Download or read book Harry Bertoia and Postwar American Design Culture written by Sydney Skelton Simon and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation investigates the confluence of art, design, and corporate interests in the career and oeuvre of Harry Bertoia (1915-1978). Since the Industrial Revolution, modernist art has labored to distinguish itself from design and the associated threat of being dismissed as 'merely' commercial, decorative, or craft. The decades following World War II saw an amplification of this modernist anxiety. Alongside the rise of Abstract Expressionism, a new design culture flourished in postwar America, bolstered by the powerful economic and political interests of big business. Design assumed unprecedented prominence as a central means of relating to increasingly abstract systems and institutions. Bertoia occupied a fraught position in this cultural landscape. In the course of his four-decade-long career, his practice routinely crisscrossed the categories of fine art, design, and craft. His extensive output includes hollowware, jewelry, monotypes, furniture, welded and cast metal sculpture, and sound recordings. This study demonstrates how his work dramatized the competing aims and claims of modernist art and design in the Cold War period.
Download or read book Harry Bertoia written by Marin R. Sullivan and published by Scheidegger and Spiess. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Postwar American Design and Its Cultural Ramifications written by and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Alloys written by Marin R. Sullivan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new look at the interrelationship of architecture and sculpture during one of the richest periods of American modern design Alloys looks at a unique period of synergy and exchange in the postwar United States, when sculpture profoundly shaped architecture, and vice versa. Leading architects such as Gordon Bunshaft and Eero Saarinen turned to sculptors including Harry Bertoia, Alexander Calder, Richard Lippold, and Isamu Noguchi to produce site-determined, large-scale sculptures tailored for their buildings’ highly visible and well-traversed threshold spaces. The parameters of these spaces—atriums, lobbies, plazas, and entryways—led to various designs like sculptural walls, ceilings, and screens that not only embraced new industrial materials and processes, but also demonstrated art’s ability to merge with lived architectural spaces. Marin Sullivan argues that these sculptural commissions represent an alternate history of midcentury American art. Rather than singular masterworks by lone geniuses, some of the era’s most notable spaces—Philip Johnson’s Four Seasons Restaurant in Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, Max Abramovitz’s Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, and Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius’s Pan Am Building—would be diminished without the collaborative efforts of architects and artists. At the same time, the artistic creations within these spaces could not exist anywhere else. Sullivan shows that the principle of synergy provides an ideal framework to assess this pronounced relationship between sculpture and architecture. She also explores the afterlives of these postwar commissions in the decades since their construction. A fresh consideration of sculpture’s relationship to architectural design and functionality following World War II, Alloys highlights the affinities between the two fields and the ways their connections remain with us today.
Download or read book An Illustrated Guide to Furniture History written by Joclyn M. Oats and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Illustrated Guide to Furniture History provides upper-level students and instructors with an alternative visual analytical approach to learning about furniture history from Antiquity to Postmodernism. Following an immersive teaching model, it presents a Nine-Step Methodology to help students strengthen their visual literacy and quickly acquire subject area knowledge. Moving chronologically through key periods in furniture history and interior design, such as the Renaissance, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Modernism, it traverses Europe to America to present a comprehensive foundational guide to the history of furniture design. Part I addresses furniture within the context of the built environment, with chapters exploring the historical perspective, construction principles, and the categorization of furniture. In Part II, the author visually depicts the structural organization of the methodological process, a three-category framework: History, Aesthetics, and Visual Notes. The chapters in this part prepare the reader for the visual analysis that will occur in the final section of the book. The book is lavishly illustrated in full color with over 300 images to reinforce visual learning and notation. A must-have reference and study guide for students in industrial and product design, interior design, and architecture.
Download or read book American Culture in the 1940s written by Jacqueline Foertsch and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-27 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the major cultural forms of 1940s America - fiction and non-fiction; music and radio; film and theatre; serious and popular visual arts - and key texts, trends and figures, from Native Son to Citizen Kane, from Hiroshima to HUAC, and from Dr Seuss to Bob Hope. After discussing the dominant ideas that inform the 1940s the book culminates with a chapter on the 'culture of war'. Rather than splitting the decade at 1945, Jacqueline Foertsch argues persuasively that the 1940s should be taken as a whole, seeking out links between wartime and postwar American culture.
Download or read book American Design in the Twentieth Century written by Gregory Votolato and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Greg Votolato presents the intricate story of how design evolved as a profession and a leisure activity. Votolato demonstrates that design in affluent American culture is as much about personalization of the material world as it is about the performance and appearance of manufactured goods. 114 illustrations.
Download or read book Makers of Modern Culture written by Justin Wintle and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides lively and clearly written expositions of those figures who have done most to shape our views in the period since 1914. Music, cinema, drama, art, fiction, poetry and philosophy are just some of the fields covered
Download or read book The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art written by Joan M. Marter and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011 with total page 3140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.
Download or read book World War II and the Postwar Years in America 2 volumes written by William H. Young and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-09-17 with total page 942 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 150 articles provide a revealing look at one of the most tempestuous decades in recent American history, describing the everyday activities of Americans as they dealt first with war, and then a difficult transition to peace and prosperity. The two-volume World War II and the Postwar Years in America: A Historical and Cultural Encyclopedia contains over 175 articles describing everyday life on the American home front during World War II and the immediate postwar years. Unlike publications about this period that focus mainly on the big picture of the war and subsequent economic conditions, this encyclopedia drills down to the popular culture of the 1940s, bringing the details of the lives of ordinary men, women, and children alive. The work covers a broad range of everyday activities throughout the 1940s, including movies, radio programming, music, the birth of commercial television, advertising, art, bestsellers, and other equally intriguing topics. The decade was divided almost evenly between war (1940-1945) and peace (1946-1950), and the articles point up the continuities and differences between these two periods. Filled with evocative photographs, this unique encyclopedia will serve as an excellent resource for those seeking an overview of life in the United States during a decade that helped shape the modern world.
Download or read book Alloys written by Marin R. Sullivan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new look at the interrelationship of architecture and sculpture during one of the richest periods of American modern design Alloys looks at a unique period of synergy and exchange in the postwar United States, when sculpture profoundly shaped architecture, and vice versa. Leading architects such as Gordon Bunshaft and Eero Saarinen turned to sculptors including Harry Bertoia, Alexander Calder, Richard Lippold, and Isamu Noguchi to produce site-determined, large-scale sculptures tailored for their buildings’ highly visible and well-traversed threshold spaces. The parameters of these spaces—atriums, lobbies, plazas, and entryways—led to various designs like sculptural walls, ceilings, and screens that not only embraced new industrial materials and processes, but also demonstrated art’s ability to merge with lived architectural spaces. Marin Sullivan argues that these sculptural commissions represent an alternate history of midcentury American art. Rather than singular masterworks by lone geniuses, some of the era’s most notable spaces—Philip Johnson’s Four Seasons Restaurant in Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, Max Abramovitz’s Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, and Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius’s Pan Am Building—would be diminished without the collaborative efforts of architects and artists. At the same time, the artistic creations within these spaces could not exist anywhere else. Sullivan shows that the principle of synergy provides an ideal framework to assess this pronounced relationship between sculpture and architecture. She also explores the afterlives of these postwar commissions in the decades since their construction. A fresh consideration of sculpture’s relationship to architectural design and functionality following World War II, Alloys highlights the affinities between the two fields and the ways their connections remain with us today.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of American Cultural Intellectual History written by Mary Kupiec Cayton and published by Macmillan Reference USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 858 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of American thought and culture throughout history examines the individuals and documents that revealed significant ideas, issues, and movements.
Download or read book Design The Key Concepts written by Catherine McDermott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the essential student’s guide to Design – its practice, its theory and its history. Respected design writer Catherine McDermott draws from a wide range of international examples.
Download or read book Atomic Dwelling written by Robin Schuldenfrei and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International scholars from architecture, design, urban planning, and interior design here reappraise modern life in the context of practices of dwelling over the span of the postwar period. Reassessing culture and the economic and political effects on civilian life, this collection looks at what role material objects, interior spaces, and architecture played in quelling or fanning the anxieties of modernism's ordinary denizens.
Download or read book Serious Play written by Monica Obniski and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively exploration of eclecticism, playfulness, and whimsy in American postwar design, including architecture, graphic design, and product design This spirited volume shows how postwar designers embraced whimsy and eclecticism in their work, exploring playfulness as an essential construct of modernity. Following World War II, Americans began accumulating more and more goods, spurring a transformation in the field of interior decoration. Storage walls became ubiquitous, often serving as a home's centerpiece. Designers such as Alexander Girard encouraged homeowners to populate their new shelving units with folk art, as well as unconventional and modern objects, to produce innovative and unexpected juxtapositions within modern architectural settings. Playfulness can be seen in the colorful, child-sized furniture by Charles and Ray Eames, who also produced toys. And in the postwar corporate world, the concept of play is manifested in the influential advertising work of Paul Rand. Set against the backdrop of a society that was experiencing rapid change and high anxiety, Serious Play takes a revelatory look at how many of the country's leading designers connected with their audience through wit and imagination.
Download or read book The American Design Adventure 1940 1975 written by Arthur J. Pulos and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Interior Design Innovators 1910 1960 written by Cherie Fehrman and published by Fehrman Books. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scholarly review of the prominent designers and designs from 1910-1960 covering the Organic Design Movement, methods and materials of construction and in-depth measurements with hundreds of archival photographs.
