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Eero Saarinen, IBM Manufacturing and Training Facility, Rochester, Minnesota, circa 1958, Photographer Balthazar Korab, © Balthazar Korab Ltd. |
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Eero Saarinen with A Combined Living Dining Room Study project model, created for Architectural Forum Magazine, c. 1937. Courtesy of Eero Saarinen Collection.
Eero Saarinen, Dulles International Airport Terminal, Chantilly, Virginia, circa 1963, Photographer Balthazar Korab, © Balthazar Korab Ltd.
Eero Saarinen, Tulip Chair, Photo courtesy Knoll Inc.
Eero Saarinen, Patent drawing for pedestal chairs, June 7, 1960, Courtesy Eero Saarinen Collection. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University. |
Minneapolis Institute of Arts On a fouryear international tour of Europe and the United States, the landmark exhibition Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future — the first major museum retrospective of this Finnishborn American architect’s short but prolific career — will be jointly presented. An opening weekend lecture on Sunday, September 14, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, with Susan Saarinen, the architect’s daughter, and a weekend symposium October 10–12, concluding at the Saarinen & Saarinen designed Christ Church Lutheran in Minneapolis, one of the finest examples of modern ecclesiastical architecture, are among the related programs celebrating the exhibition. (A complete listing follows.) Organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, and the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C., with the support of the Yale University School of Architecture, Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future features never before seen sketches, working drawings, models, photographs, furnishings, films, and other ephemera from various archives and private collections. Exploring more than 50 of Saarinen’s built and unbuilt projects, the exhibition provides a unique opportunity to consider his innovations in the use of new materials and construction techniques within the larger context of postwar modern architecture. In this collaborative presentation, the Walker Art Center will feature Saarinen’s furnishings and residences as well as his designs for churches and academic and corporate campuses, while the Minneapolis Institute of Arts will present his designs for airports, memorials, and embassies as well as his early work within the context of its modernist design collection. From the sweeping curves of the TWA terminal JFK Airport and the soaring Gateway Arch in St. Louis to the elegant simplicity of the Pedestal Chair, Eero Saarinen created some of the most powerful and enduring expressions of modern architecture and design. Although his career was cut short by his early death at age 51 in 1961, Saarinen was one of the most celebrated architects of his time, both at home and abroad. Born in Finland in 1910, he coincidentally shared the same birth date as his famous father, architect Eliel Saarinen, who designed the buildings and grounds of the famed Cranbrook educational campus in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Emigrating to the United States at the age of 13, Eero grew up at Cranbrook, immersed in its artistic culture, and completed his architectural studies at Yale University before eventually returning to Cranbrook to teach and practice architecture in partnership with his father on many important commissions. With the death of Eliel in 1950, Christ Church Lutheran (1947–1949) in Minneapolis’ Longfellow neighborhood would be the last completed project by Saarinen and Saarinen. Saarinen established his own firm and enjoyed a fame that surpassed that of his father’s, attracting and nurturing top talent from around the world, many of whom went on to have significant practices of their own. He achieved international acclaim while working out of a surprisingly modest office in Bloomfield Hills. An intense and immersive environment, the office operated nearly around the clock. Saarinen’s practice spanned airports, embassies, national memorials, corporate and academic campuses, churches, private residences, and furniture. Some of his peers criticized him for having a different style for each job, but he shrugged off the criticism, rejecting the dogma of an orthodox modernism by letting the subject and site guide his solutions. Saarinen helped create important expressions of American identity such as the United Sates Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, better known as St. Louis Gateway Arch, which celebrated the country’s westward expansion with a simple form of monumental proportions; airports in both New York and Washington, D.C., that thrilled people with the glamour of international travel and served as an entry to the country’s business and political capitals; and his pioneering development of the postwar corporate campus for such industrial giants as General Motors, Bell Telephone, and IBM, including its manufacturing and training center in Rochester, Minnesota (1956–1958). These buildings used dynamic forms and structural innovations to capture the optimism of mid20thcentury America, while their variety came to represent a national ideal of unbounded choice. Screened at both venues, Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, an 18minute documentary film by KDN Films produced by Bill Ferehawk, Bill Kubota, and Ed Moore, chronicles the life and work of the architect, focusing not only on his buildings in their cultural context but also the collaborative, 24houraday process that produced them. Interviews with more than a dozen people tell the Saarinen story in a search to understand his genius and his little understood, yet influential, design process. Included are personal anecdotes and commentary by key figures in Saarinen’s life: intimate family friend Florence Knoll Bassett; critic Vincent Scully; and architects such as Kevin Roche, César Pelli, and Ralph Rapson. Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue that addresses the themes and framework of the exhibition, with sections devoted to building types and the architect’s milieu. An opening essay written by coeditors EevaLiisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht introduces the themes of the book, which is composed of two main sections, an annotated chronology, selected Saarinen writings, and appreciations by former collaborators. Included are essays by a team of researchers and scholars that situate Saarinen and his work in his social, intellectual, and artistic milieu, as well as the most complete portfolio of Saarinen projects to date presenting a chronological survey of more than 100 projects. The catalogue, published by Yale University Press, is available at the Walker Art Center Shop and the Museum Shop at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. $65. Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future is organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York, the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, and the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., with the support of the Yale University School of Architecture. The exhibition is curated by Donald Albrecht, independent curator and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of the City of New York. |
Eero Saarinen, Christ Church Lutheran, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1949. |
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Tetsumi Kudo during the happening Quiet Event-Observation, presented at Gallery M.E. Thelen, 1968. |
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Walker Art Center The first solo U.S. museum exhibition of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo’s work includes some 70 works of diverse media and scale — objects, sculpture, installation, drawing, and painting — covering the entire trajectory of his career, from the late 1950s through the late 1980s. Also featured will be a study room, in which viewers can explore a timeline of the artist’s life and work and examine historical documentation, posters, and ephemera, as well as studies for some of his larger-scale works. Kudo was a rare artist who bridged many disparate artistic tendencies in the latter half of the 20th century — including French Nouveau Realisme, international Fluxus, Pop art, 1960s anti-art tendencies, and 1980s Japanese postmodernism — without specifically belonging to any of them. Tetsumi Kudo (b. February 23, 1925, Hy?go-ken), Tetsumi Kudo studied oil painting at and graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts in 1958. He was first noticed at the Yomiuri Independents exhibition. In 1962, Kudo emigrated to France and lived there for the next 25 years. After his return to Japan, Kudo taught at Tokyo Art University from 1987 until his death in 1990. His strong concern for the human body, which he shows through his often grotesque work, bears many implications for modern society. We should, for example, react to his series which address the issue of radioactivity and environment. He died November 11, 1990 in Tokyo, Japan. Throughout his life and career he remained an eccentric and enigmatic figure in postwar art. In his stance and approach, temperament, and philosophy, the contemporary artists he perhaps shared most with were figures like Joseph Beuys, Paul Thek, James Lee Byars, and Yayoi Kusama. But the significance of Kudo’s work lies not only in art history but in postwar culture and thought more generally. Throughout his career, he remained particularly Japanese, while his art and vision were consistently and uniquely transcultural, international, and cosmopolitan. Deeply concerned with the fate of humanity in the wake of nuclear attacks on his native land and the dawn of the global arms race, Kudo sought to develop a universal humanist language of creativity and regeneration until his untimely death in 1990. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition. The exhibition is curated by Doryun Chong. |
Tetsumi Kudo, Cultivation for Nostalgic Purpose for Your Living Room (or Cultivation, for Melancholy, In Your Now), 1967-1968, Mixed
Tetsumi Kudo, L’âme d’artiste d’avant-garte, 1986, Mixed media 94-1/2 x 43 x 43", Collection Aomori Museum of Art. |
Tetsumi Kudo, Portrait d’artiste dans la crise, 1978, Mixed media 11-7/16 x 17-11/16 x 7-7/8", Collection Aomori Museum of Art. |
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Eero Saarinen, Miller House, Columbus, Indiana, circa 1957, Photographer Ezra Stoller, © Ezra Stoller/ESTO. |
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United States Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri, under construction, 1965, From the Collections of Arteaga Photos Ltd.
Eero Saarinen, TWA Terminal, New York International (now John F. Kennedy International) Airport, New York, circa 1962, Photographer Balthazar Korab, © Balthazar Korab Ltd. |
Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts jointly present this first major museum retrospective of architect Eero Saarinen’s short but prolific career. Saarinen was one of the most celebrated, unorthodox, and controversial masters of 20th-century architecture. In many ways he was the architect of what has been dubbed “the American century,” the post-World War II era when the United States emerged as an influential world superpower. Although Saarinen’s most iconic and publicly recognizable design is the soaring Gateway Arch in St. Louis, his work spanned many different areas of architectural practice, including the design of airports, corporate and academic campuses, churches and private residences, and furniture. Although criticized by his peers at the time for having a different style for each project, Saarinen rejected the dogma of an orthodox modernism and instead adopted a varied approach to architectural design, letting the subject and site guide his inventive solutions. His resulting body of work includes such masterpieces as the sweeping concrete curves of the TWA Terminal (1956–1962) at New York’s JFK Airport; the grandeur of General Motors Technical Center (1948–1956), dubbed an “industrial Versailles” by the media; and the iconic Womb Chair and Ottoman (1946–1948) or the innovative Pedestal (1954–1957) series of tables and chairs, both for Knoll and all classics of mid-century modernism. Featured in the exhibition are never-before-seen sketches, working drawings, models, photographs, furnishings, films, and other ephemera from various archives and private collections. Exploring his entire output of more than 50 built and unbuilt projects, it provides a unique opportunity to consider Saarinen’s innovations in the use of new materials, technologies, and construction techniques within the larger context of postwar modern architecture. In this collaborative presentation, the Walker Art Center will feature Saarinen’s furnishings and residences as well as his designs for churches and academic and corporate campuses, while the Minneapolis Institute of Arts will present his designs for airports, memorials, and embassies, as well as his early work within the context of its modernist design collection. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition. |
Eero Saarinen, Sketch of David S. Ingalls Hockey Rink, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, circa 1953, Courtesy Eero Saarinen Collection. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University. |
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