Smithsonian.com

In whatever city you are in, anywhere in the world, chances are that the rich environment of a nearby Chinatown is calling. There are more than 300 of these neighborhoods in the world—from San Francisco to Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur—and more are forming every day.

Exploring Chinatown never gets boring. Getting lost in the narrow alleys of these insular communities is a feast for the senses. As an art subject, the same liveliness holds true.

This month the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City is hosting an exhibition that testifies to this fact. Displaying more than a thousand images taken by almost as many photographers, Chinatowns gives viewers a grand tour of the Chinese urban enclaves that exist worldwide.

One Chinatown might be a derelict eyesore for one city and a bustling, developing quarter of another. Some of the neighborhoods are newly created, like those in Sydney, Australia, and Richmond, British Columbia. Others in San Francisco and London are well-known, well-loved sites visited by tourists and locals alike.

Certainly there is a visual unity established in the photographs that isn’t remiss—so much of the phenomenon built up around these places is based on the idea that the same features can be found in each neighborhood no matter where it is on the globe. But the nuances of each locale also shine through, distinguishing that particular spot and bringing its unique personality and presence to the fore.

Although the religious world and the art world are now riven, there was a time when churches, monasteries and the ecclesiastical like were the lifeline of painting, sculpture and architecture.

The earliest iconography in the world is spiritually thematic. Humbly fashioned talismans of resident gods and goddess are some of the first objects fashioned by man on record. During the Renaissance artists’ vied ruthlessly to secure commissions from the Mother Church, and many of the wonders of the world were made under the aegis of religion, from the temples at Machu Picchu to the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

For good or bad (and let’s face it there was a lot of bad), the circumstances that brought these two spheres of influence together in a way that dynamically affected art-making are gone, which is part of the reason why the holdings in the contemporary art and sculpture museums of the Vatican are so fascinating. The art world may have freed itself from the church, but the church has definitely been keeping tabs.

In the contemporary art museum housed in Vatican City, there is an extensive modern collection, with paintings from Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà, and hundreds of others. And to bring us right up to date, just recently the current pope, Benedict XVI, commissioned his first work for the museum. Claudio Parmiggiani, a leading Italian artist, was approached by church officials and asked to create a work based on his smoke paintings, which he did.

One night about five years ago, I was out in Westwood, California, home to UCLA and its Armand Hammer museum, among other things. We were at a sanitized burger joint, one of those establishments that makes me start humming “Little Boxes” as soon as I step in. A girl I didn’t know well, not from L.A. but attending UCLA, told me she was disappointed with the city, my hometown, of which I’m admittedly protective.

“There’s no architecture here,” she said simply. “No architecture!” I sputtered. “No architecture!” I screeched, flouncing around in the garishly colored booth we were sitting in.

She’d hit a nerve.

The L.A. I knew and the L.A. she knew were clearly two different places. And though L.A. can be derided for many things, its architectural history is not one of them. Love them or hate them, the Taj Mahoney (Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral), the J. Paul Getty Museum and Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall are just the latest examples of what the city is willing to try, and L.A.’s architectural legacy is not linked to public buildings alone. Ironically, “Little Boxes” describes plenty of L.A. area neighborhoods perfectly, but there are some great residences in L.A. on the architectural and design forefronts.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, Sam Watters, at least, agrees with me. Though, according to the article, L.A. can be derided for the obliviousness it displays toward its architectural history. “ ‘That’s the thing about L.A., compared to the East Coast: We don’t just tear down our treasures. We toss out all written records about them as well,’ he says. ‘In the East, they kept bills for every seed, awning or doorknob ever purchased.’ ”

L.A. originals have been gutted or torn down for years, and Watters has attempted to stanch the bleeding by publishing the two-volume history, Houses of Los Angeles.

The Times describes Watters as chafing at the notion that “everything was just a copy of what had been built before somewhere else. ‘Untrue,’ says Watters.” I heard in his tone the echo of my indignant foot stamping from five years ago, and thanks to him, now I have the books to back it up.

Is 2007 the year of the glass house?

Philip Johnson’s New Canaan stunner reopened to the public in April, and tours for this year promptly sold out (console yourself with a video tour and book now for 2008!). Frank Gehry has a cloud-like glass building in the works for Bernard Arnault and his Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation.

Meanwhile, a recent article in the New York Times featured Nicolai Ouroussoff’s sprawling feature on “The Best House in Paris,” Pierre Chareau’s 1932 Maison de Verre (pictured above), purchased last year and painstakingly restored by American financier Robert Rubin (who we learn enrolled in Columbia’s graduate school of architecture at age 48 and worked as a teaching assistant to architectural historian Kenneth Frampton).

“The house has been compared to a Surrealist artwork, a theater stage, and an operating room,” notes Ouroussoff, who concludes that it’s “above all, an exquisite machine.” And he should know, because he got to live there with his girlfriend for a few days this summer, fulfilling both a personal fantasy and that of a chorus of editors.

After Ouroussoff and friend get settled with the help of a housekeeper (“Light switches. Check. Bathrooms. Check. Where to hang our clothing. Check.”), we learn of the house’s Duchampian division into male and female realms, its elasticity, and the ability to transform the mood of the entire place with the flick of the outdoor floodlight switches. In short, it’s pretty much perfect: “the perfect balance between the need for companionship and solitude, a utopia of the senses.”

When I was a child, I found a pre-World War II atlas and thumbed through it, marveling at the strange flags printed on yellowed paper. The flag for Germany was emblazoned with a swastika, menacing in my eyes yet matter-of-fact on the atlas. But of all the strange European flags, one stopped me, refreshingly powder-blue: Estonia. What’s that? The very word seemed reminiscent of some C.S. Lewis fable.

What happened to Estonia? Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union covered much of Eastern Europe in a swath of red and gold, sickle and hammer. Little Estonia became another Soviet Republic, closed off from the West.  (more…)