Memorial master shares influences, perspectives on art, architecture
Despite their different functions, art and architecture often draw inspiration from one another. And the distinction between the two can become blurred, artist-architect Maya Lin said to a full crowd at the Menil Collection last Friday. Her Feb. 2 lecture, entitled “Maya Lin: Art and Architecture,” was third of this spring’s four-part Menil/Rice Lecture Series.
Lin gave an overview of her work since the design of her most famous piece, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. She completed the memorial in 1981 as a 21-year-old undergraduate architecture student at Yale University. Lin briefly mentioned the memorial near the end of the speech, expressing her desire to close her series on memorials and to emphasize her work in architecture, sculpture and art.
“I’m balanced pretty nicely between the art and the architecture,” Lin said of her current work.
Lin stressed the blend of art and architecture in her works, particularly monuments such as the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., while clarifying the differences in function between art and architecture. Monuments, to Lin, lie somewhere in the middle.
“I’ve always seen monuments as … in between art and architecture,” Lin said. “You are out to convey something. There is a message to [them], a purpose to [them]. And in that sense, [they are] a little bit more utilitarian — a symbolic utility. … I truly believe that when you walk into a studio, it’s all about not having a purpose. Art is its purpose.”
Lin said her work draws on a variety of influences, including her youth in picturesque Athens, Ohio, and the creative talents of her poet mother and ceramic artist father, both professors at Ohio University. History is another source of inspiration — it led to Lin’s work on the state of Washington’s Confluence Project, commemorating the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Nature, Lin said, also plays a part in her work, exemplified in the rippling ocean patterns in “Wave Field,” a series of grassy earth mounds resembling waves on the campus of the University of Michigan.
“Much of my work is inspired by natural topography and terrain,” Lin said. Her environment also inspired her to select a natural palette of architectural materials — including stone, wood and glass — for many of her works.
Lin said simple things in the natural world and in her work can have complexity behind them. Baker College junior Ali Naghdali, an architecture major who attended the lecture, agreed.
“When she showed her pictures, at first glance they seemed very ordinary [until] she explained them and showed what personal interest she had in her work,” Naghdali said.
Julia Hager, a fifth-year architecture student, praised Lin for her interdisciplinary approach to projects.
“I think … she was making design decisions, and design decisions aren’t really limited to any one discipline,” Hager said. “In architecture, you do have parameters like building codes and handicap access, but at the same time it’s your job to look beyond them to make a building more than just its building standards. … Otherwise you would just get an engineer to make the minimum requirements.”
Karl Kilian, Director of Public Programs at the Menil, said the biennial Menil/Rice Lecture Series was organized to give the Houston community a chance to hear fine arts professionals talk about their work.
The theme of this year’s lecture series is “Architecture and Museums.” Earlier speakers included James Turrell, known for his Houston’s Skyspace project, and Terence Riley, the former chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Barry Bergdoll, MOMA’s current architecture and design curator, will speak April 3 in the last lecture of the series.
“I think this series reaffirms our commitment to architecture and design, which should be apparent from the campus [of the Menil Collection],” Kilian said. “We will never have an architecture and design department, but we can nevertheless put on these kinds of events that makes a contribution to the understanding and support of both of those fields in the city of Houston.”
Art History Department Chair Joseph Manca said this year’s Menil/Rice Lecture Series has been successful in increasing interest in both the Menil and Rice University.
“It’s all based on this idea of collaboration
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