The Curated Object

Exhibitions Los Angeles. Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design. The MAK Center, Los Angeles. The Curated Object

Esther McCoy at her drafting board, mid-1940s.

Courtesy of Esther McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian

Institution.

 

Esther McCoy at work, Santa Monica, California, c. 1985. Courtesy of Esther

McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

 

Pier at Santa Monica, California, September 5, 1949. Esther McCoy (foreground)

with husband Berkeley Tobey, Vera Dreiser (left) and Helen Dreiser. Courtesy of

Theodore Dreiser Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of

Pennsylvania.

 

Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture
 

September 28, 2011 - January 29, 2012

 (West Hollywood) The MAK Center celebrates writer and historian Esther McCoy, the pre-eminent voice of 20th century California architecture: Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design, the first exhibition to present the life and work of Esther McCoy (1904-1989), recognizes an American original and affirms her unassailable role as a key figure in American modernism. Co-curated by MAK Center director Kimberli Meyer and writer Susan Morgan, Sympathetic Seeing will be on view from September 28, 2011 - January 8, 2012, with a public opening reception on Tuesday, September 27 from 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time, the Getty-organized initiative that brings together more than 60 Southern California cultural institutions to explore the birth of the Los Angeles art scene.

 

"No one can write about architecture in Southern California without acknowledging her as the mother of us all," declared Reyner Banham. In 1945, McCoy's formidable career was launched with the publication of "Schindler, Space Architect." Now, the Schindler House hosts the first Esther McCoy exhibition, a resonant homecoming, a celebration of McCoy's work and the rich legacy of California architecture.

Esther McCoy, born in Arkansas and raised in Kansas, landed in Greenwich Village during the 1920s where she pursued her vocation as a writer and apprenticed with novelist Theodore Dreiser. In 1932, she moved to Los Angeles and wrote for literary journals, popular magazines, and progressive broadsheets. After completing a wartime stint in Douglas Aircraft's drafting department, she went to work as a draftsperson for R.M. Schindler. By 1945, McCoy's attentive writing had turned significantly to architecture.

For more than 40 years, McCoy's work articulated the concepts and vibrant character of West Coast modernism. Her writing appeared regularly in the Los Angeles Times, Arts & Architecture, Zodiac, and Architectural Forum. In 1960, McCoy published Five California Architects, her groundbreaking book that remains a seminal volume on California architecture. As Robert Winter and David Gebhard noted in A Guide to Architecture in Southern California (1965): "Our present awareness of Southern California architectural heritage has been due to a one-woman crusade on the part of the critic and historian, Esther McCoy."

McCoy worked variously as an author, editorial scout, lecturer, and exhibition curator. Among her exhibitions, Felix Candela (1957) and Juan O'Gorman (1964) introduced major Mexican architects to North American audiences. Throughout Arts & Architecture's legendary Case Study House program, she chronicled mid-century modernism as it was being created. McCoy's final essay, commissioned for the exhibition Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses (MOCA, Los Angeles), was published one month before her death in 1989.

Exhibition co-curators Susan Morgan and Kimberli Meyer have worked closely with the Esther McCoy papers--an invaluable primary source comprised of thousands of documents and photographs--housed at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art.

Sympathetic Seeing will highlight--through photographs, drawings, texts, videos, and audio interviews--the extraordinary range and importance of McCoy's work: starting in the 1930s and her activist journalism focusing on fair labor practices and Los Angeles slum clearances; the Arts & Architecture years and the rise of innovative domestic architecture; her campaign to save Irving Gill's 1916 Dodge House; and her always incisive stories that deliver an irresistibly compelling, first-hand view of American modernism.

For more information please visit: The MAK Center 

Exhibitions London. Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–90. The V & A. The Curated Object

'Casablanca', sideboard, Ettore Sottsass, made by Memphis, 1981. Museum no. W.14-1990

 

Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990

September 24, 2011 - January 8, 2012 

The ideas of Postmodernism emerged first in architecture. While the Modernist slogan had been 'less is more', architects like Robert Venturi, Michael Graves and Aldo Rossi insisted that 'less is a bore'. They took a new interest in buildings from the past, and from popular phenomena such as highway strip malls. Though few of these early Postmodern buildings were actually constructed, the ideas forwarded by this "paper architecture" became hugely influential on everything from furniture to graphics.

 The exhibition will also look at the popular side of Postmodernism, especially the music of the time: raves, New Wave, Hip-hop and graffiti art. With the help of the new design medium of the pop-promo video, the new Postmodern celebrities-like Grace Jones, Boy George and Madonna-became famous, most of all, for being famous. Their relationship to the media was more self-conscious, more ironic, and more artfully designed than the popular culture icons of any previous period.
 
The exhibition ends on a spectacular note, with a section devoted to the boom years of the 1980s, in London and New York, across Europe, and in East Asia, Latin America and Africa. Wherever you went, speed, excess, and fame were the key words of the moment. Design was big business. Now it was not just architects who thought that More was More. (description by the V&A)

For more information please visit: The V & A

Exhibitions London. Love, Magic and Power. The Victoria & Albert Museum. The Curated Object: International Decorative Arts Exhibitions

Carved wooden Victorian marionette with brooch at her throat, Tiller family marionette company, England, 1870 - 1900, Museum no. S.302-1999

Love, Magic and Power
10 September 2011 - 8th January 2012

Whether priceless family heirlooms, or the most modern of costume creations, almost everyone has a piece of jewellery that is precious in a personal sense. This exhibition will examine the human fascination with jewellery, tracing its importance and symbolism from ancient times to the present day. The objects included will showcase jewellery's relationship with every aspect of the arts, including portraiture, photographs, moving images, literary quotations and music. The type and range of jewellery will be vast, placing the humblest of wedding rings alongside the love tokens of kings and queens.

For more information please visit: The Victoria & Albert Museum

-Joanne Molina