Mid Century Modernism And The American Body

"The first investigation of the role of how modernist objects were marketed by affirming buyers' racial and gender identities"--

There is no hotter style today than the cooler than cool work of modern designers and architects from the 1940s and 50s. Endlessly inventive and emminently livable, mid-century modernism has an optimism and confidence born of postwar abundance, and a spirited elegance that appeals powerfully fifty years later. In CLASSIC MODERN, design expert Deborah Dietsch introduces readers to the basic tenets of modern design and explains how the simple yet inspired forms typical of this style were so readily disseminated into mainstream American culture. Filled throughout with enticing examples of mid-century pieces from such timeless designers as Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Arne Jacobsen, and George Nelson, this beautiful book recaptures the excitement of the period's brilliant designs.

New and vintage photography of America’s modernist architectural mecca. A visionary artist who has achieved worldwide fame, Julius Shulman transformed architectural photography. From his earliest photographs to those taken today, his work demonstrates a profound sensitivity to and appreciation for the spaces in which people live. These spaces, as seen through his lens, are at once luminous and profoundly shadowed, becoming spaces of intrigue and extraordinary beauty into which the observer longs to enter. This volume focuses on Shulman’s Chicago work. This town is America’s First City of Architecture, and its modern architecture is the ideal subject for Shulman’s lens. Featured here are the elegantly modern Minsk House, designed by Keck & Keck in 1955; the 1960 Burton Frank House, a mid-century modern gem; architect Harry Weese’s inspired modernist home and studio of 1957; and many other modern masterpieces.

"This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Crafting modernism: midcentury American art and design, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York, October 11, 2011-January 15, 2012; Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York, February 27-May 21, 2012"--T.p. verso.

An extraordinary artist and designer: a fresh view of Harry Bertoia's entire body of work. Italian-born American Harry Bertoia (1915-78) was one of the most prolific and innovative artists and designers of the postwar period. Trained at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he met future colleagues and collaborators, such as Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, and Eero Saarinen, he went on to make one-of-a-kind jewelry, design iconic chairs, create thousands of unique sculptures including large-scale commissions for significant buildings, and advance the use of sound as sculptural material. His work speaks to the confluence of numerous fields of endeavor but is united throughout by a sculptural approach to making and an experimental embrace of metal. Harry Bertoia: Sculpting Mid-Century Modern Life accompanies the first US museum retrospective of the artist's career to examine the full scope of his broad, interdisciplinary practice and features important examples of his furniture, jewelry, monotypes, and diverse sculptural output. Lavishly illustrated, the book offers new scholarly essays as well as a catalog of the artist's numerous large-scale commissions. It questions how and why we distinguish between a chair, a necklace, a screen, and a freestanding sculpture--and what Bertoia's sculptural things, when taken together, say about the fluidity of visual language across culture, both at midcentury and now.

Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design challenges the received narrative on the artists, exhibitions, and interpretations of Viennese Modernism. The book centers on three main erasures—the erasure of Jewish artists and critics; erasures relating to gender and sexual identification; and erasures of other marginalized figures and movements. Restoring missing elements to the story of the visual arts in early twentieth-century Vienna, authors investigate issues of gender, race, ethnic and sexual identity, and political affiliation. Both well-studied artists and organizations—such as the Secession and the Austrian Werkbund, and iconic figures such as Klimt and Hoffmann—are explored, as are lesser known figures and movements. The book’s thought-provoking chapters expand the chronological contours and canon of artists surrounding Viennese Modernism to offer original, nuanced, and rich readings of individual works, while offering a more diverse portrait of the period from 1890, through World War II and into the present. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history, design history, architectural history, and European studies.

Focusing on the creation of the concept of Whiteness, this study links early photographic imagery to the development and exploitation that were common in the colonial Atlantic World of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. With the advent of the daguerreotype in the mid-nineteenth century, White European settlers could imagine themselves as a supra-national community, where the attainment of wealth was rapidly becoming accessible through colonisation. Their dispersal throughout the colonial territories made possible the advent of a new representative type of Whiteness that eventually merged with the portrayal of modernity itself. Over time, the colonisation of the Atlantic World became synonymous with fascination itself within a European mind fixated upon both a racially subordinated world and the technical media through which it was represented. In the intervening centuries, images have acted as a medium of the imaginary, allowing for ideas around classification and the measurement of value to travel and to situate themselves as universal means. Contemporary societies still grapple with the residues of race, gender, class, and sexuality first established by the contrived mores of this representational medium, and those who were racialised by the camera as objects of fascination, curiosity, or concern have remained so well into the post-digital era. The book will be of interest to scholars working in history of photography, art history, colonialism, and critical race theory.

During the prosperous, forward-thinking era after the Second World War, a growing number of men, women, and children across the United States were wearing fashions that evoked the Old West. Westernwear: Postwar American Fashion and Culture examines why a sartorial style with origins in 19th-century agrarian traditions continued to be worn at a time when American culture sought balance between technocratic confidence in science and technology on one side, and fear and anxiety over global annihilation on the other. By analysing well-known and rarely considered western manufacturers, Westernwear revises the common perception that fashionable innovation came from the East coast and places western youth cultures squarely back in the picture. The book connects the history of American working class dress with broader fashionable trends and discusses how and why Native American designs and representations of Native American people were incorporated broadly and inconsistently into the western visual vocabulary. Setting westernwear firmly in context, Sonya Abrego addresses the incorporation of this iconic style into postwar wardrobes and popular culture, and charts the evolution of westernwear into a modern fashion phenomenon.