Tag Archives: 1960s

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Paul Feeley, Formal Haut

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Paul Feeley Formal Haut By Gail Worley
Photo By Gail

Paul Feeley (1910 – 1966) has often been associated with Color Field painters, but his most recognized works, largely made between 1962 and 1965, stand apart from those of his peers for their economy of color and spare compositions.  Formal Haut (1965), produced the year before Feeley’s death, features his signature forms, namely a single jack (inspired by the game of jacks) and repeated baluster shapes. Their convex and concave contours interlock in a symmetrical arrangement, centered within the square frame. The simple geometric design is highlighted by an equally uncomplicated palette, limited to just two contrasting colors on unprimed canvas.

Photographed as Part of the Exhibit, The Fullness of Color: 1960s Painting, On Through August 2nd, 2020 at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan.

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Toshinobu Onosato, Painting A

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Toshinobu Onosato Painting A By Gail Worley
All Photos By Gail

In 1960, Toshinobu Onosato reevaluated his approach to the circle, a form that for much of the previous decade he had presented as monochromatic surfaces whose simplicity was emphasized by surrounding webs of intersecting lines.

Toshinobu Onosato Painting A Detail By Gail Worley
Painting A, Detail

According to the artist, dividing the circle through the “the piling up of color planes” allows for better understanding of the shape’s true dimensions. Born from a desire to capture brightness and harmony, works such as Painting A (1961 – 62) vibrate with energy that relates to — but remains separate from — the illusory effects sought by Op artists.

Toshinobu Onosato Painting A By Gail Worley

Photographed as part of the exhibit The Fullness of Color: 1960’s Paintings at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan

Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Twiggy London Girl Dress Circa 1966

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Twiggy London Girl Dress
Photos By Gail

This Twiggy London Girl Dress (1966) was part of a product line by British teenage model Twiggy, so nicknamed due to her skinny, twig-like frame. The short, A-line construction plays on the silhouette that many designers were working with during the 1960s to free wearers from the heavily structured styles of the previous decade.

Twiggy Fashions

Twiggy came to embody the increasingly thin, youthful ideal of the ’60s and remains a key reference in debates about body image.

Photographed in the Museum at FIT in Manhattan as part of the Exhibit, The Body: Fashion and Physique, on View Through May 5th, 2018.

Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Hullabaloo Mondrian-Inspired Hi Brows Boots

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Hullabaloo Mondrian Inspired Hi Brow Boots
All Photos By Gail

These extremely rare, retro-vintage Hi Brows Boots were worn by one of the GoGo dancers on the 60s-era TV show, Hullabaloo. Made of white vinyl with red and blue vinyl panels and black vinyl piping, the red and blue color block design was inspired by the non-representational paintings of Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian. They are low heeled and below the calf in height, with a back metal zipper at the back. Why these boots originally sold for just a few dollars per pair, they can now fetch as much as $700 or $800 on eBay.

Hullabaloo Mondrian Inspired Hi Brow Boots

Hullabaloo was a Pop Rock weekly variety show that ran from 1965 to 1966 (two seasons), NS was broadcast on the NBC network. As with ABC TVs Shindig, which began 4 months earlier, this series combined the musical trends of the day, The British Invasion, Detroit’s Motown sound and the merging Folk Rock trend. Unlike Shindig, this series featured a segment from Great Britain hosted by The Beatles‘ manager Brian Epstein, who presented “up and coming” groups. The weekly hosts, at NBC ‘s Burbank studio, included George Hamilton, Roger Smith, Noel Harrison, Paul Anka and Sammy Davis Jr.

Hullabaloo Mondrian Inspired Hi Brow Boots

The performers, from both sides of the Atlantic, included The Four Seasons, The Beatles, Nancy Sinatra, Gary Lewis and The Playboys, Petula Clark, Barry McGuire, The Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, The Byrds and The Lovin’ Spoonful.

Photographed in the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, NY.

Design and Innovation

Eye on Design: Area Lamp (Model 1112) By Neal Small

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Area Lamp By Neal Small
Photos By Gail

Dubbed the Prince of Plastic by the New York Times, Neal Small (b. 1937) lead a craze in the late 1960s for sculptural lighting and furniture made from plastic and acrylic. “I like to think of it as all part of the new permissiveness,” he commented. ‘I Know that I am being more permissive with myself and the designs I allow myself to make — making fuller, more sensuous things. People are permitting themselves in every area, whether it’s music, with The Beatles and The Stones, architecture or clothes. They are allowing themselves things that please them personally. You don’t have to invest in things forever anymore. Lighting is getting to be an art form.”

 Area Lamp (model 1112), 1966 -67 was Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

Area Lamp By Neal Small

Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Pillola Lamps By C. Emanuele Ponzio

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Pillola Lamps at Cooper Hewitt
All Photos By Gail

In the 1960s, youth culture asserted itself, changing society’s rhythms of mass production and consumption, and generating a sense of upheaval and freedom. The Pop Art movement emerged, taking inspiration from mass media and the everyday. Bold colors, new material and radical forms characterized the work of artists and designers whose appropriation of the ordinary made brash or ironic statements.

Pillola Lamps at Cooper Hewitt
Note: Tongue Chair in the Background

Italy’s anti-design movement of the mid-1960s and 1970s is fully expressed in the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the Pillola Lamps (1968, designed by C. Emanuele Ponzio, b, 1923). Challenging notices of “good design,” the anti-design movement took its visual cues from pop art’s use of bold colors and banal subject matter. Conceived as a group, the lamps look like oversized pills poured from a giant medicine bottle.

Pillola Lamps at MOMA
Illuminated Pillola Lamps Photographed at MOMA. Non-Illuminated Lamps Photographed at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in Manhattan.

Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: The Tongue Chair

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Tongue Chair
Tongue Chair on Display at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum (All Photos By Gail)

With its curvilinear form, the Tongue Chair (1967), designed by Pierre Paulin (1927 – 2009) demonstrates the innovative construction methods and synthetics that allowed Paulin to make highly sculptural upholstered furniture in the 1960s. His forms foretell those of plastic furniture in the latter half of the decade.

Tongue Chair
Tongue Chair Photographed as Part of a Modern Design Display at the Museum of Modern Art