What makes American Design American - Essay Example

What makes American Design American Summary The American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen, known by the acronym AUDAC, was formed in 1928 Out of informal meetings held on Wednesday evenings in the ground.-floor gallery of interior designer and decorator Paul Frankl at 4 East 48th Street n New York City. America." AUDAC was a dramatic gesture at a crucial time in the development of the decorative arts in America. Many art historians have suggested that until 192 there was essentially no true form known as American design and that craftspeople in the United States from the 16th to the 19th centuries interpreted European prototype& Granted, the handmade copies of lath-century English furniture mode in Boston, Connecticut, New York, and Philadelphia were aesthetically of a high order. Some of the earliest examples of "true' American design appeared offer the Civil War. Americans were exposed to the new design trends from Europe - the most Influential of which may hove been japonisme the roots of Art Nouveau American design began to show itself as having unique traits particularly from the lost quarter of the 19th century. George Hunzinger as emigre-craftsman, Louis Comfort Tiffany as native artist-designer, Frank Furness as designer-architect, and the Herter Brothers as manufacturer are prime examples of producers with an American aesthetic. - From Vienna, Austria, architect-designer Joseph Urban, furniture-designer Pour Frankl, designers Wolfgang and Polo Hoffmann, and architect Frederick Kiesler. - From Paris, France, decorative artist Paul lribe and industrial designer Raymond Loewy. - From New Zealand, industrial designer Joseph Sinel Walter von Nessen and Peter Muller-Munk and film set designers Hans Drier and Iribe become one of the first film art directors in America to offer the more baroque, if not bizarre, aspects of the Art Deco style in France, Those native Americans who attended 1925 French far included Donald Deskey, Kern Weber, Eugene Schoen, and Hollywood set-designer Cedric Gibbons, In the 192O, Ruth who become known for her fabric and carpet designs for Radio City Music Hall in New York City, was an art student in Paris. Few other American designers attended the event or were living in Paris at the time, although the city was packed with American literati. Soon after the fair, numerous American designers and soon-to-be AUDAC members traveled to Europe-Walter Dorwin Teague in 1926, Gilbert Rohde n 1927, Raymond Hood, and Ely Jacques Kahn-and the exposure is manifested in their subsequent work. Viennese architect Kiesler was the director of the Paris exposition's Austrian pavilion, designing its theater and architecture section. The influence of the French decorative arts at the exhibition was appreciable. Having lived in the U.S. for 14 years by 1928, hit commitment to ,American design was widely known. In the best tradition of European designers, AUDAC members were active in oil areas of design. in this book, Modern American Design, we find individual designers who were active in most of the minor-arts media interiors, lighting, textiles, industrial design, and graphics, For example, by 1929 Gilbert Rohde had become art active designer of furniture, textiles, lighting, Industrial products and interiors. Unlike American design and American organizations, European design often had a political agenda, whether or not overly expressed The UAM (Union des Artistes Modernes), which, was formed in Paris a year after AUDAC began, had members in the decorative arts, fine ants, and architecture-the full spectrum of art mineur and art majeur. French artist Amedes Ozenfont and Swiss architect Le Corbusier pointed out, "There is a hierarchy in the arts... decorative art is at the bottom." Nouveau pavilion A plethora of the new French Art Deco style furnishings and interiors filled pavilion at the fair. Neither the Bciuhcius nor Art Deco The apartment in the Hotel Delmonico's & 502 Park Avenue n New York designed by AUDAC's president Lee Simonson was more charming than many of the room selling's installed at the contemporary Parisian Saudi exhibition particularly the 1928 SAD event where furniture is sharply cut profiles was shown. AUDAC members and other American designer were arguably not producing works as original or aesthetically equal to their French counterparts, although the lamp designs o von Nessen, Deskey, and Rohde might suggest otherwise. French work was extraordinary and inspired. Modern American Design covers the brief period from 1925-30 when tremendous strides had been made towards producing what might be called "American design." This volume does not illustrate the model rooms installed at AUDAC's two exhibitions. Published between its 193O and 1931 events, Modern American Design illustrates the competed work of AUDAC members for real clients and not the theoretical interiors and displays shown of AUDAC's first exhibition at the Grand Central Palace and the second exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition displays aimed "to show representative examples of the accomplishments of art in industry and applied art in this country today." Blanche Noylor, one of AUDAC'S contemporary chroniclers, may have described the group's intentions best when she wrote that it was "on organization of designers, architects, artists, engaged in designing for Originally published as Modern American Design in 1930, the book before you was reprinted a year later as the, Annual of American Design 1931. There were five model-room setting penthouse living room included "Flekram" metal-alloy furniture. Willis S. Harrison designed a living room/bedroom suite. In his room of AUDAC'S First exhibition, Donald Deskey showed designs for textiles and a three-panel lacquered screen with dots and sold rectangles-a model originally made for the Frankl gallery and Produced from 1927-31. room setting at the "Contemporary American Industrial Art, 1934" exhibition cit the Metropolitan Museum of 1934 AUDAC's second and last exhibition-Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts"-was he'd from May to June 1931 other Brooklyn Museum. AUDAC's ,iodine American Design candy it exhibitions were an acknowledgment in America-whether recognized then or not-that the hard-fought ideological battle ever the Modernist once of Le Corb Lousier and his synthetic contemporaries throughout Europe had won out The style had been innovatively and adequately pursued by designers arid architects ranging from Russia arid Czechoslovakia to the Netherlands and Britain. The Modern style and Modernism were pursued by those architects and designers who wined nothing to do with the reveille of tradition. Architects and designers adopted the freedom of abstract painting, particularly Cubist painter. No matter how 'perfumed like" its colorings may have beer,, there s no doubt that American designers were fully aware of French end German designers. French Connell. Bach, a distinguished essay to Modern American Dep't, had been Associating Industrial Arts at the Metropolitian Meusum of Art since 1918. Donald Deskey designed a guest bedroom and wood-and-leather lounge char nicked at AUDAC's second evens in Brooklyn. The typeface "Gothic Light," used to set the collogue, was designed by Lucian Bernhard, another Austrian migr member of AUDAC. A Benchmark in American Design Modern American, Design records a golden moment in 2Oth century American decorative arts. From the very beginning, American design had on exuberance about it. New York City was a fast place. Ethan artist Ortist Fortunate Deeper lived from 1928.-30 rib New York City, where he designed the interior of restaurants Yucca in 1930 cod Enrich & Paler in Greenwich Village a year earlier, In 1926, the Metropolittan Museum 0f Ar opened its prance& Modern decorative arts gaiety that wicks dint from the rumen's onus& exhibitions. Ice Corbusier published hi book Veers we arch/declare' in 1923, when he began to design his international State houses in Paris. Lance Rosenberg opened n Paris the golfer Ledford Modern with an exhibition of De Stir constructions. Having been the only American to attend the first ClAM convention, pioneer architect and saws migr William Lescaze's, with his partner and fellow AUDAC member George Howe, designees the first International Style school' budding in America, the 1929 nursery building of the Oak Lane Country Dicey Schoolman Working alone and with Howe, he also designed the first International Style house in America, the 1930.31 Frederick Field house in New Hartford, Connecticut; the first international Style skyscraper, the l92-32 Philadelphia Soires Fund Society building; and the first International Sty's large-scale, low-cost urban housing development, the 1931-32 Christie-Forsyth Streets project, which was unrealized, on the Lower East Side of New York City. Modern Intercross for Factious People The houses and apartments in Modern American Deskn were decorated in the glamorous new Modern style. Norman Bel Geddes began his career in theater design in 1916 in Los Angeles and returned to Hollywood in 1925, when he designed movie sets for Czech 8. De Mule and DEW. Other American industrial designers had begun their corers in the theater as members of el Goddess's office, eluding Henry Dreyfus in 1923 and Russell Wright in 1924. De Mille also hired Wilfred Buckland, the first stage designer to work in films, His glamorous bathroom set in Modern Interiors for Real Clients White not an American design, its use in an American decor in the late 1920s was impressive for its sophistication's' Many of the designers in AUDAC used Sloane's wares in their interiors, including custom-mode furniture and carpets like those shown in Kern Weber's and Albert OF. Roller's interiors for the Summer & Kaufmann Deportment Store in San Francisco () where Weber's first tubular-sled furniture was installed. Mass Production In America, there were nuns of the political or ideological bases of design found in France and Europe. The styles pursued by American designers were a unique amalgamation of both the ornate Classical Madame and ornornerit void Cubist forms. in about 1929, Descry designed sane bent-metal furniture for the caf of the Abraham & Straus deportment store in Brooklyn that was among the 'First of its type produced and installed in America. Deskey's furniture for Radio City Music Ho[165 included pieces in the Classical Moderne style juxtaposed with Streamline models that mixed metal with Bakelite and wood in geometric forms and with lighting and case goods in the most severe Cubist silhouettes.. The sleek metal furniture combined elements of French Art Deco with unadorned forms. Josef Urban designed a similarly luxurious apartment at Radio City that no Longer exists. the designer, whom he appointed artistic director of the firm. In 1934, Weber designed Strecrnliried digital clocks for Lawson tine in Alhambra, California, and tubular. steel furniture for Lloyd Manufacturing Co. in Menominee, Michigan. In 1935, he designed furniture for Berkley & Gay, Baker, Mueller, Idiom, and Karen Brothers. The beginnings of Deskey's Robe's, Weber's, anti Bel Gisela's activities in moss production occurred soon after the founding of AUDAC in 1928 --a defining moment for industrial design. The reprint of Modern American Design makes it possible to study a crucial moment in time when the design that we now think of as Modern American was being formulated. American design was essentially the separate efforts of individual designers, who together thought of themselves as American designers. "it is high time or the American designer to emancipate hornet from European rioters".. Read More