Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies

Examines the films of the 1920s and 1930s which depict Art Deco and modern architecture, explains which features were adopted for film sets, and describes nine types of film decor

Arts & Photography

ALBRECHT, Donald

Architecture

Perennial Library/Harper & Row

Donald Albrecht is Guest Curator of the exhibition "World War II and the American Dream" at the National Building Museum.

World War II and the American Dream: How Wartime Building Changed

Crawford, Margaret

Mit Pr

World War II and the American Dream: How Wartime Building Changed a Nation

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Designing dreams: Modern architecture in the movies

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

THAMES HUDSON LTD

Explores the work and philosophy of renowned industrial designer Russel Wright, whose former home in the Hudson Valley―Manitoga―is now a national historic landmark. This catalogue was published by the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz in conjunction with the exhibition Russel Wright: The Nature of Design, curated by Donald Albrecht and Dianne Pierce, on display at the Dorsky from August 29, 2012 through March 10, 2013. The exhibition and catalogue explore the work and philosophy of renowned industrial designer Russel Wright, focusing on one of Wright’s most pervasive preoccupations, which also has much relevance today: the relationship of humankind with the natural world. While examining Wright’s entire career from the 1920s through the 1970s, the catalogue focuses on his work between 1945 and 1968, when Wright increasingly designed in experimental and innovative ways. A special component of the exhibition―Man and Nature in the Hudson Valley, organized by Kerry Dean Carso―provides a historical context for Russel Wright’s designs and his interest in natural forms. The fully illustrated catalogue features essays by co-curators Donald Albrecht and Dianne Pierce and by Kerry Dean Carso. The catalogue also includes images and text from a slide talk developed in the 1960s by Russel Wright to promote his philosophy of modern living and the importance of maintaining a close relationship to nature.

Russel Wright: The Nature of Design (Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art)

Pierce, Dianne

History & Criticism

Distribution Partners

The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention

Charles and Ray Eames gave shape to America's 20th century. From the 1940s to the late 1970s, the Los Angeles-based husband-and-wife team designed furniture, buildings, toys, films, graphics, exhibitions, and books that aimed to improve society--not only functionally, but culturally and intellectually as well. This title includes six generously illustrated essays that examine the couple's projects in the contexts of science, corporate patronage, politics, and modern design. 200 illustration, 150 in full color.

Harry N. Abrams

Before there was Martha Stewart, there was Russel Wright (1904-1976), the great mid-century modern American designer who pioneered the concept of "easier living" for the middle class, a uniquely American lifestyle that was gracious but contemporary and informal. Yet despite Wright's enormous influence, there has been no major survey of his work until now. 
This handsome volume-which accompanies an exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City-showcases more than 125 of Wright's best designs for inexpensive, mass-produced dinnerware, textiles, and furniture. As the flurry of Wright auction activity on Ebay shows, there is a thriving collectors' market for his designs. This thorough interpretation of his achievement is eagerly anticipated. 125 illustrations, 65 in full color, 176 pages, 71/2 x 10"

Russel Wright: Creating American Lifestyle

Schonfeld, Robert

Thompson, Paul Warwick

The avant-garde decades of Steuben Glass coincided with America's own heady days of modernism in the middle years of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1930s, the company sought to to marry art and industry, function and beauty, glass and glamour, aligning its aesthetic with the progressive art and design sensibilities of the time. This moment also linked design to the era's ultimate modern metropolis, New York City. Steuben's new glass, designed in Manhattan, was fashioned in a range of styles, its repertoire rendered modern by the radical clarity of the company's revolutionary crystal. Steuben's iconic objects from this period unequivocally achieved their early promise to be "as typical of our modern life as the skyscraper or the airplane."

Glass and Glamour

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts & Hobbies

Abrams

Indisputably the grande dame of modern design, Andrée Putman burst onto the scene twenty-five years ago with the graphic, black-and-white interiors of the Morgans Hotel in New York. Since then Putman has gone on to redefine design for a diverse group of prestigious clients, including Karl Lagerfeld, the French Ministry of Culture, and the interior of the supersonic Concorde. Projects since 1980 range from museum interiors, a jewelry line for Christofle, private residences for global trendsetters, and a film set for Peter Greenaway. Putman’s work is the epitome of chic, incorporating cashmere and leather with affordable ceramic tiles and industrial metals for interiors that speak volumes for Putman’s unmistakable style of quiet luxury. The same attention to detail is given to a simple necklace as to furniture collections, grand offices, and entire spa hotels. Putman is also credited for the revival of once-forgotten early modernist designers, such as Eileen Gray, Robert Mallet-Stevens, and Jean-Michel Frank, whose designs she put back into production and used in her famous interiors. The first comprehensive monograph on Putman’s essential designs in 20 years, Andrée Putman Complete Works will be an indispensable road map of style and elegance to all lovers of modern design.

Andree Putman: Complete Works

Rizzoli

The definitive book on the legendary photographer's life in New York City, with many never-before-seen images and reminiscences by his closest friends and confidants. From the 1930s, when he helped revolutionize fashion journalism, through the 1960s, when he launched headlong into the Pop art era, London-based photographer Cecil Beaton brought to New York City his own perspective--aristocratic, sexually ambiguous, and theatrical. At the same time, New York offered Beaton innumerable opportunities to reinvent himself and his career. Cecil Beaton: The New York Years features sketches, costumes, set designs, previously unpublished letters, and over 220 photographs and drawings, many in color and never seen before. This volume documents Beaton's most influential relationships with quintessential figures of the New York art scene, including Greta Garbo, his female confidant and muse, and Andy Warhol. Richly illustrated, Cecil Beaton is the definitive portfolio chronicling Beaton's stunning career in fashion, portraiture, and the performing arts. The book will be divided into five parts: Beaton in Vogue: Beaton's photography for Condé Nast's Vogue in the 1930s hastened the decline of fashion illustration in favor of today's emphasis on photography. Beaton himself became a celebrity photographer, as famous as his subjects, in the later mold of Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz. Beaton and the Stage: After World War II, Beaton appeared on the New York stage as an actor, and he also designed sets and costumes for such musicals as My Fair Lady and Coco and operas Vanessa and La Traviata, both at the Metropolitan Opera. Beaton on New York: Beaton produced many illustrated books on New York City and his tell-all diaries detailed his life among the city's best-known figures. Beaton was also commissioned to produce innumerable photographs of New Yorkers, from Truman Capote to Tom Wolfe. Beaton on Garbo: Greta Garbo was Beaton's closest female friend She was also his muse, and his photographs captured her in many different scenarios and moods from the mid-1940s, when she ended her Hollywood career and permanently moved to New York. Beaton on Warhol: In 1968, Beaton was advised to photograph a group of young New Yorkers, the most famous of which was Andy Warhol and his Factory. In effect, this photo shoot charted the passing of the torch from Beaton to Warhol, two figures who defined their era's concepts of popular culture, celebrity, and sexual mores.

Cecil Beaton: The New York Years

Individual Artists

Skira/Rizzoli

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