Crayon and graphite on paper
Not on view
In the early 1970s Raimund Abraham's renewed interest in the typology of the house resulted in numerous projects exploring the ritual of dwelling. To explore the various psychological conditions intuited in the archetypal house, Abraham used words as well as images. In a poem he titled "Elements of the House," he indicated often opposing sensations and feelings, natural elements and cycles, and spatial components to characterize his subject. With regard to the design for a House with Curtains, the open grid with blowing curtain walls gives physical form to "the wind," "movement," "transparencies," and "dreams." In the House without Rooms, what looks like the carved interior of a boulder embodies, "density," "paralysis," "isolation," and "wombs." Situated in barren landscapes, either imagined or from memory, both schemes are for houses that straddle the earth and the sky, and evoke life's oppositions.
an essay by Bevin Cline and Tina di Carlo, in Terence Riley, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 116.
Explore more
From MoMA Design Store
Installation views
We have identified this work in the following photos from our exhibition history.
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.