  To see my built projects,   go to:  03. Buildings _______________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________ To explore my entire Legacy Labyrinth — its major galleries, special worlds, and secret chambers — go to: Legacy Labyrinth: Doorway to the Stars Links HQ: Navigation | About   Internet Archive Home _______________________________________________________________________________________ JEF 7 REY HILDNER   | ARCHITECT