I never know what I'll think of, at the Kimbell

I know you know of such a place, where part of why

you love to be there is that you will be surprised 

to be invigorated, and not - as in other places one 

loves, possibly more, gratified and restored or cen-

tered. It is because the lighting lifts me from the

ground, perceptibly, not tipping me into chaos but

elevating me in a way Antaeus hadn't known, to be

freer and more critically adroit.

Because of surgeries so recent that I could not be

more acutely sensitive to the reciprocities of pres-

sure that are articulated in standing, I'm aware of

the difference between weightlessness - not an il-

lusion at the Kimbell - and of weight, equalised in

space by sensory compensations in seeing, and pos-

sibly in listening. The canvas on the wall and I re-

gard each other without being hefted; we have mass,

but it is imponderous.

I know that what has bestowed this impression upon

me is an imagination of power without force, of 

truly the benignest courtesy to my pleasure. I sup-

pose I have made it clear that I am of a cast of

mind to cherish such thoughtfulness, as a gesture

of shared respect, yet so self-effacing that I am

not, unless I should blog of it, conscious of being

loved. 

           

This is how we want to see the art of others, with-

out that grandiloquent mediation. In this simplified

entry, I wish to exercise a test, drawing on a widely

enough remembered image not to post it at all, and to

engage with others in my only skill, lighted as ever

with erotic signals of caring. This is how Laurent

may indulge the effrontery of demanding someone's at-

tention in the first place. Leaf through his entries;

the pictures are a flux, seldom a literal illustration,

inspired by a hypothetical constituency, to be contem-

porary with a real one.

An exception, today, is that I am inspired by the

departure of a fine young medical researcher at our

university, a friend who is off to take his degree

in medicine in the shade of one of Louis Kahn's more

famous projects, the Richards Medical Center at the

University of Pennsylvania - here, Kahn taught archit-

ecture to friends of mine, from my eating club. It

could not be more fitting, that so many of Kahn's

projects are devoted to the development of youth, 

and remain - as in the library at Exeter, and his

last, the gallery at Yale - in unending and concen-

trated extraction of their genius.

        

For this entry, I invite the freest comment, but it

would especially favour the experiment if anyone were

to select a painting from the Kimbell's permanent col-

lection, and commence a discussion of it right here.

My interest is to experience promise and to celebrate

it, not to measure its outcome. The Kimbell is a tri-

umph of giving domicile to promise, and of exciting 

its revival, its sharing. I have cited its architect 

before, and do again, for the humaneness of his men-

tality. This is quite palpable. In the buildings of 

Louis Kahn, one of Mr Dylan's most beloved lyrics is

answered to becoming surprise, as in the Kimbell's

Allen portrait by Henry Raeburn: I was young when I

came home.

      

Louis I. Kahn

Kimbell Art Museum

Fort Worth

1972

Alexandra Latour

Louis I. Kahn

  L'uomo, il maestro

Alexandra Latour, translation

Edizioni Kappa, 1986©