“Tanya” Billboard on the Strip, LasVegas, 1968
© Venturi, Scott Brown& Associates Inc., Philadelphia
Las Vegas Studio – Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown at the MOCA
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), presents Las Vegas Studio: Imagesfrom the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, March 21 through June 20, 2010, at MOCAPacific Design Center.
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March 23, 2010 – Source: MOCA
This exhibition presents original photographs and films produced in the context of the“Learning from Las Vegas Research Studio” conducted by architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, andSteven Izenour at the Yale School of Architecture in the fall of 1968. Out of this research resulted Learningfrom Las Vegas, a landmark treatise on architectural theory published in 1972. Las Vegas Studio: Images fromthe Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown is curated by Martino Stierli and Hilar Stadler incollaboration with artist Peter Fischli. MOCA’s presentation, organized by MOCA Curator Philipp Kaiser,follows presentations at Museum im Bellpark, Kriens, Switzerland; Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt,Germany; and Yale School of Architecture, New Haven, Conn.
“The theory of communication in architecture set forth in Venturi and Scott Brown’s groundbreakingpublication is crucial for experiencing space in major cities across the world, including Los Angeles,” commentedMOCA Curator Philipp Kaiser. “Martino and Hilar have taken on the task of reappraising the engaging visualdiscourse from this study, and have directed our attention to the photographs themselves.”
“For the architects, photography was both the means of argumentation and representation of their research,”commented curators Martino Stierli and Hilar Stadler. “We have removed the images from their originalanalytical context and have presented them as photographic sensations.”
At the end of the 1960s and in the beginning of the 1970s, architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown,and Steven Izenour discovered Las Vegas as a paradigm of the commercial city. Their findings, published inthe book Learning from Las Vegas, are legendary, extending the categories of the ordinary, the ugly, andthe social into architecture. Their contemporaries reacted strongly against the Las Vegas research, whichapproached architecture from the perspectives of symbolism and the phenomena of appearance. For thearchitects, photography was both the means of argumentation and representation of their research. Theirapproach used photographic methods borrowed from the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and art.
Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown presents the originalresearch materials from the archives of Venturi Scott Brown & Associates, including over 80 photographs and aselection of films. Motivated primarily by an interest in the image, the exhibition returns to a point beforetheory formation, and refers directly to the photographic material. The selection of images included in theexhibition focuses largely on secondary aspects and side products of the research project. It thereby shifts to theforefront previously unknown photographs that settled on the fringes of the Las Vegas research.
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