Shelf Life

Coca-Cola

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:12:00 +0000

Assouline Publishers, hard cover, 208 pages, 125 illustrations in color and black and white, $65.

What do these odd couples have in common: Andy Warhol and Norman Rockwell, JFK and Richard Nixon, the Andrews Sisters and the Kinks? All were Coca-Cola enthusiasts, along with billions worldwide who have been lured by the winning synthesis of content and packaging that has made Coca-Cola an icon of American popular culture. To celebrate the company’s 125th anniversary, Assouline has released a cheery new volume abundantly illustrated with photos, posters, graphic and fine art, and punctuated by apt quotes from poets, songwriters and politicians (W. Averell Harriman: “Americans wanted to settle all our difficulties with Russia and then go to the movies and drink Coke”). A fascinating epilogue chronicles the company’s enduring commitment to topnotch visual presentation: the selection, in 1886, of a signature typeface; a trademarked, instantly identifiable “contour bottle”; fulsome use of red, the color of power and passion; and charismatic design: industrial design giant Raymond Loewy, for example, created the company’s sleek fountain dispenser in 1947. These elements have made Coke the most recognizable product on the planet, and — with 34 million Facebook friends to date — probably the most popular.

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Crafting Modernism: Midcentury American Art and Design

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:07:00 +0000

Abrams Books, hard cover, 368 pages, 250 color illustrations, $65.

Since the Renaissance, artists and craftspeople have engaged in an ongoing, sometimes rancorous, debate about the relative merits of the fine versus the decorative arts. Can a handsomely crafted utilitarian object be considered a work of art? Is “form follows function” a transformational philosophy, or an alliterative how-to instruction? In Crafting Modernism, a kaleidoscopic volume that accompanies the eponymous exhibition at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, twelve eminent scholars explore this question, focusing on the post-WWII American studio craft movement: furniture, metalwork, pottery, textiles, glass and jewelry. Highlighted is the work of scores of luminaries, including sculptor Alexander Calder, who also made jewelry; acclaimed glass artist Dale Chihuly and Bauhaus-educated fiber artist Anni Albers, whose work bridged art, craft and industry. With a comprehensive bibliography, biographies and listings of schools, conferences and manufacturers, the book is not only an engaging read, but a valuable resource. (See Modernism, Vol. 14, No. 3, for an article about the exhibition.)

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Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life: Early-Twentieth-Century European Modernism

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:54:00 +0000

Art Institute of Chicago, hard cover, 160 pages, 300 illustrations in color and black and white, $50.

Avant-garde art has often been derided as incomprehensible, but to the six European and Russian leaders of the politically-charged early 20th-century art movement that is the subject of this book, edited by Mathew Witkovsky, communication should be one of the highest aims of design. “True art should go beyond the intellectual and transform daily life,” they asserted. Chapters are devoted to Dutch minimalist Piet Zwart (interior design, movie-magazine covers, glassware, postage stamps and biscuit boxes); Czech modernist Ladislav Sutnar (housewares, toys and graphics); John Heartfield, radical-left German graphic designer (propaganda posters); pugnacious Latvian Gustav Klutsis (portable multimedia installations, heroic postcards and agitprop photomontage — “I use my work like a bullet, with which to strike down the enemy”); Russian El Lissitzky (architecture, Yiddish children’s book illustration); and Karel Teige, a leading light of the Devˇetsil (Czech avant-garde). The book is prodigiously illustrated (although some captions are confusingly placed and unevenly translated) and paints a vivid portrait of a design era that flourished briefly before the avant-garde was swept out of homes and into museums.

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Alvar Aalto Houses

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 14:03:00 +0000

Princeton Architectural Press, hard cover, 224 pages, 316 illustrations in color and black and white, $50.

Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, acclaimed as the “father of Scandanavian Modernism,” enjoyed a 50-plus year career designing furniture, lighting, glassware, textiles, public buildings and private homes. Jari and Sirkkaliisa Jetsonen’s book celebrates the latter in high style, featuring 26 houses built between 1922 and 1974. The inviting volume is replete with stunning interior and exterior photos, as well as archival drawings, chronologically highlighting Aalto’s classical-vernacular work of the1920s; private villas and company housing (1930s); summer cottages and “standard houses” (commissioned by the Finnish government in the 1940s, for returning war veterans); experimental structures of the 1950s, primarily for large-scale public projects, such as college campuses and cultural venues; and residences designed in the 1960s for friends, some of them famed composers and writers. In all these creations, Aalto remained steadfast in his belief that good architecture should be sensitive to its natural environment, harmonious in all decorative elements, seamless in its integration of indoor-outdoor space, spiritually elevating and as accessible to “the little man in the street” as to the upper classes.

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Man Ray - Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Merrell Publishers (in association with the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA), hard cover, 160 pages, 100 illustrations, $40.

Photographers and multimedia artists Man Ray and Lee Miller might be considered the odd couple of Surrealism: he a rumpled, cerebral Brooklynite (born Emmanuel Radnitsky) and she a glamorous, aloof fashion model (the authors call her “the ultimate ‘it-girl’ of 1920s America”). Their evolving union — first as mentor and protégé, artist and muse; then ardent lovers; ultimately respectful collaborators and abiding friends — produced some of the most gripping, revolutionary photographic art of the 20th century. This exhibition catalogue, illustrated abundantly with diary entries, letters, poems, paintings, drawings

and, of course, photographs, chronicles the ups and downs of a couple whose passion for each other sparked an outpouring of erotically-charged, haunting creations. Though the text, by Peabody Essex Museum curators Philip Prodger and Lynda Roscoe Hardigan and Lee Miller’s son Antony Penrose, is at times opaque, the book succeeds in recreating the overheated, impulsive aura of the duo and their coterie, which included Picasso, Duchamp and Calder. It is creditably the first appreciation of the pair’s partnership to place Miller’s talents on par with Ray’s — recognition long overdue.

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Alex Steinweiss: The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:56:00 +0000

Taschen, hard cover, 420 pages, more than 300 color illustrations, $70.

In our era of downloaded music — disembodied from any visual references, let alone a three-dimensional presence — the singular artistry of Alex Steinweiss, who designed midcentury album covers and magazine and film credits, is particularly notable. In this eye-popping, cleverly designed monograph (optical illusions appear at front and back), author Kevin Reagan pays rhapsodic tribute to the Brooklyn-born graphic artist widely regarded as the originator of the modern- style phonograph record jacket. Before 1940, records were packaged in dull brown wrappers; it was 23-year-old Steinweiss’s idea to enclose them in visually arresting cardboard sleeves. He created hundreds of them over decades for numerous record companies, primarily Columbia (where he was art director from 1939 to the mid-1940s) and Decca. Decorating the recordings of jazz, classical, pop and folk musicians from Fats Waller to Chopin to The Weavers, his poster-like designs sported vivid colors, bold typography (featuring his zany “Steinweiss Scrawl”) and whimsical, showy imagery, all to magical effect. “I wanted the people to look at the artwork …” wrote Steinweiss, who died July 17 at the age of 94, “and hear the music.”

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Vienna 1900: Style and Identity

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:54:00 +0000

Hirmer Verlag Publishers, hard cover, 288 pages, more than 200 illustrations in color and black and white, $65.

In this stunning volume — released concurrently with the openingof an important show at the Neue Galerie in New York City — editors and co-curators Christian Witt-Dörring and Jill Lloyd outdo themselves in achieving the high style and intellectual gravitas for which the Galerie’s exhibition catalogues are much noted. Both the book and the show aim to “reveal a common thread running through the fine and decorative arts in fin-de-siècle Vienna: the redefinition of individual identity in the modern age.” Interdisciplinary contributors have done so here in kaleidoscopic fashion, exploring issues that boiled to the surface in Vienna, setting the stage for upheavals to come: nationality, sexuality, class, the evolving status of women and Jewish preeminence in the arts, medicine and psychology — the latter simultaneously a source of pride and fierce resentment. Essays by esteemed journalists and cultural commentators (Philip Blom’s “Rebelling in a World of Façades and Freud’s Lederhosen,” as well as Lloyd’s “Feminists and Femme Fatales” are standouts), and glorious illustrations of designs by luminaries such as Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka, Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann and Kolomon Moser, eloquently depict the zeitgeist of a pivotal era.

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Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:54:00 +0000

It Books, hard cover, 372 pages, more than 200 illustrations in color and black and white, $75.

In this engaging paean to the artistry and imagination of Hollywood’s set designers, author Cathy Whitlock celebrates the magnitude of their oft-overlooked contributions to the singular gestalt of American cinema. While most movie buffs can easily call to mind the names of storied directors, actors and screenwriters, few may know that the glossy Art Deco “big white rooms,” central to RKO’s Astaire and Rogers films, were the handiwork of renowned designer Van Nest Polglase; that German architect Hans Dreier, considered “the master of chiaroscuro,” fashioned the trademark “Paramount glow”; or that 11-time Oscar winner Cedric Gibbons, an art director who was fascinated with all things moderne, designed the inimitable sets of The Wizard of Oz (1939), not to mention the golden statuette itself. Images to delight the modernism aficionado abound, from a Fallingwater-style scoundrel’s lair in North by Northwest (1959), to sets inspired by Mies van der Rohe in the charming musical Down with Love (2003). Whitlock’s skillful writing brings to life the observation of Hollywood veteran Peter Wooley: “A production designer looks at nothing and sees everything.”

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The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:59:00 +0000

Yale University Press, paperback (original hardcover published by Alfred A. Knopf), 544 pages, more than 100 illustrations in color and black and white, $27.50.

Modernism enthusiasts who enjoy reading accounts of their icons spiced with a healthy soupçon of scandal will love this group biography of six leading lights of the Bauhaus. Author Nicholas Fox Weber engagingly chronicles the coterie’s escapades through the humanizing recollections of Josef and Anni Albers, the school’s lone husband/ wife duo (he a professor/ artist in glass, wood and metal; she in textiles), portraying an idiosyncratic, highly competitive group that was far from the solemn, upstanding lot one might imagine. While numerous anecdotes depict them as fiercely principled, sharing “an exceptional lust for improving the seeable world,” other nuggets show that founder Walter Gropius (a bon vivant whose private life was made “a living hell” by drama queen wife Alma Mahler), painters Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee (who once vented in a letter “The Bauhaus will never calm down; otherwise it wouldn’t be the Bauhaus!”) and architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (ill-tempered, foppish, made up his own name) were capable of some rather shady shenanigans in their spare time. As in Tom Lehrer’s witty tune Alma (“Alma, tell us/All modern women are jealous/You should have a statue in bronze/For bagging Gustav and Walter and Franz.”), it’s all quite delicious.

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The Art of British Rock: 50 Years of Rock Posters, Flyers and Handbills

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 15:13:00 +0000

Frances Lincoln, hardcover, 208 pages, more than 350 color illustrations, $35.

Graphic design evolved hand-in-hand with British rock ‘n’ roll at midcentury. Improvised posters of the ‘60s for small “beat boom” gigs gave way to sophisticated “psychedelic” masterpieces, as well as outliers like Pete Townshend’s modernist black-and-white branding for The Who. The cut-and-paste aesthetic of punk followed in the ‘70s, then the ‘80s brought heavy metal arena tours branded with macho Teutonic fonts and “women with heaving breasts,” in the words of artist Hugh Gilmour. The ‘90s saw computer graphics. Album sales have decreased due to digital downloads, but live performance has increased. The result: a renaissance in concert and festival posters. Author Michael Evans and designer Paul Palmer- Edwards explore the evolution of artistic processes and the professionalization of graphic arts; big names in the music and art scenes; and changes in the music industry that influenced the art. But the focus here is on the visuals. Like the music it celebrates, the artwork is sexy, colorful and in your face.

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75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:59:00 +0000

75 Years Of DC Comics: The Art Of Modern Mythmaking
Taschen, hard cover, 720 pages, more than 2,000 color illustrations, $200.

Ladies and gentlemen! In the red cape, weighing in at sixteenpounds, measuring 18 x 13 x3.5 inches … 75 Years of DC Comics! Although daunting first glance, due to its leviathan size, this stunningly produced volume is compelling reading for both enthusiasts and nonaficionados. Divided chronologically into sections, from the fascinating “Stone Age” (the period through 1938, beginning with a nod to prehistoric cave paintings and ancient storytellers), to the “Golden Age” of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman(1938–1956) and forward into the digital era, it meticulously traces the history, infuences on and cultural dominance of America’s premier comic book publisher. Author and lifelong maven Paul Levitz includes a plethora of eye-popping comic book covers and stories, original illustrations, photographs and film stills; he pays tribute not only to the company’s iconic fictional characters (“from The Atom to Zatara”), but also to the wildly creative “characters” who comprised the company’s real-life ranks. In its 75 years, DC Comics produced more than a million pages of comics and thousands of hours of animated television, film and theatrical serials. In that context, the book — despite its heft — is but a tantalizing tidbit.

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Brasilia-Chandigarh: Living with Modernity

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:09:00 +0000

Lars Muller Publishers, soft cover, 240 pages, 200 illustrations in color, $60.

In this quirky album, Dutch photographer Iwan Baan (whose edgy architectural images have been compared to Diane Arbus’s candid “circus freak” photos) sets out to document Brasilia, Brazil, and Chandigarh, India. For Baan, these singular cities “drawn from the revolutionary ideals and voices of Modernism” provide a canvas for exploring “how people are living, thriving, or coping with Modernism today.” The two urban centers — honored simultaneously by UNESCO at the 2007 International Conference on Modern Cities — were inspired by utopian visions, to lesser and greater success. Brasilia, often criticized today for its “anti-pedestrian layout,” was designed as a soaring, imaginative capital freed from the ghosts of Portuguese colonialism, by urban planner Lucio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer. Chandigarh was envisioned by its designer, Le Corbusier, as a bold statement of India’s emancipation from British sovereignty, a demonstration of the pivotal role modern architecture would play in the nascent transformation of traditional society. (Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, enthralled by the beauty and orderliness of the city, called it “the temple of new India.”) Brasilia- Chandigarh includes poet Cees Nooteboom’s meandering, Dreams of the Future but intriguing, commentary, “Ex Nihilo: A Tale of Two Cities”; an epilogue entitled “Monuments to Modernity,” by Swiss art historian Martino Stierli, provides more detailed conceptual information about the architecture and planning, and includes maps, sketches and archival photos. And although they suffer from a disconcerting absence of captions, the book’s photographs pose haunting questions about modernism’s impact on humankind.

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Voiture Minimum: Le Corbusier and the Automobile

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:07:00 +0000

MIT Press, hard cover, 354 pages, 205 illustrations in black and white, $49.95.

Although Le Corbusier is known as a stern father of modernist architecture, he is revealed, in this engagingly written volume, to be a doting uncle of modernist
car design. His passion for the speed of automobiles (“I tell you straight: a city made for speed is made for success”), and his faith in them as the transformative element of 20th-century life, shine throughout Antonio Amado’s painstakingly researched book. By turns philosophical, exuberant, technical and historical — and abundantly illustrated with photographs, sketches, charts, letters and logos — Voiture Minimum brings into lively relief Le Corbusier’s many significant, but negligibly recognized, achievements in industrial design and urban planning. His vision of a “minimalist vehicle for maximum functionality,” often cited as the inspiration for Volkswagen’s iconic Beetle, embodied his belief that cars must be regarded as “an absolute reference point” in the design of cities of the future. Upon observing new automobiles rolling off a Ford assembly line every 45 seconds, he rhapsodized: “I am immersed in a type of astonishment.”

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Setting Your Table Wright: A Guide to the Tablecloths of Russel Wright & Other Mid-Twentieth Century Modern Designers

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:18:00 +0000

Gary & Laura Maurer Collectibles, 112 pages, 287 illustrations in color and black-andwhite, $50.

If Russel Wright’s American Modern ceramics were the most popular tableware ever sold in the United States, the line’s table linens were less well-known. This book aims to change that. Wright cared passionately about the presentation of food and designed every element essential to the well-set table, including recipes. Through advertising and his book, Guide to Easier Living, he encouraged consumers to mix and match shapes, colors and patterns for personalized environments. Ostensibly a collector’s guide — Gary and Laura Maurer assure readers that these vintage cloths are still affordable — the book is also a visual feast, beautifully photographed by Brian Franczyk. Especially charming is the inclusion of Wright’s Menu #2: Spaghetti and Meat Sauce with suggestions for the Wright-designed dishes and linens that best complement the food. The Maurers prepared this meal and include a photograph of the appealing result, proof of the savory effect of good design on your taste buds.

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Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:13:00 +0000

Chronicle Books, hardcover, 192 pages, 250 illustrations in color and black-and-white, $50.

When the Design Research store opened in Cambridge, Mass., in 1953, it proposed a new “attitude about design,” in the words of its founder, architect Ben Thompson, who traveled the globe to bring back useful and beautiful products for the home. Marimekko dresses, Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobson furniture and Venini glass were arranged in domestic settings with Chemex coffee makers, Vallauris ceramic casseroles, American canvas camp chairs, Bolivian alpaca sweaters and Moroccan rugs, suggesting colorful, informal ways of personalizing international modernism in the American home. D/R went out of business in 1979 and is today all but forgotten. Written by Ben Thomspon’s widow, Jane Thompson, and Alexandra Lange, this beautiful volume seeks to restore D/R to its rightful place in the history of American modernism.

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Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:48:00 +0000

Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust / Marquand Books, softcover, 48 pages, 52 color and black-and-white illustrations, $19.95.
Sometimes a slender volume is anything but slight, as this little book on the finest house of Frank Lloyd Wright’s early career demonstrates. Designed in 1908 as a horizontal Prairie Style house on a confined Chicago city lot, the Robie House served only briefly as a private residence, later becoming a dormitory and then office space. It has been beautifully restored by the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, which operates it as a house museum. The house’s rich history is detailed in text by Trust experts Zarine Weil, Cheryl Bachand and Brian Reis; a foreword by New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger gives valuable context. New color photographs by Tim Long are well-juxtaposed with vintage photos showing similar views of the house as built, and Wright renderings, plans and sketches illuminate the architect’s creative process. A minor quibble with this excellent work: the delicate Futura Standard font in white on black is somewhat difficult to read.

The American Department Store Transformed, 1920-1960

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:46:00 +0000

Yale University Press, hardcover, 352 pages, 240 black-and-white and 15 color illustrations, $60.

It’s anyone’s guess if the department store as we know it will survive; discounters, online retailers and auctions and hard times have all made huge inroads on what was once America’s favorite way to shop. Architectural historian Richard Longstreth documents the 40-year period when department stores were at their mightiest, evolving from downtown Beaux-Arts confections to sleek midcentury malls. Retailers changed focus from mere purveyors of goods to enablers, offering alternate universes so fantastically attractive it was all too easy to forget that their purpose was to part shoppers from the most cash possible. Retailers spent vast sums on keeping up-to-date, with mixed results. Old stores in classical styles were refreshed with Deco and Moderne facades, branch stores were built in the latest modernist idioms, malls intended to supplement downtown stores ended up making them obsolete instead, and now many of the malls themselves are in serious trouble. The department store may or may not have a future, but as Longstreth’s detailed and impeccably researched text demonstrates, oh, what a past.

New Architecture in Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:46:00 +0000

Merrell Publishers, hardcover, 272 pages, 400 color illustrations, 237 plans, $49.95.

Some of the most delightful new architecture lately has been in Japan, whose modernism draws on that of other countries, while adding something for the Aichi Expo of 2005 by Japanese/British firm Foreign Office Architects, looks something like a giant cube of Lego outside, but is divided into ovoid exhibition spaces within. The Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo, designed in 2004–07 by Kengo Kuma & Associates, is of a Miesian purity, a cube clad in delicate, vertical ceramic fins. Text by architecture writers Yuki Sumner and David Littlefield, architect Takero Shimazaki and architect and writer Naomi Pollock, complements handsomely detailed photographs by Edmund Sumner. This book is a look at deeply felt architectural excellence, and the reader will long to visit the buildings it presents in person.

Starstruck: Vintage Movie Posters from Classic Hollywood

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:56:00 +0000

Abbeville, hardcover, 258 color and 28 black-and-white illustrations, $65

Movie posters of Hollywood’s classic era, which extended from 1912 to about 1962, worked hard to sell a movie at a split-second glance; they had to evoke glamour, promote a star and suggest a story all at once. In Starstruck, with a perceptive foreword by Martin Scorsese, poster maven Ira M. Resnick displays his dazzling collection and offers insights into the creative process behind them, chatty anecdotes about the films they advertised and collector tips. Often suggesting far more sophistication than the films themselves delivered, the posters are full of compelling graphical tricks; one for 1936’s Love Before Breakfast shows Carole Lombard sporting a black eye, and another for 1942’s You Were Never Lovelier catches Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire in perfectly synchronized mid leap. Over the years, graphic artists moved from sentimentalized paintings and hand-lettering to photographic and layout techniques borrowed from fashion magazines, but the focus on glamour and sophistication — to say nothing of the wonders of the female figure — remained constant.

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The 1940s Home

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:55:00 +0000

Shire, softcover, 48 pages, 81 illustrations in color and black and white, $12.95

This slender, almost pamphlet-sized book is chock-full of British modernism of the 1940s, with plenty of photographs and an erudite text. British modernism was concerned with new manufacturing techniques even as it strove to be somewhat familiar in form; Ernest Race’s BA3 chair was not startling to behold, but its handsome, slender lines were cast in aluminum. Upholstered chairs and settees were often made on steel frames, instead of the more traditional wood. And prefabricated steel postwar housing got a lot farther in Britain than in America, with more than 150,000 units built. Authors Paul Evans and Peter Doyle, an antiques dealer and military historian who usually work together on Shire’s books about World War II, have given this volume an informative, well-researched text that flows along with the photographs.

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The Iconic House: Architectural Masterworks Since 1900

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:54:00 +0000

Thames & Hudson, hardcover, 638 illustrations in color and black and white, $65

In The Iconic House, design and architecture writer Dominic Bradbury has selected 100 houses that can fairly claim the label “iconic,” whether by Wright, Neutra, Van der Rohe or a host of more recent architects, and he writes about each with concision and clarity. Architectural photographer Richard Powers’s photographs, well mated with the text, offer fresh views of houses that can seem wearyingly familiar in less skilled hands. Laid out by decade, the houses represent every phase of modernist thinking, from the Arts & Crafts aesthetic of Charles F. A. Voysey’s Homestead of 1906 in Essex, England, to the sleekly tooled multilevel glass cube of Werner Sobek’s House R128 in Stuttgart, Germany, designed in 2000.

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Four Florida Moderns

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:05:00 +0000

W.W. Norton, hardcover, $50, 307 pages, more than 300 illustrations in color

Four Florida Moderns: The Architecture of Alberto E. Alfonso, René González, Chad Oppenheim and Guy Peterson is a somewhat unwieldy title, but the architecture in the volume’s pages is crisp and exciting, evoking ‘50s and ‘60s modernism while being completely of our own time. Known as the Florida Four, the architects have different styles. Alfonso’s Nielsen Media Research Building of 2003 seems inspired by both Mies van der Rohe’s buildings at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Le Corbusier’s Brutalism, but the structures surround a reflecting pool that bestows a casual elegance. González’s buildings have a harder, high-tech edge, with enormous flat planes of glass or mosaic that embue structures like his 2008 Cisneros Fontenals Art Foundation with enormous presence, yet keep them related to their surroundings. Oppenheim’s 2006 Ilona Bay condominium complex riffs on Paul Rudolph’s piercings and projections, and Peterson’s houses burst with midcentury excitement, using bold blocks of color and external steel framing. Writer Saxon Henry has crafted an appreciative, informative text, including interviews with the Florida Four, positioning them as the nucleus of a movement. Critical assessments of their work are offered by Richard Meier, Terence Riley, Warren Schwartz and the late Charles Gwathmey (visit www.modernismmagazine.com to read obituary). It isn’t often that today’s buildings, with their complex demands unheard-of at mid century, exhilarate, but the Florida Four manage the feat handily.

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10 Architectural Walks in Manhattan

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:46:00 +0000

W.W. Norton, softcover, $29.95, 304 pages, 200 illustrations in color and black and white

The Municipal Art Society of New York has been offering walking tours of the city’s architecture for more than half a century, giving both natives and tourists a greater appreciation for the marvels surrounding them. For those who want to approach the idea of a walking tour on their own terms, the MAS has now published 10 Architectural Walks in Manhattan. Each of the walking tours is set in a specific area of Manhattan and covers a stylistic gamut: the neo-Gothic Woolworth Building designed by Cass Gilbert in 1913 is here, and so is Dan Shannon’s 24/7 Apple Store of 2007, a transparent, almost illusory addition to the plaza in front of the General Motors Building. The MAS’s expertise in conducting tours is highly evident; the book provides extraordinarily precise directions on where to walk, where to look up and when to turn around. The text, by architectural tour guide Francis Morrone and architectural historian Matthew A. Postal, is rich without being overly dense, and striking high-resolution photography by Edward A. Turan makes the volume useful to armchair travelers as well.

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Case Study Houses

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:42:00 +0000

Taschen, hardcover,
$14.95, 96 pages, 150 illustrations in color and black and white

In 2002, Taschen introduced a coffee-table book detailing every Case Study House created through Arts and Architecture magazine’s celebrated midcentury program of architect-designed houses. Then last year, the publisher released a ten-volume facsimile version of the first ten years of the magazine itself. But the Case Study book was introduced at $150 and the facsimile magazine set lists for $700. Now Taschen is offering something for thinner wallets: Elizabeth A.T. Smith’s Case Study Houses. Smith, a former curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, where she mounted an exhibition on the Case Study Houses, says a great deal in few words. Her satisfying captions for the original Arts and Architecture photographs point out the major pieces of furniture in each interior and give designer and manufacturer information. While advanced modern mavens might covet the more lavish Taschen offerings, this slender volume contains more than enough information — to say nothing of eye candy — to make most of us happy.

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The Women

noreply@blogger.com (Modernism Magazine) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:34:00 +0000

Viking, hardcover, $27.95, 464 pages

At its best, historical fiction can fill in the gaps between historic facts, giving the reader a sense of the human motivation behind events. In The Women, T. Coraghessan Boyle, author of the 1993 novel The Road to Wellville, attempts to give us insight into the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. That unconventional, even pagan life has been fulsomely covered in several sensationalistic biographies, so at first glance, it would seem unnecessary to cover the same ground in fiction. But Boyle seems to have found something Wright’s biographers have missed. Where scholars see vast contradictions between Wright’s professional and personal personas — how could such architectural genius co-exist with such a rascally private life? — Boyle sees a common thread. The story, set during the first four decades of the 20th century and told from the perspective of a fictional Japanese apprentice at Taliesin, centers around Wright’s relationships with the women he loved: abandoned first wife Kitty Tobin; second wife, the flamboyant Miriam Noel; tragic mistress Mamah Borthwick Cheney; and Wright’s third wife, the fierce, yet loving Olgivanna Milanoff. The historical record, which Boyle’s tale respects for the most part, shows that Wright conceived his buildings in a sort of sweet madness, brushing aside qualms, traditions and realities to create as he saw fit. Boyle’s evocative and credible fiction suggests that Wright ran his private life along exactly the same lines — that he was an organic whole in spite of apparent contradictions.

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