Exhibit's photos chronicle destroyed modernist homes

By: Special to the News | Opelika Auburn News
Published: February 08, 2010

A new exhibition, on view Feb. 6 through April 17 at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, features a series of haunting images that record the demise of three abandoned houses designed by world-renowned architect Paul Rudolph, who earned his bachelor’s degree at Auburn University.
The exhibit, “After You Left, They Took It Apart: Demolished Paul Rudolph Homes,” is a collection of photographs by Chris Mottalini.
Rudolph, who died in 1997, was one of the 20th century’s most iconoclastic architects, according to a release from the museum. Originator of the Sarasota Modern style of architecture in Florida, he studied at Harvard after graduating from Auburn and later became dean of the school of architecture at Yale University. Best known for his starkly geometric, concrete building design termed “Brutalism,” his residential works shared the same modernist aesthetic while reflecting regional and vernacular influences.
Photographed in some cases immediately prior to the homes’ demolition, Mottalini’s images are the last “portraits” of Rudolph’s striking creations. According to the release, Mottalini’s photographs have appeared in numerous publications worldwide and have been included in recent exhibitions at the Santa Monica Center of Art in Barcelona, Spain, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Ill. This is his first showing in Alabama.
Admission to JCSM is free in 2010 thanks to the museum’s business partners. For more information on the museum, visit www.jcsm.auburn.edu or call (334) 844-1484.