Photo By Gail
Luigi Lucioni and Paul Cadmus probably met as students, and they doubtless shared acquaintances within New York’s circles of gay artists and writers. Lucioni’s likeness of Cadmus (1928) celebrated the shared passion of two young moderns for the ideal forms of Italian Renaissance art, particularly the paintings of Piero della Francesca. Within a modern close-up format, the artist captured a gaze that is at once tentative and mesmerizing.
Photographed in the Brooklyn Museum.
Photo By Gail
This Vanity (1928) stands as a harbinger in the evolution of an American modern style. Norman Bel Geddes (1893 -1988) conceived of it only a year after founding the first industrial design firm in the United States. His prior experience on theater and film sets lent a dramatic flair to his consumer products, including this dressing table and mirror, made of enameled and chrome-plated steel, which was part of a larger suite of metal bedroom furniture.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Dressing Table and Mirror By Norman Bel Geddes
All Photos By Gail
In this design from 1928, partly inspired by an office swivel chair, Charlotte Perriand softened the rigidity of the tubular, chrome-plated frame with a stuff cushion resting on coil springs. Because the frame and the upholstery required considerable handwork, the chair was relatively expensive and manufactured in limited numbers. Perriand used such chairs in her own Paris apartment.
Installation View, Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
New Photo Added January 2022
Photos By Gail
Inspired by bentwood rocking chairs by Michael Thonet, and recumbent doctor’s chairs, the angle of repose on this Chaise Lounge LC/4 (1928) is adjusted by sliding the chromed steel frame on its stationary base. The LC/4 was a collaborative design of Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret), Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, spearheaded by Perriand, who had designed other furnishings in tubular steel before joining Le Corbusier’s studio.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Chaise Lounge LC/4, Collaborative Design
Photo By Gail
Le Faux Miroir (1928) presents an enormous lash-less eye with a luminous cloud-swept blue sky filling the iris, and an opaque, dead-black disc for a pupil. The allusive title, provided by Belgian surrealist writer Paul Nougé, seems to insinuate limits to the authority of optical vision: a mirror provides a mechanical reflection, but the eye is selective and subjective. Magritte’s single eye functions on multiple enigmatic levels: the viewer both looks through it, as through a window, and is looked at by it, thus seeing and being seen simultaneously. The Surrealist photographer Man Ray, who owned the work from 1933 to 1936, recognized this compelling duality when he memorably described Le Faux Miroir as a painting that “sees as much as it itself is seen.”
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art n NYC.