Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts: Where Art & Architecture Meet

Earlier today, I visited for the first time the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Intentionally built in the developing district known as Grand Center of Saint Louis (go here to read more about the Pulitzer's urban context), this magnificent gem brings together the arts and architecture, inviting all visitors to re-imagine, no, re-invent, our preconceived ideas of creativity, art, culture, space.

The website explains: "Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando and situated in St. Louis' Grand Center district, the Pulitzer presents changing exhibitions and engages in a variety of programming initiatives involving the visual, literary, and performing arts." You can visit here to explore more about the architect who designed the Pulitzer, hear his reflections on this building, as well as read his biography.

After you've seen the current exhibition (more on the exhibition in a later post) inside the Ando building, you must not neglect to visit Richard Serra's permanent piece on site: the Joe sculpture, which is a torqued spiral comprised of five pieces of weathered steel, each weighing 25 tons. Yeah, you read that right. 125 tons of steel sitting under the Saint Louis sky. It sits permanently in the courtyard of the Pulitzer, and is a marvel to look at (but no touchy-touch since one brush of our fingers could make an impression lasting six months).

This is what Serra says about Joe:  When you walk between the walls, you become implicated in the tremendous spiraling force of the movement. The velocity projects you ahead into an open interior space which frames the sky. Joe cannot be grapsed as Gestalt or image. The sculpture is understood behaviorally as a function of time.  "Everyone thinks my medium is steel," says Serra, but he is quick to correct that misconception. "My medium is space," he says, and being inside the sculpure is like "being inside a steel womb". Once inside, you are made completely, fully, deeply aware of the space encapsulated by the steel spiral. The docent who talked us through/around the Joe said that, to her, it seemed as if the artist was intentionally trying to waste the visitor's time, forcing us to walk along the path of the spiral towering over our heads, only to be led (by what force, by what inertia?) into an empty space. There is nothing inside. Yet, instead of a sense of loss, the spiral's "center" somehow generates an awareness of potential, of possibility, as if you were waiting for creation to happen while standing in the midst of that spaciousness. 

This reminds me of the experience of a poem. Even before entering into the spiral, even before that first step into that enclosed space (where your left and right are "fenced" in and you can only go forward or backwards with very little room -- and you are warned not to touch the sides), there is great anticipation. As I walked forward, I could tell that my expectation was building, and I hurried along the gravelly, spiral path towards what I expected was something awe-inspiring which would fill me with "wonderment". Once inside, I cannot help but look up, raising my eyes above the dark rim of the spiral to the clouds in the blue sky, feeling and seeing the sunlight pouring down -- so much heavier and weightier because the steel spiral has pushed all the spaces toward me...  Like a poem, that feeling of expectation, anticipation, wonderment.

Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts

3716 Washington Boulevard
(between Grand Boulevard and Spring Avenue)
St. Louis, MO 63108
Phone   314.754.1850
Fax     314.754.1851