| Austin | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Austin entrance | |
| Artist | Ellsworth Kelly |
| Completion date | 1 February 2018 (2018-02-01) |
| Type | Building |
| Medium | stone, glass, wood |
| Dimensions | 60 ft. x 73 ft. x 26 ft. 4 in. |
| Location | Blanton Museum of Art,Austin, TX |
| Coordinates | 30°16′54″N97°44′16″W / 30.28170°N 97.737815°W /30.28170; -97.737815 |
| Owner | Blanton Museum of Art,University of Texas at Austin |
Austin is an immersive work of art and architecture designed by artistEllsworth Kelly and built on the grounds of theBlanton Museum of Art inAustin, Texas, USA. The building is a permanent installation and part of the museum's permanent collection.
Kelly'sAustin relates to the tradition of modernist artist-commissioned buildings that includes theRothko Chapel in Houston,Philip Johnson'sThanks-Giving Square chapel in Dallas, and theMatisse Chapel inVence.
The initial conception ofAustin was the television producer and art collectorDouglas S. Cramer's request to Ellsworth Kelly to design an architectural pavilion on his vineyard nearSanta Barbara, California. Kelly designed the structure that would later becomeAustin, intending it for Cramer's estate, but the plans eventually fell through.[1][2]
In January 2015, Kelly gave to the Blanton Museum the design concept for a 2,715 square feet (252.2 m2) stone building that he subsequently namedAustin. Kelly said that the design of the building was inspired byRomanesque andByzantine art he studied while in Paris on theG.I. Bill. Following Kelly's gift, the Blanton launched a $15 million campaign to realize the project.[3][4] This number eventually grew to $23 million.[5]
The building was opened to the public February 18, 2018.[6]
A companion exhibition of Kelly's prints, sketches, and sculptures was displayed February 18–April 29, 2018 at the Blanton to trace the evolution of four core motifs throughout his career: spectrum, black and white, color grid, and totem.
The design-build team that realized the project was Overland Partners and Linbeck Group.
The structure is clad with 1,569limestone panels fromAlicante, Spain. The interior stone flooring and plaza flooring is granite fromGeorgia, United States. The entry door is made from a native Texaslive oak tree from the site of theDell Medical School.Austin has thirty-three mouth-blown-glass windows fabricated byFranz Mayer & Co. ofMunich, Germany installed on three walls in "color grid", "starburst" and "tumbling squares" motifs.
There are fourteen black and whitemarble panels on the interior walls ofAustin that each measure 40" x 40". The black marble is from Belgium, and the white marble is fromCarrara, Italy. Kelly experimented with a variety of composition for these simple panels, inspired by theStations of the Cross. There is also an 18-foot-talltotem inAustin's interior, which is salvagedredwood.[7]
Although it was inspired by church art and architecture,
Kelly was a lifelongatheist. When he set out to create his own version of a chapel, he omitted explicit religious imagery and chose not to have it consecrated. In the end, Kelly'sAustin—the prosaic title he gave the work—is a chapel-like form stripped of any holy narrative.[8]
The Austin American-Statesman reported that "Kelly's temple of light and color...received almost universal acclaim."[9]
M.H. Miller inThe New York Times wrote thatAustin
is very much the culmination of Kelly's oeuvre, not just a summation of his work's themes but his masterpiece, the grandest exploration of pure color and form in a seven-decade career spent testing the boundaries of both. It is also the kind of ambitious fantasy that artists rarely get to execute...There are precedents forAustin... But it's possible that no contemporary artwork of this scale by a major artist has matched its creator's initial ambitions so perfectly as Kelly'sAustin.[1]
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