In the wake of the sad passing of Elizabeth Taylor today, it was with the ring of finality that Hollywood took yet another step away from the Golden Age of pictures that so epitomized the middle of the twentieth century.
Taylor was one of the last century's most durable stars, with a scintillating career that spanned an arc from the early 1940s through to the new millenium. As much noted for her tumultuous personal life as her notable dramatic roles in films like Butterfield 8, for which she won the Oscar, it may be her serial relationships with former husband Richard Burton that serve as the linchpin -- the hinge -- in a life and career which is certain to be unique in our history.
Given this blog's preoccupation with 20th century modern motifs, it may not come as a surprise to readers that our personal favourite high point in that career is the fascinating film The V.I.P.s. It was the first movie Taylor and Burton made together and also starred French superstar Louis Jourdan, along with a remarkable supporting cast that included Orson Welles, Rod Taylor, Maggie Smith and - in a scene-stealing character role as the Duchess of Brighton - Margaret Rutherford.
Films don't come much more "modern" than this. Released in 1963, starring Burton and Taylor, and featuring a tailored wardrobe that could clothe all of Madison Avenue, never mind the cast of Mad Men. But best of all is the plot conceit, summarized thusly by IMDb:
Awaiting at London Airport for a flight to New York, Frances Andros, seen off by her tycoon husband, Paul Andros, plans to leave her spouse for the arms of an aging international playboy, Marc Champselle. Les Mangrum, a self-made Australian businessman traveling with his loyal secretary, Miss Mead, must be in New York the following day to arrange the loan that will help him repel a hostile takeover of his tractor company. Max Buba, a film mogul traveling with starlet Gloria Gritti, must get out of England immediately or face ruinous British income tax. The Duchess of Brighton has taken a job as a hostess at an American holiday resort, thinking she will be able to keep her family estate on her new income. Fog descends and blurs the future for them all, forced now to wait in the airport hotel for morning and fair weather.
Jet setting tycoons! International playboys! Orson Welles! The VIP lounge in an airport serving as a metaphorical location for the ennui of a generation impatiently waiting for the fog of uncertainty to lift before it strides bravely into the coming Youth Revolution!
Sweet, sweet modernism, all around....
RIP, Elizabeth and Richard. The 21st century doesn't deserve you, and the 20th century wasn't big enough to contain you.
BAUHAUS was not only an architectural style; it was also a social solution to the problems of the 1920s and 1930s whose concepts remain relevant today.
“The future of architecture lies in the application of Bauhaus ideas to today’s problems – including affordable housing, which remains the main architectural issue of the 21st century. The focus of Bauhaus architecture has always been on finding solutions to the fundamental problems of humans in their respective times,” said Michael Siebenbrodt, director of the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Germany, in conversation with the American photographer Gordon Watkinson.
Enchanted by the concept of Bauhaus, Watkinson photographed 12 iconic buildings typical of the Bauhaus style and 12 contemporary buildings inspired by or reflecting the ideas of Bauhaus. The photos are on show until March 27 at the Design Factory in Bratislava as part of the exhibition Bauhaus Twenty-21: An Ongoing Legacy. The images not only convey the architectural history of Bauhaus, but go much deeper, uncovering its enduring philosophies and the importance of its legacy for contemporary architects.
When you think about it, the fashion revolution of the late '60s has had amazing staying power. Take the miniskirt. Though we're seeing longer hemlines for spring, the mini also held its own when designers as varied as Calvin Klein, Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana presented their spring 2011 collections on runways last fall.
Ditto that office staple, the women's pantsuit. Front and center for this spring season, it was Stella McCartney's first look out on the catwalk and the second at Thakoon. Trouser suits were also aggressively rebooted at Haider Ackermann, coolly provocative at Oliver Theyskens' Theory and all silky-slouchy at Bottega Veneta.
On the men's side, the Milan fall season shows in January kicked off with Burberry's kaleidoscope of orange, yellow and chartreuse, a palette straight out of the period. For power brokers, all it takes is a lush wide necktie — a staple of posh lines like Tom Ford and Polo/Ralph Lauren Purple Label — to signal that alpha combination of authority and luxury.
And for both sexes, though silhouettes swing wide some seasons and skinny down the next, the boot-cut jean (rooted in, yes, the bell bottom of the late '60s and early '70s) will never be out of style. In fact, the bell bottom itself is expected to be a popular wardrobe choice this spring.
So maybe it's worth speculating a bit about the '60s-era television show — "Mad Men" — that's been a major influence on much recent fashion. At the end of last season, the series closed the door on the first half of the decade, ending in late 1965.
It is a last-ditch effort to save a city built as a monument to modernity and hope but now threatened by neglect and the fierce demands of the global art market. Chandigarh, 180 miles north of Delhi, was built by Le Corbusier 60 years ago.
Since then, many of its finest buildings, recognised as modernist masterpieces, have been neglected. Recently, international art dealers have made substantial sums selling hundreds of chairs, tables, carvings and prints designed by Le Corbusier and his assistants but obtained at knockdown prices from officials often unaware of their value.
Now a group of local architects, art historians and officials are hoping to mobilise international help to prevent further damage to Le Corbusier's unique Indian legacy. A report commissioned by the government in Chandigarh has recommended a campaign targeting the UN heritage agency, Unesco, as well as foreign governments, especially in Europe where many of the items have been auctioned. Informal approaches to embassies in Delhi have failed, the unpublished report, seen by the Guardian, says.
To read more of this content at The Guardian, click here.
Fifteen years ago, when the design cognoscenti descended on Palm Springs, cleared away the tumbleweeds and started to renovate the 1950s houses beneath them, they created a mini modernist revival. The culmination of their efforts is Palm Springs Modernism Week, (17-27 Feb), a small but growing festival of exhibitions, tours, lectures, films and parties. For ten days, a discerning, in-the-know crowd flocks to the desert town to sneak a peek at iconic and rarely-seen homes, courtesy of benevolent owners, sip cocktails at exclusive soirees and snap up mid-century finds in quirky shops and galleries - all to a backdrop of Rat Pack tunes, sunshine and retro vibes.
To read more of this content at Wallpaper Magazine, click here.
In 1945, America was ascendant, and her sons returned from exotic ports of call around the world. Overnight, the culture turned from a pre-war, parochial and insular stance to one which came had come of age, saw the world, and conquered. Still, most of the GI's who had invaded Africa, or stormed the honeycombed hills of Guadalcanal had no desire for the exotic. They simply wanted to return to Montana farms, small towns in Tennessee and lumber mills in Oregon.
For a few, though, the excitement of foreign sounds and tastes never left their memories, and they shared what they had discovered - with high school chums, younger siblings and hunting pals. The lure of the wider, wonderful world lurked underground, growing like a virus in the very bosom of the triumphant Eisenhower Fifties.
By the early 50s, the virus had grown, nurtured in late-night clubs in places like New York, Chicago and L.A. and by 1952, it had ripened enough to become nationally visible. In that year, Les Baxter released Ritual of the Savage, and everything changed.
'Ritual' featured 13 tracks, with names like 'Jungle River Boat' and 'Stone God' and the immensely influential 'Quiet Village'. Baxter was a composer and arranger with a special affinity for the saxophone, and early in his career worked as a composer and arranger for Mel Torme's Mel-Tones. As the official Baxter website notes:
The Mel-Tones recorded with Artie Shaw, the first notable American musician to show an interest in the sort of Dark Continent program music that would later grow up to be exotica. Shaw's records like "Dr Livingstone, I Presume", "The Chant", and "Serenade To A Savage" show him striving towards something Les would later perfect.
Aside from what he learned from Artie Shaw', Les experienced early exposure to exotic influences when he worked in '47 with Broadway composer Harry Revel. Revel requested that Baxter arrange songs written for the theremin, and conduct their performance by virtuoso Hollywood thereminist Dr Samuel Hoffman, who had already performed on the soundtracks for movies such as Hitchock's surrealistic 'Spellbound'.
The creation that resulted from the Baxter/Revel/Hoffman collaboration was the album 'Music Out of the Moon', which featured this track, "Mist o' the Moon":
"Music Out of the Moon" featured a number of characteristics which were to become common to many Exotica albums, including an overarching concept around which the songs are arranged, and the use of unusual instrumentation. It was also the first record cover featuring a full-colour photograph, and Exotica collectors who see the cover photography and typography will recognize it immediately as belonging to the genre.
The next milestone in Exotica's evolution took place when Les was assigned by Capitol to work with Yma Sumac. The fascinating Peruvian vocalist - ostensibly a princess descended from the last Emperor of the Inca - was then named Imma Sumack, but when she and her incredible five-octave vocal range was discovered by a Capitol talent scout in a small club in New York, she was immediately signed and her name changed to Yma Sumac.
In addition to her jaw-dropping range, Sumac brought with her another critical piece of the Exotica puzzle. Barred from singing publicly as a young child, she was driven to performing in the Incan highlands, lonely concerts to the only audience she could find. As her official biography puts it:
Around the age of 9 she could often be seen high atop a mountain in the High Andes singing ancient Peruvian folkloric songs, to a group of rocks, which she pretended was her audience. Entranced by the beautiful birds that sang nearby, she began to imitate them, by incorporating their high pitched sounds into her"repertoire.
Baxter's experience with the theremin and other exotic instruments and arrangements, the notion of the concept album and Sumac's jaw-droppingly unique voice combined in the release of 1950's 'Voice of the Xtabay'.
According to Incan legend, the Xtabay is "the most elusive of all women":
You seek her in your flight of desire and think of her as beautiful as the morning sun touching the highest mountain peak. Her voice calls to you in every whisper of the wind. The lure of her unknown love becomes ever stronger, and a virgin who might have consumed your nights with tender caresses now seems less than the dry leaves of winter. For you follow the call of the Xtabay...though you walk alone through all your days.
The record had a similarly hypnotic effect on both critics and the buying public, and the release shot to No. 1. At the time, critic Glenn Dillard Gunn raved "there is no voice like it in the world of music today...Her voice has a greater range than any female voice of concert or opera. It soars into the acoustic stratosphere, or it plumbs the sub-contralto depth of pitch with equal ease. Such voices happen only once in a generation." Another critic said "her voice is that of birds and of the earthquake."
The truth of that assessment is revealed in this recording from that first album, a track called 'Tumpa', or 'earthquake'.
Another critic said that of Sumac "she has a panther and a nightingale in her throat." And, it's true that while her unusual upper registry has been occasionally achieved by various performers, none have been able to simultaneously achieve her guttural basso profundo, never mind the shocking versimilitude of her birdcalls and monkey chattering.
In an interview with Goblin Magazine, Sumac offered a further explanation of the animal noises - especially birds - that became such a signature of Exotica.
Goblin Magazine: Did you actually imitate the bird songs you heard in your village?
Yma Sumac: The birds were my inspiration since I was a little child. Each bird sings completely different. When I was six or seven years old I had a tremendous impression in my heart that the way they were singing was an inspiration for me. Some day, I said, when I grow up I'm going to imitate the songs. I never forgot the sound when I became a singer and a recorder.
GM: Did you learn to do your trills from the birds? They have beautiful trills and you do also.
YS: On the song Chuncho (Voice Of the Xtabay) I do a triple trill. Sometimes it doesn't come. The human throat is a mystery. When I was doing that the engineer I was recording with was so surprised -- he said 'what is that?' She has a double jointed throat.' On the stage it happened again in Poland. It was a big concert, I started singing and by the end, whoop, it come and ring. It was a surprise for me. It happened once again when I was singing with my ex-husband -- during the high note the strings for his guitar broke! It happened in Russia, Germany, Israel and many countries over the world and here too. The voice is so powerful when I was in Spain I broke a glass of apple juice that was on the piano. I was screaming 'cause I was scared the glass would get in my eyes. It was funny.
The stage was set for the meteoric rise of Exotica on the American consciousness, soon to be aided by such seminal figures as Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman.
Stay tuned for a future Midcentury Modernist blog entry exploring the continuing development of Exotica, when The Komodo Lounge presents: Exotiki! Sensual Sounds from the South Seas and Other Ports of Call
