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A Slaughterhouse with Style

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The Daily Pic: At the 1933 arts center in Shanghai, death goes Art Deco.

The 1933 Art Center in Shanghai

(Photo by Blake Gopnik)

A view down into the wild, Art Deco abattoir now called the 1933 Center in Shanghai. Brutalism avant-la-lettre, and as usual, I love all that concrete. Apparently, however, the creatively reused building hasn’t really succeeded as an arts-and-culture center, so I have a modest proposal: Return it to its original function, for which it was so carefully and elegantly designed.

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Blake Gopnik is a contributing critic to Newsweek and The Daily Beast and writes on art and design for a wide range of publications. He previously spent a decade as chief art critic of The Washington Post and before that was an arts editor and critic in Canada. He has a doctorate in art history from Oxford University, and has written on aesthetic topics ranging from Facebook to gastronomy.

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