Vladimir Kagan's Blog

A Blog for Foodies!

The Importance Of Weight Maintenance

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, April 1, 2016

 

Everyone is obsessed with weight loss; I am concerned about weight maintenance. This is important for sustaining happiness. It is difficult to do under the pressure of the weight-loss movement.

These are my recommendations:

Breakfast: the eye-opener meal - very important to start the day right!

‘Firstly’ a good breakfast is mandatory. It provides you with the energy to get through the day. This is NOT a meal to have on the run. The aroma of fresh brewed coffee and bacon must fill the air to prime you for this major repast. Start with fruit and nuts to provide you with necessary fiber. For the main course, have some pre-buttered toasted English muffins (they must be Thomas’ accept no substitute). Add additional butter to suit. Alternate choice; a New York bagel. Next the choice of a ‘schmear’; jam, jelly, honey, peanut butter creamy or chunky or cream cheese. I like to add Scottish smoked salmon with a squeeze of lemon. For those choosing a more exotic fare, try English Marmite. Add eggs any style. If you are still hungry, add cereals; granola is a good source of fiber – substitute porridge, if you are an Anglo. Linger at the table, it aids digestion and allows you to dip into the jam or honey jars instead of adding sugar to your coffee. You’ll be surprised how energized you will be and ready to face the day ahead.

Nothing like a relaxed lunch with a good glass of wine

 

Lunch. Don’t neglect this. Americans tend to too often ignore this important meal. They swallow down a sandwich on the run, while the ladies tend to graze. Some even skip lunch entirely. Lunch is very important. Eat heartily and don’t deny yourself the satisfaction of a digestive glass of wine. Remember, a noontime meal is easier to digest. In some civilized countries a siesta is mandatory.

You are now primed to survive into the evening and won’t be famished at dinnertime. Don’t think of early dinner, some people eat early in time for the seven o’clock news. The news is always depressing, better to relax with a cocktail; my tipple of choice is a Vodka martini. A late dinner makes you tired and preps you for bed. It’s too late for the theater or movies. People will tell you it’s bad for the digestion to eat too much too late. Ignore that. That’s what anti-acid pills were invented for. If tiredness overcomes you, try a strong cup of coffee; I have a Nespresso machine wherever I reside just for this purpose. Go to bed and toss and turn yourself to sleep. It is subliminal exercise and you will eventually drop off into a heavenly slumber, dreaming of the day’s meals.

A well fed person is a satisfied person - happy dreams!

 

If you are still loosing weight: consult your doctor!

 

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This Blog is dedicated to my kid-sister, and fellow foodie - Tanya

The Palm Beach Modern & Contemporary Art Fair 2016

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, January 23, 2016

 

I wasn’t going to write about this show.

 

contemporary art has become a science class. Experimentation is the buzzword. 'Putz' around with LED lights; flashing, changing colors, twirling, snaking. There were neon signs of yesterday reinvented. There were three-dimensional ‘paintings’ with appliquéd metal, plastic and paper. There were the tricky paintings intended to fool the eye, trumpe l’oeil. There was art using automotive enamels, a robotic artist painting all day on an electronic canvas, a diminutive Indian artist ‘plucking’ paper. There was manipulated photography and there was the usual infatuation with bare breast. To qualify as a contemporary art, it is fair game to try anything as long as it is different. This produced some interesting stuff, but is it ART?

As for Modern Art? Anything goes. Slap some colors onto a canvas and let it drip, depict humanity as artsy, disfigured bodies, add a samplings of installation art, and there you have The Palm Beach Modern & Contemporary Art Fair 2016… in a nutshell.

In spite of this jaundiced overview, there was some delightful art to enjoy. We found some exquisite pencil and pen drawings, an art form virtually missing in contemporary shows. Sculpture still found its antecedent in tradition. Casting bronze has not changed. The most imaginative experimentations were with glass. Glass is a most time honored material, a molten mass of sand cannot be easy be fooled. The glass artist is wedded to tradition. He or she must respect the material’s limitations. Therefore their experimentations are all the more exciting.

Art is in the eyes of the beholder, one person’s treasure is another’s junk. Below is some of the ‘art’ that I found interesting. I am sure there will be many who will disagree.

   

 

The Fernando Botero's lying nude was the first piece of art I encountered on entering the show. Botero is one of my favorite contemporary artists. I love him for glorifying the obese and fat and making them lovable.

 

This pair of life-sized  black children was one of my favorites as the artist caught their youth, despair and wisdom in their faces.

Marek Zynga mixed media sculture is beautifully executed in clay and glazed tiles. You can recognize him as the artist as he and his subject are dressed alike.

I have always loved aboriginal art. This five by five foot painting was done my Esther Giles Nampitjinpa, a diminutive native Australian. To know her is to love her, but you would never associate this little woman with her bigger-than-life-art.

 

  

 A few miles North of us in Tampa, works Marlene Rose, an amazing artist pouring hot molten glass into sand molds. The ball gown with the decollate is a spoof, but her work is serious. She is doing a job more frequently done by brawny men able to take the extreme heat of the furnaces. Marline has gone back to the ancient art of casting glass as sculpture and her Buddhas, ceremonial bells and ancient relics in a range of colors from subtle to vibrant are amongst the finest works in the show this year.

     

Marlene and many of the glass examples above, are represented by Habitat Galleries of Royal Oak, Michigan, the finest art glass  gallery in America.

I like the growth, simplicity and use of color in this life-size enameled steel sculpture.

 

 

I was intrigued by the textile-like character of these wallhangings even before I met Neha Vedpathak, the charming young Indian artist, who created these 'plucked paper' hanging. Her's is a most time consuming task, using Japanese handmade paper, which she laboriously pulls apart with a fine needle, inch by inch.

 

 

Two drawings by an Italian artist.
The lightness of line were executed with a minimalist's skill, They were among our favorite in the show.

Quite to my amazement, I found my 1970s Day Bed in mint condition, in the exhibit of The Silver Fund, a gallery on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. The sofa is covered in the original fabric I had hand woven in Munich at the time. It is a rare example of my lesser-known linear minimalist designs.

 

Some of the most intriguing avant-garde art came from the ArtLabbe Gallery from Santiago de Chile including the ribbon sculptures below by Solange Heilenkotter and the glass and stone sculptures by Alejandro Herrera.

   
 

These slender ribbons of sliced plastic sheets were made by Sollange hellenkotter. Her work was amongst the most original of the new experimental art at the show.

Using thin shards of rigid plastic, this three-dimensional painting was one of the more intriguing works at the show.

 

Two black marble and glass sculptures were a unique mix of two disparate materials.

 

...And to finish off the show, the ubiquitous "installation Art"

 

 

 NOTE: The show closed tomorrow, Sunday afternoon. If you're not stuck in the snow, try and visit this great Art Fair.

An Ode to a Bridge

In Celebration of the George Washington Bridge

Copyright Vladimir Kagan December 20, 2015

I cross the GWB (George Washington Bridge) four or five times a week to and from my studio in Clifton N.J. Thousands of cars and trucks join me each day. For trucks it’s the only route between Manhattan and New Jersey as they are banned from the tunnels.  This enormous overpass is the conduit for millions of cars each year. It boasts the most traffic of any suspension bridge in the world.

To pass the time, I am on my cell phone or directing the Uber driver to ignore the ‘Google lady’ giving him wrong directions. Though the view is spectacular, I take it for granted! I seldom look out of the window.

That’s a huge mistake!

One day I took a moment to look-up and rediscovered this magnificent structure. The realization that mere humans conceived this gorgeous bridge was mind-boggling.  Engineers and architects, whose names have long been forgotten and the hundreds of human hands brought it to fruition. And yes, the forgotten workers whose lives were lost in its building.

         

 

I was awe-struck by the massive chunks of concrete anchoring the cables at each end. It is unfathomable to contemplate the amount of concrete needed to create them. Imagine the number of cement trucks it would take to build such a mass. (The builders wisely had their own cement factory on sight.) Visualize the teams of men riveting each red-hot rivet into the superstructure. Squint into the sun and look at the height of the towers and the cables extending from them. Then imagine tiny men manipulating strands of steel stretched across the river’s span. If you are lucky, you might see the high-wire-act of today’s maintenance crews painting every inch of the bridge or servicing the string of light bulbs along its cables.

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I have a wonderful connection to this bridge!

 In my early teens, I lived on Riverside Drive and 103^rd Street, in a gracious old building with a wire-caged elevator and a spectacular view of the Hudson River. I would often sit in our living room window and paint the changing seasons on the river. With a little stretch of the neck I could see the GW Bridge off in the distance.

My water color painting of Ice on the Hudson River - circa 1943

Though I was a good student in most subjects, I had a terrible time with math! I couldn’t visualize the hypotheses of mathematical formulas; algebra, geometry and trigonometry stifled me. I could not accept a theoretical truth.  If it wasn’t visual, I flunked the test. 

A few floors above our apartment lived a friend of my family, David Bernard Steinman. D. B. Steinman, as he was known to all. Mr. Steinman was an affable man who loved puffing on his pipe and explaining the theories of mathematics to me. He made mathematics visual. D.B. Steinman was not a tutor; he was the world’s foremost bridge designer!

D.B. Steinman was born on the lower east side in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. He fell in love with Roebling’s masterpiece and determined … he wanted to become a designer and builder of bridges. At age thirteen, he was the youngest pupil admitted to City College.  He graduated with honors and went on to Columbia University receiving his PhD in engineering. 

His career as a consulting engineer struggled for a number of years. He recalled … his first consulting fee was $5! Ten years later he was offered a job to work with Holton Robinson, who built the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges across the East River in New York.  Mr. Holton wanted to enter a competition to build the Florianopolis Bridge in Brazil. The firm won the competition largely due to D. B. Steinman’s revolutionary new concepts for suspension spans. The Florianopolis Bridge was hailed worldwide as a huge success.  His revolutionary concept laid the foundation for the successful design of the George Washington Bridge, which at the time was twice the length of any suspension bridge ever built.

In addition to the Florianopolis Bridge, Mr. Steinman’s list of successes include the Henry Hudson Bridge and the Triborough Bridge in NY, the Mt. Hope Bridge connecting Providence with Newport, the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan and the Messina Straight Bridge linking Italy with Sicily. One of his favorite projects was the commission to modernize the Brooklyn Bridge, the first love of his life. D.B was an avid writer and wrote many books of poetry and the best selling ‘The History of the Brooklyn Bridge’ and ‘The Biography of the Roeblings, THE BUILDING OF THE BRIDGE.’ 

In his memoirs Mr. Steinman gave words to his meaning of a bridge: “A bridge is more than a thing of steel and stone: it is the fulfillment of human dreams to link together distant places. A bridge is more than a problem in stresses and strains; it is a challenge and an opportunity to create the beautiful.”  

He and I would sit for hours discussing bridges. The conversation would eventually be intermingled with the explanation of the bridge structure’s connection to math.  His patience and love of math helped me to understand the theories of math well enough to pass my exams!

During our chats, he explained how the Tacoma Washington Bridge disaster could have been averted with a simple sea anchor to stop the oscillation that finally tore the bridge apart. He explained his theory of how a bridge could be built over the New York Harbor, even though it was considered impossibility at the time.  His dream became the Verrazano Bridge. He described how the George Washington Bridge was designed to be clad with steel plates like the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was decided that the structure was too beautiful to be hidden. When I first saw the GW Bridge, it had only one deck!  He explained that the clever engineers envisioned one-day, the increased traffic would need additional roadways and so their original design factored-in the second level.

These pieces of knowledge have stayed with me for sixty odd years, imbedded in my mind forever through the teachings of the indomitable D.B. Steinman.

Today, I no longer keep my head down. I love the approach to the bridge from the Henry Hudson Parkway. It looms up through the fog, glistens in the rain or shimmers in the sunlight. This massive work of art is nearly eighty-five years old and still one of the great wonders of the world. Next time you have a chance to cross the Hudson, enjoy all that is before your eyes. 

The Indomitable Wendell Castle

 Copyright Vladimir Kagan October 24, 2015

 

If there is one person who’s work I have admired all of my life, who’s work stands out as art transmuted magically into furniture, who has been true to his muse and at age 83 still creates monumental works, it’s Wendell Castle.

 

A reunion of old friends: Nancy Jurs, Wendell's wife, Vladi and Wendell Castle at the opening reception for Wendell's Retrospective show at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD Museum)

Wendell Castle is not a furniture maker; he is a sculptor creating vessels for sitting. He is not motivated by a need for comfort. It is what separates his art from us mortals who make furniture. We are driven by rules: seat height, seat depth, lumbar support, and feasibility – strictures that do not bind Wendell. 

 

Wendell is currently being honored with a major retrospective of his work at the Museum of Art & Design (MAD) in New York City. It is befitting that some fifty years earlier Wendell had his first show at this same museum, formerly The America Craft Museum. What goes around – comes around.

 

Wendell Castle grew up on a farm in Emporia, Kansas. We don’t quite know what motivated him to venture from the bucolic life of raising cows to a love affair with wood and sculpture. But the world he inhabits today is a more beautiful place for it.

 

 

A sculpture  by Wendell Castle created out of discarded gunstocks

A scribe chair, vaguely resembling a piece of furniture, is another early work created with gunstock elements

This is the Wendell Castle we all recognize, an organic stool on four legs. Ironically Wendell carved this stool upside down, starting with the legs, he  had no idea of it eventually becoming a seat!

In 1958, Wendell Castle received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in industrial design, and in 1961, a Master of Fine Arts, both from the University of Kansas. From 1962-1969, he taught at Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Craftsmen, in Rochester, NY, and is now an Artist in Residence. In 1980, he opened the Wendell Castle School in Scottsville, NY, not far from Rochester, where he became a shining star. His classes nurtured generations of creative woodworkers that have spread his gospel worldwide, but there is only one Wendell Castle.

     

 

By the mid-sixties, Wendell's signature handwriting was well established. He glued-up huge slabs of wood and called them Stack Laminations, which he deftly attacked with his chainsaw to create the furniture illustrated above.

 

Eager to try his hand at new technology, In the 70's Wendell developed a collection of fiberglass furniture named the Molar Group. This sensuous chair was the masterpiece of the collection.

The Museum's caption about his fiberglass work

In a beautiful documentary film, Wendell demonstrates that he is still the master of using his tools including rasps, chisels and chainsaws.

 

 

An artist with a huge vision, in the 21^st Century Wendell discarded his traditional tools of creativity. Gone are his ubiquitous chain saw, chisels, rasps and spoke-shavers. They have been replaced with the industry’s latest technology: precision scanners, sophisticated 3D printers and C&C carving machines, tools more apt to be found in a Ferrari model shop than in a sculptor’s atelier. Wendell transformed his studio into a high-tech laboratory. With this new technology Wendell’s work has exploded to new flights of imagination.

 

  

Today, Wendell carves precise miniature models he then scans into his computers for his machines to replicate into larger-than-life sculpture-furniture

 

One of the exhibits graphically illustrates the stack build-up of his furniture. Wendell is a VERY precise worker!

     

The NEW Wendell Castle designs are carved on his high-tech C&C carving machine. This technology has liberated Wendell from the workbench to explore the stratosphere.

 

The MAD’s comprehensive show illustrates the transition from his early sculpture using discarded gunstocks to create his skeletal shapes vaguely resembling furniture. By the early sixties, Wendell experimented with stack-laminated wood and using his primary tool, a chainsaw, deftly wielded it to create bold, arboreal shapes that morphed into chairs, tables, desks and sofas.  In the seventies, Wendell explored fiberglass to create sinuous tactile curves of color that became chairs and stools.

 

Wendell is never a man to stand still and the second floor of this retrospective is devoted almost entirely to his monumental creations on the C&C carving machine.

 

This show has just opened. If you are planning a visit to New York, Wendell Castle’s retrospective is a must.

 

 

 

 

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Zaha Hadid - the Doyen of Modern Architecture

 

 

The Indomitable Zaha Hadid 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, October 6, 2015

 

There is no glass ceiling that can hold back Zaha Hadid – she has catapulted through shatterproof glass and is today, the best modern architect in the World. Zaha is a force to be reckoned with, the most creative architect in the 21^st Century. She has out-curved Frank Gehry and Santiago Calvatava, the acknowledged masters of the genre. Zaha is the only woman to win the Pritzker award – the World Series of architecture. Awards have been piling up ever since.

 

She is not a computer doodler. Zaha draws. She visualized her creative concepts in sketches with bold curvilinear strokes. She is my friend and hero; she inspires my work and she tells me that I have inspired hers.

 

Zaha paints her concepts. Only after she is happy with the design does she interpreter them on the computer.

Top: Zaha's rendering for the Vitra fire station ca. 1991 Bottom: her concept for the KMR Art and Media Center in Dusseldorf Germany

 

She is worshiped for her lyrical curved stadiums, undulating museums and amorphous concert halls. She prefers horizontal to vertical architecture. Her sprawling lines are inspired by the topography of the rolling landscape. As a proponent of linear design, designing a high-rise building imposes limitations to her creativity. The Zaha Hadid most of you recognize today was not always curvilinear – before anyone heard of Zaha, her work was angular with sharp shards of concrete soaring skyward.

  

I met Zaha in the early 1990s when she was commissioned to design the fire station for the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhine, Germany. Vitra is an innovative Swiss company dedicated to classic modern furniture and accessories. The new building was radical and its interior disorienting. The good German bürger-firemen assigned to the building refused to work in it. Rolf Fehlbaum, Vitra’s owner got the message and immediately put it to a better use. He turned it into an adjunct of his fledgling Vitra Museum. This was Zaha’s first building and kick-started her career on the road to fame.

 

 

The Vitra Fire Station 1993, with its stark angular deconstructionist esthetic

Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center 2003. A masterpiece of compact use of space, delineated with strong horizontal blocks of concrete interspersed with glass

In both these examples of her early work, Hadid's work is strongly angular

The Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany, was completed in 2005. It looks to me like a giant battleship at anchor.

By 2005, Zaha softened her lines with introductions of curves. the BMW Plant in Leipzig, Germany

Abandoning angles and radical slashing lines, Zaha created a soft amorphous shells for the Nordpark Rail Station in Innsbruck, Austria 2007

 

Interpreting a gentle wave breaking on shore, this is Zaha's famous Aquatic Centre in London 2011

The swimming pools and high-diving platform in the Aquatic Centre

By 2013 Zaha became totally lyrical. This undulating curved roof seems impossible to create in concrete and glass. The Heydar Allyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan 

Pure sculpture dominates the interior of the center

 

 

Zaha was in New York last weekend for the New Yorker Festival, an annual event sponsored by the New Yorker Magazine.  As usual, she took the architectural community by storm. The waiting line of people at the School Of Visual Art’s Theater on West 23^rd Street stretched for one block around Eighth Avenue. John Seabrook, The New Yorker’s writer on design did a lively interview with Zaha, accentuating the depth of her commitments to complexity and precession. She explained how, with the use of fiber concrete she has been able to create seamless surfaces using vacuum bagging. 

To design the Aquatic Centre for the London Summer Olympics, Zaha looked at the harbor and envisioned connecting water back into the city. Her vision was to create liquid space.

Her sprawling public spaces are inspired by flow and movement. She told us that one of her most complex project was the theatre, library and museum in Azerbaijan, integrating three separate functioning entities into one flowing movement. 

One of Zaha's latest endeavor is the building of the parliament and central bank in Baghdad, her native home. 

Zaha is finally adding her imprimatur to the New York skyline with an eleven story residential building on 520 West 28^th Street, at the High Line in this rapidly gentrified Chelsea neighborhood. The building is a futuristic fantasy of 39 apartments with prices ranging from $4.5 million to $50 million!

 

520 West 28th Street

 The facade undulates and there are definite Hadid touches but the limitations of a high-rise structure are apparent in this New York Condo.it lacks the grandeur of her free-flowing spirit

 

Zaha’s designs are super expensive to build. Are they cost effective? Was the Parthenon or Versailles? Zaha’s work is linear sculpture in motion that liberates design from the pull of gravity. It is a joy that in today’s budget conscious bean-counter society, there are visionaries willing to build a 21^st Century Taj Mahal.

   

I Love this ski-jump tower in Austria 

...and this amazing bridge (don't know whee it is)

 

 Zaha's fertile mind does not limit her to concrete and glass, she has brought her creative esthetic to shoes, jewelry and furniture.

The sky is the limit for Zaha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day dreams vs reality

Perceptions

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, August 5, 2015

 

The Rorschach test (/ˈrɔrʃɑːk/ or /ˈrɔərʃɑːk/,‪[3]‬ German pronunciation: [ˈʀoːɐ̯ʃax]; also known as the Rorschach inkblot test, the Rorschach technique, or simply the inkblot test) is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation. The test is named after its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. In the 1960s, the Rorschach was the most widely used projective test.‪[5]‬ and was ranked eighth among psychological tests used in outpatient mental health facilities.‪[6]‬ Currently it is the second most widely used test by members of the Society for Personality Assessment.

 

 

Life is nothing but a Rorschach Test. It is all about perception and miss-percetions. It is how we interprete things.

Perhaps the earliest miss-Perception was seeing “The Man in the Moon”

Of course, religion is a longtime player in the field; mono-theism vs. polytheism. How do the concepts really differ? Both teach respect and fear – both bring rewards (sometimes) and totally ignore you at others times.

Staring at clouds on a lazy day at the beach triggers many interpretations. The fun part of this activity are the ever changing images, a custom-built Rorschach every minute.

Driving along on any of our Nantucket roads, I see beautiful women from the back, sometimes pony tails swaying like a pendulum as they jog along. I see slender trim girls and ladies riding their bikes. The imagination carries you to the front to complete the vision, but often driving won’t permit that second glance. Not infrequently, what I envisioned as a prety girl turns out to be a man. Imagination is deceptive.

The other night I went to a beautful ballet performance. One of the highlights was Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake almost entirely danced on toes, to the delight of the audience. Realistically, dancing on toes is a grotesque and unnatural movement only facilited by specially designed “toe shoes”. (choreographers of modern dance have virtually eliminated this practice.) Dancing on toes is akin to Chinese bound feet. The elegantly embroidered tiny silk slippers were considered beautiful and walking on them an act of daintiness and upper-class idolitry. Both skills are precieved pinacles of grace. I adore toe dancing but shudder at the sight of the ocasional older Chinese lady mincing along the street, the result of her years of bound feet. Is one more beautiful than the other? Preception!

“To tell the truth” as a preamble to a sentence implies what’s to follow is a lie. Of course, that is not the case, but there is one more Rorschach.

“Whatever” as a closing phrase. Is it a discussion ender, or is it a lazy incomplete thought? A Rorschach of two minds.

I often preface every question with “so” - “So what are we going to do?” - ”So where are we going?” - “So what does that mean?” Another Freudian question for a Rorschach analysis.

Abstract art is another great deceptor - your interpretation is as good as the next person’s, but neither of you probably sees what the artist had in his mind.

When Chinese super hero artist Ai Weiwei takes a priceless Ming vase and shatters it into a thousand pieces in front of a camera it is called “Art”. When a disgruntled Florida artist takes one of Ai Weiwei’s crudely decorated “priceless” Ming vases and shattered it at last year’s Weiwei’s exhibit at the Perez Art Museum in Miami, the poor slob is arrested. Figure that out, Dr. Rorschach!

I sometimes gape off into space, not focused on anything. The perception of what I am visualizing is not what is actually out there. It isn’t what it ought to be! Just ruminating!

So why am I writing this Blog? Because these thoughts come into my head at night when I can’t sleep. Some people read a book; I entertain myself with random thoughts. What you see is not always what is out there. What you think may not match-up with reality. There is no absolute truth. Truth and lies fall into a grey area. It is one person’s perception over another’s.

Food for thought!

An Ode to a Great Man

Remembrance Of A Great Man

who died silently

Copyright Vladimir Kagan January 22. 2015

 

David Josefowitz 1918 - 2015

The measure of a man is not his size. He can be a giant and bumble through life with open eyes and do nothing. He can be blind and see more than his sighted neighbor. He can be decimated by Alzheimer, existing within a silent shell, where there still might linger the remains of the genius that once was. Now, there is nothing left but the music swirling in his head - his useful hand conducting the orchestra that once was his voice. Communication left him years ago. “No” was the only word that stayed with him to the end. Why “NO”? Perhaps it was the last remnant of self-expression?

 

You may not recognize the name David Josefowitz, but he was one of those giants. While doing his doctorate in Chemistry at MIT, David invented the formula that gave us vinyl LP records. If you joined a classical music Club you were likely a member of Concert Hall Society or Guild International Du Disque –anyplace in the world– Again a brainchild of David. Together with his brother Sam, they created the Vitamin Club of the Month. David did not invent the Book of the Month Club, but if you were a child studying your homework from flash-cards sent to you on a monthly basis, you benefitted from yet another creation of David and Sam’s. If you lived in Europe, you surely bought books from Editions Rencontre, one of Europe’s preeminent publishing houses. Yes – David and Sam’s creations. If you lived in London, were a music enthusiast and went to concerts of the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra. The founder and conductor was David Josefowitz. He created this unique orchestra to give young gifted musicians from all over the world, an opportunity to perform as soloist. If you studied music at London’s Royal Academy, chances are you did it in the David Josefowitz Hall. When young promising ensembles or soloists wanted to borrow great string instruments David organized the lending of them.

 

 David was married to my sister Tanya. For 65 years they spent their lives collecting art… while other entrepreneurs amassed real estate in the Hamptons and fancy watering holes in Europe, Tanya and David sagaciously bought art; not any art but selectively; The Fauves, French Impressionists and Cubists, and with an expert eye, a discriminating collection of old masters. Their collection is world-class and is generously loaned to institutions around the world.

 

When David finally retired, Queen Elisabeth, in appreciation for his contribution to music and art in England, bestowed the honor of a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) on him.

 

David knew that he had Alzheimer and for the comfort of his family returned to live the remainder of his life in Switzerland, where so many of his children and extended family lived.

 

David Josefowitz died quietly on January 10^th in the arms of his wife and surrounded by his family – He was 96 year old.

 

Architecture RevisIted

In Search of Meaningful Architecture in New York

My Christmas present to all of my fans - wishing you a happy New Year!

Copyright Vladimir Kagan December 20, 2014

 

Four years ago I scoured New York in search of architectural satisfaction and could only find relics of a glorious past. Nothing in modern spoke to me nothing was visually gratifying. * This year I gave it another whirl, really determined to find redemption in modern. The exercise turned out to be feeble but all is not lost.

 

 

 

*See my Blog   A Tour through New York Streets July 8,2010

 

*For a more jaundiced review on the subject, read the New York Times’ recent editorial

How to Rebuild Architecture

By STEVEN BINGLER and MARTIN C. PEDERSEN DEC. 15, 2014

 

 

This is my review of some of the city’s newest and sometimes not so new buildings, some that appeal to me - others that don’t. (In Nantucket it was a walk through the Moors). In New York it’s whatever I could see from the passenger seat of my car - a worm’s eye view of the city.

This, in opinion,  is still one of New York's greatest - The Empire State Building construction started in 1929

 

Big spaces do not necessarily produce great works. The Freedom Tower (It has been renamed 1 World Trade) is tall and impressive. After much political back and forth- and the ineptitude of getting the project going, the design was finally watered down and Daniel Liebeskind’s original concept was redesigned by David Childs of the architecture juggernaut SOM. Conde Naste became the first tenant to move into the building in November 

(Tall towers scare me… they are too nice a target for mischief). The building is located at the far end of the Freedom Park. Its architectural statement has set the tone for the latest craze in modern architecture: Create a tall rectangular box,  then take a substantial diagonal karate-chop off it, - more than one is even better. And there you have the latest genre in 21^st Century Architecture. This has already set the trend for a number of new wannabes in the city.

 

The transportation hub was to be a monument of gracious architecture. Santiago Calvatava, the most imaginative architect that Spain has produced in recent years, took an open site and gave us a beautiful vision of a white dove in flight. The Port Authority bought the idea and made it the most expensive train station ever built; over $4 billion dollars! However, this glorious structure is buried amongst tall, inconsequential buildings virtually hidden from view.

 

Downtown Manhattan:  Enterprising real estate developers did not wait for the Freedom Tower to rise. They turned it into a residential neighborhood Downtown is now called "fidi" by the kids. The banks have all but moved elsewhere and Wall Street is more of a tourist stop then a place of serious business. Hundreds of buildings both residential and office have gone up since 9/11. The blighted neighborhood rapidly rebounded. Bravo for the entrepreneurs who had envisioned the future. But as my friend Ele said, “It’s like a bowl of M&Ms you don’t know which one to eat first.” – inconsequential architecture defines the neighborhood.

 
The new Karate chop wannabees

Cruisn' down the FDR Eastriver drive to the portal of Brooklyn:

and now we cross into Brooklyn on the venerable Brooklyn Bridge

 

Brooklyn's new skyline - driving up Flatbush Avenue

The new Barclay Center, a marvel of technology but short on aesthetics

Driving over the magnificent Brooklyn Bridge you come upon the new Barclay’s Sports Center; Barclays was designed by SHoP architects- 5 young kids with big ideas. They make their work about understanding the capabilities if technology - how 3d software in the computer can streamline physically making a building. Barclays could not have been made without a computer. Fascinating as it may be, it reminds me of a huge rust bucket, that’s what Cor-Ten steel does: it rusts. Non-the-less it makes an impressive statement as we drove up Flatbush Avenue and marveled at the rapid change in that Borough.

 

Much of my architectural journey followed the East River Drive, a beautiful way to ogle at the city. The NYU Hospital complex on the East River is a potpourri of elegant glass towers presumably well suited to their given purpose. One is hardly distinguishable from the other; glass towers with donor’s names in two-foot letter over the entrance doors, but because of crowded space, the buildings are barely distinguishable one from the other.

Every architect's favorite gimmick: use lots of mirror to reflect the other buildings often camouflaging their own creations


This is my hidden architectural treasure temporarily exposed by the big dig where once stood the Con-Ed Powerplant.

Ooop, a bird's eye view of Tudor City - we drove by too quickly to photo it from the car

There is a huge hole between First Avenue and the River where once stood the mammoth Con-Ed Power plant (long a blight on the neighborhood). The lot has been empty for years and is sprouting an urban forest with trees and grasses. For the time being you can see the heroic Tudor City, built in the 1920s by Fred French as the first high-rise residential complex including a hotel and other amenities. Prior to that the neighborhood was a derelict no-man’s land of hoodlums and squatters. First Avenue was home to dozens of slaughterhouses and the vast Con Ed Power generating plant. My first factory was located opposite this squalor on East 44^th Street. But the neighborhood was soon to change forever with the building of the United Nations. If you slow down long enough, there is one building on Second Avenue that has always fascinated me; a corn-cob rising some thirty or forty floors with a splendid view of the East River all the way up Long Island. This is not a new building… it has been there for at least thirty years. Normally you couldn’t see it obscured by the power plant, but now, for a little while it has its place in the sun.

 

The view from my apartment: lhe latest skyline interruption: 432 Park Avenue - 1,396 feet tall

And here come the wannabees!

New York is the city that never sleeps. But someone was asleep on the switch when they permitted the construction of a monolithic tower standing 1,396 feet tall: taller than the Freedom tower, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, 432 Park Avenue. Rafael Viñoly designed  a 10 x 10 structural grid of concrete. This makes a strong shell and strong core so there are no interior columns – I can’t wait to get my first comission to design one of the interiors!  The building is touted to be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere. Imagine the joy of living in a hermetically sealed building with a power failure! Don’t be fooled by the address, it is plunked into the middle of the block on 54 Street between Park and Madison Avenue where once stood the gracious but jaded Drake Hotel. Seen from my apartment window or a drive down Park Avenue, or approaching the city from New Jersey or Long Island you are greeted by this singular erection on Viagra. For me It flaunts the last vestiges of New York’s civility. There was a time were when a building in the middle of a block had to conform in height with its neighboring structures. This gave a harmonious silhouette to the street scene. However with clever manipulation of building codes, anything goes. Now that the civility mold has been broken, expect more of these behemoths. The other day, I drove on East 60^th Street between Park and Madison to find a hole in the ground announcing the next super monstrosity. 60th Street is one of New York’s busiest cross streets– the last street feeding into Central Park and 59^th Street – no right turn is permitted on Madison Avenue, it is always chucker-block full with traffic spilling into grid-lock on Park Avenue. Now envision a hundred story residential building with tenants driving in and out of their luxury garage. (Where was the city’s planning board???)

 

A fifties "Wedding Cake" Architecture along Park Avenue

 

As students, we scoffed at the proliferation of the post-war wedding cake architecture, mostly built in white glazed brick. The Genre was virtually owned by Emory Roth and Sons – Architect. These building sprouted up all over New York – East Side and West side. - In retrospect they weren’t all bad. Designed to meet strict building codes for air and sunlight; the many setbacks provided terraces and penthouses for dozens of tenants. And yes, sunlight did filter down to the street. The windows were bad and often leaking, the ceilings were low, the little square parquet floors were rather heinous. Air conditioning often came as an afterthought and these buildings now sprout hundreds of dripping units. Still, they respected the building code for height. Cunning builders sometimes squeeze another floor out by dipping the lobby entrance below street level. However, none of these buildings towered above the others.      

 

Redemption: Today, some the most pleasing architecture are those buildings that have been shoehorned into tiny spaces. Where once stood a modest brownstone between two apartment buildings, new low-rise building have been neatly inserted into their place - decent modern without despoiling the neighborhood.

           

                                                  

Not all great buildings are residential - here are a few others that I really like


A storage facility in the Bronx - a renovated warehouse downtown NY

I can't reist the "old" - I guess that I am a nostalgic octeneratian after all

A wacky relic of the good old days

The last vestige of civility at the Battery - the old sailors home and church

How did this one get left behind in 2nd Avenue?

Is this cheating? I do love the marriage of these two Metropolitan Museum building under one glass roof

 

 

New York may be the city that never sleeps… it’s certainly true of its architecture - More and Upward!

 

 EPILOG

New York is not an easy place to be an architectural trendsetter. Her are five Architects and their buildings that have filled the bill:

 

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building 1957 was a trendsetter; build in Bronze, clean, monolithic and monumental. Asked why Bronze, Mr. van der Rohe replied “Because I like it!”

 

In 1952 The Lever House by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owing & Merrill started the glass trend. It sits airily on a square block on Park Avenue. Mercifully it is Land Marked and protected from greedy development.

 

Frank Lloyd Wright defied the skyscraper and gave us the poet Guggenheim Museum in 1959. I was proud to have met Wright during that period. He was much defiled by his contemporaries for degrading 5^th Avenue.

 

The TWA terminal by Eero Saarinen, 1962 is one of my favorite building in NYC. I would fly TWA whenever I could just to pay homage to this lyrical, totally impractical masterpiece. (Saved by Landmark designation)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today, I am hard pressed to find any new candidates for this short list! (No wonder Mid-Century design holds us in such awe today!)

 

The Quiet Season

Nantucket in the Quiet Season

Copyright Vladimir Kagan, November 27, 2014

 

 

 

This is Thanksgiving weekend. In years past, I shared our hilarious Thanksgiving festivities. This time I want to share the quiet season; the pleasure of seeing leaves floating in puddles, the thrill of seeing trees devoid of their foliage, showing off a filigree of branches and twigs.

“A Walk in The Woods” was one of my favorite books about the author’s trek of the entire Appalachian Trail - all 2,000 miles of it! For me a half- mile walk through Nantucket’s moors and grasslands is an unbelievable treasure. It is a quiet, serene experience. There is no longer fall’s vivid display of colors. Instead you see the majesty of barren trees, berry-laden bushes and golden grasses swaying like waves in the sea. Leaves die quietly on country roads turning from burnished reds and gold to mellow shades of taupe. Once flaunting brilliant colors, they are now shrived in size and reveal their delicate veins. You must look down at the ground to see the last leaves plastered onto the wet pavement or blowing past your feet by a burst of wind.

     

 

The landscape is transformed into a panorama of muted colors against a gray sky. Threatening clouds whisk across the somber heaven. I am in love with this time of year; it has its own special beauty. A tree that once bore leaves and berries has long since died; its barren stems become a sculptors dream. Dressed in shades of grey with white trimmed windows, the distant town lies quietly on the horizon, only the white church steeples reach above the roofs.

 

Fall in my garden has its own time schedule. First to drop are the leaves of the wild cherry and crabapple trees. The rose bushes have long ago shed theirs. Last is my Japanese maple, it holds on to its foliage through wind and cold, but overnight, like the strike of a conductor’s baton, all leaves drop to the ground and turn the muddied earth into a red carpet. These too soon drift away.

 

In other years a little snow had fallen to put a finishing touch on this idyllic scene. This year our temperate weather has eluded it. It will come sooner or later after I have left the Island. We have rain instead, lots of it - with blustery winds gusting to fifty, canceling all plane and ferries. We are once again an Island thirty miles out at sea, separated from the mainland by an angry ocean. Darkness descends early from the rain-filled sky casting a somber visage to my fall’s idylls. But even that has its allure. After all, what can be better than roasting chestnuts over glowing embers in the fireplace?

 

Me on a walk in the woods

My son Illya painted this picture of the same scenes in the fall

 

And finally, my friend Betsey, who encouraged me to walk every day and patiently carried my sit-stick for me to rest on when I got exhausted.

 

++++++++++++++

 

I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving

A catastrophic water scenario

Water, Water Everywhere but Not a Drop To Drink!

Rejoinder: Where is the Water Going?

Reality – water is disappearing

 

Copyright Vladimir Kagan – November 8, 2014

 

Though the earth is mostly covered with water, less than three percent of this is fresh and most of this is now contaminated.

It’s the most valuable commodity in the world.

It’s the most undervalued commodity in the world,

This brings us to a catastrophic water scenario!

 

Water waster - you and me flusing our toilets

We watch torrents of water flow down rivers and empty into the sea… We brush our teeth twice a day with water gushing from the tap down the drain… Old toilets use up to seven gallons with each flush (water savers use 1.5!)… I love luxuriating in a hot bath … over 35 gallons whirlpool down the drain. My lawn sprinklers wastes hundreds of gallons each summer… The neighborhood car wash gulps hundreds of gallons per day.

 

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water waster you and me brushing our teeth with running water

 

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water waster me luxuriating in a hot bath

 

 

BUT…all this is just a drop in the bucket!

 

The real culprit is industry waste and industrial farming: Yes, I said farming.   Farmers are huge consumers of water… Some of the biggest farms are in the desert. Fruits and vegetables grow well there. These farms sit on millions of gallons of water in their underground watersheds… Abundant water and unlimited sunshine make desert farming ideal. The problem is that these watersheds are being drained by wasteful irrigation.

 

water waster a desert lemon grove running their water down an irrigation ditch

 

Ten years ago, my son-in-law, Matt opted to leave the profitable world of hedge funds and set out to save the world’s water! He is Don Quixote jousting at windmills. The hue and cry then was: “Yes, water is important, but hey there’s a lot of it”… (If you want to invest in commodities, go for gas, oil)… But the fact is: the world is running out of that good stuff. There’s no digging for it or praying for it. Gone is gone.

  

My son-in-law, Matt Diserio, as Don Quixote saving the world's water one drop at a time

There are huge reservoirs of water under the ground; farmers are sitting on millions of gallons in their aquifers. When properly used, it can benefit the farmer and the municipality…. And that is where Matt excels. How does a water-based company become one of the largest farm owners in the land? He partners with huge farms and installs efficient irrigation, which save millions of gallons of water to sell to municipalities… It’s a win-win situation. The farmer has a new cash crop; the city dweller can enjoy water as long as he turns the tap off wisely.

Industrial Pollution is also a culprit: industries use freshwater to carry away waste from their plants into rivers, lakes,aquifers and oceans. Hydraulic Fracking for oil uses million of gallons and in the process contaminate thousands of acres of land. Paper mills, mining, tanning, textiles, and the automotive industry poison millions of gallons.

 

water waster industrial waste such as power plants

A water utility in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is running out of water. It is astounding that Latin America’s biggest metropolis, the ninth largest city in the world, may be out of water by next month! The water left in its Cantareira reservoir, a four-lake complex that supplies half of Sao Paulo has already been drained of 96% of its water capacity! Sao Paulo metropolitan area could suffer “unprecedented collapse” if it doesn’t rain hard and soon…

 

You don’t have to go to South America to feel the pain. If you live in California, you know you can run out of the good stuff.

 

Matt’s water business, Water Asset Management, has him involved in all facets of water: the pipes that transport it; the reservoirs that store it – desalination that converts it – to irrigation and generation. One of their properties is deep in the Ruby Mountains; the plan is to build a storage dam on top, pump water up with solar and release the water through turbines to generate electricity when needed.

 

Since founding Water Asset Management (WAM), Matt and his partners have been writing and speaking about the role that private capital and full cost pricing is playing in the water industry.  While water is one of the world’s largest industries consuming nearly $400 billion per year, its local nature and historical dependence on unsustainable government subsidization has made it one of the most inefficient industries in the world. To improve efficiency, and solve water supply and water quality problems Matt’s company, WAM, advocates tiered volumetric pricing. Matt says “Trillions of dollars of investment spending is needed to prevent the shortages in Sao Paulo from happening in L.A., Las Vegas, Beijing, Atlanta, Houston, and the list of global cities goes on and on. Governments have failed at managing their water supply and infrastructure through subsidies.  Without adequate pricing to pay for all operating costs, capital, and future reliable supply, the world faces the risk associated with unsustainably cheap water as a water crisis is now reported almost daily in some parts of the world.”

 

Real world examples dispel the misperception that “water should be free”.