PIANTING SCULPTURE FURNITURE & ARCHITECTURE MODERNIST MINIMALIST
PIANTING PIET MONDRIAN AGNES MARTIN ELLSWORTH KELLY
PIET MONDRIAN the spiritual in art
“Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture.� Piet Mondrian
PIET MONDRIAN
the spiritual in art Broadway Boogie Woogie | 1942 - 43
the spiritual in art PIET MONDRIAN lines and colors Piet Mondrian, one of the founders of the Dutch modern movement De Stijl, is recognized for the purity of his abstractions and methodical practice by which he arrived at them. He radically simplified the elements of his paintings to reflect what he saw as the order underlying the visible world, creating a clear aesthetic language within his canvases. In his best known paintings from the 1920s, Mondrian reduced his shapes to lines and rectangles and his palette to fundamental basics pushing past references to the outside world toward pure abstraction. His use of asymmetrical balance and a simplified pictorial vocabulary were crucial in the development of modern art, and his iconic abstract works remain influential in design and familiar in popular culture to this day. His painting Broadway Boogie-Woogie at The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan was highly influential in the school of abstract geometric painting. The piece is made up of a number of shimmering squares of bright color that leap from the canvas, then appear to shimmer, drawing the viewer into those neon lights. In this painting and the unfinished Victory Boogie Woogie, Mondrian replaced former solid lines with lines created from small adjoining rectangles of color, created in part by using small pieces of paper tape in various colors. Larger unbounded rectangles of color punctuate the design, some with smaller concentric rectangles inside them. While Mondrian's works of the 1920s and 1930s tend to have a scientific austerity about them, these are bright, lively paintings, reflecting the upbeat music that inspired them and the city in which they were made. In his final works, the forms have usurped the role of the lines, opening another new door for Mondrian's development as an abstractionist. The Boogie-Woogie paintings were a revolutionary change than an evolutionary one, representing the most profound development in Mondrian's work since his abandonment of representational art in 1913. In 2008 the Dutch television program Andere Tijden found the only known movie footage with Mondrian. The discovery of the film footage was announced at the end of a two-year research program on the Victory Boogie Woogie. The research found that the painting was in very good condition and that Mondrian painted the composition in one session. It also was found that the composition was changed radically by Mondrian shortly before his death by using small pieces of colored tape.
PIET MONDRIAN
New York City I 1942
Composotion London 1940-42
Composition No. II with Red and Blue 1929
AGNES MARTIN the still and silent in art
“My interest is in experience that is wordless and silent, and in the fact that this experience can be expressed for me in art work which is also wordless and silent.� Agnes Martin
AGNES MARTIN
the still and silent in art AGNES MARTIN on a clear day
AGNES MARTIN
ON A CLEAR DAY
lines and stripes, seem to hug one another out of sheer existential empathy. There is something ironic, perhaps unintentionally so, in Martin’s titling of On a Clear Day. Six years to describe a single day? This attenuation of experience resonates with the timelessness of the mind. It is a clue as well to the secret of Martin’s life in art. As she has said, “The memory of past moments of joy leads us on.”
AGNES MARTIN
ELLSWORTH KELLY the content in the present
ELLSWORTH KELLY
“I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract.� Ellsworth Kelly
Colored Paper Image XIII Yellow Green Black Blue Orange 1976 / left
Colored Paper Image IX Four Grays with Black I 1976 / right
Red Diagonal 2007 / left
Black over Blue 1963 / right
Curves on White Four Panels 2011
the content in the present ELLSWORTH KELLY on a clear day Ellsworth Kelly, born May 31, 1923, is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and the minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing simplicity of form, similar to the work of John McLaughlin and Kenneth Noland. Kelly often employs bright colors. He lives and works in Spencertown, New York. Ellsworth Kelly has been a widely influential force in the post-war art world. He first rose to critical acclaim in the 1950s with his bright, multi-paneled and largely monochromatic canvases.Maintaining a persistent focus on the dynamic relationships between shape, form and color, Kelly was one of the first artists to create irregularly shaped canvases. His subsequent layered reliefs, flat sculptures, and line drawings further challenged viewers' conceptions of space. While not adhering to any one artistic movement, Kelly vitally influenced the development of Minimalism, Hard-edge painting, Color Field, and Pop art.His painting Broadway Boogie-Woogie at The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan was highly influential in the school of abstract geometric painting. Real-life observations are the backbone of Kelly's abstraction works, which are replications of the shapes, shadows, and other visual sensations he experiences in the world around him. As did the early twentieth century Dadaists, Kelly delights in the spontaneous, the casual, and the ephemeral means of finding such "readymade" subjects. The subtle fluctuation between the meditative, decorative and industrial in much of Kelly's work can be traced in part to this design training in art school. In this sense, Kelly continues Henri Matisse's lyrical and decorative ideal of creating an art of visual serenity, even as the painted motif is now reduced to its simplest and sometimes most mysterious configuration. The special camouflage unit of which Kelly was a part during his service in World War II, and the principles of visual scrambling he undertook, has also contributed greatly to Kelly's intense visual motifs.
ELLSWORTH KELLY
SCULPTURE SOL LEWITT ROBERT MORRIS CARL ANDRE DAN FLAVIN
SOL LEWITT idea makes the art
ELLSWORTH KELLY
“Minimal art went nowhere.” Sol LeWitt
Untitled 1968 Lawrence Weiner Douglas Huebler Joseph Kosuth Robert Morris Robert Barry Carl Andre Sol LeWitt
idea makes the art SOL LEWITT father of conceptual Art LeWitt was pivotal in the creation of the new radical aesthetic of the 1960's that was a revolutionary contradiction to the 'Abstract Expressionism' current in the 1950's New York school. He had no interest in inherent narrative or descriptive imagery. LeWitt, like no other artist of his generation, had maintained the importance of the concept or idea and, apart from his original works on paper, the work is executed by others to clear and strict instructions. As one of the first coherent proponents of conceptual art with his writings, Sentences on Conceptual Art, 1969, LeWitt's work continues to be regarded and referred to by a younger generation of artists as one of the seminal investigations into 'idea' and 'concept' art. He continued to challenge new thinking about what art can be. "If the artist carried through his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art as any finished product." Stated LeWitt in 1971. "All intervening steps, scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed work models, studies thoughts, conversations, are of interest. Those that show the process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product." Born in 1928 in Hartford Connecticut, LeWitt continued to work up until his death in early 2007. After studying a bachelors degree in Fine Art at Syracuse University until 1949, he worked as a graphic designer for I.M Pei's architecture office in New York. In 1960 LeWitt took a job at the Museum of Modern Art in New York at the book counter where his co-workers included Robert Ryman, Dan Flavin and Robert Mangold, situating him in the midst of young artists searching for a new direction in art. LeWitt participated in seminal group exhibitions including "Primary Structures", Jewish Museum, New York and "10", Dwan Gallery, New York, both in 1966, Documenta IV in 1968 and Harald Szeeman's exhibition "When Attitude Becomes Form", Kunsthalle, Berne and Institute of Contemporary Art, London. He began making wall drawings in 1968. The earliest consisted of pencil lines—in systematized arrangements of verticals, horizontals, and diagonals on a 45-degree angle— drawn directly on the walls. Later wall drawings included circles and arcs and colored pencil. LeWitt would eventually use teams of assistants to create such works. In sculpture, LeWitt mapped out all possible permutations—he found 122—of a cube with one or more sides missing in Variations of Incomplete Open Cubes. From 1966, LeWitt’s interest in seriality led to his production of several artist’s books. Among them is Autobiography , which documents in photographs everything in his studio on Manhattan’s Hester Street, his home for twenty years. In 1976, with Lippard and others, LeWitt founded Printed Matter, an organization established to publish and disseminate artist’s books.
Cubic Construction: Diagonal 4, Opposite Corners 1 and 4 Units 1971
In 1980 LeWitt left New York for a quieter life in Spoleto, Italy. Since the mid-1980s, he has composed some of his sculptures from stacked cinder blocks, still generating variations within self-imposed restrictions. LeWitt’s wall drawings of the 1980s incorporated geometric forms and stars, as well as solid areas of ink-washed color. His wall drawing for the 1988 Venice Biennale engulfed the Italian Pavilion’s interior. In 1996 he introduced acrylics into his wall paintings; he has described the colors of these paintings as “raucous and vulgar.” Collecting since the 1960s, LeWitt and his wife, Carol, have accumulated well over eight thousand artworks by his predecessors and contemporaries. They have been generous lenders to various institutions, like the Wadsworth Atheneum. Comprehensive traveling LeWitt retrospectives have been organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1978) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2000). Since returning to the United States in the late 1980s, LeWitt made Chester, Connecticut, his primary residence. LeWitt died on April 8, 2007 in New York.
Cubic-Modular Wall Structure, Black 1966
the freedom of art DAN FLAVIN
“I like art as thought better than art as work. I've always maintained this. It's important to me that I don't get my hands dirty. It's not because I'm instinctively lazy. It's a declaration: art is thought.� Dan Flavin
the freedom of art DAN FLAVIN interaction of color and light Few artists can boast having explored a single medium, and an unusual one at that, as tenaciously and consistently as Dan Flavin with his signature fluorescent light tubes. Classified within the Minimalist framework, Flavin saw himself as vehemently "Maximalist." That is, in using readymade objects in the style of Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, he exploited the possibilities of the most banal and in some ways ugly material: harsh fluorescent lights - surely the stuff of futuristic anti-aestheticism. Flavin began incorporating electric lights into his works in the early 1960s with his breakthrough Icons series. Having hit upon his chosen medium, he abandoned painting altogether, focusing on light works for the remainder of his career, where he produced installations and sculptural pieces made exclusively of fluorescent light fixtures and tubes that came in a limited range of colors and sizes. Working with prefabricated rather than hand-crafted materials allowed Flavin to focus on the light itself and the way in which it transformed the exhibition space. A clear progression in scale and ambition marks Flavin's sitespecific light installations, sculptural and architectural environments commissioned by a wide-range of artistic and religious institutions for the rest of his career. Dan Flavin emphatically denied that his sculptural light installations had any kind of transcendent, symbolic, or sublime dimension, stating: "It is what it is and it ain't nothing else," and that his works are simply fluorescent light responding to a specific architectural setting. Despite Flavin's insistence on this, it is possible to view individual pieces in terms of implied narratives.Potential associations with the concept of light - from religious conversion to intellectual epiphanies - are rife in Flavin's work, whether or not such interpretations are encouraged by the artist himself. The tendency to privilege pre-fabricated industrial materials and simple, geometric forms together with the emphasis placed on the physical space occupied by the artwork and the viewer's interaction with it aligns Flavin's work with that of other Minimalist artists. His emphasis on light and effects, however, align him as strongly with Op art, whose practitioners explored variations in color and shape based on differences in light. But, in some regards, Flavin went much further than the art painters by taking the fundamental concepts of the style and translating them into sculpture that demonstrated in three dimensions what the paintings could only aspire to communicate. The optical effects painters achieved could fool the eye by alluding to movement, whereas Flavin's light waves demonstrated how the two-dimensional illusionism was light was color, color was light, and the interaction of either created the illusion of dynamism as they played against, or in harmony with, one another and in their environment.
From 1975, Flavin installed permanent works in Europe and the United States, including "Untitled. In memory of Urs Graf" at the Kunstmuseum Basel; United States Courthouse, Anchorage, Alaska; the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; the lobby of the MetroTech Center; seven lampposts outside the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich; Institut Arbeit und Technik/Wissens, Gelsenkirchen, Germany; and the Union Bank of Switzerland, Berlin. Additional sites for Flavin's architectural “interventions” became the Grand Central Station in New York, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. His large-scale work in colored fluorescent light for six buildings at the Chinati Foundation was initiated in the early 1980s, although the final plans were not completed until 1996. His last artwork was a site-specific work at Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, Milan, Italy. The 1930s church was designed by Giovanni Muzio. The design for the piece was completed two days before Flavin's death on November 29, 1996. Its installation was completed one year later with the assistance of the Dia Center for the Arts and Fondazione Prada. The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas states that in 1990 Dominique de Menil approached Flavin to create a permanent, site-specific installation at Richmond Hall. Just two days before his death in 1996 Flavin completed the design for the space. Living in Wainscott and Garrison, Flavin often drew the surrounding landscape, whether it was the Hudson Valley off Long Island. He also created small portraits and kept about 20 volumes of journals. Flavin collected drawings, including works by Hudson River School artists like John Frederick Kensett, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and Sanford Robinson Gifford, along with examples of works on paper by early-19th-century Japanese artists like Hokusai and 20th-century European masters like Piet Mondrian and George Grosz. Flavin also exchanged works with Minimalist colleagues like Sol LeWitt.
The diagonal of May 25 1963 Diagonal of May 25, 1963, 1963 is one of Flavin's first and important investigations into the formal possibilities of using standard light fixtures in commercially available colors. The image of the diagonal was a critical early theme executed by the artist, in series and according to simple mathematical configurations. Flavin made a number of diagonal "proposals" in different colors, alternating angles from right to left. Flavin executed the first diagonal in gold light, subsequently making diagonals in green, yellow, and red. The Museum's Diagonal of May 25, 1963 may be the most conceptually and formally pure work in the series: pure white, ultraviolet light.
The diagonal of May 25 1963 - 1964 Flavin's iconic diagonal grew out of a sketch of the "diagonal of personal ecstasy," apparently made earlier on the same day. Having studied and admired readymades by Marcel Duchamp, Flavin was searching for a simple object to claim for his art. With the "ecstatic" revelation of the diagonal, Flavin realized the potential of the fluorescent bulb as a basic form that could be built upon and infinitely repeated, like the grooved design of Brancusi's Endless Column. Flavin's choice of the diagonal refers to the artistic philosophy of early abstractionists like Wassily Kandinsky and Theo van Doesburg, who emphasized the diagonal for its dynamic presence. Thus, rather than creating works that focused on stasis in contrast to the impermanence of his medium of light, Flavin celebrated movement by exploiting the liveliness and speed implied by the diagonal.
ROBERT MORRIS notes on sculpture
ROBERT MORRIS
“I never presumed that a technique of composition or an idea was so special that just using it would guarantee the quality of the music.� Robert Morris
Untitled | L-Beams | 1965
notes on sculpture ROBERT MORRIS the use of simple forms Robert Morris was one of the central figures of Minimalism. Through both his own sculptures of the 1960s and theoretical writings, Morris set forth a vision of art pared down to simple geometric shapes stripped of metaphorical associations, and focused on the artwork's interaction with the viewer. However, in contrast to fellow Minimalists Donald Judd and Carl Andre, Morris had a strikingly diverse range that extended well beyond the Minimalist ethos and was at the forefront of other contemporary American art movements as well, most notably, Process art and Land art. Through both his artwork and his critical writings, Morris explored new notions of chance and ephemerality. Morris's pioneering role in Minimalism and Post-Minimalist movements such as Process art and Land art made him one of the most significant figures in American art of the 1960s and 1970s. His use of repeated geometric forms, industrial materials and focus on the viewer's pure engagement with the object influenced the work of contemporaries such as Donald Judd, as well as later adherents of Minimalism such as Fred Sandback and Jo Baer. Morris's embrace of simple actions such as cutting and dropping and his use of unconventional materials resonated in the works of artists like Eva Hesse and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, as seen, for example, in the former's coiled rope pieces and the latter's works composed of spilled black licorice. Morris also has an important critical legacy. His pivotal essay "Notes on Sculpture" directly prompted a negative response from critic Michael Fried who composed his famous 1967 essay "Art and Objecthood" as a response to Morris. In "Art and Objecthood," Fried expressed his objection to Minimalist sculpture for abandoning the concern with the nuances of composition and form in favor of engagement with the viewer, or "theatricality," which, in Fried's eyes, removed the work from the realm of art and transformed the act of viewing into a spectacle. From 1975, Flavin installed permanent works in Europe and the United States, including “Untitled. In memory of Urs Graf” at the Kunstmuseum Basel; United States Courthouse, Anchorage, Alaska; the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; the lobby of the MetroTech Center; seven lampposts outside the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich; Institut Arbeit und Technik/Wissens, Gelsenkirchen, Germany; and the Union Bank of Switzerland, Berlin. Additional sites for Flavin’s architectural “interventions” became the Grand Central Station in New York, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. His large-scale work in colored fluorescent light for six buildings at the Chinati Foundation was initiated in the early 1980s, although the final plans were not completed until 1996. His last artwork was a
Untitled , L-Beams , 1965 One of Morris's best-known Minimalist pieces, lacks any texture, trace of the artist's hand or figural content.
site-specific work at Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, Milan, Italy. The 1930s church was designed by Giovanni Muzio. The design for the piece was completed two days before Flavin’s death on November 29, 1996. Its installation was completed one year later with the assistance of the Dia Center for the Arts and Fondazione Prada. The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas states that in 1990 Dominique de Menil approached Flavin to create a permanent, site-specific installation at Richmond Hall. Just two days before his death in November 1996 Flavin completed the design for the space. Living in Wainscott and Garrison, Flavin often drew the surrounding landscape, whether it was the Hudson Valley or the waters off Long Island. He also created small portraits and kept about 20 volumes of journals. Flavin collected drawings too, including works by Hudson River School artists like John Frederick Kensett, and Sanford Robinson Gifford, along with examples of works on paper by early-19th-century Japanese artists like Hokusai and 20th-century European masters like Piet Mondrian and George Grosz. Flavin also exchanged works with Minimalist colleagues like Sol LeWitt.
Untitled , Ring With Light , 1966 Plywood, Acrylic, Plexi, Fluorescent light.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Carl Andre produced a number of sculptures which are now counted among the most innova
Flavin, Eva Hesse and Robert Morris, Andre played a central role in defining the nature of Minimalist Art. His most significa
constructing, and to make works that simply involved sorting and placing. Before him, few had imagined that sculpture cou
configurations and set directly on the ground. In fact, during the 1960s and 1970s many of his low-lying, segmented works ca
From the late 1960s, Andre's art became an important reference point for many subsequent artists both in North Ameri
its essential state. While Andre himself saw this as the end-point of his art, many sculptors took his insights as the starting-poin
In 1966, Andre began to describe his work as "sculpture as place," a phrase which alludes both to the fact that h
"place generating" properties. Andre defined "place" as "an area within an environment which has been altered in such a
the natural of minimalist art innovative of generation
ant contribution was to distance sculpture from processes of carving, modeling, or
uld consist of ordinary, factory-finished raw materials, arranged into straightforward
ame to redefine for a new generation of artists the very nature of sculpture itself.
ica and in Western Europe-largely because he was seen to have reduced sculpture to
nt for their own practice, and built up from the principles which Andre had laid down.
his sculptures are produced simply by positioning units on the floor, and to their
a way as to make the general environment more conspicuous."
CARL ANDRE
ative of his generation. Along with figures such as Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Dan
FURNITURE + ARCHITECTURE ISAMU NOGUCHI THE SHAKER SHOPPE GERRIT THOMAS RIETVELD JOHN PAWSON DAVID CHIPPERFIELD ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE
FREEFORM SOFA | 1946 Isamu Noguchi was an American sculptor who viewed himself as a travelling internationalist. He produced many recognized pieces of art, like the Associated Press sculpture in Rockefeller center, but his most critically acclaimed work was his gorgeous sculpted table made from wood and glass. Noguchi had an affinity for sculpting like no other from the 20th century and no two of his sculptures where never alike.
118" L | 51.25" W | 28.25" D
“Everything is sculpture. Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture.� Isamu Noguchi
biomorphic imagery of sculpture ISAMU NOGUCHI
balance of sculptural form
Noguchi 's sculptural style exerted an influence on the whole organic design language of the 1950s. In co-operation with the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, the Vitra Design Museum presents the Freeform Sofa which up until now has been impossible to find. This exquisite example of mid-century biomorphic form was designed by Isamu Noguchi in 1946 for Herman Miller. Only a few were made at the time and the rare originals achieve record prices at auction. Made to the exact specifications of the original by the Vitra Design Museum under license from the Noguchi Foundation, the sofa is perfect for living rooms and ideal for commercial applications in hotels, boutiques and reception areas. I found a furniture designer that was not an Architect. Isamu Noguchi was an American sculptor who viewed himself as a travelling internationalist. He produced many recognized pieces of art, like the Associated Press sculpture in Rockefeller center, but his most critically acclaimed work was gorgeous sculpted table made from wood and glass. This table would eventually take his name and become known simply as the Noguchi table. Noguchi had an affinity for sculpting like no other from the 20th century and no two of his sculptures where never alike. Recently, the Noguchi table has been the highlight of something funny within the design industry which brings about the question, why do we design rooms to be so cliché and uncomfortable? It
is
questions can
like spark
these
that
design
that
The
perfect
balance—literally—between
and
discussion art
moments is
design
and
of that
furniture.
humor is
to
Sculptor
that be
remind
us
remembered.
Isamu
Noguchi
created his distinctive table by joining a curved, wood base with a freeform glass top. The ethereal result does not diminish the practical design—a sturdy table. This marriage of sculptural form and everyday function has made the Noguchi table an understated and beautiful element in homes and offices since its introduction in 1948. The Noguchi Coffee Table was originally designed in 1939 as a commission from the president of MoMA and is now featured in the Museum’s collection. Noguchi modified the design in 1944 to accompany an article by designer George Nelson, entitled, "How to Make a Table." This design reflects the biomorphic imagery of Noguchi's contemporary sculpture. A free-form plate-glass top with flat polished edges, and a self-stabilizing tripod made of two interlocking curved legs of solid or ebonized walnut. With its successful balance of sculptural form and everyday function, this piece is one of his best-known designs. Made by Herman Miller®.
WOMB CHAIR | 1948 Eero Saarinen designed the groundbreaking Womb Chair at Florence Knoll's request for "a chair that was like a basket full of pillows - something she could really curl up in." The mid-century classic supports countless positions and gives a comforting sense of security - hence the name.
35" H | 40" W | 34" D
Noguchi’s first retrospective in the United States was in 1968, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City. United States at the Venice Biennale.
In 1986, he represented the
Noguchi received the Edward MacDowell
Medal for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to the Arts in 1982; the Kyoto Prize in Arts in 1986; the National Medal of Arts in 1987; and the Order of Sacred Treasure from the Japanese government in 1988.
He died in New York City in 1988.
THE SHAKER SHOPPE
THE SHAKERS
snippit of shaker history
The Shakers were the largest and most successful Utopian venture in existence in their time, with an estimated four thousand to six thousand members in eighteen principal communities from Maine to Kentucky by 1840. The Shakers peacefully pursued the vision of their English founder Mother Ann Lee, who came to America with eight followers in 1774. They turned away from the rest of society, which they simply called the World. They lived in large families that were both celibate and communal, devoted their lives to work, and celebrated their love of God in the rousing dance worship that gave them their name. Simplicity was their hallmark, they cared little for worldly goods. As they created a new, more perfect society, the Shakers also produced a visual environment of such quiet power that it continues to impress the observer centuries later. Shaker work, devoid of any unnecessary ornamentation or frivolous detail, endures.
72” H | 44” W | 24” D 2 Piece Computer Cabinet 1840
43” H | 19-3/4” W | 15-1/2” D High Work Chair / left Low Work Chair / right
36” H | 36” W | 18” D Turned Leg Coffee Table
Pencil Post Bed
40” H | 19-3/4” W | 25-1/2” D Nursing Rocker
Shaker Today, 2015 As different as the Shakers were from the rest of society, there existed differences between the various communities
interpreters of the neoplastic message GERRIT THOMAS RIETVELD
spatial creation
Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, born in Utrecht on 24 June 1888, seems possessed of two personalities, each so distinct that one might take his work to be that of more than one artist. The first personality is that seen in the craftsman cabinet-maker working in a primordial idiom, re-inventing chairs and other furniture as if no one had ever built them before him and following a structural code all of his own; the second is that of the architect working with elegant formulas, determined to drive home the rationalist and neoplastic message in the context of European architecture. The two activities alternate, overlap, and fuse in a perfect osmosis unfolding then into a logical sequence. In 1918 Rietveld joined the “De Stijl” movement which had sprung up around the review of that name founded the year before by Theo van Doesburg. The group assimilated and translated into ideology certain laws on the dynamic breakdown of compositions (carrying them to an extreme) that had already been expressed in painting by the cubists: the “De Stijl” artists also carefully studied the architectonic lesson taught by the great Frank Lloyd Wright, whose influence was widely felt in Europe at that time. Rietveld designed the Zig-Zag Chair in 1934 and started the design of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which was finished after his death. In 1951 Rietveld designed a retrospective exhibition about De Stijl which was held in Amsterdam, Venice and New York. Interest in his work revived as a result. In subsequent years he was given many prestigious commissions, including the Dutch pavilion for the Venice Biennale, the art academies in Amsterdam and Arnhem, and the press room for the UNESCO building in Paris. Due to irreparable damages caused by regular decay, it was once again rebuilt, this time with new materials, in 2010. In order to handle all these projects, in 1961 Rietveld set up a partnership with the architects Johan Van Dillen and J. Van Tricht built hundreds of homes, many of them in the city of Utrecht. His work was neglected when rationalism came into vogue, but he later benefited from a revival of the style of the 1920s thirty years later.
Zig-Zag Chair , 1934 Gerrit Rietveld’s “Zig-Zag” chair remains one of the most radical formulations in furniture design.
Side Table , 1923 Gerrit Rietveld’s Side Table remains one of the most radical formulations in furniture design.
Rietveld had his first retrospective exhibition devoted to his architectural work at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, in 1958. When the art academy in Amsterdam became part of the higher professional education system in 1968 and was given the status of an Academy for Fine Arts and Design, the name was changed to the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in honour of Rietveld.Gerrit Rietveld: A Centenary Exhibition at the Barry Friedman Gallery, New York, in 1988 was the first comprehensive presentation of the Dutch architect's original works ever held in the U.S. The highlight of a celebratory in Utrecht, the exhibition “Rietveld’s Universe” opened at the Centraal Museum and compared him and his work with famous contemporaries like Wright, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
minimalist aesthetic JOHN PAWSON
fundamental problems
Pawson was born and brought up in Halifax, Yorkshire, the youngest of five children. Coming from a wealthy family, he was schooled at Eton.After a period in the family textile business Pawson left for Japan in his mid-twenties, moving to Tokyo during the final year of his stay, where he visited the studio of Japanese architect and designer Shiro Kuramata. On his return to England he enrolled at the Architecture Association in London, leaving to establish his own practice in 1981. Pawson’s work focuses on ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials.
Porta Milano outside
Porta Milano inside
Nobel Center
continental architects DAVID CHIPPERFIELD
place specific work
David Chipperfield is a British architect. David Chipperfield has been recognised for his work with an array of honours and awards including membership of the Royal Academy of Arts, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, a knighthood for services to architecture, and the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 2013. David Chipperfield Architects is a global architectural practice with offices in London, Berlin, Milan, and Shanghai, and projects in more than 20 countries on 4 continents. The practice's projects have received more than 100 architecture and design awards, including the 2007 RIBA Stirling Prize, the 2011 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, and the 2011 Deutscher Architekturpreis.
thinking with your hands ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA
built idea
Alberto Campo Baeza, born in Valladolid, where his grandfather was an architect, but from the age of two, he lived in Cรกdiz where he saw the Light. He is a Professor in the Madrid School of Architecture, ETSAM, where he has been a tenured Professor for more than 25 years. He has taught at the ETH in Zurich and the EPFL in Lausanne as well as the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the Kansas State University, and at the CUA University in Washington.
Porta Milano
The Ma-Andalucia's Museum Memory
Cadiz
less is more LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE
legacy
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), a German-born architect and educator, is widely acknowledged as one of the 20th century's greatest architects. By emphasizing open space and revealing the industrial materials used in construction, he helped define modern architecture. Born in Aachen, Germany, Mies spent the first half of his career in his native country. His early work was mainly residential, and he received his first independent commission, the Riehl House, when he was only 20 years old. Mies quickly became a leading figure in the avant-garde life of Berlin and was widely respected in Europe for his innovative structures, including the Barcelona Pavilion. In 1930, he was named director of the Bauhaus, the renowned German school of experimental art and design, which he led until 1933 when he closed the school under pressure from the Nazi Regime.
Seagram Building
Crown Hall
MODERNIST MINIMALIST PAUL RAND DIETER RAMS BRAUN FASHION
thought better than art PAUL RAND Defamiliarize the ordinary PAUL RAND was a well-known American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs. Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute, the Parsons School of Design, and the Art Students League. He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design. From 1956 to 1969, and beginning again in 1974, Rand taught design at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Rand was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972. He designed many posters and corporate identities, including the logos for IBM, UPS and ABC. Rand died of cancer in 1996.
“Everything is design.” Paul Rand
design evolution DIETER RAMS BRAUN vision and enterprise In the 1920’s Braun started as a small engineering shop and by the 1960’s had become an internationally renowned brand for small electrical appliances a
development
driven
by
technical
innovation,
long-lasting
quality
and
outstanding design. Today, nearly 90 years after its inception, Braun is part of P&G, the largest consumer goods products company in the world.