Wow, has it been a month since the last post? Apologies for the radio silence over here--we are closing in on the final weeks before the opening of our summer exhibitions (June 20th for members, June 21 for the public!) and all of the troops have been rallying to perfect install and content before our guests arrive! I had to return to the blog today to pay tribute to Massimo Vignelli, who passed away in New York yesterday at the age of 83. Vignelli was a design visionary, executing some of the most iconic graphic programs of the 1960s and 1970s, and renowned especially for promulgating the International Typographic Style through his many designs for advertising, corporate identity, and packaging. With his company Unimark, and later Vignelli Associates, he launched graphic identity systems for Knoll (1967), American Airlines (1967), and the New York City Transit Authority (1970), as well as the ...
Tagged: Dot Zero, Graphic Design, Massimo Vignelli, Shelley Selim
Read MoreWe're big vinyl connoisseurs here at the Art Museum. One of us collects albums with covers featuring mid-century furniture (like this one!). Another spent a weekend scouring every record store in Stockholm for a Swedish pressing of Lee Hazlewood's Cowboy in Sweden, to no avail. So it's no surprise that we are pretty pumped for Record Store Day tomorrow, an annual nationwide event--held on the third Saturday of April--for which record stores feature limited edition pressings and exclusive releases from hundreds of musicians, new and old. Record collecting has experienced a surge in recent years, particularly for my generation. If we want to get diagnostic, it all could be chalked up to a cultural response to the immateriality of music (and more broadly, our lives in general); a longing for the days past when music--in its vinyl manifestation--was tangible, permanent, and thus held more personal value. But there's also that big, ...
Tagged: Album Art, Andy Warhol, Ben Shahn, Graphic Design, Painting, Shelley Selim
Read MoreCRANBROOK SIGHTING: INSIDE THE VAULT Sol-Air Canvas Chaise Lounge, c. 1950 Pipsan Saarinen Swanson and J. Robert F. Swanson for Swanson and Associates Iron, rope, and canvas 34 x 23 x 24 in. (86.4 x 58.4 x 61 cm) Transfered from the Cranbrook Academy of Art If it were up to me, every month would be Women's History Month, but alas for the foreseeable future it is *officially* delegated to March in the United States, and today is our last chance to celebrate! How auspicious that March 31 also happens to be the birthday of Pipsan (born Eva Lisa) Saarinen Swanson, designer of furniture, interiors, fashion, and textiles, and younger sister of one of the most recognizable names in modern architecture, Eero Saarinen. Pipsan's father Eliel was of course the architect of the Cranbrook Campus and President of the Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1932-1946, but before being lured to Bloomfield Hills by Cranbrook founder George ...
Tagged: Eero Saarinen, Eliel Saarinen, Furniture, Pipsan Saarinen, Robert F. Swanson, Shelley Selim
Read MoreJohn Cage Listens to John Cage, 1974. Offset lithograph poster designed by Michael McCoy, with photography by Frances Greenberg. Printed at Cranbrook Press. (c) Michael McCoy. Photo courtesy Stephen Milanowski.In early April of 1974, artist-composer John Cage traveled to Cranbrook to celebrate the opening of Music–Mushrooms–Manuscripts at the Art Museum, an exhibition of his drawings, photographs, books, poems, prints, and sound recordings. Featured works included his 1969 series of Plexigrams, Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, and the Mushroom Book, both printed by Irwin Hollander (1973-1975 head of the Cranbrook Academy of Art Printmaking department). On the evening of April 12, Cage attended a concert of his own music—aptly titled “John Cage Listens to John Cage”—performed by local musicians as well as students from the Cranbrook Upper School and neighboring Andover and Seaholm high schools. The program featured a 35-piece ensemble of brass, string, woodwind, and non-pitched percussion instruments for ...
Tagged: Chuck Baughman, Doug Huston, Graphic Design, John Cage, Michael McCoy, Prints, Shelley Selim, Stephen Milanowski, Steve Tennent
Read MoreCranbrook Sighting # 11 Sighter: Shelley Selim Sighted: Cranbrook Art Museum and Library Location: the Internet Date: March 10, 2014The Internet Archive continues to be a hardy source of endearment for me, and this weekend I found myself traipsing through a favorite district of its offerings--Prelinger's backlog of mid-century Populuxe videos. The term "Populuxe" was coined by cultural and design historian Thomas Hine for his 1986 book of the same name, which analyzed the hyper-consumerism that swept the United States in the 1950s and '60s. Product styling--an extension of a collective fervor for material abundance and variety--became a wellspring of national pride during the Cold War, particularly as a means of counter-defining American capitalist prosperity against the Soviet Union's Communist economy. Many "Populuxe" promotional films were produced in the mid-century, and American Look, sponsored by General Motors' Chevrolet Division, is a champion of its genre. It has it all: bright colors (in the '50s, practically ...
Tagged: Advertisements, Film, Harry Bertoia, Populuxe, Shelley Selim
Read MoreCRANBROOK SIGHTINGS: CRANBROOK HOUSE Albert Herter The Great Crusade 1920 Cotton, wool, and silk tapestry Manufactured by the Herter Looms, Inc., New York, New York 156 x 120 inches Gift of George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth A day late but with no less affection, we here at the Cranbrook Art Museum wish a very happy birthday to Albert Herter, born on March 2, 1871. The son of Christian Herter, one half of New York's famed Herter Brothers design and decorating firm, Albert went on to become a successful artist and decorator in his own right. Over his lengthy career he painted portraits of the Bouviers, executed many private and civic murals in the United States and Europe, opened and decorated an exclusive Montecito hotel for America's elite, and in 1908 founded the Herter Looms weaving company. Although Herter Looms manufactured a variety of textiles for home furnishings, it is perhaps best known for its output of revivalist ...
Tagged: Albert Herter, Arts and Crafts Movement, Cranbrook House, Gerhardt Knodel, Shelley Selim, Textiles
Read MoreCRANBROOK SIGHTINGS: INSIDE THE VAULT Catherine Murphy Nighttime Self-Portrait 1985 Oil on canvas 16 ¾ x 16 1/8 inches Gift of Rose M. Shuey, from the Collection of Dr. John and Rose M. Shuey Image © Catherine Murphy From this gusty tundra of unrelenting frigidity (-20 degrees with windchill today!), we here at Cranbrook Art Museum would like to extend our warmest and most heartfelt congratulations to Catherine Murphy, the 2013 winner of the Robert De Niro, Sr., Prize, awarded to one outstanding mid-career artist each year. Since the 1960s, Murphy’s representational paintings have been widely exhibited and prolifically produced, but the artist’s talent for nuanced channels of perception remains at times underappreciated.Catherine Murphy, Nighttime Self-Portrait, 1985Cranbrook Art Musum holds Murphy’s Nighttime Self-Portrait (1985) in its permanent collection, acquired as part of a generous gift of contemporary paintings and sculpture from the Collection of Dr. John and Rose M. Shuey in 2001. The Shueys were principally drawn to ...
Tagged: Catherine Murphy, Painting, Shelley Selim
Read MoreCRANBROOK SIGHTINGS: INSIDE THE VAULT Shiro Ikegawa Valentine’s Day at Cranbrook Suite of eighteen prints Photo-Lithography and serigraphy three-color separation relief Photography and lithography by David W. Wharton and Michael D. Powe Printed at Cranbrook Academy of Art All photos of Valentine's Day at Cranbrook (c) Estate of Shiro Ikegawa What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than by taking a leisurely stroll around the Cranbrook campus in sub-zero temperatures, photographing ice formations and footprints in the snow? In 1977, artist Shiro Ikegawa (1933–2009) did just that, commemorating one of America’s most beloved and reviled holidays with a suite of eighteen photo-lithographs and silk-screened prints. Cranbrook Academy of Art’s printmaking department invited Ikegawa for a two week visit, during which time he led critiques and became an acting art director of sorts, supervising students as they executed his works on the lithographic press. The three images below were published in a Birmingham-Bloomfield Eccentric article about Ikegawa’s visit. Photos by ...
Tagged: Prints, Shelley Selim, Shiro Ikegawa
Read MoreCRANBROOK SIGHTING #9 Sighter: Shelley Selim Sighted: Eliel Saarinen, Helsinki Central Railway Station Location: Helsinki, Finland Date: July 4, 2012 There was a two week block of last summer when at any given moment I could be found clapping, beaming, and prancing with merriment; arms open to our joyous earth’s embrace. No, I hadn’t finally completed my master’s degree (that would come later—with commensurate celebrating in its own right), but rather had landed on Nordic soil, where I completed the remainder of my graduate coursework studying Scandinavian design amidst the incredible apples and countrysides of Sweden and Finland. How befitting that on our American day of independence, I disembarked in Finland, a country that was also shaped by the struggle for its own autonomy (a struggle which persisted for centuries longer than that of the Tories and the Patriots, I might add). That morning I launched my tour-laden itinerary with a walk to the hub of ...
Tagged: Architecture, Eliel Saarinen, Helsinki, Helsinki Central Railway Station, Helsinki, Finland, Shelley Selim
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