Deco Delicious:
With my parents in town, I took it upon myself to take us all the the Art Deco retrospective at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Art Deco for me has always been some catch-all for “really cool shit from like the 20’s or 30’s with great geometry, shiny surfaces, and everything streamlined to look like a rocket. I also dug that, true to its birth at the dawn of the 20th century, Art Deco influenced mass market consumer good as much as it did fine art.
I can’t speak to the quality of curation (although both Suzan and my dad had problems with the exhibit being on two floors with no discernable flow between them) but the stuff is amazingly, breathtakingly, say-it-out-loud beautiful. Ignore the web site slide show (the link marked “exhibition preview”) as it features 19 slides of the least interesting pieces.
Some Art Deco artists I hadn’t heard of before that I’m going to look out for now…
+Sargent Johnson. A black San Franciscan who mined African forms to create amazing masks, sculptures and sketchings.
+The mathmatical precision and whimsy of Scotch architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
+Delicious pieces of Lalique Glass.
+My favorite. A clock from Dutch silversmith Jan Eisenloeffel that would have made Faberge hide his head in shame.
+ “Skyscraper Furniture” from Paul Frankl.
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6 Replies to “Deco Delicious:”
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When I was in Glasgow briefly (an afternoon, really) I had a chance to tour through exhibits dedicated to Mackintosh, which was the first I had heard of him. Beautiful, amazing stuff.
Of course, when I first saw it, I said that it was Frank Lloyd Wright. The Scot I was with looked at me like I was crazy, and knew it was Mackintosh but hadn’t heard of Wright. Yay for cultural differences.
When I was in Glasgow briefly (an afternoon, really) I had a chance to tour through exhibits dedicated to Mackintosh, which was the first I had heard of him. Beautiful, amazing stuff.
Of course, when I first saw it, I said that it was Frank Lloyd Wright. The Scot I was with looked at me like I was crazy, and knew it was Mackintosh but hadn’t heard of Wright. Yay for cultural differences.
I was glad I went, but frankly, it didn’t leave me very excited – you sound energized by the experience, and I was not. I did enjoy the product stuff at the very end, and like you I found the layout of the whole exhibit to be terrible – bad signage, strange flow, and annoying disconnection between the various parts of it.
I was glad I went, but frankly, it didn’t leave me very excited – you sound energized by the experience, and I was not. I did enjoy the product stuff at the very end, and like you I found the layout of the whole exhibit to be terrible – bad signage, strange flow, and annoying disconnection between the various parts of it.
Steve,
Agreed. The space was used horribly and the flow was nonexistant. The art itself, though, totally pumped me up.
Steve,
Agreed. The space was used horribly and the flow was nonexistant. The art itself, though, totally pumped me up.