Harry Bertoia and postwar American design culture
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation investigates the confluence of art, design, and corporate interests in the career and oeuvre of Harry Bertoia (1915-1978). Since the Industrial Revolution, modernist art has labored to distinguish itself from design and the associated threat of being dismissed as 'merely' commercial, decorative, or craft. The decades following World War II saw an amplification of this modernist anxiety. Alongside the rise of Abstract Expressionism, a new design culture flourished in postwar America, bolstered by the powerful economic and political interests of big business. Design assumed unprecedented prominence as a central means of relating to increasingly abstract systems and institutions. Bertoia occupied a fraught position in this cultural landscape. In the course of his four-decade-long career, his practice routinely crisscrossed the categories of fine art, design, and craft. His extensive output includes hollowware, jewelry, monotypes, furniture, welded and cast metal sculpture, and sound recordings. This study demonstrates how his work dramatized the competing aims and claims of modernist art and design in the Cold War period.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2018; ©2018 |
| Publication date | 2018; 2018 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Simon, Sydney Skelton |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Lee, Pamela M |
| Thesis advisor | Lee, Pamela M |
| Thesis advisor | Keller, Sean, (Architectural historian) |
| Thesis advisor | Troy, Nancy J |
| Thesis advisor | Turner, Fred |
| Degree committee member | Keller, Sean, (Architectural historian) |
| Degree committee member | Troy, Nancy J |
| Degree committee member | Turner, Fred |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sydney Skelton Simon. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Art and Art History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2018. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2018 by Sydney Skelton Simon
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...