Designing the Centennial

Designing the Centennial PDF

Author: Bruno Giberti

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-03-17

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 0813181488

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The 1876 United States Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was not only the United States' first important world's fair, it signaled significant changes in the very shape of knowledge. Quarrels between participants in the exhibition represented a greater conflict as the world transitioned between two different kinds of modernity—the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the High Modern period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the center of this movement was a shift in the perceived relationship between seeing and knowing and in the perception of what makes an object valuable—its usefulness as a subject of study and learning versus its ability to be bought and sold on the market. Arguments over design of the Centennial reflected these opposing viewpoints. Initial plans were rigidly structured, dividing the exhibits by country and type. But as some exhibitors became more interested in the preferences of their audience, they adopted a more modern stance. Objects traditionally displayed in isolated glass boxes were placed in fictive context—the necklace draped over a mannequin, the vase set on a table in a model room. As a result, the audience could more easily perceive these items as commodities suitable for their own environments and the fair as a place to find ideas for a material lifestyle. Designing the Centennial is a vital first look at the design process and the nature of the display. Bruno Giberti uses official reports of the U.S. Centennial Commission and photographs of the Centennial Photographic Company, as well as the ephemera of the exhibition and literary accounts in books, magazines, and newspapers to illuminate how the 1876 fair revealed changes to come: in future world's fairs, museums, department stores, and in the nature of display itself.

Masterpieces of the Centennial Exhibition 1876 Volume 2: Industrial Art Illustrated Special Edition

Masterpieces of the Centennial Exhibition 1876 Volume 2: Industrial Art Illustrated Special Edition PDF

Author: Walter Smith

Publisher:

Published: 2020-09-12

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781592180578

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The second volume in a three-volume set of highly sought-after books that covers the industrial art, tapestries, and furniture on display at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.Originally published in 1876 by Professor Walter Smith, the second volume in the "Masterpieces of the Centennial Exhibition" series takes a dynamic look at late 19th-century artistry, craftsmanship, and industrial design featured at the World's Fair in Philadelphia, otherwise known as "art applied to indusry." This profusely illustrated tome of jewelry, furniture, textiles, sculpture, chandeliers, pottery, and metalworking is highly detailed and filled with contemporary critique and analysis from the Exhibition. Those interested in the development of modern industrial design will find this period look at the evolution of American art and craftsmanship, applied to both industrial and commercial designs, thoroughly fascinating.An art historian digitally scanned and re-mastered each 19th-century image from a priceless pristine copy of the original print. Masterpieces of the Centennial Exhibition 1876 Volume 2: Industrial Art Illustrated Special Edition is presented in the original type font with the author's intended layout. A new, retro-inspired cover design was created exclusively for this handsome reprinting.Historians and art enthusiasts alike will find themselves immersed in contemporary writing, period imagery, and a thorough examination of the pieces on display. One can almost imagine that they're there, soaking in the sights and sounds of the most fabulous party on Earth in 1876.

Will Eisner: The Centennial Celebration

Will Eisner: The Centennial Celebration PDF

Author: Will Eisner

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Published: 2017-02-23

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1506703550

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The legacy that Will Eisner (1917–2005) had on sequential art cannot be overstated—his innovative storytelling, layouts, and art on his newspaper series The Spirit inspired a generation of cartoonists, and his turn toward an acclaimed run of graphic novels beginning in 1978 with A Contract with God helped pioneer the form. This catalogue includes over 175 selected illustrations, reproduced from the original artwork, from the landmark Will Eisner Centennial Celebration exhibitions taking place in 2017 at Le Musée de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême and the Society of Illustrators in New York. Dual English and French text with essays by Denis Kitchen, Paul Gravett, and John Lind. Celebrating the centennial of a master storyteller! Over 175 Eisner illustrations, reproduced from the originals! The official catalogue to exhibitions at Le Musée de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême and The Society of Illustrators in New York!

Power and Posterity

Power and Posterity PDF

Author: Kimberly Orcutt

Publisher:

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780271078373

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A milestone in American cultural history, the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was one of the most broadly shared, heavily attended, and thoroughly documented public experiences of the nineteenth century. Power and Posterity illuminates how the art featured in the celebration informed and reflected national debates over the country's identity and its role in the world. The Centennial's fine arts display, which included both a government-sanctioned selection of American works and significant contributions from sixteen other countries, spurred a transformation in the American art world. Drawing from official records, published criticism, guidebooks, poems, and satire, Kimberly Orcutt provides a nuanced, in-depth study of the exhibition. She considers the circumstances of the artworks' creation, the ideological positions expressed through their installation, and the responses of critics, collectors, and the general public as they evolved from antebellum nationalism to a postwar cosmopolitanism in which artists and collectors took the international stage. Orcutt reveals how the fair democratized the fine arts, gave art criticism newfound reach and authority, and led art museums to proliferate across the country. Deeply researched, thoughtfully written, and featuring a mix of more than eighty full-color and black-and-white illustrations, this thorough and insightful book will appeal to those interested in American culture and history, the art world, and world's fairs and exhibitions in Philadelphia and beyond.

Fair Park Deco

Fair Park Deco PDF

Author: Jim Parsons

Publisher: Texas Christian University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780875655017

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Fair Park Deco is a fascinating tour of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. Like every American exposition in the 1930s, it began in economic depression. Although its economy had been buoyed by major oil discoveries in the early '30s, Texas agriculture was hard hit by the Great Depression. By the middle of the decade, state officials had set their sights on a great centennial celebration to help stimulate the economy and attract tourist dollars. "If during the next six months the people of the state could become filled with the idea of holding a big celebration on the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of Texas independence," the state's centennial commission speculated in July, 1934, "it would have the effect of creating a general forward-looking spirit through the state. It would be more stimulating than anything we can think of, and this effect would be immediate." This book focuses specifically on the Art Deco art and architecture of Fair Park--the public spaces, buildings, sculptures and murals that were designed for the 1936 exposition. Most of the chapters in the book represent different areas of Fair Park, with buildings and artwork effectively arranged in the same order that a visitor to the Texas Centennial Exposition might have seen them. The art and architecture are featured in original photography by Jim Parsons and David Bush as well as in historic photographs. Fair Park is one of the finest collections of Deco architecture in the country, but it is so much more: the embodiment of Texan swagger, it is a testament to the Texanic task of creating a dazzling spectacle in the darkest days of the Depression.

A Day with Picasso

A Day with Picasso PDF

Author: Billy Kluver

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1999-02-18

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 9780262611473

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In 1978, while collecting documentary photographs of the artists' community in Montparnasse from the first decades of the century, Billy Klüver discovered that some previously unassociated photographs fell into significant groupings. One group in particular, showing Picasso, Max Jacob, Moïse Kisling, Modigliani, and others at the Café de la Rotonde and on Boulevard du Montparnasse, all seemed to have been taken on the same day. The people were wearing the same clothes in each shot and had the same accessories. Their ties were knotted the same way and their collars had the same wrinkles. A total of twenty-four photographs—four rolls of film with six photographs each—were eventually found. With the challenge of identifying the date, photographer, and circumstances, Klüver embarked on an inquiry that would illuminate the minute texture of that time and place. Biographical research into the subjects' lives led Klüver to focus on the summer of 1916 as the likely time the photos were taken. He then measured buildings and plotted angles and lengths of shadows in the photographs to narrow the time frame to a spread of three weeks. Further investigation eventually allowed Klüver to identify the photographer as Jean Cocteau and to determine the day that Cocteau had taken the photographs: August 12, 1916. A computer printout of the sun's positions on that date, obtained from the Bureau des Longitudes, together with the length of the shadows, enabled Klver to calculate the time of day of each photograph, and thus to put them in proper sequence. In a tour de force of art historical research, Klüver then reconstructed a scenario of the events of the four hours depicted in the photographs. With evocative attention to detail—noting when Picasso is no longer carrying an envelope or Max Jacob has acquired a decoration in his lapel—Klüver recreates a single afternoon in the lives of Picasso and friends, a group of remarkable people in early twentieth-century Paris. Besides the central "portfolio" of photographs by Cocteau, the book contains additional photographs and drawings, short biographies of all the subjects, and a historical section on the events and activities in the Paris art world at the time.

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