In Pictures: The U.S. World's Fairs

To view additional content at BBC Canada, click here.

We Wish You a Retro Christmas

Spray-on Snow.

Perhaps no other product better captures the contradictory nature of the mid-century version of Christmas than this strange product. It captures the nostalgia-infused glow of those days while at the same time acknowledging the DOW-chemical embrace of the artificial that characterized the era.

Although we might find it online, spray-on snow was one of the few retro hallmarks we weren't able to obtain this year in our quest for achieving the perfect atomic-era yuletide ambience. Aided by a season of haunting garage sales and flea markets, not to mention the odd church bazaar, we amassed enough vintage touchstones to recreate the halcyon Xmas days of 1966 most effectively.

Most critical to the project was the Haugh's Sapphire Aluminum Christmas Tree rescued from a garage sale this past summer for $5 (top photo, second photo is of the box). Handwritten ballpoint writing on the box dates it to 1969, as well as identifying it as "Helen's Tree". Since picking it up, we've seen similar items on E-Bay for literally hundreds of dollars, so this was one really good bargain. The box tells us it features: stainless foil; extra-long, full branches; permanent curl and twist; distinctive needles; heavy metal stand; foil mechanically fastened to branches; fire-proof; years of use; easy storage; assembled in minutes; sturdy construction; save box for construction. It really was easy to set up, too!

Over the years we've collected quite a number of vintage glass Christmas tree ornaments (picture three), as well. Many of these were made by Alderbrook, of Pickering, Ontario, which has quietly become the leading manufacturer of Christmas decorations and lighting in Canada, expanding to the point where in 1997 it purchased Noma's Christmas division. Alderbrook was founded in 1963 by Noma Executive VP John H. Rice, as Carillon Lighting and Alderbrook Industries. Carillon became the first company in the country to manufacture scotch pine artificial trees, and Alderbrook in turn commenced the manufacture of spun satin tree ornaments that delighted consumers. In Canada, Rice also introduced the use of miniature Christmas lights, which became an instant market hit and the most popular method of lighting for interior trees.

Of course, Christmas atmosphere is a result of more than just the decorations. Holiday carols and Christmas music are as integral to the season as presents and egg nog. This year, we used YouTube to create a Christmas playlist featuring some of the best classic songs. Below are some of the midcentury selections:

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - Jimmy Boyd, 1952

At 13 years old, little Jimmy Boyd recorded this song at the urging of Columbia Records, creating what would become one of Columbia's most popular Christmas songs. When it was first released, the song was banned in Boston by the Catholic Church, which felt that it mixed sex with Christmas. Boyd made worldwide news by travelling to Boston and meeting with church leaders to explain the song, after which the ban was lifted the following year. This YouTube version was recorded from the original 78 rpm vinyl.



Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - Gene Autry, 1949

This Johnny Marks song was offered to - and turned down - by the popular vocalists of the day, but was finally recorded by singing cowboy, Gene Autry. Released in 1949, "Rudolph" became an instant, and huge, success, eventually becoming the second-most popular selling Christmas song of all time, behind "White Christmas."



Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree - Brenda Lee, 1958

Recorded by Brenda Mae Tarpley (better known as Brenda Lee) when she was just 13, this eventual seasonal favourite fared poorly on the charts both in its debut year and the following. But, like "Rudolph", another major hit penned by Johnny Marks, it eventually became a major staple of the season for an entire generation, and sold more than five million copies.



White Christmas - Bing Crosby, 1940

As Wikipedia tells it: " "White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide. Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song.[4] One story is that he wrote it in 1940, poolside at the Biltmore hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. He often stayed up all night writing — he told his secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!" "



Mistletoe and Holly - Frank Sinatra, 1957

Written by Sinatra, Doc Stanford & Hank Sanicola, this number was picked to be the theme song for the 1960 Christmas Seals campaign. This video is from the 1957 Christmas special that re-teamed Sinatra with Bing Crosby, capitalizing on the heels of their success in "High Society" the previous year.

HIGHRISE, The NFB’s Innovative Documentary Experiment, Wins At IDFA 2010

HIGHRISE, the National Film Board of Canada’s innovative documentary experiment that examines the human experience in global vertical suburbs, has won the first DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The world’s largest documentary film festival, on now through November 28, spotlights HIGHRISE’s first international production, Out My Window. Director Katerina Cizek and NFB senior producer Gerry Flahive have been awarded a Canon 5D Mark II camera.

“The project draws its strength when viewed in depth and at length. The meetings in dozens of countries, from Bangalore and Beirut to Toronto, Canada are all beautiful and the design of the piece resonates with the stories. Photos, video, audio and interactivity all work in seamless harmony towards telling the stories in a compelling way.”

- IDFA DocLab Award jury report on HIGHRISE/Out My Window

To read more of this content at Movie City News, click here.

Circular Reasoning: On the Geometry of Chairs

Beginning with de Stijl, geometry became an obvious metaphor for the scientific and mechanistic modes of thinking associated with avant-garde modernism. Mondrian's canvases, arguably influenced themselves by Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School architecture, became templates for mid-century wall systems and modular case good systems, as well as graphic inspiration for architecture.

All of these applications self-evidently involved rectilinearity or at least linearity--the so-called deconstruction and reconstruction of the box, applied both to surface and volume. Famously, this was the approach taken with Rietveld's Red and Blue chair, which was explicitly linear, a rigid composition of wooden planks designed with little regard for comfort. Much cantilevered, Bauhaus-inspired furniture would also fit into this camp, though with somewhat greater interest in comfort. In the opposing, organic camp, are chairs such as the Womb chair, ergonomic in character, curvilinear, and fitted to the human form.

To read more of this content at Interior Design magazine, click here.
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Modernism left distinctive mark on MIdwestern painters of early 20th Century

The immigration boom of the late 19th century brought more than huddled masses to the Midwest. An influx of new cultures helped spread the groundbreaking ideas fueling modernist thought and practice in Europe.

"Against the Grain: Modernism in the Midwest" at the Riffe Gallery offers a survey of works that show the movement's influence on artists from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin from 1900 to 1950.

Curated by Christine Fowler Shearer, the exhibit includes works that represent many of the common threads of modernism, from cubist composition to expressionist techniques. Simultaneously, they highlight the crucial part that individualism played in the movement's quest to find new ways of seeing and portraying the world.

A grouping of landscapes suggests an empathetic, appreciative connection to the land among these artists.

To read more of this content at The Columbus Dispatch, click here.

Depicted works by Charles Burchfield and Harold Noecker.

Motorbikin'

"Ever since World War II, California has been strangely plagued by wild men on motorcycles. They usually travel in groups of ten to thirty, booming along the highways and stopping here are there to get drunk and raise hell. In 1947, hundreds of them ran amok in the town of Hollister, an hour's fast drive south of San Francisco, and got enough press to inspire a film called The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando. The film had a massive effect on thousands of young California motorcycle buffs; in many ways, it was their version of The Sun Also Rises."

- Hunter S. Thompson, "The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders", The Nation, May 17, 1965.

Welcome to another special edition of the Komodo Lounge, this week dedicated to the early seeking of freedom via the motorcycle. The garage ethic on two wheels, propelled by rebellion, high-octane fuel and an early devotion to bongos and three chords, motorcycle music takes a place of honour in the pantheon of mid-20th century music.

Les Baxter - Hogin' Machine



Originally released in 1969, this amazing track is from the original soundtrack for the movie Hell's Belles, by cycle trash movie moguls American International Pictures. Composed and performed by the iconic Les Baxter, who composed music for films from the 50s through the 70s, including American International, before his post-humous anointing as The King of Exotica in the mid-90s.

Ricky Nelson - Fools Rush In



The motorcycle connection here is Kenneth Anger's use of "Fools Rush In" as the first track on his groundbreaking experimental vintage homoerotica film Scorpio Rising (1964). Originally written by Johnny Mercer in 1940, Nelson had a major hit with it in 1963, when it reached no. 12 on the Billboard charts.

Davie Allan and the Arrows - The Wild Angels (aka Blues' Theme)



Classic fuzztone from one of the artists who created the sound. Davie Allan. was another mainstay of American International, with a trademark fuzzed out, aggressive and speedy guitar style that proved a fitting accompaniment for the teen surf movies and biker flicks that formed the core of AIP's offerings. Blues' Theme, the main theme for the 1966 Roger Corman bikesploitation film 'The Wild Angels' (starring Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd) was a breakout hit for Allan, with 17 weeks on the Billboard Chart.

Savage 7 - Desert Ride



This track is from a scene in the movie The Savage Seven, 1968, among whose stars was a young Larry Bishop, son of Ratpacker Joey Bishop. While I can't say for sure who performed this insturmental track, which was used as background for a desert ridin' montage, the presence of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15ngUiPUxzs">Johnny and the Hurricanes on the movie's soundtrack makes me suspect they may have been the culprits.

Hell Ride - Opening Sequence



The aforementioned Larry Bishop became perhaps the most omnipresent biker movie actor in the sixties, appearing in more bikesploitation films than Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson combined. In 2008, with the support of executive producer Quentin Tarantino, Bishop capped a panhead-propelled career by writing, producing and starring in what might be the quintessential biker trash flick, Hell Ride.

Hell Ride - Alternate Title Sequence



This is just an alternate title sequence that was filmed for Hell Ride, but it's such a great montage that it would be criminal not to include it.

Chris Spedding - Motorbikin'



From a 1975 Top of the Pops performance, here's Brit guitar god Chris Spedding leveraging his leather-clad biker tough guy image with a track called Motorbikin', one of several biker tracks he was responsible for. This one was one of his biggest hits, reaching the top 20 in the UK, but he became perhaps better known for his brilliant session guitar work with Roxy Music and for producing the Sex Pistols' first demos.

Chris Spedding - Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots



Another of Spedding's motorcycle classics, about the "terror of Highway 101". The influence of guitar pioneer Link Wray on Speddings' work is easy to detect on this one. Don't be misled, though, Spedding didn't write this one, as it was performed long before he did it, by the "leather-lunged" Vaughn Munroe.

Vaughn Munroe - Black Denim Trousers



A big band leader and a popular entertainer in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as beating Johnny Cash to the punch in charting with "Ghost Riders in the Sky" in 1949. Munroe strayed from form a little to record this cover in 1955. But Munroe still wasn't the first to record Black Denim Trousers. That honour would go to an American vocal group called The Cheers, earlier in the same year.

The Cheers - Black Denim Trousers



The Cheers hit the charts with a couple of songs in the mid-1950s, both of which were written by the legendary songwriting team of Lieber and Stoller. The Cheers were notable for having the first rock'n'roll hit by a white group, after Bill Haley and the Comets, with their track 'Bazoom (I Need Your Loving)', which seems pretty sadly dated to modern ears.

Parting Shot: Edith Piaf - L'Homme a la Moto

We've finished this edition of The Komodo Lounge with an exploration of multiple versions of Black Denim Trousers, but we'd be absolutely derelict in our duties if we didn't include the French version, recorded by the legendary Edith Piaf. Enjoy!!!

Gettin' in the Groove

A special non-weekend edition of The Komodo Lounge proudly presents Gettin' in the Groove, a gargantuan gaggle of girl group goodness. What a gas!




Patti's Groove - "It Won't Last Long".

This stripped down girl group, orginally referred to as 'The Female Beatles' released no LPs, but thankfully, this number was preserved on a compilation called Girls in the Garage, Vol. 3.



April March - "Chick Habit"

Enjoying new life after its inclusion in Tarantino's Deathproof, this super-catchy tune by April March was actually first recorded by ye yesingerFrance Gall in 1964 as "Laisse tomber les filles".



Gloria Jones - "Tainted Love"

Also from 1964 is this first outbreak of Tainted Love, written by Ed Cobb of the Four Preps. Jones was also the girlfriend of Marc Bolan, and actually played keyboards and sang in T-Rex.



Toni McCann - "Saturday Date"

The Brit-born Australian go-go-go-go girl, Toni McCann, along with her beat-group backup, the The Blue Jays, launched this shout-it-out rouser in 1966 as their second single. A bit hard to imagine now, but in its day, this tune was considered pretty vigorous for a female singer.



The Ronettes - "Walkin' in the Rain"

This version of the well-known Ronettes tune features full-blown production by her future husband Phil Spector, including ambient rainfall and thunder. Co-written by Spector, along with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, this tune has been covered by at least six other artists, including Jay and the Americans, David Cassidy and Erasure.

These are a few of my Favourite (Automotive) Things - Part 2

The late 1960s and early 1970s was the era of the Detroit Big Three supercars: Chevelles, Camaros, Chargers and Mustangs ate up the roads from coast to coast. These beautiful examples of Detroit iron were perhaps not as popular as the top muscle cars, but they are undeniably gorgeous.

From top to bottom: 1971 Buick Riviera 'boat-tail' hardtop coupe; 1971 El Camino SS; 1969 Chrysler Barracuda; 1968 Plymouth Fury III four-door coupe; 1969 Pontiac Bonneville convertible.

These are a Few of my Favourite (Automotive) Things - Part 1

Amazing automotive design from the 1950s and 1960s. From top to bottom, 1963 Jaguar XKE, 1964 Volvo Coupe, S1800 Coupe, 1961 Chrysler Saratoga, 1953 Pontiac Coupe, 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.

Modernist Buildings Have a Story to Tell

In 2007, the American Institute of Architects launched a public survey to identify "America's Favourite Architecture." With the Empire State Building, the White House and the Washington National Cathedral finishing in the Top 3, the list exposed a strong public connection with heritage buildings. Of the Top 50 favourite structures in the United States, only five were built after the Second World War.

These results raise the question: Do people prefer historic buildings for their character and style or, like a favourite pair of faded blue jeans, is time and familiarity an important factor in the public perception of architecture? Will the steel and glass modernist buildings that replaced these styles be just as well-loved when they are old enough to be considered historic? If so, should we work to protect them in the same way we do the brick buildings of the Exchange District?

The answers to these questions are of particular importance for Winnipeg, a city celebrated for its historic buildings, but less well known as home to one of the finest surviving collections of modernist architecture in Canada.

Emerging in the 1950s, modernism was an architectural movement that rejected the ornamentation of the past and celebrated the technological advancements of the 20th century. Heavy walls of stone were replaced with large curtains of glass flooding light into open interior spaces. The decorative motifs of the past gave way to a machine-inspired look of exposed structure and clean, austere lines.

Examples of this style, both large and small, can still be found in every Winnipeg neighbourhood. The Centennial Concert Hall and MTC Theatre, the Great West Life and Workers Compensation buildings, Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, Kildonan Park Pavilion and even the Bridge Drive-in (BDI) on Jubilee are all remnants of the modernist era.

The soon-to-be-replaced terminal building at the Richardson International Airport is one of Winnipeg's most significant representatives of this movement. Designed by GBR Architects in 1964, it stands as the only remaining example of a federal initiative to modernize Canada's national image by constructing a series of new airports across the country. Much like the railway did decades earlier, these new jet-age terminals were an effort to unify and inspire the country.

To read more of this content at The Winnipeg Free Press, click here.

Vintage Video - The American Look (1958)

Populuxe film on American industrial design of 1958. Digitally enhanced at Retro-matic™ LLC in Hollywood, California. This film is registered as Public Domain with Creative Commons at www.creativecommons.org.

Modernist Posters

A three-part video describing an auction of Modernist posters by the Swann Galleries, based in NYC.

Swann Galleries was founded in 1941 as an auction house specializing in Rare Books. Today Swann has separate departments devoted to Photographs, Posters and Prints & Drawings, in addition to Books, Maps & Atlases and Autographs.

York Wilson, Canadian Modernist: the Northern Year

by Clifton Bertram

R. York Wilson, considered by some authorities to be one of the three greatest muralists of all time, is most well-known to Canadians for his public works that adorn Imperial Oil, the O’Keefe Centre for the Performing Arts (now the Hummingbird Centre), Bell Canada, Queen's Park and Carleton University But Wilson was known to consider himself "first a painter, with a flair for murals."

Wilson turns out to have also been a notable figure in the development of modern art. Indeed, it is possible that his prodigious output more aptly chronicles modern art's evolution more effectively than any other Canadian artist.

In this, the first of a series of pieces highlighting the evolution of York Wilson's work, we will examine a point in his early career during which he painted some remarkable images of the Canadian north. These early paintings are among the least abstract and experimental of York Wilson's ouevre, being produced at a stage in his career when he was still highly influenced by his time as a commercial artist just ten years earlier, working with Group of Seven luminaries Franklin Carmichael and A.J. Casson.

In 1945, Wilson travelled to the prairies, the Hudson's Bay region, and the High Arctic, creating images that powerfully capturing both the unique qualities of winter light as well as the incredible effects created by a combination of swirling wind and snow. York Wilson's northern year resulted in paintings that manage to distil, in oil and canvas, an essential element of every Canadian's soul.

York Wilson paintings, from top to bottom: 46 Below, oil on canvas; Muskox Gnomes, oil on panel; Near Churchill, oil on canvas; Expedition Muskox, oil on panel, Snow Peaks, Hudson's Bay, oil on panel.

Leading the Group of Seven Out of the Wilderness

Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution and the Group of Seven is Ross King's attempt, as he puts it, to site the celebrated gang of woodsy painters in a greater esthetic context.

Well, imagine that. But be warned — the very suggestion can make one fear for the esteemed historian's safety. With any luck, King had the prescience to hire bodyguards for the inevitable manhunt that might ensue. After all, death by caning — the executioner's weapon of convenience, given the blue-haired brigade he's most likely to offend — would be a rough way to go.

Undaunted, King, who both wrote the book and curated an exhibition now at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, has made nothing less than an historical reclamation project of the group, trying to exorcise the myth of idealized naturalists making art in a vacuum of Canadian shield wilderness. Many of the group worked in advertising, as graphic designers, and witnessed the creep of mass-commercial billboard imagery first-hand.

Industrialization was the major force of their world. Maybe it provoked their retreat into the wilderness, but not before central group figure Lawren Harris made several urban paintings that stand in stark contrast to the pristine wilderness myth with which they're most often associated. How do you think they got to Algonquin Park, anyway? Tourist trains and logging roads, like anyone else.

King notes the disservice the myth does to a clued-in group of painters whose legacy is far more complex, and plugged in, than its enshrinement as national symbols allows.

To read more of this content at The Toronto Star, click here

Living With Mies

"A few blocks east of Detroit’s downtown, just across Interstate 375, sits Lafayette Park, an enclave of single- and two-story modernist townhouses set amid a forest of locust trees. Like hundreds of developments nationwide, they were the result of postwar urban renewal; unlike almost all of them, it had a trio of world-class designers behind it: Ludwig Hilbersheimer as urban planner, Alfred Caldwell as landscape designer and Mies van der Rohe as architect.

The townhouses, plus three high-rise buildings, were built between 1958 and 1962 on land previously occupied by a working-class African-American neighborhood, Black Bottom. While much of Detroit began a steep decline soon after, Lafayette Park stayed afloat, its residents bucking the trend of suburban flight. Lafayette Park today is one of the most racially integrated neighborhoods in the city. It is economically stable, despite the fact that Detroit has suffered enormous population loss and strained city services.

We wanted to hear how residents — especially people with long-term, intimate knowledge of living with Mies — think about this unique modernist environment and how they confront and adapt it to meet their needs. During our research, we were struck by the casual attitude that many residents have toward the architecture. Then again, Detroit has an abundance of beautiful housing options: one can live in a huge Victorian mansion, a beautiful arts and crafts house or a cavernous loft-conversion space in a former factory. Living in a townhouse built by a renowned architect isn’t as noteworthy as one might think. At the same time, such nonchalance is a mark of success: the homes are great because they work, not because they come affixed with a famous name."

To read more of this content at The Opinionator, the NY Times blog, and to access their great interactive feature 'Living Rooms With a View', click here.

Manneken Pis

When I was six or seven, my father received a gag gift as a birthday present from one of his friends. A liquor decanter, it was topped with a statue of a cherubic young boy peeing, and when you pressed the button on the decanter it would fill your glass.

As a little kid, this device tickled me to no end. It was naughty and funny and educational, all at the same time. After all, I learned, the statue of the little boy really exists, and is in fact a much revered emblem of the City of Brussels, where it is known as the Manneken Pis. Located at the corner of Stoofstraat/Rue de L'Etuve and the Eikstraat/Rue du Chêne, the famous landmark has been cherished by locals for more than 400 years.

There are many legends about the Manneken. According to one of them a little boy had watered against the door of a witch who lived where the fountain now stands. The witch was so angry that she turned the little boy into a statue. Another legend says that a man had lost his little son. He found the child after two days near the place where the fountain now stands. When the father spotted his child, the latter was peeing. As a token of gratitude the father had the fountain with a statue of a peeing boy constructed.

From the mid-sixties through to the end of the seventies, this famous work of art was turned into the liquor dispenser given to my father, and sold under a number of name, including Master Piss and Little Whizzer.



As so often happens with novelty gifts, my dad's dispenser was used three or four times, garnered a few chuckles, then was consigned to the basement storage shelf. A few years later, when he built a pond with a waterfall in the backyard, he took the statue from the decanter and installed it as a fountain - a fate I always felt was a dignified resting place for the lad.

Last year, I happened across a copy of this silly gag gift in an antique store, and couldn't resist. I paid $20 for it, and after I got it home I did a bit of research and found I could have gotten an unused vintage example online for about the same price...but, while it didn't end up as an example of shrewd antique purchasing on my part, that wasn't the objective in this case anyway.

And twenty bucks is a small price to pay for that golden glow of childhood nostalgia....

Saturday Night at the Komodo Lounge

Welcome to Saturday night at the Komodo Lounge, a periodic set of period cocktail inspired music and videos to while away a weekend evening in the comfort of your very own home tiki bar.

Sixties Jet Set - Air Hostesses



From contemporary dance/lounge auteur Tipsy, here's 'Chop Sockey':



Juan Garcia Esquivel - Miniskirt



Al Caiola - Malaguena



Modern-day lounge performer Lushy live at the Tacoma Art Museum



Fascinating bossa nova version of California Dreaming, performed by Brazilian sensation Rosa Marya Colin.



The incomparable Antonio Carlos Jobim, with one of his classics, 'Wave'.



Donald Byrd - Dominoes



Jean Jaques Perry - Indicatif Spatial Space Age Fashion



Nat King Cole performs one of his signature tunes 'Nature Boy', written by the mysterious proto-beatnik Eden Ahbez.




Thanks for coming, and we hope you enjoyed your time with us. Tonight's Komodo Lounge has been brought to you by our sponsors, Roman Coppola's 'CQ'. Watch the trailer here:

Why Travelators Still Trundle On

"It's 50 years this week that the first travelator opened in the UK, prompting visions of a future where walking would be superseded by standing on a moving walkway.

They belong to an age of hovercraft and monorails, a Tomorrow's World imagining of the 21st Century rooted firmly in the past.

Even their name - travelator! - evokes the sci-fi innocence of a post-war world which had not yet learned to be cynical about the transformative power of technology.

Once, the idea of automated moving walkways may have been bound up with gleaming, modernist idealisations of the future.

But after 50 years in the UK, most of us must now surely associate them with a brief moment of respite as we trudge from one end of an airport to another.

It was a very different story when the UK's first travelator opened in September 1960 - a time when the confident consumerism of Harold Macmillan's "never had it so good" era was preparing to give way to Harold Wilson's faith in the white heat of scientific development."

To read more of this content at BBC News Magazine, click here.

Trendwatch: Dollhaus Movement Sweeps Basements Everywhere

"Just days before the Operation Dollhouse deadline, Fast Company's Co.Design reports on Brinca Dada, a New York-based manufacturer of modern dollhouses. Let's put it this way: LED lighting, cut-stone walls, solar panels—all the hallmarks of fine adult living, signs that one's made it, right? Not anymore, actually—now they're within reach of the toddler set. Aspirational parents can finally eschew Barbie's Dream House for a more modernist-inclined abode, complete with equally streamlined miniature furniture. Hey now, it's never too early to teach the youngsters about the De Stijl movement. And here's looking at you, Dwell: pressure's on."

(source: Curbed National).

***************

What's wrong with Barbie's Dream House? It can be pretty modernist, too.....(see the picture of the 'Dream House' bought for my daughter's sixth birthday).

The Ikea Revolution

"Ikea is not so much a store as a cultural phenomenon. It's the land of the Allen key, where the product names make us laugh (do I really need a lamp called Knubbig?) and the missing pieces make us groan. We joke about the confusing layout but we still flock to the company's outlets.

Ikea is the best-known mass-producer of home products in the world. About 30 per cent of households in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane contain something bought there in the past year. This week, the company announced six more stores would be built in the next decade.

Some items are more than just furniture. The Billy bookcase is a rite of passage, a symbol of the proud, just-left-home renter. With its flat-pack, sustainably grown timber, low price and modular form, Billy is a contemporary furniture icon, a bestseller here and overseas. And, in truth, you're just as likely to find it in the home of the first-time renter's parents. If anything sums up Ikea's contribution to the way we live, it's this modest book-holder.

Even museums have recognised the company's impact. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has pieces in its permanent collection. The Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Vienna's Imperial Furniture Collection and Stockholm's contemporary art museum, Liljevalchs konsthall, have mounted exhibitions on Ikea in the past year.

These retrospectives coincide with the 60th anniversary of Ikea's catalogue. The launch of this clever marketing tool in 1951 marked a turning point for a company whose founder, Ingvar Kamprad, began as a 17-year-old peddler of pencils, stockings, matches and household items in Sweden in 1943.

To read more of this content at The Sydney Morning Herald, click here.

Sneak Peek: George Nakashima and the Spirits Within

As the proud owner of a much-cherished Nakashima-inspired burlwood slab coffee table, I am determined to write an overview of the marvelous Japanese-American furniture maker's work at some point in the very near future.

In the meantime, I will leave you with this little "teaser" to whet your appetite.

george nakashima (1905-1990) was born in spokane, washington. the first son of a newspaper reporter of samurai lineage named katsuharu nakashima and his wife suzu. he graduated from the graduated from the university
of washington in 1929 and from the M.I.T. with a master's in architecture in 1930 and then worked as a mural painter and architectural designer in the new york area.

in 1933 he moved to paris, and the next year joined the tokyo architectural offices of antonin raymond. in 1937 he volunteered to design and supervise construction at a religious sanctuary in pondicherry, india. because of his deep transformation of consciousness at the sri aurobindo ashram 1937-39, - and was given the sanskrit name 'sundarananda' (one who delights in beauty) by sri aurobindo himself - his work thereafter was propelled by a religious fervor.

he believed that it is necessary to remove the desire to promote one's individual ego from the creative process and to devote work each day to the divine, a concept quite contrary to mainstream western culture.

Read more at designboom. Click here.

Gallery: Giants of Modernist Art

From top:

Take Your Time, an exhibition by Olafur Eliasson in 2008 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Eliasson changed the gallery lights, mirrored the ceilings, filled a room with a pool of water and a fog bank, and turned a skywalk into a kaleidoscope, all in an effort to tinker with the way we experience space and light.

A painting by Aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye, exhibited in the National Center for Modern Art in Roppongi, Australia. Kngwarreye, who died in 1996 started to paint in her late 70s, after living her entire life in Utopia, an outpost in the blistering Western deserts. Her abstract, colorful works broke all sales records, and she became the first Aboriginal artist to sell a painting for over a million US dollars.

Richard Serra sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, 2008. Serra’s early work focused on the industrial materials that he had worked with as a youth in West Coast steel mills and shipyards, but in his maturity, his work became famous for coupling that physicality with breathtaking size and weight.

Jack Bush, December (C65), 1961. Bush was part of the group Painters Eleven, which was founded by William Ronald in 1954 to promote abstract painting in Canada. Starting as an Abstract Expressionist, Bush simplified his composition by using an all-over coverage of thinly applied bright colours inspired by his watercolour sketches. Bush was thus an early proponent of Color Field Painting and Lyrical Abstraction.

Emily Carr, In the Forest, 1935. Fascinated by the strength of the natural world of her native British Columbia, and deeply inspired by the culture and art of the indigenous people of the Pacific North East coast, she expresses Nature with transcendental qualities. Air, trees, leaves and soil are intensely reproduced in open brush strokes and rendered from particular viewpoints that conceive an idea of intense immersion in the mystery and soul of the silent forests.