House Beautiful magazine

One of my favorite houses is the fictional house in North By Northwest, owned by spymaster and villain, James Mason. The building is structurally impossible, and is a symphony of glass, flagstone, and steel. It is telling that the bad guy lives in a modernist avant-garde house. He is also British. If you pay attention, you will notice that movie villains in the 1950s are almost always European and live in modern houses. The hero, or typical American protagonist, lives in a traditional colonial house with a wife and children. Why is that?

North by Northwest, villain house

Think of it this way: modernism was a European construct before 1945. In the 1950s, Americans looked back into the past and European modernism and rejected it. The past represented the depression and World War I and II. Due to the Nazi party’s concept of a utopian society, any European utopian movement, including high modernism, was deemed suspicious. House Beautiful editor, Elizabeth Gordon, recognized this and waged a war against all modernist residential architects. She understood the consumerist needs of the public and knew her audience wanted to buy things. The photographs she commissioned from Maynard Parker support the agenda she called, “The Station Wagon Way of Life.”

Davis, Thomas, residence, Maynard Parker, 1957

Pace Setter House, Maynard Parker, 1949

Quincy Jones residence, Maynard Parker

Parker’s images are traditional, filled with paintings, furniture, objects, and the human element. Whereas Julius Shulman’s photographs celebrate the minimalist form, Parker’s celebrate the post-war traditional domestic sphere. The inside-outside concept of California living is represented often. The images are casual and have no sense of elitism. At their best, they are playful, fresh, and authentic. Jennifer Watts’ book, Maynard L. Parker: Modern Photography and the American Dream is a beautiful collection of Parker’s work. Jennifer A. Watts, is the photography curator at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, and oversees the Huntington’s vast Parker archive

Maynard L. Parker Modern Photography and the American Dream

This, however, is not a simple appreciation for a group of cheerful 1950s domestic scenes. While most of the photographs feel optimistic and light, there is a subset of images that reads differently for me. When I look at the empty rooms, dark corners, and incessant domesticity, I think, not of Leave it to Beaver, but of Herb and Bonnie May Clutter’s Kansas house (Truman Capote, In Cold Blood). There is something that is airless, stifling, and relentless in certain photographs.

The Clutter home, Holcomb, Kansas

The Clutter family

Maynard Parker, courtesy Huntington Library, Photo Archive

Martha Raye residence, Maynard Parker

Maynard Parker, courtesy Huntington Library, Photo Archive

Pace Setter House, Maynard Parker, 1950

Pace Setter House, Maynard Parker, 1950

Martha Raye residence, Maynard Parker

Maynard Parker, courtesy Huntington Library, Photo Archive

Henry Fonda residence, Maynard Parker, 1948

Parker images courtesy Huntington Library, Photo Archive

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Ed Fella, National Student Conference poster

Tomorrow, Thursday December 6, at 11am PST, 2:00 pm EST I’ll be hosting a webcast about AIGA’s 100 year history. “Boy, Sean,” you say, “That sounds as interesting as a lecture about the history of the UAW.” And, if it weren’t for the incredible images, you might be correct. The difference is the design solutions created by the nation’s leading designers over a century. They didn’t design an ordinary poster or publication. These pieces ended up in the hands of their peers, and we know that designers often can have opinions. I’ve had the experience of asking a designer to create something for AIGA, and then watch them choke. There is something about the pressure that all of your friends, enemies, and heroes will see it. That’s understandable. But, the opposite is true. When they succeed they create work that is often some of the best pieces of their career. So, if you want to see some pretty nifty design, and you don’t mind listening to me blather on about history, join intomorrow, http://www.aiga.org/webcast-100-years/.

Tommi Ungerer, call for entries

Lester Beall, invitation

Stefan Sagmeister, Jambalaya National Conference poster

Rudy de Harak, call for entries poster

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Philip Castle, Farrah Fawcett

Lately, I’m missing shiny. After two decades of adhering to the flat world, I’ve begun to admire the shiny stuff. For years, clients asked for shiny and sparkly type in three dimensions on every motion design project. Of course, we didn’t do that. We took the opposite point of view, focusing on the simple forms and lack of ostentation. So, why now, am I drawn to airbrush illustration of the 1970s and 80s? Everything in these images is so clean. Even skin is glossy because it’s so pure.

I assume the crystal clear, high gloss approach was a reaction against the earthy and organic design of the 1970s. Much of the airbrush work was done for the music industry at the time. The crunchy political music was replaced by slick disco that celebrated hedonism. So it makes sense that the illustration would also celebrate a slick veneer and present sex, fast cars, and youth as the subjects.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that our Eames conference table at the studio was too matte. Somebody had repeatedly cleaned it with 409 or Windex. That’s not so good with wood. So I brought in my trusty wood oils and wax. After one application of oil, the table still seemed dry and flat, so I flooded the surface with it. “I’ll let this sit overnight and soak in,” I thought. Unfortunately, I didn’t count on someone using the conference room for a meeting. Since I am one of the owners, I couldn’t be fired. But, if I weren’t, oh boy I’d be out the door fast. People don’t like oil soaking onto their shirts and presentations.

Peter Palombi, Nature By the Pack, 1976

Hajime Sorayama

Peter Lloyd, Caddy Girl, 1985

Peter Lloyd, Viva magazine, 1974

Goro Shimaoka, 1983

Toshikuni Okubo, 1984

Yosuke Onishi, 1983

David Willardson, The Uncola, 1977

David Willardson, Thelma Houston, 1974

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The Knockabout Club Alongshore by C.A. Stephens, 1883

At lunch today, we discussed which fiction books changed each of our lives. People talked about Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion, anything by Walt Whitman, and The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald. When the group asked me to list my top three, I admit I was ashamed to admit the truth. “Hmm, well, hmm,” I said in a scholarly tone, “I’m quite fond of anything by Raymond Carver. And, of course, Grace Paley.” I did not tell the whole truth. Yes, I do like Raymond Carver, but one of my favorite books is one I had at my grandparents’ house. It’s The Knockabout Club Alongshore by C.A. Stephens. It doesn’t have interesting symbols, metaphors, or complex narrative structure. It’s a standard issue boy’s adventure book about “The adventures of a party of young men on a trip from Boston to the land of the midnight sun.”

I know every page and spent hours as a kid staring at the maps of Nova Scotia and etchings of sailing adventures. The Knockabout Club was published in 1883. No, I did not read it when it was first released. When you’re eight, and there are icebergs, polar bears, Vikings, and the northern lights the publication date doesn’t matter.

            The deck—when we were able to catch sight of it for “skulps” (seal cub scalps)—was almost slippery with gore.

Lines like these are thrilling to any young boy. No worries, I do recognize now that clubbing seal cubs for scalps is not okay. I look at the book now, and am impressed with the actual design. The bright cover screams sailing adventure. I love the detailed initial caps, or in some instances, initial words. For years, I’ve wanted to go to Antarctica. Now I know the genesis of this desire. I am, however, a little confused as to why my grandparents gave me a book from 1883 to read while my friends were reading Deathwatch.

The Knockabout Club Alongshore by C.A. Stephens, 1883

The Knockabout Club Alongshore by C.A. Stephens, 1883

The Knockabout Club Alongshore by C.A. Stephens, 1883

The Knockabout Club Alongshore by C.A. Stephens, 1883

The Knockabout Club Alongshore by C.A. Stephens, 1883

The Knockabout Club Alongshore by C.A. Stephens, 1883

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Jean Cocteau’s La belle et la bête is one of the most beautiful films ever produced. If you think it is simply a black and white version of the Disney Beauty and the Beast, yes, you are wrong. Cocteau’s 1946 creation is soft, dreamlike, and romantic. It touches on surrealism, Jungian, and Freudian psychology. Each frame is sublime, yet compositionally erratic. Figures are askew, foreground objects hide the main action, and lighting is intentionally operatic. The intention is to create a narrative that is similar to a dream: symbols and the hidden information produce meaning.

The overt theme is that there is good in everyone. However, the characters all behave, at times, cruelly. The Cocteau version is about complex and contradictory behavior. There is subterfuge, hidden agenda, and betrayal mixed with compassion and kindness. Understanding the timing here is important. Cocteau produced La belle et la bête one year after the end of World War II. France was recovering from Nazi occupation, the puppet Vichy Regime, and years of combat. The war forced the French population into complex and unwelcome alliances to survive. The story can be viewed as one of understanding and sensitivity, or a Stockholm syndrome kidnapping. The duality mixed with the surreal set of symbols sets this apart from a simple fairy tale.

Title, La belle et la bête, 1946

La bête et La belle, La belle et la bête, 1946

Jean Marais, La belle et la bête, 1946

Josette Day, La belle et la bête, 1946

Surreal candle holders, La belle et la bête, 1946

The surreal hall, La belle et la bête, 1946

Fireplace statue, La belle et la bête, 1946

La belle et la bête, 1946

poster, La belle et la bête, 1946

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