Putting the "Real" in Real Estate

Update (9 July 2009): The Times Magazine has removed this slide show from its website because several photos in the series were "digitally altered" and "did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show." These alterations were not disclosed by the artist, and alert viewers (hat tip: Simon Owens) produced evidence of computer manipulation, such as the composition of a timber-framed interior created by photographing half the scene and completing the tableau with a mirror image of the initial photo.

A seven-bedroom "stockbroker Georgian" house in Greenwich, CT, now in repossession. Image by Edgar Martins for the New York Times Magazine.

Last night the Passengers explored the streets of Singapore’s Chinatown and sampled some excellent street vendors’ food. Among the topics of conversation was the incredible downturn in real estate prices across the developed world. Even Singapore has been hit as asking prices for high-end apartments in our building are rumored to be down 50% or more. Most Singaporeans remain stunned by the incredibly perverse lending undertaken by American consumers at the height of the bubble. Retail banking here seems quite staid by American and British norms. Try finding a savings account in Singapore that pays more than one percent APY.

On this topic I want to call attention to a photo essay commissioned by the New York Times Magazine last week. Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins thoughtfully captured the overreach in real estate in the United States. With emphatic verticals and deep fields of vision his images show aspirational follies in the household, holiday, and commercial markets. The depopulation and abandonment on display reveal the hubris behind each project. Leaves blow through an unsecured living room. Timber frames wait for dry wall, and a solitary box mysteriously blocks up the only opening in a concrete edifice. Martins describes his visualizations attempts “to portray the inherent movement in stillness. Sometimes objects become almost like events.” Here the viewer has been inserted in the uncertain moment after building has stopped but before new action has begun.

Downtown condos in Phoenix, AZ, stand unfinanced and unfinished. Image by Edgar Martins for the New York Times Magazine.

These photos do ask the viewers to roll up their sleeves and avert failure. The slideshow title “Ruins of the Second Gilded Age” leaves little doubt that an unfavorable judgment has been passed against American indulgence, and the images feature almost no tools that suggest a means to finish the work. Building materials appear on a street of downtown condos, but no forklifts are available to move them. Trash litters a driveway in Georgia without a dumpster to clear it. Furthermore, the artist and/or editors have chosen to visit unsympathetic locations, including those hyped by the artist’s patron. Building for a wealth population in Greenwich, CT, also allowed for spectacular losses on speculative homes. Las Vegas seemingly drew upon an inexhaustible pool of perceived wealth until homeowners balked at the high price demanded by Sin City. Martins' series once again points up the ability of images to make tragically real the stories told by journalists and economic data.

An unfinished model home in a Chandler, AZ, subdivision appears as an abandoned cathedral through Edgar Martins' lens.

Politics explained

For all of you wondering how America's two-party political establishment functions:

Theologically speaking, the two parties have divided the Seven Deadly Sins as follows: Republicans oppose lust, sloth and envy; Democrats scorn gluttony, greed, wrath and pride. Little progress is reported.

Thank you, Gene Lyons.

Fitting in at NMS

The National Museum of Singapore devotes itself to telling the history of Singapore starting from the fourteenth century. It also holds festivals that contribute to the state’s ongoing cultural life and hosts traveling exhibitions. Its mission seems a strange amalgam, especially as Singapore also has a visual arts museum and two institutions for cultural history. However, the National Museum can claim some apostolic exceptionalism since it took over duties from the colonial Raffles Library & Museum and its 1887 building by Sir Henry Edward McCallum.

The building was certainly not designed as a modern museum with intuitive traffic flow and flexible galleries. A modern overhaul began in 2003 and has created some inviting passages that harness the charm of the historic building while appending much-needed exhibition space. Almost all major museums in the post-War era have struggled to adapt to their staid homes. Old buildings psychically project legitimacy and gravitas, but many old museums were built for showing their collections as jumbles of knick-knacks and curiosities, not as a series of items requiring discreet displays for studying for each artifact.

Suzann Victor, Contours of a Rich Manoeuvre, each chandelier hangs 3m from bridge floor.

NMS has embraced their circumstances by commissioning artists to make site-specific installations in and around the building(s), both for the permanent collection and within their Art-On-Site series. A favorite addition has been Suzann Victor’s Contours of a Rich Manoeuvre, eight chandeliers that dangle above the bridge between the old and new buildings. The artist has updated a past symbol of luxury using replication and modern materials. But the chandeliers have been designed to swing back and forth in a number of configurations. The blend of past and present has not been left as a static and finished conflation.

S. Teddy Darmawan, Love Tank (The Temple), 2008-2009; roughly 3 x 5 x 8m

Another artist S. Teddy Darmawan has received temporary control over the main entryway. The Indonesian artist has stacked seven pink tanks (modeled on the M1 Abrams) underneath the museum’s iconic dome. Love Tank fills the height and breadth of the rotunda and crowds visitors immediately upon entrance. Ordinarily, a museum would consider such an installation unwelcoming and disruptive. Even MoMA, a museum that pays lip service to offering museum-goers provocative experiences, deemed it best to toy with visitors only after they pay $20. NMS, however, has a low porch over its entryway, and without the pile of tanks blocking the view arriving visitors would normally behold a steep staircase on the opposite side of a cramped rotunda. The architecture already required hiding the ticket counter to the left behind the low arcade, and the addition of S. Teddy D.’s installation helps declare this museum a place of experience and exploration rather than simple tourism. The riotous color scheme and lotus blossom patterning on the muscular masses of the tanks repeats the subversion of colonial architecture and self-serious/self-serving institutions. But if all that gets too antiestablishment, the museum does have an upscale restaurant (sound alert).

Love Tanks and the NMS dome with its original Victorian stained glass.