Three Pots of Inspiration: MoMA's 1950 "What is Modern Design?" as a dream gift guide, and bathtubs as couches.
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The mind of a visual thinker (hi!) is PACKED with photographs, colors, textures, and various oddities—both real and imagined. While Absolument is always a snapshot of what’s skipping around in my head, I want this writing to hyper-reflect what’s going on up there right now. It’s the start of December, so my eyes and mind are busy thinking about the holidays (and my daily dose of Bonne Maman via my favorite advent calendar). But obviously! Design and architecture are still at the forefront too!
Three dream gifts plucked from MoMA’s 1950 What is Modern Design? catalog:
It was 1950. Edgar Kaufmann Jr., as MoMA’s Director of the Department of Industrial Design, released a catalog of modern design principles carved from the work of leading designers of the era. Kaufmann declared modern design a “necessity” and a way in which “an awareness of human values are expressed in relation to industrial production for a democratic society.” He continued: “The average person now has needs and tastes molded by his status as a free individual in an industrialized world.” What was necessary during this transitional period? Form, practicality, the requirement of beauty, expressing the spirit of the times, and respecting “contemporary advances in the fine arts and pure sciences.”
At the same time, novelty was not equaled with “good” design. Charles Eames urged others to “innovate as a last resort!” (Exclamation mark added by me, for emphasis!) Designers had to adopt technological advances while staying true to the nature of particular objects. A newly-designed fork would always need to have the same function and must remain fork-like. If you change the fork too much, it runs the risk of becoming a spoon, or maybe a weapon. “Modern”-izing the fork properly meant changing its material for ease of use or slightly expressing its form in a more pleasurable way.
Kaufmann praised Eero Saarinen, the Eameses, Marcel Breuer, Mies van Der Rohe, Anni Albers, and Alvar Aalto, among dozens of others, for founding and prolonging this design movement. Even me—a product of the late 20th century—can appreciate these objects because of their timeless respect for materials and utility, plus their aesthetic sensibility. I dared to look at the What is Modern Design? catalog as if it were a shopping catalog today—a truly dream-level gift guide!
Polished brass ceiling lamp with counterweight for adjusting the height, designed by Paavo Tynell of Finland, 1946. I love its almost anthropomorphic form. Do you see the hook of the nose, the single teardrop, and the pursed lips?
Florence Forst’s 1946 pitcher “in red earthenware, studied for balance, grip, dripless spout, ease of filling, economy of mold making, and for fine form.” It looks perfect for cradling in your two hands as you slowly allow liquids to pour from its sculptural spout!
The always-tasteful Josef Hoffmann’s handmade silver flatware, 1910. Maybe impossible to actually capture food with, but somehow dainty and primitive while remaining industrial. He didn’t change the fork too much!
Three pieces of ephemera that I bookmarked recently:
Audrey Hepburn seated in a bathtub-turned-sofa during a scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (seen thanks to
!). Before moving to France, I had a little white couch that looked super similar to this, although way more cozy and definitely not a bathtub.
An interview with Marta Bridi, whose portrait popped out right away because she is seemingly soft and glowing, but whose words captivated me even more! She describes her experience of Venice, her home, and human connection: “We are like poles, attracting and pushing away. Meetings, departures, meetings, departures, and each encounter is enriching, creating a bond. So, if you zoom out and look at it from above, you see that a whole network has formed, an alternative map of the city.”
My whole worldview is very focused on the relationships between people and their built environments, so I love the concept of seeing cities purely as a network of its people—in contrast to a map only being made up of a city’s physical monuments.
After reading through the correspondence and papers of Abstract Expressionist artist Lee Krasner, Alexxa Gotthardt shares three takeaways for being an artist. From Lee, she learned that it’s important to: fight for a place for your work, welcome new directions, and revisit failed work.
The three well-loved stages of ordering a book:
Ordered: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.
Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely do justice to the pioneering vision and lasting impact of The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, it gave a pitch-perfect description of "the problem that has no name," the insidious beliefs and institutions that undermined women's confidence in their intellectual capabilities and kept them in the home. Writing in a time when the average woman first married in her teens and 60 percent of women students dropped out of college to marry, Betty Friedan captured the frustrations and thwarted ambitions of a generation and showed women how they could reclaim their lives. Part social chronicle, part manifesto, The Feminine Mystique is filled with fascinating anecdotes and interviews, as well as insights that continue to inspire.
Ordering now: On Painting by Leon Battista Alberti, thanks to my recent subscribe to
by Rebecca Marks.
Will order soon: Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza.
In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she specializes in canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentinean high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancólico?
On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed.
Related notes:
The first and only Hepburn movie I’ve seen is Funny Face. Looks like I need to finally get my eyes on Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Edgar Kaufmann Jr. of MoMA recommended reading on modern design, in the back of the What is Modern Design? catalog. I am taking notes and making my wishlist longer!
The Music of Miró, a Spotify playlist by the artist’s grandson, Joan Punyet Miró. “It was 39 years ago when, in my grandparents’ house, I recall hearing music coming down the stairs from the library above, where my grandfather would seclude himself to read and listen to music—his other two passions besides his art.”
How Edgar Kaufmann Jr. was linked to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
Florence Forst, the ceramicist mentioned above, participated in a 1950 MoMA exhibition called Three Modern Styles. Libby Tannenbaum, the Assistant Curator in the museum’s Department of Circulating Exhibitions (always love a woman holding a powerful job like this in 1950!!!) on the show:
“These three styles (Art Nouveau, Cubist-Geometric, and Free Form) pervade not only the fine arts, but every aspect of popular design. Each is equally international, with its own national variations. Roughly consecutive in time, in retrospect each begins to characterize the whole atmosphere of a period. Style is the signature of an era in the same way that handwriting is the personal mark of an individual.”
These Afra and Tobia Scarpa chairs are a dream in the form and material department! The pricing outrageously surpasses my budget ($18k for 4), but one can still admire them.
You may have missed:
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Happiest December!
Kelsey Rose
Oh, I'm in love with this piece! 😍
Nice article! That photo of Kaufman - he’s sitting in the Butterfly chair. I’ve never seen a photo of him before. He is largely responsible for the success of the chair. He regarded it as one of the "best efforts of modern chair design".