2017 Modernism Week Programming Guide
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CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Modernism Week extends a sincere thank you to the City of Palm Springs and to all participating sponsors. In addition, we are thankful for support from the cities of Palm Desert, Indian Wells, and Rancho Mirage, and more than 80 generous sponsors, media, community partners, BRIAN THOMAS JONES homeowners, and neighborhood organizations. Thank you to the amazing Modernism Week Event Captains and 300-plus volunteers from across the globe who make this wonderful event possible. MODERNISM WEEK BOARD OF DIRECTORS J. Chris Mobley, Chairman Mark Davis, Treasurer Gary Johns, Secretary Lise Baadh Regina Basterrechea Maureen Erbe William Kopelk Russell Schnepf Laurie Weitz STAFF AND CONSULTANTS Lisa Vossler Smith, Executive Director Davy Aker, Web Administrator David Dixon, Creative Project Manager Mary Jensen, Development Project Manager Sponsor Acknowledgements 52 Arianne Keens, Architectural Bus Tour Coordinator Paul Ortega, Content Coordinator Steve Quintanilla, General Counsel 54 In Mexico City, Modernism Is Also About the Past Patti Shaffer, Administrative Coordinator Robbie Waldman, CAMP Operations Manager David Webb, Lecture & Film Facilitator John Lautner: Jazz Architect 56 PUBLIC RELATIONS Bob Bogard, O’Bayley Communications 59 Event Highlights Christine Joo, Secret Agent PR Emily Nerad, Secret Agent PR Tim O’Bayley, O’Bayley Communications Floor Plan Claudia Suarez, O’Bayley Communications 65 Haily Zaki, Secret Agent PR Special acknowledgements to John Lautner’s Exhibitors 66 family, The John Lautner Foundation, Goldenvoice, Christopher Kennedy, Kelly Lee, Klaus Moser, Steve Ullman, Worchell Properties, Palm Springs 109 Palm Springs Area Map Art Museum, Palm Springs Historical Society, Palm Springs Life magazine, Palm Springs Modernism Show & Sale, Palm Springs Modern Committee, Palm Springs 110 Schedule of Events Preservation Foundation, and Sunnylands Center and Garden, The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands. ©2017 Desert Publications Inc. Franklin W. Jones, Publisher; Winston Gieseke, Editorial Director; Stuart Funk, Art Director; Olga Reyes, Managing Editor; Miranda Caudell, Associate Editor. Randee Bayne, Jim Doyle, Paulina Larson, Michael Mathews, Kathi Pettersen, Julie Rogers, Sales Representatives; Gracie De La Paz, Advertising Graphics Manager; Emma B. Reyna, Advertising Art Director; Laura Reyes, Production Manager; Marco Moracha, Digital Imaging. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information provided in this publication. Desert Publications Inc. makes no guarantee of the accuracy of information supplied by this publication, advertisers, organizations, or individual contributors. The publisher is not responsible for loss or damage to unsolicited editorial or photography. 303 N. Indian Canyon Dr., Palm Springs, CA 92262, 760-325-2333; FAX: 760-325-7008; www.palmspringslife.com modernismweek.com 28 28 modernismweek.com MODERNISM WEEK SPONSORS modernismweek.com 52 52 modernismweek.com of custom, minimalist homes on the then rural southern limits of Mexico City that the architect envisioned as a model of co-existence of architecture and its natural context: in this case, over 865 acres of a 5,000-year-old lava field with a rugged profile. Barragán oversaw its conception, design, construction, and marketing between 1945 In Mexico City, and 1953 and, with fellow Mexican Modernist architect Max Cetto, designed the first two “demonstration homes,” setting the architectural look for later construction. Barragán incorporated extensive gardens near the main entry of the community while creating walking paths in between lava ridges throughout the landscape. The subdivision was SHUTTERSTOCK.COM Above: The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), on June 15, 2009, in “dotted with plazas, fountains, ponds, cacti, and pepper trees,” writes Modernism Is Also About the Past Mexico City. UNAM has been awarded the 2009 Principe de Asturias award. Keith L. Eggener in his recent Luis Barragán’s Gardens of El Pedregal Symposium highlights role of art and design as assertions of unique identity. n By Morris Newman (Princeton University Press). 1949 to 1954 by more than 80 Mexican architects and artists as Barragán considered the Gardens of El Pedregal, which by the a collaborative effort, the university is a UNESCO World Heritage late 1950s boasted hundreds of minimalist homes by Mexico’s most Symposium highlights role of art and design as assertions of unique identity. Site, designated as such for the ensemble of numerous murals, important Modernist architects, “his most important project, and monumental mosaics, and Modernist buildings found on campus. critics have described the houses and gardens there as a turning point Several buildings and installations — most notably the central library in Mexican architecture,” according to Eggener. Sadly, subsequent tower’s mosaics, designed in 1952 by Juan O’Gorman, covering commercial development and the division of the once expansive 43,000 square feet on all four façades and created with millions of residential lots have destroyed parts of the project. pieces of naturally vibrantly colored stones collected by the artist from Another watershed moment in Mexico City Modern was the all over Mexico — are superb examples of the integration of Mexico’s ambitious sequence of design projects undertaken for the 1968 Summer pre-Hispanic past and Latin American Modernism. Olympics. As the first Latin American city to host the games, Mexico “The visual forging of the past and present was a visual City officials were acutely aware of the sudden international visibility solidification and advocacy, through the power of architecture, of of their city, and the games’ design projects served to communicate the a new, unified, and independent Mexico emerging into modernity image of Mexico City as a modern metropolis while raising international from multiple heritages,” says Anne Rowe, Sunnylands director of awareness of the expressive possibilities of Mexican design. The 1968 collections and exhibitions. “No longer Colonial, no longer indigenous, Mexico City Olympics were considered a paradigm-shifting event in the this uniquely Mexican, nationalist approach reinterpreted the placeless history of graphics, branding, and architecture. nature of Modernism.” The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage displays As an architect and muralist, Juan O’Gorman (1905–1982) homage to Mexican culture and design. The Sunnylands column, which represents both sides of Mexico City Modern: the sophisticated is the centerpiece of the fountain in front of the Mayan-inspired house modernity and the passionately Mexican imagery of decorative designed by architect A. Quincy Jones (1913–1979), is the work of two surfaces. In 1931, he designed a combination house and studio, one well-known artist brothers, Tomás (1914–2001) and José Chávez Morado each for painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, connected only by a (1909–2002). The brothers were active in public art, murals, painting, roof-level walkway, plus a home for himself nearby. Designed in a then mosaics, and sculpture from the 1930s until their deaths. daring avant-garde style of cubic volumes free of all ornament, these One of their most renowned collaborations was the monumental buildings were among the first in Latin America to show the influence 40-foot-tall hammered bronze columnar-shaped fountain, designed in 1964 of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. for the courtyard of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, at O’Gorman “started out as a purist,” says Mark Davis, Modernism the request of the museum’s architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (1919–2013), Week Treasurer who helped organize the day-long symposium on who often commissioned Mexican artists to create works for his projects. Mexico City Modern. Later in life, O’Gorman grew disenchanted When the Annenbergs traveled to Mexico City in 1967 and with how his “functionalist” design style had simply become an visited the museum, they were so captivated by the fountain that inexpensive building method, poorly executed by profit-driven they commissioned the artists to create a near half-scale replica for developers who lacked his commitment to quality. He began instead Sunnylands. The message of the column is conveyed by a series of relief to concentrate on creating murals and mosaics with intense, teeming sculptures spread across its surfaces. Featuring an eagle, a jaguar, and imagery inspired by Mayan and Aztec designs, among others. the profiles of both an indigenous Mexican and a Spaniard, the images Even architects who do not make explicit use of Mexican imagery, on the column comprise an elaborate symbolic narrative of the country’s such as Luis Barragán (1902–1988), have a distinctively national flavor, cultural history. The narrative sequence concludes with a diagram of an COURTESY COLLYNS MEXICO CITY ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY MEXICO CITY COLLYNS COURTESY according to Davis. With their thick walls, deeply cut windows, and atom, representing scientific progress, and a dove for world peace. ODERN ARCHITECTURE IN MEXICO CITY shares many similarities with Modernist buildings Above: Column Imagen de Mexico vibrant use of intense color, Barragán’s homes are strongly Mexican, For Rowe, the research on the history of the Sunnylands column Known as “El Paraguas” in Southern California: floor-to-ceiling windows; a sense of openness to air, sunlight, and National Museum of he says. These seemingly simple, yet sophisticated designs convey a developed