Inside Vancouver
King Arthur
By Michael Harris published Sep 1, 2006
Like his best buildings, Arthur Erickson was an elusive blend of style and substance, past and present, inner and outer. He died, at 84, in the spring of 2009. This profile originally ran in September, 2006.
Onstage, Arthur Erickson wears one of the impeccably tailored suits he picks up at Leone, every inch the icon we have come to applaud. Two hundred people have filed into this Robson Square theatre to pay homage to the architect who designed the space. The occasion is a retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Arthur Erickson: Critical Works, which has culminated here in a conversation between curator Nicholas Olsberg, a joking but assiduous man, and Erickson himself.
There is something unsettling about attending on an architect within his creation. You might call it terribly intimate if this were someone other than Erickson; but his arms are crossed; you are inside and you are not. He answers Olsberg’s questions with cheek, or wit, or reverence, in turns. Sometimes he launches into eloquent explanations of his buildings, and other times he offers only “yup.”
We watch old movies made by Erickson; one of Japanese gardens, another of his prize-winning pavilion at the 1970 Osaka Expo. Here come the pre-packaged, chuckle-inducing aphorisms (on post-modernism: “It’s an anachronism—you can’t be post modern”). And the sweeping statements about his work (“I always avoided style”).
We cannot name an avoided style—other than to point out an affinity for strong horizontals and (his “muse”) concrete. All the works are unique responses to their myriad sites. And here, in the gloaming of his career, we only begin to register what Erickson has given us: many find his public buildings cold and depressing; there are also moments of surprising comfort and warmth in his work—most evident in his homes. His style is plural, sometimes contradictory, and so he remains our misunderstood, terminally aloof, genius.
Even as Erickson speaks onstage, he seems to shift: now he is an architect; now a glamorous, old-world gentleman; now a veritable apostle. He houses all three identities.
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Discussed
Prior to this profile in Vancouver Magazine, Arthur Erickson had never
publicly acknowledged his late companion, Francisco Kripacz. When asked why
not, he would explain that he feared his clients' reactions to news of his
sexual orientation. That Erickson ultimately overcame this fear is a
tribute not only to him but to his late spouse, who, as Erickson fondly put
it in 2006, "wasn't lured aside by convention." Apparently - hearteningly -
neither was Erickson towards the end of his life.
