Tag Archives: metropolitan museum of art

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Helen Lundeberg, Plant and Animal Analogies

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plant and animal analogies photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Helen Lundeberg  (1908 – 1999) organized a group of California artists, the only interwar Surrealist group in the United States. The “Post Surrealists,” as they were called, bypassed automatism and dream imagery in favor of provocative juxtapositions and careful compositions. Their manifesto (1934) , written by the artist and illustrated with this painting, Plant and Animal Analogies (1934 – 35) promoted an art that was “an ordered, pleasurable, introspective activity; an arrangement of emotions or ideas. The pictorial elements function only to create this subjective form; either emotional or mood-entity, or intellectual or idea-entity.”

Photographed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Naissance By Laurent Marcel Salinas

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naissance photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

In 1938, Egyptian-born Surrealist Laurent Marcel Salinas (1913 – 2010) signed the group manifesto Art et Liberté that denounced attempts to bind art to the political demands of the state. The signatories declared art a means to liberate society and the individual from the “artificial restrictions” of nationality, religion, and ethnicity. In Naissance (1944) Salinas’s choice of a disembodied and tentacled eye takes up a subject – the naked eyeball – frequently depicted by Surrealists in other locations as a surrogate for male castration anxieties. By the early 1950s, the Cairo group had begun to disband; following the coup in 1952 led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Salinas fled to Paris.

Photographed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Féminité Silk Taffeta Dress, House of Worth

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silk taffeta six zag dress photo by gail worley
Photos By Gail

This lustrous Taffeta Silk Dress (1940) with a zigzag motif was created by Mme. Jacques Worth, the wife of Charles Frederic Worth’s grandson Jacques. In the 20th century, the House of Worth continued its founder’s reinterpretation of historical styles in textile pattern and cut, and commissioned custom-made textiles from Lyonnaise manufacturers such as F. Ducharne Silk Company (1925 – 1940).

Continue reading Eye On Design: Féminité Silk Taffeta Dress, House of Worth →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: White Rectangles, Number 3 By Irene Rice Pereira

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white rectangles photo by gail worley Photo By Gail

White Rectangles, Number 3 (1939)  is filled with white, blue, gold, and rust-colored geometric shapes that produce a collage-like effect. Some of the forms, particularly those near the center, are defined with strong black outlines, while various patterns and textures articulate others. Artist Irene Pereira (1907 – 1971) used a number of different tools, including, possibly, the blunt end of her brush, to carve into the paint surface, creating troughs that enhance the paints physicality and, in repetition, suggest industrial production.

Pereira made this work while a member of the Design Laboratory, a cooperative school of industrial design established under the Works Progress Administration. The school advocated applying abstract design principles not only to painting and sculpture, but also to industrial design and even architecture.

Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.

Arts and Culture

Eye On Design: Kabuki Bomber Jacket by Kansai Yamamoto

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samurai bomber jacket by kansai yamamoto photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

Kansai Yamamoto (1944 – 2020)  established his business in Tokyo in 1971. His theatrical references and exuberant designs —  a Pop response to the West’s nineteenth century fascination with Japanese art —  quickly became a favorite with youthful subcultures in London and New York. Continue reading Eye On Design: Kabuki Bomber Jacket by Kansai Yamamoto →