BOOK LEARNING
My first college art history course was a survey that covered all of Western achievement, from scratchings on cave walls to video installations. The syllabus focused on paintings and sculptures, with a handful of buildings from each era thrown in, to broaden the perspective. One of them was the Guaranty Building in Buffalo by Louis Sullivan, from 1896. I can still remember the small, square, black and white picture of it, not much larger than a postage stamp, in my textbook. And I can recall the reasons we learned that the building was, for its time, so remarkable: its steel frame, its impressive height, and the strong vertical rhythms of its facades. I’ve kept this image of this building with me for decades.
So it was a surprise, when visiting Buffalo for the first time, to see that the Guaranty Building is dressed in thick terra-cotta tiles the color of an uncooked, unwashed sweet potato. And to see that each of these tiles is cast with a dense filigree of twisting vines, leaves and blossoms, rendered with both Celtic and classical accents. And to see that the building overpowers: it stands, sternly, squarish, twenty-three stories high and half a block wide, on a prominent corner downtown. It’s brutal mass and angelic surface serve up dual, flickering identities. No longer a monument trapped in a photograph, the building is, now, for me, a complex, living thing.