#john hedjuk

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War Machine

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16.11.2019_1:36 PM

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Catcher in the Rye

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16.11.2019_1:34 PM

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16.11.2019_1:38 PM

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Invading Space

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/john-hejduk

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‘Widow’s House’

Architecture in the Ronald and Rita McAulay Gallery is a new free exhibition space at the heart of the RA. This ambitious installation features Hejduk’s design for the Widow’s House, one of 68 “objects” in his seminal Lancaster / Hanover Masque, brought to life.

The late American architect John Hejduk (1929 – 2000) believed that ideas were as important as buildings and that architecture had the power to evoke alternative worlds. Masques – popular royal entertainments of the 16th and 17th centuries featuring fantastical costumes and moving sets – inspired Hejduk to transform the way architecture is taught and imagined.

The Lancaster / Hanover Masque draws inspiration from an eclectic range of sources, including the novels of Thomas Hardy, English fairground attractions and American agricultural buildings. Hejduk used allegorical stories and a large cast of characters to deal with themes of life, death, love and virtue. The Widow is one such character in the masque.

Hejduk described the Widow’s House as a “wailing room”, with the funnels on the roof made by “the Trombone-Maker, a craftsman of refined detail”. It refers to the Widow’s Walk, a feature of traditional New England houses thought to be built for the wives of whaling ships’ captains who would go up to these cupolas and watch the ships come in from sea. Often they did not come back. The Widow’s Walk was a form of surveillance and waiting, a place of reflection and anticipation.

This dark and mysterious tale contrasts with the comical, zoomorphic form of the structure with its four legs, head and tail. Hejduk saw that in life tragedy often sits alongside comedy, and that art and architecture give us a way of reconciling mixed emotions and conflicting ideas.

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The Moral of the Labyrinth One can be assured that we have been asked to curtail the notion of the beginning and the end. It plays the image as being subservient to the materials of its representation; that the product of our design disguises the possibility of its intent; that time is everlasting once you awaken to the identity of imperfection. There is a plethora of things to be said, made and seen but some objects, let alone architecture, seem to remain in the imagination for good. Their presence would publicly declare a certain finality that we are all to timid to admit to.