Alien doubles: magic, myth and taboo in the spatial experiments of Frederick Kiesler

A number of obsessions dominate the later architectural projects of Frederick Kiesler and mark a radical departure from the prismatic functionalism that had associated his work with the avant-garde movements of Constructivism and then later De Stijl. It is primarily through the appropriation of magic and mythology that these are brought into existence and, through a certain critical repositioning, appear to work against the rubric of Kiesler’s own attitudes towards art and architecture. While the influence of magic and mysticism has been a major theme in discussions of the art of the period, particularly in regard to the work of Picasso, its influence over architecture has been less widely discussed or understood. This paper will look at the ‘Galaxy’ installation that Kiesler installed beside Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1953. The piece is pivotal for demonstrating the previously undervalued role that myth and magic played in the work of Frederick Kiesler, defining his architecture and, more directly, his architectural process. Kiesler’s association with surrealism during the period, as well as his awareness of the principles of psychoanalysis, were both major orienting themes in his work and reinforce the role and importance of magic and myth in his thinking. The paper will demonstrate how the surrealist search for ‘objects’ was assimilated into a model of ‘other’ architecture in a number of Kiesler’s proposals from the 40s and 50s. Drawing on recent critical interest in his work, the paper will show how Kiesler’s spatial interiors can be positioned within the broader intellectual culture of surrealism, and as strategies against the totalising forces of functional modernism.