Is Architecture Art? Neutra's Kaufmann House is up for auction.

"The Kaufmann house, Palm Springs, 1946, moved in the direction of the pavilion, which is Neutra's last development in domestic architecture. Horizontal planes resting on horizontal planes hover over transparent walls. The material loses its importance—magnificent as the dry-joint stone walls are in themselves—and the gist of the house is the weightless space enclosed. The victory over the front door is almost complete; it is reached by slow stages, like the Mexican house whose entrance on the street leads through a garden to an unemphasized door."
— Esther McCoy on Richard Neutra

NPR featured a story today about the upcoming auction of Richard Neutra's Kaufmann house in Palm Springs. The California homeowners who undertook the restoration hope Neutra’s masterpiece will play a role in a third movement: promoting architecture as a collectible art worthy of the same consideration as painting and sculpture.

This May, Christie’s will be handling the auction, with a presale estimate of $15 million to $25 million. Neutra's Kaufmann House will be part of Christie’s high-profile evening sale of postwar and contemporary art.

Commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., the Pittsburgh department store magnate who had commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright about a decade earlier to build Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, the house was designed as a desert retreat from harsh winters.

The Kaufmann House is one of the best-known designs by Neutra, a Viennese-born architect who moved to the United States in the 1920s and designed homes for the next few decades for many wealthy West Coast clients. His buildings are seen virtually as the apotheosis of Modernism’s International Style, with their skeletal steel frames and open plans. Yet Neutra was also known for catering sensitively to the needs of his clients, so that their houses would be not only functional but would also nurture their owners psychologically.

When Harrises first saw the Kaufmann House, it was neither a pretty palace nor an obvious candidate for restoration. Strikingly photographed in 1947 by Julius Shulman (see the black and white photo - the most well-known photo of Neutra's work), it stood vacant for several years after Kaufmann’s death in 1955.

Then it went through a series of owners, including the singer Barry Manilow, and a series of renovations. After purchasing the house around 1992 and its more than an acre of land for about $1.5 million, the Harrises removed the extra appendages and enlisted two young Los Angeles-area architects to restore the Neutra design, even seeking out the original providers of paint and fixtures.

Back to the NPR story and the premise: is architecture art? Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times art critic smirked at the thought. "The idea that a house is a work of art strikes me as rather silly," said Knight. "Just because something is labeled 'art', does not mean it's good." Knight went out to say that the relevant question for a building is not 'is it art?', but 'is it good architecture?'

Then again, he has a right to his opinion. And the right to be a snob. A home is looked at and admired and talked about. It is created and put on display. It's worth can increase and people purchase them as investments. Just like you would a painting or a sculpture. Let me put this to you, Mr. Knight: if Piss Christ, a controversial 1989 photograph by American photographer Andre Serrano in which he depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of his own urine is considered "art", then certainly some arguments must be made for some architecture - whether it's Neutra's Kaufmann House or Wright's Fallingwater, let say, to be considered "art" as well.

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