The Museum of Modern Art
05.01.13–08.10.13
III
V
Table of Contents 4
Introduction
6
Architecture
8
Interiors
10
Automobiles
12
Fashion
14
Advertising
16
Conclusion
3
n o i t c u d Intro The Good Life The postwar culture of the United States was upbeat and forward-looking, and it became the age of the consumer. The country had just gone through 16 years of depression, recession, and war, and was more than ready to put the past behind. Hundreds of thousands of veterans returned after World War II, and the fifties provided everyone a chance for new beginnings. Industry was undamaged and immensely strengthened by the war, reinstating America’s coveted position as the most powerful nation on earth. It manufactured over half of all products on earth, and America itself was the largest consumer. Goods denied during the war only lined Americans pockets with money they were eager to spend once there was a peacetime market. The combination of successful industry and optimistic self-indulgent consumers created a neverbefore-seen level of national economic prosperity. During this decade of spending, earnings almost doubled with the median family income going from $3,083 to $5,976 per year. Disposable goods flooded the market, and the buying spree of durable goods yielded huge department stores to cater to consumers. The most increased sales were seen in cars, televisions, telephones, alcoholic beverages, and entertainment.
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The fifties saw a rise of rock and roll with artist such as Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley.
The family also drastically changed during this period and having children was considered the highest form of happiness. The fifties became one the most youthful decades on record known as the “Baby Boom.” With these larger families came the swelling of the middle class anxious to buy houses and cars to accommodate their needs. Designers, filled with these same attitudes and in tune to the booming economy, developed a colorful organic style considered modern for its freshness and independence from past standards. Postwar consumerism and optimism were reflected in designs of architecture, interiors, transportation, furniture, appliances, and small consumer goods. The fifties was a golden age, materially, when designers took advantage of advanced technology and materials to transform everyday household goods into extraordinary designs everyone could afford. An array of colors, abstract forms, changing styles free from past influences, and innovative materials characterized their designs and labeled them modern. Advertisements targeted the middle class family, capitalizing on their newfound wealth. With the combination of increased income, fresh designs, mass production, and marketing, society became infatuated with the idea of modern design.
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e r u t ec A r ch i t
The Good Life As the industry returned to civilian production in the fifties rather than wartime production, builders could barely keep up with demands for new housing. Everyone wanted to experience the American dream of owning their own home, and the government’s Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration offered financing. With increased incomes and government help, people could suddenly afford the American dream of owning their own house. The doubling in homeownership transformed the home-building industry. To be affordable and still profitable, houses had to be repetitive and built on flat buildable land. Developers were the designers of these houses, and were more experimental with development than exterior design. They used assembly line fabrication and alternative materials to quickly assemble what became known as the ranch house. Levitt & Sons of New York mastered industrial-style construction methods, resulting in the first massive suburban neighborhoods called Levittowns. Levitt’s success was immediate and widely publicized resulting in a nation of mass-produced neighborhoods transforming the landscape into a sea of almost identical houses. The typical fifties ranch was a one-story rectangle parallel with the street with a carport.
Doors were only used for bathrooms and bedrooms to promote flow throughout the house. With a front entry and back patio instead of front porch, the more private backyard served to entertain guests and spend time with family. The Levitt house was attractive to the postwar generation because of its many innovative features. The open and asymmetrical floor plan, centralized fireplace, and built in equipment was actually inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. For detailing of certain features, Levitt called on well-known designer Jens Risom. Not only did Levittowns use mass production to provide millions of homes for a nation in need, they also brought modern design to the public.
By the end of the 50s, at least 60% of Americans owned their own home.
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This is an interior living area of a 1950s home.
Interiors
A Fresh Start With the increased building of houses came the increased demand for furniture and interior decoration. Most families were starting from scratch and filled their homes with new purchases made possible through easy credit and low house payments. Because the outside of the fifties home displayed very little ornamentation, designers and decorators called for bold colors inside and out. Color, an important part of the decade’s modern design, captured the era’s cheery attitude with a variety of contrasting bright colors. The new open floor plan of the ranch house, advertisements and exhibitions showcasing modern home designs, and the fifties informal lifestyle caused a demand for modern-style interior products.
The Modern Home In interior design, “modern” implied more daring and fashionable styles than even “contemporary,” and aspired to light color and line. Because of the layout, furniture settings rather than walls or doors divided rooms. Designers met the consumer’s need to rearrange furniture with light and portable furniture that could be moved around for activities. Large bulky furniture was replaced with slender pieces suspended on metal frames, conveying a sense of newness and dynamics with clean lines and abstractions. Plastic laminate opened up limitless color and pattern possibilities on all sorts of surfaces. It allowed brighter colors, was easier to clean, and fit the informal lifestyle of the time. The development of Con-Tact paper, an adhesive vinyl film that could be made to look like any surface, resulted in an explosion of patterns, colors, and textures all over the home. Many other innovations such as pole lamps, wall shelving, fiberglass draperies, lounge chairs, and colored appliances were mass-produced and characterized the modern fifties home.
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Driving in Style As the fifties’ American landscape was being transformed, the automobile-dependent-suburbia became the dominant market. Every family wanted a car, and two cars were almost essential. When everyone had cars, automobile makers relied on style to sell. The car ceased to be a symbol of the family, but representative of the driver, opening up new possibilities for stylization.
The Tail Fin Harley Earl, who practically invented automobile styling at General Motors, was first inspired by a quick glimpse of a Lockheed p-38 Lightning airplane. The lines of the plane resulted in the first tail fin on the 1953 Cadillac. With its success appeared nonfunctional tailfins on virtually every car in America. Car models began to change annually, using the association of planes for dramatic effects and to sell. The Ford and Studebaker had grills suggesting propellers while Chevrolet and Chrysler adopted plane-like features, including the pointed tail fins, but lengthened all the lines for more dramatic effect. The car buying frenzy resulted in General Motors being the first company to earn a billion dollars in a single year, producing its 50 millionth car in 1955. Americans continued to pay extra for style throughout the fifties. Even station wagons lost their boxy quality and became dynamically stylish. Though the fins and jet-like styles quickly came into popularity, by the end of the fifties buyers moved on to the next design fad. The decade’s automobiles, like the 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, will always be remembered as resembling airplanes ready to fly.
Automobiles This is a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado
“Le t’s bu rn some rubber!” 11
Fashion Material Nation The fifties’ age of science resulted in an array of fabrics that revolutionized fashion. Durability increased and enabled more economical manufacturing. Synthetics replicated traditional fabrics, and the new and improved materials were advertised as much as the product itself. The new materials also helped bring the most remembered fashion trend, the two-piece bathing suit, to America. Dupont, a synthetic corporation developed many easy care fabrics that could be mass-produced. Cheap printed cottons in America also made higher standards of dress available to everyone. Before the fifties, class and age were typically defined by how people dressed, but in the fifties things changed. Personal qualities rather than status were being showcased with fashion instead, breaking down former divisions of classes and ages. Teenage girls typically wore turtlenecks and full circle skirts, while all youth wore their jeans turned up and pants high wasted. Men’s leisure clothing was less conservative as the fifties lifestyle was increasingly informal and improved materials were developed.
“Hey, don’t touch the threads!”
The New Figure Women’s fashion was about illusion. “This is the new figure,” described Vogue magazine, “You see an unexaggerated bosom, a concave middle, a close hipline, a seemingly long leg. See it in the flesh – and in the fabric. If you weren’t born with this figure, you can achieve it.” This ideal figure of the fifties could be achieved through lifestyle and posture, but also fashion innovations in bras, corsets, and styles. The approach to female beauty itself leaned away from naturalism and towards otherworldly. Eyes were drawn widely with eyeliner, brows were precise, and porcelain skin was contrasted with dark lips. Common accessories, encouraged by fashion magazines and entertainers who decided what was deemed fashionable, were false eyelashes, pearls, black veils, gloves, and scarves. Stylish fashion became more about how women accessorized and put their outfit together than ever before.
This is an episode of “I Love Lucy” showing off the leisure clothing worn in the fifties.
Sock hops were introduced in the fifties. These dances showcased a relaxed fashion with poodle skirts and kicking your shoes off. 13
Advertising
“it was the job of the marketers, advertisers, and designers to convince buyers to chose one product over another.�
Packaged to Sell
Persuading the Masses The fifties was the age of the consumer, and they were going to buy regardless, so it was the job of marketers, advertisers, and designers to convince buyers to chose one product over the other. With the rise of television in the forties, television quickly surpasses magazines and radio in profitable advertising. Print that could not offer luxuries of sound or movement relied on clear text, glossy pictures, and bright packaging. Print remained in competition with radio and television through improved production techniques and the perk readers had of keeping and rereading ads.
The fifties’ packaging industry was a business just as important as printing, making considerable efforts to make products more marketable using easy-to-use features and sayings like “ready in no time,” “quick and easy,” and “ready to serve.” Customers were looking for convenience and relied on advertising to quickly give them all the information they wanted. The products also had to be attractive and convince them it was superior to the competition.
Advertisers soon saw advantages to all forms and exploited television, radio, and print together to advertise different aspects of one product. All forms of fifties ads presented constant images of the good life, capturing the decades mood. Advertisers increasingly used celebrities to promote product on television and magazines, to add to the authority and reliability the product claims. Advertisers also heavily targeted women, because they accounted for 80–90% of the nation’s buyers.
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n o i s u l C on c
For the first time, the majority of America had enough money to make purchases, and attitudes were optimistic about the future. The importance and awareness of all forms of design intensified in the fifties as more and more of the media infiltrated the home. These conditions promoted the modern designs of the fifties and resulted in the greatest shopping spree in history.
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Images Sources toxicpretty.com blogspot.com flickr.com fwallpapers.com Designed by Ashley Shaw
chrysler.c.pl
Typefaces Helvetica Neue, Lounge Bait
verbattemarco.com
Printed on 80 lb Matte Cover, 30 lb Matte Text
the societypages.org
Printed by Sir Speedy
sentimentaljourneys.com
Binding Saddle Stitch
blogs.sacbees.com
Page layout created in Adobe Indesign CS5.5
picasaweb.google.com
on an iMac
cemetarian.com
Graphics Created in Adobe Illustrator and
wikipedia.com
Adobe Indesign
fiftiesweb.com fashion-era.com
Spring 2011, Meredith College, Graphic Design III, Professor Dana Gay
Fifties Source Book by Christopher Pearce
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The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019 212.708.9400 www.MoMa.com