Tag Archives: Californian Modernism

Modernist Design Complete, a book review

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Modernism impacts on every aspect of our lives. This progressive aesthetic and philosophical movement, which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century in the midst of modern industrial societies and rapid urbanisation, and the horrors of the world wars, continues to shape our lives. Modernism has set a powerful framework for how we think and create, how are homes are built and interiors decorated, and the way our cities are imagined.

Modernism, though, can be a touch complex to follow given its ever-evolving nature, and the various ideological fractions, sub-groups and sub-sub-categories that formed during the last century. World wars and mass exile, especially of the key Bauhaus members to the US and beyond, helped spread the movement worldwide, creating exciting regional responses and dialogue. And there were many diverse characters involved too, each adding their own flavour to the modernist movement.

‘Modernist Design Complete’ will help navigate the movement. Thames & Hudson’s latest book brings together most facets and scales of design under a single volume to present the vast breadth of towering and lesser-known figures within modernism. This lavishly-illustrated book (635 feature here) reveals unexpected connections and aims to form new insights too.

Written by design critic Dominic Bradbury, the format is logical and easy to follow. It is divided into two main chapters – ‘media and masters’ and ‘houses and interior’, with a final A-Z of modernist designers. The former is further divided to include furniture, lighting, ceramics and glass, industrial and product design, and graphics and posters, featuring designers who were most influential in each category – all of which are conveniently colour-coded.

There are profiles of nearly a hundred creators, including the main faces of movement – László Moholy-Nagy, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Eliel Saarinen and Walter Gropius, as well as lesser-known figures. Complete with commissioned essays by established academics and subject specialists, ‘Modernist Design Complete’ aims to be the definitive guide for those involved in the creative industries, and for anyone interested in design, design thinking and design history.

Images in order: Red & Blue chair by Gerrit Rietveld, 1918 © Wright20.com; Brno chairs by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, 1929 © Richard Powers; Scarpa’s Bugne vase, 1936, © Wright20.com; 66 Air King Skyscraper radio by Harold Van Doren, 1933 © Wright20.com; ?Sonneveld House by Dutch Functionalists Brinkman/Van der Vlugt, 1933 © Richard Powers?Villa Savoye; Le Corbusier 1931 © Richard Powers; 114 Polaroid lamp designed by Walter Dorwin Teague © Wright20.com

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Marvin Rand captures south California’s unique modernism

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Los Angeles was a kind of utopian dream in the mid-twentieth century. The sunny southern Californian city had attracted an open-minded set – experimental filmmakers, independent artists, writers and patrons of design came here for it offered freedom of expression. This coupled with urban growth and industrial expansion led to a period of exceptional architectural innovation.

Marvin Rand was there to capture this spirit. Throughout the post-war period, the native Angeleno photographed the buildings of Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood, John Lautner, Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler. He also played a crucial role in helping shape the mid-century Californian modern style, as explored in a new book by Phaidon California Captured.

Rand’s career began in advertising in the 1950s, and it was his friend the design historian Esther McCoy who encouraged him to venture into architectural photography. He enjoyed a close friendship with many of these architectural greats including Craig Ellwood. Some of Rand’s best work includes Ellwood’s most celebrated projects.

The 240 illustrations in California Captured were chosen by the authors Emily Bills, Sam Lubell and Pierluigi Serraino who spent over five years analysing some 20,000 Rand photographs. Together they tell of a photographer who is an artist with his lens. Rand created abstractions out of lines and structures. He framed the clean and clear modernist structures with striking clarity carefully staging the buildings against a backdrop of LA’s dreamy, washed out, vast, open sky, sometimes the blue ocean in the backdrop. Ellwood was fond of sports cars and Rand brilliantly includes these symbols of modernity within the frame as an extension of the architecture.

He photographed high-profile projects like the Salk Institute and LAX Theme building, but also lesser-famed architects and more modest creations such as Douglas Honnold’s drive-in Tiny Naylor, shot at night skilfully abstracting light and shadow. California Captured reveals Marvin Rand as a significant chronicler of post-war Los Angeles and some of America’s greatest mid-century modern architecture.

Nargess Banks

All pictures © courtesy of the Estate of Marvin Rand

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Photographic exhibition: Eames and Hollywood

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Eames and Hollywood offers a novel glimpse into the world of Charles and Ray Eames, peeling away more layers to help us understand this dynamic duo’s very unique creative minds. The exhibition at ADAM in Brussels features 240 previously unseen photographs taken by Charles Eames on the sets of some of his friend the director Billy Wilder’s most memorable films between 1951 and 1970.

They form part of Movie Sets, a collection discovered some years ago by the exhibition’s curator Alexandra Midal. For this exhibition she works closely with the Eames Foundation to bring these photographs to life.

Eames ones said: ‘You don’t go to watch Billy shoot to learn how to make a picture, but to learn how to write an editorial, how to make a chair, how to make a piece of furniture.’

He explored the world of the movies not through the glamour of the movie stars – here there is just one such image, a touching glimpse of Audrey Hepburn on the set of Sabrina, captured as if through the peephole.

Instead Eames favoured the technicians, the extras, the costume people and make-up artists, the machinery and various apparatus. Experiencing the movie set, he said, helped inform his other creative work.

On view until 4 September. Visit the Art & Design Atomium Museum for more information.

Read our previous articles on Eames including the recent Barbican exhibition here.

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The World of Charles and Ray Eames

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For designers context is destiny, writes Sam Jacobs half way through The World of Charles and Ray Eames. The time and place in which the designer happens to emerge is decisive in shaping their world, he argues. And in this context Charles and Ray Eames are intimately connected with mid-century California. It would be impossible to consider one without the other.

Post war, California embodied the New World – the west coast became synonymous with a new kind of modernism. This particular interpretation of the movement had at its centre a sunnier thinking, an optimism lacking in Europe at the aftermath of two major world wars. It also benefited hugely from its geographical distance from Old World modernism, and perhaps the climate and vast beautiful coastline helped shape a very different mind-set.

Californian modernism rejected some of the more rigid dogmas whilst maintaining the core values of the movement, and arguably directing it towards modern life so that ideologies like social improvement married new sensibilities of popular culture.

Here film, music, magazines, mass-produced products joined art, architecture and design as tools for shaping our lives. Californian modernism embraced free thinking; it had a direct connection with lifestyle. It took design out of the strict codes set by the European avant-garde and set it free.

And Charles and Ray truly embodied Californian modernism. You cannot help but smile at image after image of this handsome and healthy couple working alongside other equally sunny faced artists and designers in their Eames Office. Here they collectively experimented with new material, finding new solutions for sustainable products, creating movies, stills and architectural models for living. Their energy is intoxicating, almost bouncing off the pages of this book.

European and east coast intellectuals looked over in awe, too. Jacobs writes: ‘The Eamses were ‘natives of a world that could only be glimpsed through the keyhole of media.’

The World of Charles and Ray Eames is a highly informative and visually engaging book published to accompany the exhibition held at the Barbican in London, and on until 14 February. Together they succeed in celebrating the inspiring and prolific world of this husband and wife team.

Chapters are divided into ‘life in work’, ‘at home with the Eamses’, ‘art of living’, ‘celebration of human need’ and so on to reveal their broad reach. Over 300 pages are dedicated to photographs, sketches, letters, original text and film stills, and it includes insightful text by Eames Demetrios, the couple’s grandson, art and design academics.

We also love the fact the book design also reflects the Eames workings whereby cropping, framing, design and presentation of image became central to their work, here captured through the very present grid, essential also in handling the large body of work presented.

Charles and Ray worked with product design, filmmaking, advertising; they explored folk art and an assortment of non-design objects to see how they can help shape our lives. Their multi-media architecture led them toward film and photography as tools for modelling ideas.

In Powers of Ten, a film made for IBM, for instance, they explore the relationship between design and the universe, as the film shows how nature, people, objects, books, and life can fit into a wider context.

Their design world was a collaborative one. Their ‘laboratory’ as the studio was referred to – active for four decades during the post-war period – involved such a wide selection of designers, architects, artists and engineers.

Charles and Ray took the principles of early modernism, the expressive visions of early Bauhaus, transported it to sunny California and moved it forward to be relevant for the new age. And what is most fascinating is just how relevant their work remains today. We are continuing this discourse.

Commissioned by the Indian government, they submitted their India Report in 1958 in response to the challenge the country was facing in the light of western design and philosophy. The recommendation was for a new educational model that would bridge tradition and modernity.

It begins with a ‘sample lesson’ and a quote that we feel captures the essence of the Eames philosophy. It is borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita, the 700-verse Sanskrit scripture of the Hindu epic Mahabharata:

‘You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only; you have no rights to the fruits of work. Desires for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working.’ This simple quote beautifully underlines Charles and Ray’s curiosity with process, which remained at the very heart of their lifelong work.

Nargess Banks

The World of Charles and Ray Eames is edited by Catherine Ince and Lotte Johnson and published by Thames & Hudson for the Barbican.

Read The World of Charles and Ray Eames exhibition review here.

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