Photos By Gail
The 1955 Ford Thunderbird Convertible was designed and built to rival Chevrolet’s exciting new 1954 Corvette. The Thunderbird, with V-8 power, and roll up glass windows, outside the Corvette immediately. Continue reading Eye On Design: 1955 Ford Thunderbird Convertible
All Photos By Gail (Above from 2017)
In 1947, while a student at Back Mountain College, Ruth Asawa (1926 – 2013) made a visit to Toluca, Mexico. There, she was introduced to a local method of crocheting wire to create baskets for carrying eggs. The discovery led Asawa to experiment with weaving wire into continuous, organic forms like the above Untitled sculpture (1955), which is described as a hanging six-lobed, complex interlocking continuous form-within-a-form, with two interior spheres. These works challenged conventional ideas of sculpture by embracing utilitarian craft methods and relying on the ceiling instead of the floor for support.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Ruth Asawa, Untitled Hanging Wire Sculpture
Photos By Gail
In mid-century America, molded Box Handbags like this one (circa 1955) were fabricated by the New York City accessory firm Wilardy aka Wilardy Originals, which embraced the increasingly experimental postwar design trend towards ‘scientific’ materials such as Lucite.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Lucite Box Handbag By Wilardy Originals
Photo By Gail
“A painting should be something that begins and ends in itself,” Rhod Rothfuss wrote. With this cut-out frame, the artist put his principle into practice: in Yellow Quadrangle (Cuadrilongo Amarillo, 1955) the slender yellow rectangle on the left juts out, and the support takes on the shape of the painting itself . While his work was indebted to that of Joaquin Torres-Garcia and to European abstract artists such as Mondrian, Tothfuss was also influenced by vernacular practices. The alkyd resin present in this work was also used by the artist to create floats for carnival parades in his native Montevideo.
Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
All Photos By Gail
With its petal-like stole, this evening gown, The Tree (1955), transforms the wearer into a flower, giving her a sensual elegance. Couturier Charles James (1906 – 1978) often envisioned his clients as exotic flowers and he believed that fashion should arouse the mating instinct. Ooh!
Continue reading Eye on Design: The Tree Evening Dress and The Petal Stole By Charles James