Wanting to raise money to maintain two modernist landmarks—Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, and Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut—nearly 100 artists, architects, and designers donated works of art to a project and book called Modern Views (Assouline; $70). Some of those works will be auctioned at Chicago’s Arts Club on September 16th, accompanied by the screening of a new Sarah Morris film inspired by the two glass houses—more distant cousins than twins. Here we pick eight artworks and examine their creators’ sources of inspiration.
 

'Blaze a Trail' by Adrian Smith

ADRIAN SMITH
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
Chicago

Smith’s painting Blaze a Trail takes its cue from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Mies, writes Smith in his accompanying statement, “exemplified this spirit. . . . Not so with Philip Johnson, who explored many paths, most of which were well worn and few of which left a trail.” As for the two houses, they share a “fundamental flaw,” in that “each fails to observe nature’s forces of flooding and heat.”

 

All artwork courtesy of architects and designers
Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

 

' 'You Cannot Not Know History' -P.J.' by Michael Graves

MICHAEL GRAVES
Michael Graves & Associates
Princeton, New Jersey

Entitled “You Cannot Not Know History” —P.J., a quote from Philip Johnson, Graves’s painting depicts the Parthenon, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (built in France in 1929), the Farnsworth House, and the Glass House. All four structures employ columns differently to define space. The interests of Mies and Johnson, writes Graves, “lay in discovering how their own modern architectural language was both similar to and different from Corbusier’s”—and the unknown Parthenon architect.

 

All artwork courtesy of architects and designers
Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

 

'Case Study Redux' by Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee

SHARON JOHNSTON AND MARK LEE
Johnston Marklee
Los Angeles

Johnston and Lee’s collage Case Study Redux, from 1999, incorporates a photograph of Case Study House No. 22. (Sponsored by Art and Architecture magazine and built between 1945 and 1966, the 30-plus Case Study houses pushed the boundaries of residential architecture.) “The evolution of the window came to an end in the Glass House and Farnsworth House,” explain the architects in Modern Views. “Developments which came after these masterpieces are but variations . . . of what has come before.”

 

All artwork courtesy of architects and designers
Photograph: Courtesy of Julius Schulman and Sotheby’s

 

'Almost Nothing' by Gary Hilderbrand

GARY HILDERBRAND
Reed Hilderbrand
Watertown, Massachusetts

Using pictures of the two houses, Hilderbrand created a collage, called Almost Nothing, reminiscent of the one Mies made for his unbuilt Resor House, planned for Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “Mies describes the aim of reducing the presence of building to beinahe nichts, or almost nothing,” explains Hilderbrand, a landscape architect. “The Farnsworth House and the Glass House exploit this motive. Over time, in both, the landscape becomes almost everything.”

 

All artwork courtesy of architects and designers
Photograph: Courtesy of Paul Warchol, Erik Johnson, and Sotheby’s

 

An untitled piece by Ronald A. Krueck

RONALD A. KRUECK
Krueck & Sexton Architects
Chicago

Krueck’s untitled piece sprang from his long-ago encounter with Edith Farnsworth as he walked along the Fox River near the Mies-designed house. After Farnsworth’s dog barked at him, Farnsworth herself appeared and yelled, “No one knows what it’s like living in a glass house!” Her anger startled Krueck, who wondered why she had bothered to build the place. Farnsworth sold the house in 1972, and today, says Krueck, it has become “a temple for all of us to visit and dream in.”

 

All artwork courtesy of architects and designers
Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

 

An untitled drawing by Lawrence Scarpa

LAWRENCE SCARPA
Pugh + Scarpa Architects
Santa Monica, California

Scarpa writes that his untitled drawing “explores the tension between the two homes and questions the structure of orderliness, capturing the sensation of gravity, balance, and motion.” As for the houses themselves, they are, he claims, “a testament to the power and joy of art. They . . . provide visual delight whose purpose is to answer nothing, but to stimulate the observer to become more acutely aware of the experience to which he or she has been subjected.”

 

All artwork courtesy of architects and designers
Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

 

An untitled work by Stanley Tigerman

STANLEY TIGERMAN
Tigerman McCurry Architects
Chicago

In this untitled work from 1983, a winged creature—might it be the spirit of Mies, dead since 1969?—exchanges a variety of objects with a human figure below. Tigerman pairs his drawing with a letter to Mies dated 1978. “There’s something called ‘postmodernism’ now,” writes Tigerman, “which seems to be getting everyone’s attention. . . . Can you believe there are even mutterings about the death of Modern architecture? But don’t worry—it’s very much alive. Love, Stanley.”

 

All artwork courtesy of architects and designers
Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s

 

Renderings of Patricia and John Patkau's Peterson/Munch House

PATRICIA AND JOHN PATKAU
Patkau Architects
Vancouver

Beneath renderings of their Peterson/Munck House on Quadra Island in British Columbia, the Patkaus note the shared characteristics of the Farnsworth and Glass houses before focusing on their dissimilarities. “Each house embodies a very different idea of space,” they write. “It is this difference, both in abstract conception and in concrete manifestation, between space as a discrete unit and space as a continuity, that reveals the individual identity of the architect within the universality of the idea.”

GO: THE MODERN VIEWS AUCTION AND SCREENING is September 16th at The Arts Club, 201 E. Ontario St.; 312-787-3997, artsclubchicago.org

 

All artwork courtesy of architects and designers
Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s