Adams W. H. Roberto Burle Marx : The Unnatural Art of the Garden. — New York, 1991

  

 

 

 

 

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Roberto Burle Marx; The Unnatural Art of the Garden

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

May 23 — August 13,1991

Exhibition URL: moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/337

 

 

The Brazilian master landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, foremost among the creators of an influential modem landscape aesthetic in the late 1930s, continues to refine his art to the day. This book examines his work, highlighting its breathtaking range, from small-scale private gardens to large public parks. It reveals him as an artist of lasting stature and significance, a world-class landscape architect whose eye-pleasing work has substantial intellectual underpinnings, and shows a deep knowledge of and respect for the natural landscape.

 

This splendidly illustrated volume offers an eloquent appreciation of the genius of this modem maestro by William Howard Adams, guest director of an accompanying exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. Mr. Adams describes Burle Marx's early life and career; the historical background of garden art in Europe as well as South America; the master's collaborative relationships with such modem architects as Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Lucio Costa, and Rino Levi; and his affinity for abstract art, in particular that of Arp, Calder, Léger, Miró, and Picasso. Following a remarkable group of early sketches and watercolors, Mr. Adams examines a selection of projects for private estates, corporate environments, and public domains such as parks and government buildings. Lavish photographs are complemented by original plans for the projects.

 

William Howard Adams is an attorney, curator, lecturer, and author of articles and and books on landscape and garden design, among them The French Garden, 1500-1800. He was editor of The Eye of Thomas Jefferson (1976), and author of Jefferson's Monticello (1983).

 

80 pages; 50 color plates, 41 black-and-white illustrations.

 

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In 1964, The Museum of Modern Art published Elizabeth Kassler's Modern Gardens and the Landscape, a small but important book in which she sought to bring together the modern movement's finest achievements in landscape design from the 1920s through the early 1960s. The projects, although few in number, clearly define a modern landscape sensibility and grapple successfully with serious formal and aesthetic issues. In the mid-1960s, the course of landscape design began to shift as social and environmental concerns took precedence and designers found themselves creating pedestrian malls and children's playgrounds and addressing ecological issues. Although in hindsight aesthetic concerns and issues of a social and environmental nature need not be mutually exclusive, that seems to have been the result.

 

Today there is renewed interest in landscape design as a serious artistic endeavor. A new generation is picking up where an earlier one left off. Nevertheless, some of the most significant work done since 1964 has been completed by designers featured in Kassler's book, among them the Brazilian artist-gardener Roberto Burle Marx, who was instrumental in defining a modern landscape aesthetic in the late 1930s and who has continued to practice and refine his art to the present day.

 

It is particularly fitting, then, that The Museum of Modern Art should organize an exhibition of his landscape designs. Like his fellow Latin American Luis Barragán, whose work was featured in an exhibition at the Museum in 1972, Burle Marx stands out as one of the great designers in the field. Although Barragan, himself an architect, designed his gardens around architectural elements — chiefly walls — the raw materials for Burle Marx are earth and plants. A consummate plantsman, as William Howard Adams makes clear, Burle Marx has, over his long career, demonstrated that artistic and ecological concerns are in fact not mutually exclusive. His active efforts to save the Brazilian rain forest and its plant species (many of which have been incorporated into his gardens) predate by a generation or two this important and currently "fashionable" cause. On behalf of The Museum of Modern Art, I wish to express my gratitude to Burle Marx, who, still irrepressibly active at age eighty-one, has given his enthusiastic support and cooperation to this exhibition.

 

It has been a great pleasure to work with William Howard Adams, the exhibition's guest curator. Author of numerous books and articles on landscape, he brings deep knowledge and a broad historical perspective to the subject. As a Jefferson scholar par excellence, he also brings a classicist's critical eye to the field of modern landscape design.

 

Finally, we are most grateful for the generosity of the Banco Safra of Brazil in sponsoring this exhibition. The enlightened patronage of the institution has resulted in two of Burle Marx's most important gardens. To Mr. and Mrs. Gustavo Cisneros we are doubly grateful: first for underwriting research travel and a new set of photographs of the gardens and parks, and second for their indispensable help in marshalling support to make the exhibition a reality. Israel Klabin and Mrs. Donald B. Straus provided valuable advice at critical moments along the way. In addition, I would like to thank The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art for its encouragement and assistance, and for having made possible my trip to Brazil to meet with Burle Marx and see the gardens first hand.

 

Stuart Wrede

Director, Department of Architecture and Design

 

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