François Arnal (1924 – 2012) was a multidisciplinary French artist who was primarily known as a painter and sculptor. In 1968 he set up Atelier A (Workshop A) to publicize the works of furniture designers. I recently popped into art furniture gallery Demisch Denant on West 12th Street and was thrilled to find that they had two of Arnal’s most iconic pieces on display! Let’s take a closer look.
Alvin Loving (1935 – 2005) once described geometric shape as “a sort of mundane form that could be very, very dull unless a great deal was done with it.” For him, however, geometry ultimately became an arena in which to develop a dramatic color sensibility. Juxtaposing neon-bright pigments, in Septehedron 34 (1970) he created the illusion that the painting’s forms recede or advance relative to one another. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Alvin Loving, Septehedron 34→
Sculptor Duane Hanson (1925 – 1996) often identified the figures in his artworks by their occupation or social roles, rather than their names. His photorealistic sculptural portraits — cast from life, painted and dressed in clothes corresponding to their roles — are thus transformed into ethnographic types. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Duane Hanson, Housewife→
In 1970, Life magazine invited Rudi Gernreich (1922 – 1985) to envision what people would wear a decade in the future. He extended his prediction to the year 2000, illustrating men and women in matching ensembles with heads either shaved or wigged. Unlike other contemporaneous unisex styles, Gernreich’s designs did not use menswear as a baseline for women’s garments. “Women will wear pants and men will wear skits interchangeably,” he predicted. “The aesthetics of fashion are going to involve the body itself. We will train the body to grown beautifully rather than cover it to produce beauty.” Continue reading Eye On Design: Unisex Jumpsuit By Rudi Gernreich→
