Jørn Utzon was guided by the ideology that architecture is not an external form, but a frame enclosing a collection of ritualised events. For Mika Utzon Popov art can also be a ritualised experience. He emphasises that the most profound encounters are designed and experienced as a procession where art, architecture, atmosphere, and environment conspire to afford transcendence. Utzon Popov cites examples such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace placed on the pinnacle of the monumental Daru staircase at the Louvre Museum, and the experience of rounding a corner at the Musée d’Orsay to be “punched in the guts” by the splendid reveal of Van Gogh’s L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise, vue du chevet, 1890.
Sometimes the procession and the reveal can be softer. Our conversation drifted towards Richard Serra’s , 1983-86: two sheets of Corten steel that like a, 1997, installed within the museum’s Panorama Room, engineers the same alchemy of art, architecture, atmosphere, and environment to superb effect. The site-specific sculpture features a diving board that penetrates and protrudes from a thick pane of glass, extending toward an abyss of sea and sky. On a silvery still and cloudy day when the horizon melts into abstraction, the Ganzfeld effect seems to tease the higher visual cortex.
