the last cubist

I really enjoyed watching Sidney Pollack's documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry earlier this week. Beforehand, I only knew two things about Gehry, namely that he built the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, and that he's featured in a Simpsons episode (the Springfielders send him a letter asking him to build an opera house for them, he scrunches the sheet together to throw it away, then looks at the paper ball, has an inspiration, and builds the opera house in the image of the crumpled paper).

I've always been a sucker for anything that appears to give some kind of insight into the nature of creativity, and there is no bigger challenge to the creative mind than to shape spaces the size of theatres and sports venues, so this was bound to appeal. In addition, I also enjoyed it because Gehry's work is so close to modern sculpture and cubist painters. I think somebody in the docu calls him the last cubist or something similar.

And of course, as always, the Simpsons episode managed to capture the spirit of Gehry's creativity in a few minutes just as well as the documentary in 83 minutes.