Tag Archives: 1927

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Fernand Leger, Leaves and Shell

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fernand leger leaves and shell photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

The paintings of Fernand Leger (1881 – 1955) often celebrate machine-made objects and modern city life. However,  in the late 1920s, he began to include natural forms in his work. The curving line down the left-hand side of his 1927 painting Leaves and Shell softens the underlying geometric structure of horizontal and vertical lines. It also acts as a link to the organic shapes of leaves and a shell. These naturalistic elements, with their streamlined shapes, are closely connected to the abstract parts of the image.

Photographed in the Tate Modern Museum in London.

Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Jean Dunand Chinoise Dressing Table

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chinoise dressing table phot by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

The Art Deco movement of the 1920s left an indelible mark on the world of design, epitomizing the perfect balance between modernity and timeless aesthetics. This Chinoise Dressing Table (1927) is a collaborative masterpiece from the partnership of  Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann (one of the most important figures in the Art Deco movement.) and Jean Dunand (the most important lacquer artist of the Art Deco period)  which stands as a testament to their exceptional talent. Recently auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York City, this extraordinary Chinoise Dressing Table shines as a treasured reminder of an opulent past. Continue reading Eye On Design: Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Jean Dunand Chinoise Dressing Table →

Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Skyscraper Cabinet By Paul T. Frankl

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skyscraper cabinet by paul t frankl
Photos By Gail

In 1927, Paul Frankl wrote, “In my own creations for the modern American home, I have kept within the architectural spirit of our time,” citing the New York City skyline as his most powerful design source. Indeed, the architecture of Manhattan is reflected in every detail of Frankl’s Skyscraper Cabinet, including its simplicity, continuity of line, flat surfaces, sharp and clean moldings, quality of restraint, and overall feeling of power.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Skyscraper Cabinet By Paul T. Frankl →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Yves Tanguy, He Did What He Wanted

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He Did What He Wanted
Photo By Gail

He Did What He Wanted (1927) was included in Yves Tanguy’s first solo show at the Galerie Surréaliste, Paris, in 1927. Before the exhibition opened, Tanguy and Surrealist leader André Breton invented titles for the paintings based on a 1922 book called Treaty of Metapsychics by Charles Richet, a Nobel Prize winner for medicine, which explored mysterious forms of cognition — a subject that resonated with the Surrealist interest in the unconscious and in dream states. The title of this work refers to a phenomenon Richet describes in which hypnotized subjects refuse to obey external commands. In early works, such as this one, Tanguy defined his signature style: a vaguely geological, otherworldly terrain strewn with symbols and enigmatic creatures. His biomorphic forms, rendered with a painterly treatment of surface that approaches abstraction, had a profound impact on postwar painters such as Matta and Arshile Gorky.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Stuart Davis, Percolator

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Percolator
Photo By Gail

Influenced by the Cubist language of flat, overlapping planes and wedges, Stuart Davis (1892 – 1964) used geometric shapes in related colors to create this still life, Percolator (1927). Here, he deconstructs the cylindrical forms of a mass-produced, percolator coffeepot and renders the everyday object both abstract and undefinable. By choosing an industrially produced consumer product as his subject, Davis put a new spin on the spatial innovations of the previous decade’s European avant-garde art movements.

Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.