Photo By Gail
Alexander Archipenko (1887 – 1964) first conceived the form of The Ray (Vase Woman III, The Ray), an elongated, abstract figure of a woman, around 1918. He explored the figure numerous times in several variations and media, sometimes calling it Vase or Vase Woman and other times Ray, recognizing the flexibility of perception, as well as the relationship between animate and inanimate forms.
Photographed in The Brooklyn Museum
Photo By Gail
A tour de force of Willem de Kooning’s gestural style, Easter Monday (1955-56) bristles with energy. Angled forms and lines collide, overlap and penetrate one another, while transferred newsprint, particularly visible at the bottom and top right, enforces a tenuous, grid-like structure. The work appears to be in simultaneous processes of creation and destruction, a perpetual state of both realization and erasure that finds some analogy in the continuous growth and decay of nature.
Named for the day on which de Kooning completed it in 1956, Easter Monday is the largest of ten monumental works that he exhibited that spring. Critic Thomas Hess likened the group to “abstract urban landscapes,” and Easter Monday does seem to reference the whirling pace and gritty detritus of the modern city.
Photographed as Part of the Exhibit, Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera currently on extended view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Photo By Gail
The catalyst for Andy Warhol’s transformation from commercial to fine artist was a 1961 display window that he created for the Bonwit Teller Department Store at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street. The window displayed five of Warhol’s newest paintings as a backdrop to mannequins wearing Bonwit’s fashions. Representing Warhol’s first foray into what would become Pop Art, these paintings depicted commercial imagery from ads and comics, overlaid with gestural drips and blotches of Abstract Expressionism. The Bonwit window introduced Warhol’s characteristic practice of elevating pop culture into fine art that he continued to explore for the rest of his career.
Photographed as part of the Gay Gotham Exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York.
Photo By Gail
While George Tooker’s paintings typically convey the artist’s passionate desire for social harmony and justice, Government Bureau (1956) represents a darker, more pessimistic dimension of his art.
The work takes the viewer inside a cold, starkly lit interior filled with anonymous bodies and cubicles. Eerily, the circular windows in the cubical walls reveal nothing but the tired, sad eyes of government employees staring blankly. The scene’s unsettling remoteness is accentuated by Tooker’s fine and detailed technique, rooted in the Italian Renaissance egg-tempera painting.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Photo By Gail
Designed George Nelson™ and Irving Harper in 1956, the playful Marshmallow sofa is a landmark of Midcentury modern design that’s still turning heads and making people smile. The 18, round cushions can be all the same color or in multiple colors for the right look in a private office, lobby, lounge, living room or den.
Manufactured by Herman Miller, this design is currently on sale for $3,314.00 (with Free Shipping!) at This Link.
The Marshmallow Sofa in this post was photographed on display as part of Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City, Manhattan, NY.