Energizing the Everyday: Gifts From the George R. Kravis II Collection
Through March 12, 2017
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
2 East 91st Street, NYC
For information, call 212.849.8400 or visit www.cooperhewitt.org
Energizing the Everyday celebrates the collecting vision of George R. Kravis II and its synergy with Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s broad and diverse collection of modern and contemporary design. An early interest in records and a background in broadcasting inform Kravis’s enthusiasm for and knowledge of radios, televisions, and technology. As Kravis’ passion for design grew, he expanded his collecting efforts beyond American electronic devices to include industrial design and furnishings for the home and office from America, Europe, and Asia. This exhibition showcases highlights of the Kravis collection dating from the early 20th century to the present. From industrial design and furniture to tableware and textiles, the exhibition makes visual and material connections across time and geography to relate the far-reaching impact of design on the enhancement of daily life.
Alexander Girard believed that modernism did not need to be dull or drab. He is known for his use of bright colors and bold geometric patterns at a time when solids and grays were the predominant modernist choices. He called his approach “aesthetic functionalism.” For Girard, the way design made people feel mattered just as much as its utilitarian value.
Apart from his work for firms like Herman Miller and the John Deere Company, one of Girard’s biggest clients in the mid-1960s was Braniff International Airways. Tasked with creating an eye-catching visual identity for the airline, Girard worked on everything from Braniff’s logo and its branded playing cards to the plane fleet and airport terminal interiors. He designed this rectilinear armchair with rounded corners in a low profile to accommodate the low-ceilinged spaces in Braniff airport lounges. He also felt that the resulting reduction in visual scale would create a feeling of repose. Girard intended his Braniff furniture to exemplify comfort, luxury, and elegance. He combined old and new materials and techniques, evident in the chair’s clarity of structure. Its components are articulated through color, line, and pattern.
Unlike his colleagues at Herman Miller, whose work and personalities retained public prominence in the latter part of the 20th century, Girard faded into obscurity. In 2000, Cooper-Hewitt held a retrospective exhibition on Girard’s career, The Opulent Eye of Alexander Girard. And, in the 21st century, there has been a resurgence of interest in his work.
The vanity was the most specifically gendered object in the modern bedroom. Design historian Kristina Wilson has written on how every part of the vanity was about display: “display of the tools for beauty,” “display of the woman in the mirror, making herself up for display before others,” and, as a flamboyant piece of furniture, the vanity itself was on display within the interior decoration scheme.1 This elegant example, designed by Gilbert Rohde for Herman Miller, amplifies its display capabilities with a triplicate mirror arrangement, allowing the woman to see herself at multiple angles. The round shape of the mirrors is mimicked in the concave curve of the furniture form itself, enveloping its female user in her moment of beautification. The circular outline appears again and is multiplied in the round door pulls, three on each side. The center glass semicircular shelf would have facilitated a floating arrangement of cosmetics in what appeared to be mid-air. During the twelve years that Rohde served as a consultant for Herman Miller, the vanity was a standard component for almost every bedroom group that he designed for the company.2
One of Müller-Munk’s most prominent designs, the teardrop-shaped Normandie pitcher is distinguished by its streamlined elegance. It takes its name and shape from the SS Normandie—a French cruise ship that embarked on its first transatlantic voyage in 1935—the same year the pitcher was introduced. The pitcher is made of a single sheet of chromium-plated brass that is bent, bringing the slightly upswept ends together, then finished with a thin border of metal to create a very efficient spout.
Utilizing a newly developed adhesive, Kuramata achieved material and visual minimalism with this armchair. Flat planes of glass are bonded together along their edges, without mounts or screws, to create a functional chair that seems simultaneously visible and invisible. The transparent form invites users to question notions of materiality, utility, and comfort.
Norman Bel Geddes is a pioneering figure in American industrial design and the Patriot is his most iconic radio design. Created for the Emerson Radio & Phonograph Corp., the Patriot made its debut in 1940. Its patriotic appearance, with its red, white, and blue palette, and a rectangular grill reminiscent of the stripes in the American flag, signaled an expression of faith in American technology, industry, and culture at a time when the country was making efforts to recover from the Great Depression while also coping with anxiety about the intensifying war in Europe. The Patriot not only strives to appear modern, it also takes advantage of new materials and manufacturing technologies of the time, utilizing the versatility of different types of colored plastic in combination with each other.
Patriot radio shows Geddes at his best, drawing on his background in theatrical design and illustration as well as his commitment to industrial design. In 1925, while in Paris to design a stage set, Geddes visited the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts (L’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes). After seeing examples of modern products in that exhibition, Geddes decided to leave theater design for the new discipline of industrial design, convinced that industry would be the driving force of the age.
This Highlight was originally published in the 17th Anniversary issue (January-April 2017) of Antiques & Fine Art magazine, a fully digitized version of which is available at afamag.com. AFA is affiliated with Incollect.
2. Phyllis Ross, Gilbert Rohde: Modern Design for Modern Living (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), 68.