Author: David A. Hanks
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
Published: 2015-10-27
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 1580934331
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The 1920s and 1930s saw the birth of modernism in the United States, a new aesthetic, based on the principles of the Bauhaus in Germany: its merging of architecture with fine and applied arts; and rational, functional design devoid of ornament and without reference to historical styles. Alfred H. Barr Jr., the then 27-year-old founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, and 23-year-old Philip Johnson, director of its architecture department, were the visionary young proponents of the modern approach. Shortly after meeting at Wellesley College, where Barr taught art history, and as Johnson finished his studies in philosophy at Harvard, they set out on a path that would transform the museum world and change the course of design in America. The Museum of Modern Art opened just over a week after the stock market crash of 1929. In the depths of the Depression, using as their laboratories both MoMA and their own apartments in New York City, Barr and Johnson experimented with new ideas in museum ideology, extending the scope beyond painting and sculpture to include architecture, photography, graphic design, furniture, industrial design, and film; with exhibitions of ordinary, machine-made objects (including ball bearings and kitchenware) elevated to art by their elegant design; and with installations in dramatically lit galleries with smooth, white walls. Partners in Design, which accompanies an exhibition opening at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in April 2016, chronicles their collaboration, placing it in the larger context of the avant-garde in New York—1930s salons where they mingled with Julien Levy, the gallerist who brought Surrealism to the United States, and Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet; their work to help Bauhaus artists like Josef and Anni Albers escape Nazi Germany—and the dissemination of their ideas across the United States through MoMA’s traveling exhibition program. Plentifully illustrated with icons of modernist design, MoMA installation views, and previously unpublished images of the Barr and Johnson apartments—domestic laboratories for modernism, and in Johnson’s case, designed and furnished by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—this fascinating study sheds new light on the introduction and success in North America of a new kind of modernism, thanks to the combined efforts of two uniquely discerning and influential individuals.
Author: Anna Sokolina
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-06-28
Total Pages: 604
ISBN-13: 1000387364
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Routledge Companion to Women in Architecture illuminates the names of pioneering women who over time continue to foster, shape, and build cultural, spiritual, and physical environments in diverse regions around the globe. It uncovers the remarkable evolution of women’s leadership, professional perspectives, craftsmanship, and scholarship in architecture from the preindustrial age to the present. The book is organized chronologically in five parts, outlining the stages of women’s expanding engagement, leadership, and contributions to architecture through the centuries. It contains twenty-nine chapters written by thirty-three recognized scholars committed to probing broader topographies across time and place and presenting portraits of practicing architects, leaders, teachers, writers, critics, and other kinds of professionals in the built environment. The intertwined research sets out debates, questions, and projects around women in architecture, stimulates broader studies and discussions in emerging areas, and becomes a catalyst for academic programs and future publications on the subject. The novelty of this volume is in presenting not only a collection of case studies but in broadening the discipline by advancing an incisive overview of the topic as a whole. It is an invaluable resource for architectural historians, academics, students, and professionals.
Author: Pat Kirkham
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Published: 2013-10-15
Total Pages: 258
ISBN-13: 1452129592
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Eva Zeisel was one of the twentieth century's most influential ceramicists and designers of modern housewares. Her distinctive take on modern industrial design was inspired by organic form and brought beauty and playfulness to housewares, earning her designs a beloved place in midcentury homes. This richly illustrated volume—the first-ever complete biographical account of Zeisel's life and work—presents an extensive survey of every line she ever created, all captured in gorgeous new photography, plus 28 short essays from scholars, collectors, curators, and designers. The definitive book on the grande dame of twentieth-century ceramics, this is an essential resource for anyone who appreciates modern design.
Author: Arthur J. Pulos
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1988
Total Pages: 466
ISBN-13: 9780262161060
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The American Design Adventurecontinues the fascinating and detailed examination of industrial design begun by Arthur Pulos in American Design Ethic. The first volume discussed and illustrated the objects and artifacts, the major designers and schools of design from Colonial times to the 1940s. This second splendidly illustrated volume carries the story into the heroic era of American industrial design, from the 1940s to the 1970s. These were the decades of American industrial design's dominance, when special exhibitions and world fairs made design a subject of national pride. Big business realized the influence that trademarks, packaging, and corporate identity programs could have on their bottom line, and the world of fashion created a consumer demand for name brands and well designed products. Industrial design flourished under the capable hands of Raymond Loewy and Charles Eames, while corporations like IBM, RCA, Herman Miller, and Knoll were sponsors of the great American design adventure. The extraordinary collection of illustrations that Pulos has assembled documents all of these important design trends while evoking the nostalgia of the 50s and 60s when Pop and Rock held sway. Pulos probes all aspects of industrial designers and their work - in education and private corporations, in professional organizations and governmental agencies. He also covers prefabricated housing, graphics, manufactured products from the exotic to the pragmatic, and public systems from the sociopolitical to the economic.
Author: Richard Meyer
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 374
ISBN-13: 0262135086
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Contemporary art in the early twenty-first century is often discussed as though it were a radically new phenomenon unmoored from history. Yet all works of art were once contemporary to the artist and culture that produced them. In What Was Contemporary Art? Richard Meyer reclaims the contemporary from historical amnesia, exploring episodes in the study, exhibition, and reception of early twentieth-century art and visual culture.
Author: Kathleen Berrin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2021-07-21
Total Pages: 389
ISBN-13: 1538134098
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The uneasy relationship between the arts, US art museums, and the federal government has not been thoroughly explored by scholars. This book focuses on the development of “national diplomacy exhibitions” during World War II and the early Cold War and explains how the War provided the government with an impetus to create a national arts policy. It discusses how national diplomacy exhibitions on US soil were deployed as persuasive tools to influence public opinion, to reconcile discrepancies between high art and democracy, and to resolve America’s lagging art status and difficulties with “the foreign.” The type of soft diplomacy that art museums provide by initiating national diplomacy exhibitions has not received emphasis in the scholarly community and art museums have essentially been ignored in cultural studies of the early Cold War. Scholarly analysis of museum exhibitions in the last quarter of the 20th century is now a popular topic, but investigations of exhibitions between 1939-1960 have been thin. By scrutinizing major exhibitions during those formative years this book takes a new perspective and examines the foundational development of the so-called “blockbuster” exhibition stimulated by World War II. The book will interest readers in visual studies, history, museums, cultural affairs, government, and international diplomacy.
Author: Victoria Grieve
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 242
ISBN-13: 025203421X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Art for everyone--the Federal Art Project's drive for middlebrow visual culture and identity
Author: Karen Patterson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2019-09-18
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 022666483X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Recent years have seen an enormous surge of interest in fiber arts, with works made of thread on display in art museums around the world. But this art form only began to transcend its origins as a humble craft in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it wasn’t until the 1950s and 1960s that artists used the fiber arts to build critical practices that challenged the definitions of painting, drawing, and sculpture. One of those artists was Lenore Tawney (1907–2007). Raised and trained in Chicago before she moved to New York, Tawney had a storied career. She was known for employing an ancient Peruvian gauze weave technique to create a painterly effect that appeared to float in space rather than cling to the wall, as well as for being one of the first artists to blend sculptural techniques with weaving practices and, in the process, pioneered a new direction in fiber art. Despite her prominence on the New York art scene, however, she has only recently begun to receive her due from the greater art world. Accompanying a retrospective at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, this catalog features a comprehensive biography of Tawney, additional essays on her work, and two hundred full-color illustrations, making it of interest to contemporary artists, art historians, and the growing audience for fiber art. Copublished with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.