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Letter From An Alleged Publisher
Jump In reprinted from VenicePaper May/June 2006
Most artists work out new ideas in private. I’m talking ‘artists’ in a general sense here. Writers too. Drafts can be re-written, ideas abandoned when they don’t translate in the execution phase, canvasses trashed.
Architects don’t have that luxury. They have to be fearless and work out their art in the public arena. Yes, computer technology allows them to capture a glimpse of a completed project. But, like all art, architecture has an ephemeral component—and that element is not fully realized until the structure is up. If an architect is determined to grow, to extend the possibilities, he has to be willing to make mistakes publicly, to journey into his personal previously-unknown.
Architect Thom Mayne has made such voyages for three decades. His first structure was on an alley in Venice; last year he won the architectural world’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize. Two days before this issue was to go to print, we interviewed Mayne for this issue at the Rose Café. He’d been flying in and out of Los Angeles for two weeks and we thought we’d get him for twenty minutes. Mayne gave us two hours—riffing about Venice and architecture, sure, but also citing German philosophers, genome biology and rap music.
Architect’s work transcends the aesthetic, combining the personal and the political. They rebuild, literally and figuratively, the way in which we live. They distill philosophy and art and science into both a real and ephemeral good.
This issue, published annually in conjunction with the Venice Garden Tour, is always a favorite. In it we take one room (this year the bathroom) and explore the way different Venetians interpret it.
Lately, my own bath is where I’ve regained tranquility after surveying the Venice political scene. Venomous debate is a given in our town but it’s an eviscerating to watch, no matter how long you observe it.
Take for instance the threat left on the voice mail of a small local business whose owners had the timidity, the person who left the message felt, to place an ad with a publication that competes with ours. The individual, who left the threat—anonymously, though Caller ID revealed who they were—didn’t like the publication’s politics and threatened a boycott if the business continued to spend ad dollars there.
We know the owner of that business. She took out a small business loan to finance the venture. It is her dream. To make it happen she and her husband work seven-day weeks. Like a lot of Venetians.
What is it that would make the person who called the owner so determined to crush, to destroy? Politics is so often the opposite of creating art. It’s easy to attack, it’s so much harder to build. To make something. Deliver real goods.
Lately, I’ve been awed by those Venetians (and they’re in the majority) who forget the political games, and simply, quietly, build real goods. That’s the way artists work: they don’t need permission and they don’t need a majority. They have a vision and they execute it. That’s Venice. And that’s this issue.—Tibby Rothman, Alleged Publisher VenicePaper
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