Louis Kahn and art in New Haven

In the middle of this campus all built in neogothic style there are two building of the early period of postmodern architecture, both were projected by architect Louis Kahn, one is the Yale University Art Gallery (top picture) and it is one of his first projects, the second lies just across the street, (Chapel Street) and is the Yale Center for British Art, (bottom picture) the center I am a visiting fellow of for this month of January, and it was one of his last projects. Thus in the space of few hundreds of metres one can play with the illusion of being able to grasp the entire life of this outsdanding architect. If you want an introduction to his life and buildings you can watch My Architect, a son's journey, a documentary made by his son. Not bad. Together with two friends who have come up from New York, we have spent the day in these two museums. Kahn always worked with reinforced concrete. The two buildings are quite different, the Yale Art Gallery, built in 1953, is symmetrical, geometrical, its quadrangular façade on York street is very beautiful, especially in the evening when some of the square elements, the windows, get lighted from the inside and produce a checkers effect. Inside the triangular shaped staircase is also very impressive, however the vast spaces of the museum are dominated by the ceilings, a thick ceiling made of a repetitive hexagonal element made of pyramidal elements some open and some simply void. The overall effect is that of an regular repetition of triangular shapes that hang over you. It made me feel in a place designed to mimick an obsessive and disturbed mind. Some galleries were closed and we could not visit the contemporary and European art sections, however, the ancient Americas rooms, the African art and the Oriental section were open and are mindblowing as you are thrown from one set of forms, of faces, of shapes to another, from ritual masks covered in antelope's skin to deities in the course of shifting sex, to a 2 century a.d. sculpture of a football game, complete with spectators. And you keep wondering how to make sense of all this otherness and displacement.

Across the road, to the Yale Center for British Art you feel in another dimension, either for the building and for the art. It was completed in 1977, three years after the death of Kahn.The façade is not at all impressive, quite anonymous. However inside great spaces, two quadrangular courtyard one containing a cylindrical staircase. Light coming from large windows on the side, your gaze able to reach across the building through the windows over the courtyards and more light from the roof windows over the permanent collection hosted in the fourth floor. The museum hosts the collection by Paul Mellon, collector of British art who hired and payed Kahn to project this building. It is almost entirely dedicated to British painting of the xvii and xviii century. Gainsborough, Reynolds, Hogarth, just to mention some names. Maybe because of all this natural light coming from everywhere, of the whole collection I particularly enjoyed Turner's landscapes with their fantastic rendering of sunlight.