Silver, Daisy;
(2024)
The form that surrounds us: encounters in modernist art and design between Mexico and California 1945-1968.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Abstract
The thesis explores the cultivation of a modernist project through a series of case studies of artists and designers working between Mexico and California from 1945 to 1968. While not always linked through direct collaboration, the artists and designers chosen for the thesis were similarly preoccupied with what it meant to produce an image of modernity. By bringing greater critical attention to the magazines and exhibitions that acted as collectivising agents and focal points for these transcultural entanglements, the thesis examines how this circulation of ideas contributed to a shared but multivocal modernist project. This method of analysis allows for a transnational study that enables individual figures, which have not necessarily been understood in relation to each other, to emerge as part of larger art historical structures. This is achieved through close attention to individual artists and designers, including Charles and Ray Eames, Mathias Goeritz, Ruth Asawa and Clara Porset and the distinct set of cultural and political circumstances in which their ideas and works were forged. In this, the study seeks to unpick underlying currencies and motivations between these spaces. A unifying thread throughout the four chapters is a preoccupation with the interior as a site for the articulation of their modernist vision. The modern interior served as the ground for a more generative materiality through a shared belief in the meaningful potential that exists between architecture and form. This ideal encapsulated in Porset’s quote, ‘design is the form that surrounds us’ which the title draws from, continues to carry weight with contemporary artists which is the subject of the final chapter.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The form that surrounds us: encounters in modernist art and design between Mexico and California 1945-1968 |
| Language: | English |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History of Art |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10194354 |
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