Archives of American Art Blog

Architecture, Interior Design, and The Cubist Room at the International Exhibition of Modern Art

2013-05-13T06:19:00-05:00

FIGURE 1: Installation shot of the Cubist room, 1913 Armory Show, published in the New York Tribune, February 17, 1913 (p. 7) from the Walt Kuhn scrapbook documenting the Armory Show, 1913. Walt Kuhn, Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The newly rediscovered Hagelstein Brothers photograph of “The Cubist Room” at the Armory Show (figure 1) provides clues as to what inspired the final floor plan of galleries at the 69^th Regiment Armory, as well as evidence of Walter Pach’s hand in designing the installation.

In the fall of 1912, Arthur B. Davies sent Walt Kuhn a letter that contained a drawing of a preliminary floor plan for the New York venue of the show (figure 2) that was composed of traditional rectangular or square rooms.

How then did the installation become the honeycomb–shaped design of polygonal galleries, shown in a blueprint (figure 3) and in the catalogue of the New York venue (figure 4)?

FIGURE 2: Armory Show floor plan, 1912 Oct. Walt Kuhn, Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

FIGURE 3: Blueprint of Armory Show floorplan, between 1912 and 1913. Walt Kuhn, Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

FIGURE 4: Catalogue of the International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York, 1913. Walt Kuhn, Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In the fall of 1912, the Cubist group of artists that included Raymond Duchamp–Villon, Jacques Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes, Alexander Archipenko, and others held an exhibition called La Salon de “La Section d’Or” at the Galerie de la Boëtie in Paris (figure 5). Several works from this exhibition were chosen by Pach for the Armory Show including Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (figure 1).

FIGURE 5: Exhibit catalog for Salon de "La Section d'Or", 1912. Walter Pach papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

FIGURE 6: Photo of Raymond Duchamp–Villon’s sculpture La Maison Cubiste, circa 1913 / unidentified photographer. Photographic print : 1 item ; 13 x 18 cm. Walter Pach papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Simultaneous to La Section d’Or was the 1912 Salon d’Automne in which La Maison Cubiste was displayed. The architectural façade was designed in a Cubist style by Duchamp–Villon. Visitors walked through the façade into rooms designed by André Mare. These rooms included Cubist paintings. Also Gleizes’s Man on a Balcony and Archipenko’s Family Life, which can be seen in “The Cubist Room” at the Armory Show (see figure 1).

Enter Walter Pach—he saw both Parisian exhibitions, knew all the artists involved, and selected all of the works seen in figure 1, including a plaster maquette of the façade of La Maison Cubiste by Duchamp–Villon (figure 6), as well as the paintings and sculptures that were shown at La Section d’Or and the 1912 Salon d’Automne.

I believe that “The Cubist Room” at the Armory Show was a deliberate conflation of these Parisian exhibitions put together by Pach; no one else could have designed this installation.

Pach also wrote a pamphlet for the Armory Show, “A Sculptor’s Architecture” in which he discussed Raymond Duchamp–Villon’s La Maison Cubiste as exemplary of a new architectural style for the modern era.

I would suggest that change in the floor plan from traditional rectilinear rooms as proposed by Davies to the polygonal galleries was Pach’s idea and reflects his understanding of Duchamp–Villon’s vision of Cubist architecture.

Furthermore, I believe that the refracted shapes of the polygonal spaces could be read as a modernist floor plan and installation design that, together with the architectural façade, paintings, and sculptures in “The Cubist Room” in particular (figure 1), formed an ensemble showing how Cubist architecture, interior design, and art could be replicated in anyone’s home.

Guest blogger Laurette E. McCarthy is an independent scholar and curator. She is an authority on Walter Pach and a leading Armory Show scholar.

Explore more:

1913 Armory Show: the Story in Primary Sources, digital timeline
The Story of the Armory Show, online exhibition on the Archives of American Art's website
Walter Pach papers, 1957–1980
Walt Kuhn, Kuhn family papers, and Armory Show records, 1859-1978, bulk 1900-1949
A Century After Their Initial Publication, Rediscovered Installation Shots of the 1913 Armory Show Come to Light by Laurette E. McCarthy
The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913, February 17, 2013 – June 16, 2013 at the Montclair Art Museum
The Armory Show at 100, October 11, 2013 – February 23, 2014 at the New York Historical Society

An Electronic Medium: Robert Wiegand as video artist

2013-05-06T06:22:00-05:00

Omar is el uno, 1976 / Ingrid Wiegand and Robert Wiegand. U-matic : 1 videocassette (U-Matic) : sd., col. ; 3/4 in. Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art.

When I first saw the Robert Wiegand papers and video art collection at the Archives of American Art, I was initially drawn to it because of the large amount of videos in the collection. As an archivist trained in working with the unique concerns of audiovisual formats, film and video among them, I was intrigued by the collection’s substantial video materials (six boxes out of eight were video). Now, after fully processing the collection as part of the CLIR “Hidden Treasures” grant project, I realize that the videos, while not the entire story of Robert Wiegand’s contribution to the art world, add to the history of video art in a way that deserves to be highlighted.

Robert Nelson Wiegand was an artist, an arts programmer, an advocate, a teacher, and a documenter of the arts around him. As a painter influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement, he was very involved in the artist community in SoHo and became one of the major advocates for legalizing the first artists’ lofts as live/work spaces in lower Manhattan in the 1960s, an event that effectively changed the landscape of the area and New York City at large. Wiegand became interested in video technology after using it as a tool to organize and advocate for the artists’ lofts.

The video art works in the collection were made in collaboration with Wiegand’s first wife Ingrid Wiegand. They began making video art in the 1970s just as it was entering the art world, when Nam June Paik came to video from performance art and Steina and Woody Vasulka migrated from music and engineering. It was a time when highlighting the mechanical nature of video was a focus for artists experimenting with the medium. Bob and Ingrid’s works draw attention to the process of video creation as a consistent theme; the technical qualities of the medium—its capabilities and its boundaries—are the real subjects and characters.

One of the earliest works, Georges, directs intentional video and audio feedback at the video’s protagonist, Georges Noel, as he speaks about his work. Julie, as documentation of dancer Julie Finch, utilizes two cameras and a switcher to fade and layer shots of her dancing, highlighting Finch’s choreography. In Moran, Tom Lillard performs an emotional monologue from Samuel Beckett’s novel Molloy. Wiegand uses dissolves to parallel the character’s emotions. In these works, the technology of the medium is used to interact with and parallel the performances.

The Wiegands also used video to make works that challenged audience reception. In Omar is El Uno, five audio tracks are layered to create an entirely unique but challenging audio experience. Face–Off features Robert and Ingrid Wiegand on separate monitors explaining to viewers the mechanical nature of video, while simultaneously exploring the nature of relationships with its use of comedy.

Face-off, 1979 / Robert Wiegand and Ingrid Wiegand. U-matic : 1 videocassette (U-Matic) : sd., col. ; 3/4 in. Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art.

In Walking (interstices), Ingrid Wiegand layers video to help tell the story of her daily life, using the technology’s unique capabilities t create the layered narrative. But Walking (interstices) also includes a scene where Ingrid talks to Robert, while he is painting, about the creation of the video itself as an artwork—as it is being created—allowing the work to also comment on how we live with the technology as part of our daily lives.

Walking (interstices), 1975 / Ingrid Wiegand. U-matic : 1 videocassette (U-Matic) : sd., col. ; 3/4 in. Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art.

In these early works, the audience is able to explore video as new technology, alongside Robert and Ingrid, as they create and share their art. Using this electronic medium, the Wiegands make statements in a different way than with paint and brushstrokes, building new kinds of perception and reception through the unique qualities of video.

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Crystal Sanchez is an audiovisual archivist and media preservationist. She was the 2012 graduate intern for the project “Uncovering Hidden Audiovisual Media Documenting Postmodern Art,” funded through the Council on Library and Information Resources”s “Hidden Collections” program. She now works with digital audiovisual collections as a member of the Smithsonian’s Digital Asset Management team.

Artists and Poets, Part 2: Charles Green Shaw and Isabel Fiske Conant

2013-04-29T06:50:00-05:00

A few of those things we never do, 19--. Charles Green Shaw papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Death stays the hand of the sculptor: In memoriam, Solon Borglum, 1922. Solon H. Borglum and Borglum family papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

When I was choosing poems to highlight from our collections, Charles Green Shaw’s “A Few of Those Things We Never Do” struck me as particularly timeless. Though this undated poem most likely was written in the first half of the 20^th century, how many of these tasks are on our own “To–Do” lists today? Whilst I don’t know the Gloomings or Pifflewits, there are friends I want to visit, and books I need to return to the library. I even have a cracked window in my basement that needs fixing.

This is a list of things to which most everyone can relate. It speaks of the daily minutiae that makes up life and shows us that artists are really no different from the rest of us in having to sort it all out and take care of it.

Isabel Fiske Conant’s “Death Stays the Hand of the Sculptor,” written in 1922 to honor Solon Borglum after his death, is in some ways the exact opposite of the previous poem. Whilst “A Few of Those Things We Never Do” focuses on the mundanities, “Death Stays the Hand of the Sculptor” deals with the sublime.

Isabel Fiske Conant writes about the mystery of how artists take the visions in their minds and turn them into art. It also deals with death which all of us will face eventually. She distills two very abstract notions, Creation and Death, and explains them in a way that makes them a bit less esoteric.

I also find particularly intriguing her vision of the afterlife. In this poem, she interprets it for artists as being a place where their art comes alive. They get to visit the places and meet all the people they created, which strikes me as a particularly interesting concept. Whereas I’d love to wander through Monet’s gardens at Giverny, I really don’t want to visit Picasso’s “Guernica.” Luckily, Mr. Borglum sculpted lots of animals and people, so hopefully, his afterlife is more restful than not.

Michelle McDaniel is an archival cataloguer at the Archives of American Art, who, in her spare time is a fiber artist, plays piano, and reads lots of poetry.

Shakespeare in Santa Fe: Observing the Bards Birthday with the Art of Dorothy Newkirk Stewart

2013-04-17T14:50:42-05:00

W. Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in block prints by D.N.S., 1949.Dorothy Stewart papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Dorothy Newkirk Stewart (1891–1955) was an artist, printer, and printmaker. Born into an affluent family in Philadelphia at the twilight of the 19^th century, she led a charmed and privileged life that included education, art, friendships, and travel. She trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art where she studied pantomime, stage design, and fresco painting. And, she traveled internationally, touring Western Europe and North America. She favored Mexico. Indeed, when confronted with serious illness, she traveled to Oaxaca with her friend Maria Chabot. Stewart subsequently died of a brain hemorrhage in a hospital in Mexico City in 1955.

Like a cadre of East Coast artists drawn to the deserts of the American Southwest, Dorothy Stewart moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico with her suffragist sister, Margretta Stewart Shaw Dietrich. Dietrich bought properties along Canyon Road, forming an artist compound. There, Stewart built herself a studio at El Zaguán.

Over the course of 20 years, Dorothy Stewart researched, composed, illustrated, and published several books on such topics as vernacular architecture, urbanism, and Native American dance. She also produced two volumes devoted to (abridged) Shakespearean plays: Hamlet and A Midsommer Night’s Dream.

A midsommer night's dream by Will Shakspeer, abridged and presented in block print by D.N.S., 1953?. Dorothy Stewart papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Her illustrations for the beloved comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream depict the romantic entanglements of the various pairs. Lovers, fools, and fairies grace the pages. And, the twisted serpents on Hamlet’s cover and title page symbolize the play’s treacherous themes.

D.N.S.’s block prints accompany and extend the Bard’s imagery. On the occasion of William Shakespeare’s 449^th birthday, April 23^rd, have a look.

Kelly Quinn is the Terra Foundation Project Manager for Online Scholarly and Educational Initiatives at the Archives of American Art.

Artists and Poets, part 1: John Henry Bradley Storrs and Terry Wolverton

2013-04-15T06:34:00-05:00

John Henry Bradley Storrs poem "Spring (in war time)", 1915 Jul. 18. John Henry Bradley Storrs papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Poetic reflection on feminist art, between 1976 and 1977. Woman's Building records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Having worked as a cataloguer at the Archives of American Art for over ten years, and read thousands of collection descriptions, I’ve realized that creative people often find multiple outlets for their artistic talents. They paint and sculpt, and take photos. Some will give just about anything a try, including poetry.

I’ve always loved poetry, since Dr. Seuss and the nursery rhymes I learned before I was in kindergarten. The sonorous susurrations of the syllables speak to me and tell me stories I understand in my heart as well as my head. Finding out that many of our artists are also poets, made them more accessible; we had something in common!

John Henry Bradley Storrs was one of those multi–talented creative people; he painted, sculpted, made prints, and wrote poems. Below is one of his better poems, “Spring (In War Time),” written in 1915. It juxtaposes a familiar rural setting, a sunlit, tree lined road—which in times of strife becomes idyllic because of its ordinariness—with the horrors of war, where soldiers lie scattered and wrecked like broken toys. Storrs took his experience working in a Parisian hospital throughout World War I and distilled it into poems which tried to make sense of the senseless, as did fellow poets of this period Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

Terry Wolverton is equally creative as an author of both poems and essays, and as a literary artist. The poem below is from her time at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, California, where she produced both performance art and literary art, and was an integral part in organizing many of its programs. Wolverton wrote this poem as a response to the question, “What is feminist art?”

Coming soon, part II: Charles Green Shaw and Isabel Fiske Conant.

Michelle McDaniel is an archival cataloguer at the Archives of American Art, who, in her spare time is a fiber artist, plays piano, and reads lots of poetry.

The Accidental Tourist: he was a poet and he knowed it

2013-04-08T06:20:00-05:00

October and November, Calendar with verses by William Adams Delano and illustrations by Tina Safranski, 1945. Arthur Sinclair Covey papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In college, one of my favorite ways to relax—and also begin research—was to go to the library and skim the shelves. Even if I were armed with a printout listing books I needed to pull, there was always a discovery waiting. Archives filled with rows and rows of uniform boxes rarely present this same serendipity; there are no brightly colored book spines to catch the eye or give context to what one might find inside.

Answering questions that researchers submit to the AskUs Form for the Reference Services Department, however, does allow me to look broadly across the collections of the Archives of American Art. Our department fields over 2,500 inquiries annually from all over the world. While generally pertaining to the visual arts, these questions cover any and every topic you could imagine. I frequently find myself making notes to go back to items in the collections which pique my interest but are unrelated to the task at hand. Stumbling across notable items while travelling through collections is something a colleague describes as being an “accidental tourist.”

The Arthur Sinclair Covey papers offer many such delights. In 31, generally thin, folders of correspondence there are many holiday greetings, some of the most charming of which were sent by the architect William Adams Delano. Delano, along with Chester Holmes Aldrich, is best known for designing Kykuit (John D. Rockefeller’s estate in Hudson Valley, New York), several buildings at Yale University (including the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle), and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

Delano had a habit of writing holiday messages in verse, and some years he printed small pocket calendars which were illustrated by artists and served as his annual Christmas card (three examples of which are found in Covey’s papers). His verses tend to be short and humorous—they very much remind me of Ogden Nash—though, living through world wars and the era of the atomic bomb, he did not leave more serious subjects untouched (his 1952 calendar was titled, A Caustic Calendar for a Worried World). Leading into 1945, the year World War II ended, he wrote:

I wish you happy months

In 1945 and

Send these silly rhymes,

Written last summer to my grandson,

BECAUSE

Though in the midst of global wars

I hope you may agree with me

There’s still a place for pleasantry.

The verses for 1945 were all animal themed, though, he took note of the war in October: The Geese are foolish fowl — BECAUSE / They taught the German Army Corps / That step so splendid on parade, / So useless fleeing from a raid.

In later calendars, there is a more reflective tone in Delano’s short poems, with ruminations on nature and the role of humankind in the world. June 1950’s verse offers: The search for truth leads far — BECAUSE / Some sceptics [sic] will uncover flaws / In many precepts long believed / And tell the world it’s been deceived. In the poem for August of the same year—five years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and two months since the start of the Korean War—Delano gives an illusion to the atomic bomb: The atom baffles us — BECAUSE / The more the scientist explores / The more we wonder whether it / Brings mankind woe or benefit.

June, Printed calendar with verses by William Adams Delano and illustrations by Herbert Abrams, 1950. Arthur Sinclair Covey papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

August, Printed calendar with verses by William Adams Delano and illustrations by Herbert Abrams, 1950. Arthur Sinclair Covey papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In one of his last holiday greetings before passing away in 1960, Delano abandoned his printed pocket calendar and instead typed a short note to Covey:

This year my muse is on vacation but, before leaving, she charged me to send a word to all the kind friends who remember me at this season; so, obediently, I send my thanks and my best wishes for 1957.

And in typing out those wishes, he reminds us that even when he wasn’t rhyming he still served his muse.

Elizabeth Botten works in the Reference Services Department at the Archives of American Art.

Yes, they represent something that is me.: Rupert Garcia on Dr. King and M. Duchamp

2013-04-03T06:33:00-05:00

William Christopher meeting Martin Luther King Jr., 1964 Sept. 14 / Mary Herrick, photographer. William Christopher papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Marcel Duchamp playing chess in his studio, 1952 / Kay Bell Reynal, photographer.[Photographs of artists taken by Kay Bell Reynal], Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

I don’t often link Martin Luther King, Jr. and Marcel Duchamp. Yet, in September 1995, Chicano artist Rupert Garcia did just this when he sat for an interview with Paul J. Karlstrom. Garcia highlighted the similarities between these iconoclasts, both of whom died in 1968.

Karlstrom began the interview,

Karlstrom: I wanted to just point to one thing in this chronology to get us started. It jumped out to me in my reading. And that was, under the little paragraph “1966 to ‘69,” towards the end of that entry it says “assassination the same year”—and that’s ‘68—“of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the death of Marcel Duchamp strike a deep chord with the artist.” And for some reason I find this promising, shall we say, in terms of your interview, and could you expand on that a little?

Rupert Garcia: Yes. You know, I have always—not always—for many, many years I’ve been very interested in Dada and Surrealism and for sure in Marcel Duchamp and the ways in which he upset the perceived notions of what art is supposed to be, what it’s supposed to look like, and the procedure of making something called art. I found that very, very fascinating, very intriguing, and intellectually stimulating because of the challenge it proposed—to me specifically. And then the death of Martin Luther King, his assassination in the same year in which Duchamp died, resonated for me in terms of the challenges that King represented—the social–economic–racial dimension of protest, which, of course, Duchamp was also protesting—more of a cultural protest having with it moments of political ideology. So the event of these two men dying in the same year, for me, rang, as the chronology says, it resonates deeply for me because it kind of combines an aspect of who I think I am—the aesthetic, cultural, artistic dimension with the twist of having a critical bent built into it, not taking things for granted in terms of art and culture, represented by Duchamp, and then Martin Luther King representing that part of me who has always been conscious of the dimensions of racism and class in our society. Even as a kid in high school I knew about that. And even as a kid growing up, the dimensions of being an artist and then being socially conscious were always there. And so when these two men died they kind of represented to me this moment of, yes, this is really . . . these two men represent something that is a part of me, that I can actually point to these two folks and say, “Yes, they represent something that is me.” And the ramifications, of course, is in terms of my work, in terms of my thoughts about my work, is, I think, more complex, but they did, nevertheless, symbolize something very great.

To me, it was so interesting when I found out that they both died in ‘68. I mean, I couldn’t believe that they both died in ‘68. Let alone died, but that they both died, and I saw these two symbols that I embrace. On the one hand, this is so sad, but just so wonderful.

On April 4^th, the 45^th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and in the centennial of the 1913 Armory Show, I am grateful to Rupert Garcia for pointing out and pairing these perhaps unlikely men, two symbols that I too embrace.

Kelly Quinn is the Terra Foundation Project Manager for Online Scholarly and Educational Initiatives at the Archives of American Art.

American Women Tastemakers: Florence Knoll Bassett

2013-03-28T06:00:00-05:00

Florence Knoll Bassett portfolio of photographs and articles, 1957-1997. Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Sketches of various color and furniture schemes for each CBS entrance, 1964. Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

As designers, business women, gallery owners, curators, critics and writers, educators, and collectors, American women have made significant contributions to the evolution and public understanding of modernist art and design in our country. The Archives of American Art is fortunate to have the papers of many of these women among our holdings, some of which have been digitized in their entirety. Women’s History Month is a most appropriate time to feature yet another American female modernist tastemaker whose papers are found here at the Archives of American Art—iconic designer Florence Knoll Bassett.

Florence Knoll Bassett established herself as one of the most influential American interior planners and designers of the second half of the twentieth century. Knoll believed that good design “strikes at the root of living requirements and changing habits.” Her belief in “total design”—architecture, manufacturing, interior design, furniture, textiles, graphics, advertising and presentation—meant that she integrated all aspects of spatial planning, furnishing, and decorating into one seamless package.

Florence Knoll Bassett was born Florence Schust in 1917 and was affectionately known as “Shu” by her colleagues and friends. She was orphaned at age 12. While attending Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Florence met the Saarinen family with whom she became close friends. She studied under Eliel Saarinen and became interested in textile design through her friendship with Loja Saarinen. Eliel Saarinen encouraged Florence to attend Cranbrook Academy of Art before finishing her studies in architecture.

There, she met and worked with many of the designers, Ray and Charles Eames and Harry Bertoia for example, whose furniture and fabric designs she would later commission for her total design packages at Knoll Associates. And, in turn, Knoll was asked to design the interior spaces for Saarinen’s CBS headquarters building in New York City.

Florence Knoll completed her formal training at the Illinois Institute of Technology where she studied under Mies van der Rohe, whom she credits with having “a profound effect on my design approach and the clarification of design.” She began working for Hans Knoll in 1943. They married in 1946 and formed Knoll Associates, Inc. Shortly thereafter, Florence started the Planning Unit as a comprehensive interior design service.

Knoll showroom at 575 Madison Avenue in New York City, 1951 / unidentified photographer. Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In 1950, Hans moved the Knoll base of operations from New York City to Pennsylvania. He died in a car accident in 1955 leaving Florence as the president. In 1960, she ceded herself to the position of consultant, leaving the company altogether in 1965. For her extraordinary contributions to architecture and design, Florence Knoll was accorded the prestigious National Medal of Arts in 2002.

Florence Knoll’s connections with leading and emerging contemporary furniture designers opened up new venues for these designers which may not have been possible without her eye for the total package and the company’s commitment to crediting architects and designers by name and paying them royalties. Knoll Associates’s support and promotion of these now–iconic designers were contributing factors to their long–term success.

Today, many of the furniture pieces commissioned by Knoll or designed by Knoll herself are represented in the modern design and decorative arts collections of major art museums across the country, and in Canada and Europe. It is a rare modern design aficionado who does not crave at least one piece of furniture by Eames or Saarinen, or a Bertoia wire chair, for their own living space.

A selection of the Florence Knoll Bassett papers in custom archival housing. Photo: Barbara Aikens

Florence Knoll Bassett even designed her own archive that she donated to the Archives of American Art in 2000. It is not uncommon for donors to provide the Archives with annotations or notes about their papers or the papers of their families. Florence Knoll, however, curated the entire contents of the collection, arranged the papers into portfolios and color–coded files, and provided a detailed inventory.

Representative of her “total design” philosophy, she also designed and had custom archival boxes made to house the collection! We have been careful to maintain Knoll’s original order and containers, adding only acid–free folders to better preserve the materials.

Depicted in this blog post is page 10 from one of the portfolios designed, compiled, and annotated by Florence Knoll in 1999 prior to donating her papers to the Archives of American Art. The portfolio includes copies of designs from all periods of her career, and copies of letters and photographs of individuals and significant events throughout her life. Biographical text, written by Knoll Bassett, accompanies the material.

Page 10 from Portfolio: a chronology of Florence Knoll Bassett from 1932 onward, compiled 1999. Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The Planning Unit was created when I joined the company to design interiors. In the course of events, I became design director and critic for furniture, textiles and graphics. Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, and Ralph Rapson from Cranbrook were among the early designers to contribute to the collection along with Jens Risom, George Nakashima and Isamu Naguchi. During this time of unavailable materials, many of the designs were experimental and limited to drawings and models.

Florence Knoll Bassett’s sleek, modern, and functional designs still resonate today, and are considered classics by admirers around the world. In all aspects of design, from furniture to her archives, she has fixed her legacy as an American tastemaker.

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Barbara Aikens is the Chief of Collections Processing at the Archives of American Art.

Irish Shamrocks, American Roots

2013-03-15T06:31:00-05:00

Poem about John Henry Bradley Storrs, 191-?. John Henry Bradley Storrs papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

That there are more than a hundred poems in the papers of modernist artist John Henry Bradley Storrs grabbed my attention. Puzzled by the quantity, I clicked my way through the collection, noting that some stanzas were written by him, and others were penned by authors both known and unknown. When I electronically opened folder 25 in box 11, I stopped, for here was an illustrated document.

This stanza, decorated with watercolor shamrocks, appears to be a rhyming tribute to Storrs, who was born in Chicago, grew up in America, then settled in France. But why shamrocks, the national symbol of Ireland, I wondered, and why is there a reference to George Washington?

Although we don’t know who wrote or illustrated this poem, it is tempting to connect the sprigs of clover to a monumental sculpture Storrs designed for a church in Cork, Ireland. Letters and photographs in his papers and related to this 1929–1930 commission, a figure of Christ the King at the new church in Cork, point to the work’s importance in the artist’s artistic production. The poet’s concluding suggestion that his sculptor–brother “Jonny Storrs” will “make von Grand George Washington” may be an oblique reference to Storrs’s American roots.

Jenifer Dismukes is managing editor of the Archives of American Art Journal.

The realm of dream and phantasie…: Alberto Vargass Musings about his Muses

2013-03-04T07:39:00-05:00

Pages 25 and 26 of the Alberto Vargas diary, 1940-1944. Alberto Vargas papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Alberto Vargas (1896–1982), the Peruvian–born, Swiss–trained artist is most often known for “Varga Girls,” or later “Vargas Girls,” his airbrushed centerfolds in Esquire and Playboy. While in the current age of airbrushing and computer manipulation of images one may view models in nearly any magazine with suspicion about their proportions, Alberto Vargas worked during a different time. He was on the search for an ideal girl, a woman, an American, and he describes her in his August 1940 diary in a dream sequence.

While previously in my diary research I have focused on diaries with dates, factual reportage, and other concrete matter, Vargas’s diary contains drafts of letters, plans, imagined conversations, and dreams. Whether the main dream that captured my imagination was a daydream or an actual dream he experienced remains to be seen. Nevertheless, what Vargas chose to record about himself paints a picture of artist qua artist. In a dialogue he records or invents, he writes himself saying to “Mary,” “Jim,” and another person:

Whoa, fellows — what do you think I’ve been hired for — to work or play at my profession? I’ve got to deliver 12 paintings ~~as soon as~~ in the shortest time possible — I’m as nervous as a cat with 12 kittens — haha. I still don’t see how I am going to do it but it will be done. Besides — my eyes are riveted on the future!...Yes — all my friends are beginning to understand that golden Jacob’s Ladder — I am on my way up! So please you guys — don’t trip me! don’t [sic] ask me to have you around! When I work — I work alone. I’ve got to have complete concentration, & exquisite aplication [sic] to they [sic] task ahead! I hope all this won’t make you tab me as selfish — or philanderer — or what have you — would it.

Anna Mae Clift in Greenwich Village Follies of 1921 at the Shubert Theatre, 1921?. Alberto Vargas papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Vargas is aware of the less–than–honorable intentions of other workers in the field, and declares that he is not like them. The story continues and Vargas describes an interaction with a friend who encourages him to simply ask the girl he admires to model for him. Alberto somehow is connected to a Mr. Garfield, who commissions him to paint Ziegfeld Follies girls, his “Dream Girl” among them. Upon Alberto’s exclamations of excitement and vows to paint the girls “as they had never been painted before,” Mr. Garfield declares to his secretary, “These artists are temperamental or crazy — this one is both. Tell Dan to take him in charge and see that he delivers on what he promises — or else!”

The stakes are high as Mr. Garfield also warns the newly–chosen Follies girls in the room to “keep out of the newspaper headlines — I mean the unfavorable headlines — it is up to you.” The lady Alberto wanted to paint visits him next, a Miss Clift. As he explains to her the pose he would like, he assures her:

I wish to confess though — and I hope you’ll understand — at this moment — there on the model stand as Miss Clift you only exist to me purely as a name — ~~for a girl~~ that is my eagerness in posing and painting you is strictly — impersonal. You’re the lucky possessor of beautiful face — a gorgeous torso — and voluptuous legs — one in a million — I am not exagerating [sic].

She replies, “ ‘Maybe you’re handing me — the Latin line?’

‘The only ‘lines’ I know — you posses them!’

‘I feel flattered.’ —

‘To continue — then. — my only concern is to try to duplicate on canvas — what my eyes behold. ’ ”

"True Tales of Our City," column from unidentified newspaper, 1955 Apr. Alberto Vargas papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Vargas gets down to work and describes how he sketches “without waisting [sic] a single stroke...His ‘Girl’ in the flesh — right up there six feet away — being instrumental in duplicating in line and form — on a virgin white paper — the vision — the dream — of long ago — into a reality of today. He felt indeed exuberantly happy and very proud of himself —”

While reading this in a post–feminist world, I admit I was suspect of Vargas’s motives for painting from the start. However, fact or fantasy aside, what Vargas chose to record was that he was a man who appreciated a certain type of beauty in the flesh. He wanted to capture on paper exactly what he saw in the women he painted. Sketching on “a virgin white paper” also reveals something about his fantasy, an element of purity, of untouched paper or model. He mentions also looking out the window as Miss Clift walked to the model stand. The artist had a sense of propriety, and his paintings of beautiful women were part of a quest for the most beautiful, pure lady.

Further reading in Vargas’s records include newspaper clippings and fan mail. The sequence of papers was just as magical as Vargas happening upon his “Dream Girl.” While reading a newspaper feature “True Tales of Our City” by Don Ryan, I learned that Vargas married a Broadway showgirl, Anna Mae Clift...the Miss Clift of the dream! I hope he showed his fantasy about painting his wife to her as a Valentine!

Q Miceli is a former Archives of American Art intern who is currently studying to be a health coach.