Sketches of Neutra: A Review

About a month ago I made a post about a Neutra exhibit at the Los Angeles Public Library. I finally got a chance to go and it was worth it. The only downside to the experience was having to pay for parking. Yeah, I know, it's downtown, I should expect to pay for parking. But still, you'd think of all places, the main branch of the public library would have a free parking lot. Turns out they don't even own or rent a parking lot. Visitors have to park in a public lot on the street or in an underground lot off Flower St. I'm not sure what good it does to offer free books if it costs money just to get to them. I probably should have taken public transportation, but I didn't have the luxury of time to do so. Anyway, on to the actual exhibit...kind of.

Before I talk about the exhibit proper, I would like to give some major, nerdy ups to the library itself as a building and as a warehouse of information. It's just a fabulous place to get lost in and explore and just marvel at. Some people go to the mall, I go to libraries. Okay, enough with the prefaces...

The exhibit is arranged in chronological order and starts out with a lot of early landscape drawings that include sketches of his travels to South America. Some of his figure sketches were influenced by Gustav Klimt, while his basic drawing ability was largely taught to him by his sister, Josephine. I'm a sucker for sketches of any kind because of their roughness. They show mistakes and process and, as an onlooker, I can trace the stages of the drawing from simple form to finished product.

The sketches give way to more formal architectural drawings that really showcase Neutra's meticulous nature. As a curatorial note mentions, "Unlike most famous architects who developed large offices and eventually left drawing function to younger colleagues, Neutra was never willing to relinquish completely this aspect of his practice." The amount of detail and precision required of the drawings is immense. Everything is measured perfectly, the lines are of even thickness and darkness. It looks like the work of a machine rather than a man. To think that Neutra sat down and actually took the time to hand draw all his buildings is mind boggling.

Both the early sketches and later architectural drawings show a man who was constantly engaged with his surroundings and wanted to create buildings that were both aesthetically pleasing and functional. He, like Wright, Le Corbusier, and many other architects, designed whole dream cities, reimagining lifestyle through architecture. He used this city titled, Rush City Reformed, as a reservoir of ideas, constantly coming back to themes of harmony and utility.

Beyond the biographical knowledge presented, the exhibit also expresses and presents Neutra's philosophies concerning architecture, most notably that the buildings around us affect the way we live, that social betterment is possible through architectural planning. Today, it feels like cities aren't planned very well or are planned based on traffic patterns and population density. There is a sense that civic planning is down to its barest bones; just enough planning to make sure chaos doesn't break out. Neutra's vision was opposite of that and cared very much about details and making creative solutions for modern life. Architecture as solution.

The exhibit displays drawings that were amazingly detailed along with curatorial notes that help place them in their historical context, tracing Neutra's influences and his stylistic breakthroughs. Like the sketches, the exhibit allowed me to trace Neutra's life, his shifts in style, his growth as a designer. I was able to see a portrait of Neutra that was fully detailed and by no means sketchy.