Frank Gehry: Novelty Without Skill

NoLandGrab posted some exerpts from the New York Times review of Gehry's first Manhattan building:

Well, both. Mr. Gehry is adding a much-needed touch of lightness to the Manhattan skyline just as the city finally emerges from a period of mourning. The IAC building, serving as world headquarters for Barry Diller’s media and Internet empire, joins a growing list of new projects that reflect how mainstream developers in the city are significantly raising the creative stakes after decades of settling for bland, soul-sapping office buildings.

We already have plenty of 'souless' architecture here in Brooklyn, courtesy of Bruce Ratner, who now propooses to replace it with 'senseless' architecture designed by Frank Gehry. But Ouroussoff isn't concerned about buildings that work:

Yet the building, which is not quite complete, also feels oddly tame. For those who have followed Mr. Gehry’s creative career, these easy, fluid forms are a marked departure from the complex, fragmented structures of his youth. Rather than mining rich new creative territory, Mr. Gehry, now 78, seems to be holding back.

As a 'novelty seeking' critic Oursoussoff looks for 'shock' and 'experimentation' those of us who have to live with the results look for something else -like something that will be practical and appealing once the novelty wears off. Given Gehry's track record we're not likely to get that. Architects now embody how Tom Stoppard described modern (abstract) artists: 'novelty without skill'. I can skip the Whitney and go to the Frick if I want, but Gehry's obnoxious, garish funhouse architecture can't be avoided, nor disposed of as easily as a painting. But this just reveals what some of us have known all along, the tastemakers have no taste.....or common sense.