Design 1935-1965: What Modern Was : Selections from the Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection - Softcover

Martin Eidelberg has been professor of art history at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, since 1964. Paul Johnson is an historian, and the author of several books, including Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, A History of the Jews, A History of Christianity, and A History of the American People.

Charles and Ray Eames's plywood lounge chair, Isamu Noguchi's Japanese-inspired lamps and Russell Wright's "American modern" dinnerware are among the 200 objects, made between 1935 and 1965, spotlighted in this stunning showcase. The catalogue of a traveling exhibition, this mammoth repository of images and essays redefines mid-century modernism. Historian Johnson sets the stage with an examination of the sociopolitical forces that fostered the democratization of art and the development of a rational aesthetic. Led by Rutgers art historian Eidelberg, 15 scholars track the 1930s and '40s "streamlining" style in locomotives, jukeboxes and clocks, then trace biomorphism in rugs, tables, an Eva Zeisel teapot and Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal at New York's Kennedy Airport. Expressionism is shown to be a common denominator in Peter Voulkos's ceramics, Lenore Tawney's fiber sculptures and Irena Brynner's jewelry. One provocative finding is that modern design, from its inception, has ransacked past historical styles.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.