Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Wendy Kaplan is Department Head and Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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CALIFORNIA DESIGN 1930–1965

The MIT Press

Contents

Foreword...............................................................................................................................21Corporate Sponsor's Statement..........................................................................................................251. Introduction: "Living in a Modern Way" WENDY KAPLAN................................................................................272. The Rise of California Modern Design, 1930–41 CHRISTOPHER LONG...............................................................613. Fusing Old and New: Émigré Designers in California BOBBYE TIGERMAN.......................................................914. Open World: California Architects and the Modern Home NICHOLAS OLSBERG.............................................................1175. At Home with California Modern, 1945–65 PAT KIRKHAM..........................................................................1476. War and Peace: Unexpected Dividends BILL STERN.....................................................................................1797. Serious Business: The "Designer-Craftsman" in Postwar California GLENN ADAMSON.....................................................2038. Distinctly Californian: Modernism in Textiles and Fashion MELISSA LEVENTON.........................................................2339. Developing a Language of Vision: Graphic Design in California JEREMY AYNSLEY.......................................................26310. "It Has To Be Sold": The Dissemination of California Design, 1945–65 WENDY KAPLAN AND STACI STEINBERGER.....................289Map of California, 1930–65.......................................................................................................320Checklist of the Exhibition............................................................................................................321Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................347Lenders to the Exhibition..............................................................................................................353Illustration Credits...................................................................................................................354Index..................................................................................................................................356

Chapter One

"What Makes the California Look"? asked the Los Angeles Times, a question so pressing it was posed on the cover of the newspaper's "Home" magazine for October 21, 1951 (1.1). The answer was so obvious that it was immediately supplied with this image and its caption: "In this abstract arrangement are the glowing color, originality of treatment and simplicity of design that typify the California look."

The cover depicted the most recognized characteristic of California culture—indoor/outdoor living—and many of the objects assembled have become icons of California design. Since the state's benign climate permitted the great outdoors to be incorporated as an extended living room, the photograph highlights objects intended to be used either on a patio or in the living room: a planter by Architectural Pottery and a cord-and-metal lounge chair by Van Keppel-Green. The blurring of boundaries is emphasized with the prominently featured grill and the garden lamp, both by Hawk House, placed among the interior furnishings. New industrial materials—a fiberglass chair by Charles and Ray Eames and a plastic screen by Spencer Smilie—are displayed with traditional handicrafts, evidence of other ways that boundaries were fluid. The bright yellows, burnt oranges, and vivid greens of sunny climes prevail, as does a stripped-down, casual aesthetic that was the essence of California modern style.

The essays in this book explore how "The California Look" was established, idealized, and disseminated at mid-century. It became synonymous with a modern way of life and, as the "Home" magazine article observed, a symbol of "the willingness to experiment and be different, to solve problems in California's way." Such paeans to California exceptionalism were ubiquitous until the late 1960s—one of the most oft-repeated quotations about the Golden State is writer Wallace Stegner's 1959 observation that California is "America, only more so." If the United States symbolized the land of opportunity for immigrants, California was the repository of the most intense longings for reinvention. Odes to California's endless capacity for growth, inventiveness, and individuality, coupled with its rejection of conventions, permeated the popular press of the era. As industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, who moved from New york to Pasadena in 1944, wrote three years later: "On the Pacific Coast there are fewer shackles on tradition. There is an unslackening development of new thought. There is a decided willingness to take a chance on new ideas." More recently, the California dream has been exhaustively and eloquently studied by historians such as Kevin Starr; many books and innumerable articles have been devoted to the image of California and the state's history of incessant boosterism.

These associations are persistent because so many of them ring true. This volume explores the California modern aesthetic, analyzing how the general qualities associated with the state (optimism and democracy, fearless experimentation, and a love of new technology) and those specific to design (an affinity for light and brilliant color, an openness to Asian and Latin influences, and an embrace of fluid spaces and cross-disciplines) made the state's best products distinctive. None of these qualities, however, was unique to California, and all had important precedents before the 1930s, when this account begins.

The characteristics now associated with the mid-century home had first developed with the Arts and Crafts movement at the turn of the last century, particularly in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. In the Prairie houses, he created interior spaces that were not enclosed in the traditional sense. Barriers between the dining room, living room, and porch were abolished, establishing interpenetrating spaces and freeing the walls to define distinct areas rather than enclose them. This startling innovation became widespread with its application to the inexpensive bungalow, which, though built throughout the country, has always been associated with California. The bungalow's open interior, one-story plan, prominent porch, and overhanging roof offered the ventilation and protection from the sun appropriate to the state's climate, and its rapid assembly, affordability, and informality made it particularly well suited to a mobile society.

In the 1920s, revolutionary experiments in modern living were taking place throughout Europe and elsewhere in the United States, most famously in Germany at the Bauhaus and in Holland with the De Stijl group of architects. Gerrit Rietveld's Schröder House in Utrecht (1924–25)—with its open plan, sliding walls for flexible room configurations, built-in furniture, and large, uncurtained windows—is widely considered to be the first truly modern house (1.2). Truus Schröder's convictions about what a house...