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Paying homage to the seminal mid-century modern architecture of Palm Springs, this luxurious book showcases historic jet-set homes designed by legendary talents such as Richard Neutra, Albert Frey, and Paul Williams, as well as private residences by today’s leading tastemakers. Since Gary Cooper built one of the first modernist houses in Palm Springs in the 1930s, this desert oasis has entranced Hollywood. A mecca for the international jet set that lured Frank Sinatra, Walter Annenberg, and others, Palm Springs came into its own architecturally as a haven for visionary modernists such as Richard Neutra, who were practicing the International Style in Los Angeles. The architectural legacy remains unsurpassed for its originality and influence, and recently many of the city’s modernist residential treasures have been restored. In original new photography, Palm Springs captures the allure of this famed modernist destination. The book profiles outstanding examples such as the Annenberg Estate, the Ford House, and the Kaufmann House, shown in their splendor, as well as today’s restorations by top interior designers such as Martyn Lawrence Bullard and fashion designer Trina Turk. A resource section provides modernist furnishing stores and other points of interest.
Master of the Midcentury: The Architecture of William F. Cody is the first, long-overdue book on this key Palm Springs architect, abundantly illustrated and detailed. Of the architects who made Palm Springs a crucible of midcentury American modernism, William F. Cody (1916-1978) was one of the most prolific, diverse, and iconic. Directing a practice ranging from residences to commercial centers and industrial complexes to master plans, Cody's designs are so recognizable that they provide visual shorthand for what is widely hailed as "Desert Modern." While his architecture was disciplined and technically innovative, Cody did not practice an austere modernism; he imbued in his projects a love for social spaces, rich with patterns, texture, color, and art. Though the majority of Cody's built work was concentrated in California and Arizona, he had commissions in other western states, Hawaii, Mexico, Honduras, and Cuba. From icons like the Del Marcos Hotel (1946), to inventive country clubs like the Eldorado (1957), to houses for celebrities (Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Walt Disney), Cody's projects defined the emerging West Coast lifestyle that combined luxury, leisure, and experimental design. Cody also pushed the boundaries of engineering, with beams and roof slabs so thin that his buildings seemed to defy gravity. Master of the Midcentury is the first monograph devoted to Cody, authored by the team that curated the acclaimed exhibition Fast Forward: The Architecture of William F. Cody at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles: his daughter, Cathy Cody, design historian Jo Lauria, and architectural historian Don Choi. Replete with photographs of extant and now-lost structures, as well as masterful color renderings and drawings for architectural commissions and plans for vanguard building systems, Master of the Midcentury is the authoritative resource on Cody.
Palm Springs is as much a showcase for its unparalleled collection of Midcentury Modern architecture as it is for the unique people that designed and inhabit that architecture. With Palm Springs Modern Living, photographer James Schnepf has created a wonderful collection of photographs that document both the iconic architecture and fascinating people of this desert oasis. More than fifty modernists, artists, builders, and architects were interviewed, including such Midcentury Modern luminaries as Donald Wexler, William Krisel, and Hugh Kaptur, and their stories and anecdotes provide a perfect complement to Schnepf’s vivid photography. Together, they manage to bring Palm Springs to life in a way that most volumes of architectural photos could never hope to achieve. James Schnepf is a location photographer with an emphasis on people. He has photographed for a long list of America’s leading corporations and publications, and these assignments have taken him to all parts of the world. In his travels he has always kept an eye open for a climate and community to balance the cold winters of his family’s Midwest base. He and his wife, Christiane, found that place in California’s Coachella Valley, where they own a 1959 William Krisel–designed home.
A must-have guide to one of the most fertile regions for the development of Mid-Century Modern architecture This handbook - the first ever to focus on the architectural wonders of the West Coast of the USA - provides visitors with an expertly curated list of 250 must-see destinations. Discover the most celebrated Modernist buildings, as well as hidden gems and virtually unknown examples - from the iconic Case Study houses to the glamour of Palm Springs' spectacular Modern desert structures. Much more than a travel guide, this book is a compelling record of one of the USA's most important architectural movements at a time when Mid-Century style has never been more popular. First-hand descriptions and colour photography transport readers into an era of unparalleled style, glamour, and optimism.
This first major monograph chronicling the work and architectural philosophy of William Krisel features examples and insights from Krisel's own papers, culled from his personal collection as well as the extensive archives of the Getty Research Institute. Krisel's architectural drawings and renderings, as well as many archival photographs, highlight examples of his custom homes, mass-produced housing, and recreational facilities in Palm Springs and rest of the Coachella Valley. Contemporary photographs are by architectural photographer Darren Bradley. Heidi Creighton is a midcentury modern enthusiast, writer, collector, and researcher. In 2012, she purchased a Palm Springs home designed by William Krisel in 1957. Chris Menrad, a Southern California native, was drawn to Palm Springs in 1999 by its abundance of modernist architecture. He is a founding board member of the Palm Springs Modern Committee, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Desert Modern architecture and a real estate agent specializing in architectural properties in the Coachella Valley. He lives in a Krisel-designed home, which was the first Palm Springs' Class One historic Krisel/Alexander-built house.
Before Abstract Expressionism of New York City was canonized as American postwar modernism, the United States was filled with localized manifestations of modern art. One such place where considerable modernist activity occurred was Texas, where artists absorbed and interpreted the latest, most radical formal lessons from Mexico, the East Coast, and Europe, while still responding to the state's dramatic history and geography. This barely known chapter in the story of American art is the focus of Midcentury Modern Art in Texas. Presenting new research and artwork that has never before been published, Katie Robinson Edwards examines the contributions of many modernist painters and sculptors in Texas, with an emphasis on the era's most abstract and compelling artists. Edwards looks first at the Dallas Nine and the 1936 Texas Centennial, which offered local artists a chance to take stock of who they were and where they stood within the national artistic setting. She then traces the modernist impulse through various manifestations, including the foundations of early Texas modernism in Houston; early practitioners of abstraction and non-objectivity; the Fort Worth Circle; artists at the University of Texas at Austin; Houston artists in the 1950s; sculpture in and around an influential Fort Worth studio; and, to see how some Texas artists fared on a national scale, the Museum of Modern Art's "Americans" exhibitions. The first full-length treatment of abstract art in Texas during this vital and canon-defining period, Midcentury Modern Art in Texas gives these artists their due place in American art, while also valuing the quality of Texan-ness that subtly undergirds much of their production.
"This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition An Eloquent Modernist: E. Stewart Williams, Architect, Palm Springs Art Museum, November 9, 2014-February 22, 2015"--Colophon.
In 2008, Daniel Chavkin began photographing some of the more discreet and off-the-beaten-path midcentury modern homes and buildings in the Palm Springs area. These included secret gems created by such famous modernist architects as William Cody and John Porter Clark, as well as others by relatively lesser-known designers. The result is this rich photographic collection of largely unseen examples of desert modern architecture. Many of the buildings shown herein are not easily accessible by, or in some cases completely off-limits to, the general public, so the photographs in this book may be the only opportunity for midcentury aficionados to ever see some of these buildings. Daniel Chavkin is a photographer who lives and works in Palm Springs and Los Angeles. He began his career shooting celebrity portraits, but his passion is for midcentury modern architecture—and especially the desert modernism of Palm Springs. His love of modernism was forged while studying at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He also owns the graphic design business Design Lab 2.
Aidan Tynan provocatively rethinks some of the core assumptions of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Showing the significance of deserts and wastelands in literature since the Romantics, he argues that the desert has served to articulate anxieties over the cultural significance of space in the Anthropocene. He explores the ways in which Nietzsche's warning that 'the desert grows' has been taken up by Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze in their critiques of modernity. And he looks at how the desert has been a terrain of desire over which the Western imagination of space and place has range, in writings from T.S Eliot to Don DeLillo, from imperial travel writing to postmodernism; and from the Old Testament to salvagepunk.