Image courtesy of Zanotta Design.

Two members of the Design Arts Society explore the same work of art from different perspectives. Here is Part Two—

If you had to select a single symbol that best represents the world of agriculture, what would it be?  That would definitely be a challenge.  Once you had an image in mind, could you then take that image and design a piece of furniture with it—something perfectly utilitarian and practical, but at the same time sleek and sculptural?  That would be the greater challenge.  Fortunately, two brothers from Italy accepted that challenge in the 1950s and created what is today one of the world’s most iconic and timeless furniture pieces.

The Mezzadro (sharecropper) stool, designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, premiered in 1957 but did not go into full production until thirteen years later in 1970.  This elegantly simple stool married a standard metal tractor seat and bicycle wing nut with a strip steel spring stem and a cross base of natural beech wood.  It was all about editing, editing, editing—eliminating anything that was not absolutely necessary and getting down to the simple basics of what a stool needed to be and could be.   Simple, yes, but plain, definitely not!

While the brothers succeeded in having a minimal number of principle parts (4) and materials (2), they still wanted to take this visually quirky yet comfortable stool to another design level.  Mezzadro needed to have an unexpected sense of style and, I think, glamour.  Could those elements be combined with the basic function and material components and allow the stool to transition from ordinary to sublime?  The answer is yes, and I think the brothers did it brilliantly.  It was all about the finishes.

First, they chose to finish the humble metal tractor seat in a shiny colored lacquer.  The tractor seat of the Mezzadro stool in the Design Arts collection of the IMA is finished in a glossy red lacquer. That color lends the seat a boldness and dynamism that belies its simple, utilitarian form (this is the same red you remember from your youth when you received the coveted Radio Flyer “little red wagon” for your birthday).  The brothers then added the surprise element of “luxe” to their creation by taking the ordinary flexible steel bow and coating its plain steel in polished chrome.  To me, the chromed steel is the piece de resistance—the element that transcends practicality and puts the stool in an entirely new category. It’s furniture as fashion! The red seat is now the equivalent of fellow countryman, Valentino, and his spectacular red couture gowns (from the same time period) and the chromed steel support is the glimmering necklace of diamonds at the model’s throat. The mirroring effect and the sparkle of the flexing chromed steel bow also add a dimensional twist, moving the overall stool into the realm of functional sculpture.  Last, and not to be overlooked, is the natural beech “foot” that anchors all of the above.  Like the other components the foot is so much more than just balance and support.

Valentino Haute Couture Red silk crêpe dress, fall 1965. Image courtesy of Valentino and vogue.com

Keeping the wood as light as possible allows for the maximum material contrasts between the red seat and the chromed steel.  The subtle graining also adds a natural pattern that complements the highly machined parts.   It is the embodiment and fulfillment of Mies van der Rohe’s classic statement: “Less is More.”

As a designer, I feel the Mezzadro is one of those great accent pieces that can totally transform a room.  Six of these around a rustic wood French farm table, a classic late 19^th century American round oak pedestal table or a spartan Shaker cherry or maple table would create a memorable dining experience.  That is the beauty of this stool.  It works well with a diverse number of more traditional and antique furnishings and yet it feels perfectly at home in a more high-tech and minimalist environment.  The Mezzadro  is where agrian meets urban, and the rest is history.

Filed under: Design, The Collection

Image courtesy of Zanotta Design.

Two members of the Design Arts Society at the IMA explore different facets of a recently acquired work in the IMA’s collection. Here is Part One:  

Through the doors of Piazza Castello, 27 lay the magical wonderland that is the studio of Achille Castiglioni (1918-2002).  It is here that the maestro designed his oeuvre that would become the hallmark of the Italian modernist movement of the 1950s. In April of 2011, I had the distinct pleasure to visit the studio and be escorted through by Achille’s daughter and wife.  His zest for life and child-like fascination with found objects is in exuberant abundance…it’s as if he has just stepped out for an espresso and gelato only to return to continue working on  and tinkering with a new idea with his brothers Livio (1911-1979) and Pier Giacomo (1913-1968).

Amongst the myriad of prototypes, drawings, and ephemera cluttering the space was an object that has intrigued me since the day I first experienced it, the Mezzadro stool designed in 1957 by Achille and Pier Giacomo and put into production by Zanotta in 1970.  Constructed of a mass-produced tractor seat, enameled and chrome-plated steel and a beech wood foot rest, the stool, translated “sharecropper,” is a direct descendant of Marcel Duchamp’s notion of the “ready-made.”  The brothers incorporated a well-known and perhaps “invisible” archetypal element because of its common place presence, here the tractor seat, and gave it new life by placing it in an expressively compelling context.  In other words, form follows emotion and concept in addition to function.

As the Italian post-World War II economy began to strengthen, it was this conceptual groundwork that the Castiglioni brothers reveled in. The stool’s first prototype was introduced at the 1954 X. Milan Triennial in the industrial design section entitled “Art and Production.” Off the shelf items (a tractor seat and bicycle wing nut) were combined with a flat bar of steel to provide a springy seating experience similar to that of a typical tractor riding through a bumpy field. The final element, the beech foot rest, provides stability.  These mere four pieces make up the essence of a seating solution.  Nothing extraneous in the minds of the brothers was necessary to add meaning or additional functionality to their archetypal form.  Mezzadro in its final form was presented at “Colori e forme nella casa d’oggi” at Villa Olmo in Como, Italy in 1957.  It wasn’t until thirteen years later in 1970 that the stool was introduced at the Milan furniture fair by Zanotta because of its far-reaching concept and form.

Castiglioni’s “sharecropper” is truly an icon of mid-century Italian industrial design.  Its whimsicality, Dadaist references and elemental assembly of found objects embodies the studio’s timeless design philosophy, impacting every object that the brothers developed.  MAGNIFICO!

Filed under: Design, The Collection

Face-mounting permanently marries the photograph to the glazing with an interface of synthetic adhesive. Usually, a rigid backing material is similarly adhered to the verso of the photograph, creating a unified package that encases the work completely, supplying strength, support, and unfettered edges. There are visual advantages to this system that are very appealing to artists. With face-mounting, the colors of the photograph appear saturated and lush, and the images are appreciated by viewers as “crystal clear.” As air between a photograph and the glazing has been eliminated, there are no issues of multiple light-reflecting surfaces that can confuse the clear perception of the image. The absence of air can also be considered chemically beneficial to a photograph, both in relation to traditional gelatin emulsions with their cyan, yellow, and magenta dyes and the pigments and dyes deposited in digital printing. The oxygen component of the air has a destabilizing effect on organic molecules, and this includes cellulose (paper) proteins (gelatin) and some classes of colorants. In addition, humid air will cause the damaging reactions to proceed at an accelerated rate. Finally, face-mounted photographs are prevented from distorting, tearing, or suffering from casual accidents that would ordinarily mar its surface; it will never be directly handled again.

Face-Mounted photograph “Yellow Hallway” by James Casebere, 2001 (IMA2003.78). This is one of the earliest face-mounted photographs to enter the IMA collection. It has been shown in our galleries with some regularity, and it remains in excellent condition.

With these virtues in mind, it seems that the conservation community should welcome face-mounting with open arms. However, conservators are a cautious folk, and they never fully trust innovations that have not been observed and judged over significant periods of time. Their first concern is the obvious drawback of having a glazing material that cannot be removed. If the acrylic sheeting becomes scratched or clouded, it cannot simply be replaced – these problems become a permanent part of the artwork, compromising the prized aesthetic qualities expected from face-mounted images. The “protective” nature of glazing the front of the artwork is tempered by the fact that it is now also the aspect of highest vulnerability and it must be zealously protected from harm.

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Filed under: Conservation, Contemporary, Photography, The Collection

Frank Weston Benson, “Sunlight,” 1909. Indianapolis Museum of Art, John Herron Fund.

The return of Frank Weston Benson’s Sunlight to the IMA’s American galleries will provide welcome warmth to visitors weary of the winter chill. Shining brightly among the museum’s collection of American Impressionism, Benson’s painting of a female figure standing in front of a crisp, blue sky returns from a loan to the exhibition Impressionist Summers: Frank W. Benson’s North Haven at the Farnsworth Art Museum (FAM) in Rockland, Maine. A handsome catalogue produced by FAM and Skira-Rizzoli accompanied the exhibition, and Sunlight starred prominently by gracing the front cover.

Curated by Faith Andrews Bedford, Impressionist Summers centers on work Frank Benson produced at “Wooster Farm,” an eighteenth-century North Haven farmhouse that served as the artist’s family getaway. By the first summer there in 1901, Benson’s career hallmarks had already been ascertained. A well-known and financially successful artist, co-founder of the Impressionist group “The Ten,” and co-director of Boston’s Museum School, Benson sought a country escape from his busy city life. Maine’s Penobscot Bay provided relaxation and a chance for artistic experimentation. Impressionist paintings like Sunlight, today arguably the most popular of Benson’s work, stemmed from this newfound freedom.

Purchasing Wooster Farm in 1906 allowed the Bensons to convert the barn into a light-filled studio, where the artist completed light-spackled paintings of his family’s active, outdoor lifestyle. While the wispy, dazzling brushstrokes of Sunlight may suggest quickly-captured plein-air painting, Benson carefully staged each composition using his wife and daughters as patient models. The noticeable absence of Benson’s son George in these family paintings fosters discussion around the decorative use of the female figures; however, Faith Andrews Bedford frankly attributes George’s absence to the boy’s inability to sit still. Today, the barnyard studio where Benson finished his outdoor paintings remains intact even though the house has been privately owned since 1950, reminding visitors of Benson’s significance to the area.

Wooster Farm today. North Haven, Maine.

At the Farnsworth and in the catalogue pages, Sunlight joined three closely-related works painted in the summer of 1909. The monumental Summer, now in the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art, was executed first and inspired the three smaller paintings. Summer shows Benson’s daughters Eleanor and Elisabeth and their two friends Anna Hathaway and Margaret Strong perched on Lookout Hill, a favorite site near Wooster Farm and the same hilltop location as in Sunlight.  Eleanor stands in the same pose as the IMA’s Sunlight: her left hand shielding the sun’s bright light as she surveys the bay.

Frank Weston Benson, “Summer,” 1909. Bequest of Isaac C. Bates. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.

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Filed under: The Collection

Kenneth Miller Adams, “Taos Indian,” 1965. Gift of Garo Antreasian. 1994.388

In 1965, Garo Antreasian printed Taos Indian, a lithograph by Kenneth Miller Adams in the IMA’s print collection. In an interview with the IMA, Antreasian recalled the process, his brief encounter with Adams, and the impact the Great Depression had on the printing abilities of Adams and his contemporaries.

Kenneth Miller Adams was a painter and the last member of the Taos Society of Artists, elected in 1926. He moved to Taos in 1924 and was often described as the artist with the closest relationship to the city’s inhabitants. He worked there as an artist until 1938, when he moved to Albuquerque to teach at the University of New Mexico. Adams continued teaching until his retirement in 1963, two years before the creation of Taos Indian, but he remained involved and lived across the street from the university until his death in 1966. It was during his retirement, in 1965, that Adams made Taos Indian with Antreasian.

Garo Antreasian is an Indianapolis native who taught at the Herron Institute before moving to Los Angeles to open the Tamarind Lithography Workshop (now the Tamarind Institute) with Clinton Adams in 1960. In 1964, Antreasian arrived at the University of New Mexico to develop a teaching program, mostly for graduate students, with Clinton Adams, who was dean of the College of Arts by that time. The art department at the University of New Mexico was an important one in the 1950s and ‘60s. It brought in well-known American artists to lecture and demonstrate work, including local artists. It was during such instruction that Antreasian worked with Kenneth Adams to print Taos Indian.

It was a brief collaboration. Adams already knew how to create lithographs, so the process was a smooth one. One of the students delivered the stone to his studio where he completed the drawing and sent it back to the university where Antreasian printed it. Their primary interaction was when Adams came to the classroom to see the proof. He liked it, had some small corrections, and Antreasian “pulled the edition.”

Anteasian explained, “in the making of lithographs, the ‘collaborative effort,’ (depending on the personality of the artist and the printer, how they get along, and how they communicate their thoughts together) is a very sensitive thing. If one admires one and the other doesn’t, it goes in fits and starts before the collaboration produces something good. This interaction between me and Kenneth was very smooth and somewhat impersonal because both of us knew what we were doing and trusted one another.”

Adams knew what he was doing, in part, because of the effects of the great Depression on the art economy. In her book, Pioneer Artists of Taos (published, interestingly, in 1955, just as the Post WWII Print Renaissance was gathering steam), Lauren Bickerstaff wrote, “Graphics were the artists’ answer to the Depression.” Bickerstaff describes the American regional artists’ response to an economic period quite different from the one of the 1950s and ‘60s.

As the economy declined in the 1930s, many fine artists sought refuge in commercial art. Printmaking allowed artists to make multiple copies of a single subject and sell them at affordable prices to a wider audience. The organization Associated American Artists sold inexpensive prints by a number of famous American artists, such as Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, to middle income audiences. Many of the pioneer artists of Taos found print media equally intriguing and produced stunning prints, not only during the Depression for commercial purposes, but also throughout their artistic careers.

Adams was introduced to lithography by Swedish American artist Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt in 1932, three years after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. Nordfeldt immigrated to Chicago with his family in 1891 but returned to Europe for some time to continue his studies in art. He learned Japanese woodblock printing in England (an example of which is in the IMA’s collection) before returning to the United States and moving to Santa Fe. Nordfeldt was a Taos Society artist when Adams was inducted and later lent Adams his lithography tools to learn the medium, which, as Antreasian pointed out, Adams mastered. His prints of the 1930s won multiple awards, and one, Dona Ascensione, was the frontispiece in Harper’s Magazine in 1933.

Adams represents many of the Taos artists who became familiar with printmaking because of the Depression. In a time when artists struggled to find work, the medium was a different and lucrative outlet for their creativity and had a lasting effect on their art. Taos Indian represents not only Adams’s reputation for striking depictions of Taos natives, but also the impact one of the nation’s most difficult eras had on a resilient artist and his later work.

Filed under: Art, The Collection