In this monthly design review: German female artists at the Bauhaus school, Contemporary French interiors, 1960s Miami hotels, African road-trip photography, maverick British architecture and long-gone structures of the American south.
Roselyne Titaud: VISITES (2014)
Roselyn Titaud, a French photographer based in Berlin, photographs European interiors devoid of people and frozen in time. In one of the essays accompanying the plates, titled “At Home,“ the German art critic Christina Landbrecht writes: “Titaud's interiors look predominantly as if they were from another time. Even more than this, though, they appear as spaces that present themselves as “quasi-finished places,“ or as spaces that have been furnished over time. They have arrived at a point where it's all there and it's barely necessary to change a thing.“
To see more photos from the book, alongside other work, visit Titaud‘s website
To purchase the book go to Amazon Germany or Amazon France.
BAUHAUS WOMEN: Art, Handicraft, Design - by Ulrike Mueller (2009)
The art historian Ulrike Mueller sets about discovering the under-documented history of the Bauhaus Women - students, teachers and wives at the famous Bauhaus school in Germany. Though the school and its administration touted progressive ideas of gender equality from its founding, the reality on the ground proved much more challenging for women: antiquated concepts about craft and femininity, discriminating bureaucracy and tensions within the school restricted women artists' careers and trivialized their contribution to the Bauhaus legacy. This book lists the women artists of the Bauhaus with a short chapter on each, accompanied with great photos, samples of their work and essays on the various workshops they worked in.
To learn more about the women artists of the Bauhaus, visit these links:
To purchase the book go to Amazon or indiebound.org
MORRIS LAPIDUS: The Architecture of Joy (2010)
Morris Lapidus was an architect known for some of South Florida's gaudiest, glitziest and most glamorous hotels in the 1950s and 60s. “I wanted people to walk in and drop dead,“ he said of his celebrated hotel lobbies. Though drided in their time, Lapidus“ innovations in the use of lighting, fabric and color have become staples of American design. This book, written by his collaborator and keeper of his archives, Deborah Desilets, presents the highlights of Lapidus’s career, from seductive modern shops and private residences to iconic hotels and residential towers in New York, Miami Beach, the Caribbean, and beyond.
To learn more about Morris Lapidus, see the websites learningfrommiami.org and the essay I am a Modernist by Gabrielle Esperdy in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Dec. 2007
To purchase the book go to Amazon
OPEN ROADS & INVISIBLE BORDERS
article by Sean O’Toole in “Odyssey,” the Spring 2016 issue of Aperture magazine
Invisible Borders is a photography collective started in Nigeria in 2009. Their flagship project is The Invisible Borders Trans-African Road Trip, where about a dozen artists (including photographers, writers, filmmakers and performance artists) collectively take road trips across Africa to explore and participate in various photographic events, festival and exhibitions while engaging on a daily basis with the environment and the people encountered. Sean O’Toole tells of the groups various trips acorss Africa and their evolution into a dynemic African-centric organization inspiring all African artists.
To read more about Invisible Borders, visit their website: http://invisible-borders.com/
To read the Aperture article: http://aperture.org/blog/open-roads-invisible-borders/
MAVERICKS - Breaking the Mould of British Architecture
(Exhibition at Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1.26.2016 till 4.20.2016)
The Royal Academy of Arts presents an installation, book and series of events celebrating original and unorthodox thinking in British architecture. The installation goes through 400 years of architectural British history and takes a colourful look at twelve maverick architects who helped to shape its course: Smythson, Vanbrugh, Wyatt, Soane, Cockerell, Mackintosh, Holden, Goodhart-Rendel, Stirling, Price, FAT and Hadid.
To learn more, visit the exhibition‘s website
CARNEGIE SURVEY of the ARCHITECTURE OF THE SOUTH
Library of Congress digitized collection
In the 1930s, noted architectural photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston photographed an estimated 1,700 structures and sites in rural and urban areas of the American south. Johnston’s interest in both vernacular and high style structures resulted in vivid portrayals of the exteriors and interiors of houses, mills, and churches as well as mansions, plantations, and outbuildings. The collection is fully digitized and includes more than 7,100 images of the rapidly disappearing antebellum architecture of the American South.
To see the Collection, visit the Library of Congress
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