The Maverick

Author: Calvin Tomkins (The New Yorker)
Year: 1997 (June 30, 1997)
Source type: article (profile)
Raw file: raw/articles/tomkins_1997_the-maverick.md

Summary

A comprehensive profile of Frank Gehry published months before the Guggenheim Bilbao's opening (October 1997). Tomkins presents Gehry at a career turning point: the Bilbao museum is nearly complete and already being called a "masterpiece" by visitors like Eli Broad, while the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles has stalled amid cost overruns and administrative dysfunction. The article covers Gehry's biography, design process, key works (Santa Monica house, Winton Guest House, fish sculptures, California Aerospace Museum), his relationships with artists and patrons, and his fraught position in Los Angeles — celebrated internationally but neglected at home.

Key Claims

• Bilbao as masterpiece-in-waiting: The Guggenheim Bilbao is described as "an eruption of powerful forms" in titanium; though not yet open, it is "hailed as a masterpiece" and Gehry's "crowning achievement." Tomkins notes the building's transformative visual impact: "from across the Nervión River it looks like a fantastic dream ship."
• The Bilbao deal: The Basque government paid for construction and maintenance; Thomas Krens (Guggenheim director) demanded "one of the greatest buildings of the twentieth century" as his program requirement. Gehry selected the site — an abandoned industrial area at a river bend — over the city's preferred central location.
• Disney Hall disaster: The Walt Disney Concert Hall project stalled in 1994 after $80 million spent, with only an underground parking garage completed. Gehry blames Dworsky Associates (the commercial firm hired for working drawings) and the Music Center trustees. Eli Broad later led a fundraising revival, but tensions erupted when Broad tried to bid the project without Gehry's office — leading Gehry to threaten withdrawal.
• Design process: Gehry's method is intensely iterative: "dozens of models, more than any other architect would dream of making." He works through physical models, not drawings: "It's almost like I'm grinding into the paper, trying to find the building." He rejects theoretical positions and "style wars."
• Santa Monica house (1977): The pivotal work that "nearly did him in." Gehry wrapped a "dumb little house" in chain-link, corrugated metal, and plywood, leaving studs exposed to show "the building hasn't stopped." Neighbors protested; someone "fired a bullet through a window." The house cost him his commercial client (Rouse Company), and he "started over" with a staff of three.
• Artist collaborations: Gehry's closest friends since the 1960s have been Los Angeles artists (Ed Moses, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin). He absorbed their "casual, funky aesthetic" and use of unorthodox materials. Philip Johnson became an early champion: "When a building is as good as that one, fuck the art."
• Fish sculptures: The fish image emerged from anger at postmodernism's historical revivalism: "If you really want to go back into the past, why not do fish, which were there three hundred million years ago?" The fish lamps led to monumental fish sculptures in Barcelona and a building in Kobe.
• CATIA and metal cladding: Gehry adopted CATIA (French aviation software) to analyze and cost complex forms. Metal cladding (lead-coated copper, stainless steel, titanium) enabled increasingly sculptural designs.
• Los Angeles ambivalence: Despite being "California's best-known architect," Gehry lost major local commissions (Museum of Contemporary Art, cathedral) to others. He "talked more often about leaving L.A." after the Disney Hall debacle, even as he gained commissions in Dallas, Cleveland, New York, Seattle, Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Seoul.
• Biography: Born Frank Goldberg in Toronto (1929), moved to Los Angeles (1947). Changed name to Gehry (at wife's insistence). Studied at USC, briefly at Harvard (where Le Corbusier's paintings were the "revelation").

Connections

Concepts: Iconic Architecture · Star Architecture · Spectacle · Architectural Autonomy
Authors: Frank Gehry · Leslie Sklair · Charles Jencks · Deyan Sudjic
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function · Genius vs. Bureaucracy
Related source notes: Creating the Bilbao Effect · Modernity's Opiate (Brott 2012) · The Bilbao Effect (Michael 2015) · Reviewing the "Bilbao effect" (Lorente 2024)

Direct Quotes

"The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, won't sit still for its portrait. Approached from the center of town, on the Alameda de Maredo, it bursts into view as an eruption of powerful forms held in check by a cloak of titanium."

"If that wall sloped just three or four degrees, it would cradle you, it would be warmer and friendlier. You'd feel better in the space." (Gehry on a compromised gallery wall in Bilbao)

"It's much easier and sexier to say the Bilbao Effect is putting up a flamboyant building." (Gehry, anticipating the reductionist reading)

"When a building is as good as that one, fuck the art." (Philip Johnson on the Guggenheim Bilbao)

"It's almost like I'm grinding into the paper, trying to find the building. I never think of the drawings as a finished product—they're a process to get to an idea." (Gehry on his design process)

"Frank was a comrade, and damned if he didn't become more prominent internationally than any of us. Who would have expected it—this putzy little guy?" (Ed Moses on Gehry)

"He just took the money and ran." (Gehry on Dan Dworsky and the Disney Hall working drawings)

Open Questions

• Timing: This profile was published before Bilbao opened (October 1997). How does the pre-opening hype compare to post-opening reception? Tomkins notes the building was already being called a "masterpiece" by early visitors like Eli Broad — does this anticipate the celebratory narrative, or does it reveal the icon's power before functional validation?
• Disney Hall resolution: The article ends with Gehry threatening to withdraw from Disney Hall if Broad's approach prevailed. The project was eventually completed (opened 2003). What does the resolution tell us about the architect-patron power dynamic?
• The "Bilbao Effect" formula: Gehry explicitly rejects the idea that Bilbao can be replicated: "Just make the Bilbao Effect. I turn those projects down." Yet the term became shorthand for iconic urban regeneration. Does Gehry's rejection anticipate critiques (Brott, Plaza) that the "effect" is misattributed to the building alone rather than the broader infrastructural investment?
• Los Angeles neglect: Why did L.A. — the city that "nurtured his genius" — refuse him major commissions while celebrating him internationally? Does this reveal the local/international split in architectural reception, or the difficulty of the "maverick" position within institutional power structures?