Fifty years ago, Black Mountain College was closing its doors after some of the most
innovative and influential artists, designers, architects, poets, dancers and craftspeople
of the 20th century had passed through them. Most could not help but be influenced by
the contagious enthusiasm and electric atmosphere at Black Mountain College. Some
entered the college as seasoned professionals ready to pass on their theories and ideals,
while others attended to learn and hone their respective crafts. This show offers a
glimpse of progressive design through the window of Black Mountain College.
Though many of these designs were executed decades ago, they are as fresh and
compelling today as they were when conceived.
Curated by Bobby + Kelly Gold and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
This project has been made possible through the generous support of the
North Carolina Arts Council, AIA Asheville, Mobilia, BlackBird Frame & Art, and
the UNCA Office of Cultural & Special Events.
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Thinking Ahead Events
Do-it-yourself Jewelry Workshop
Lecture: The Design Legacy of Josef and Anni Albers
Lecture: The Bauhaus and the Farmhouse: Reflections on the Modern Movement in the South
Lecture: The Modern Chair
Lecture: Going Upstream: The Bauhaus in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin
Do-it-yourself Jewelry Workshop
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In conjunction with the exhibition THINKING AHEAD: Progressive Design + Black Mountain College, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center offered a hands-on workshop called Do-it-Yourself Jewelry on Saturday, September 16th.
The Design Legacy of Josef and Anni Albers
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A lecture by Brenda Danilowitz, the Chief Curator of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Ms. Danilowitz addressed the critically important years the couple spent on the faculty of Black Mountain College as well as their earlier years at the Bauhaus in Germany and the years post-BMC when Josef was head of the Dept. of Design at Yale University.
Two of the most talented and influential artists of the 20th century spent sixteen important years of their lives in Western North Carolina at Black Mountain College. Josef Albers (1888 – 1976) and Anni Albers (1899 – 1994) came to teach at Black Mountain College after Hitler closed the Bauhaus, a legendary school of design in Germany, in 1933. Anni was Jewish, so escape from Germany to teach at the newly founded Black Mountain College was a welcome opportunity. Josef taught Art and Anni taught Textile Design and Weaving until 1949 when they left North Carolina. Within a year, Josef Albers became Head of the Department of Design at Yale where he remained until 1954.
Anni Albers is recognized as perhaps the foremost textile artist of the 20th century and was also a writer and printmaker. Josef Albers is acknowledged as one of the century’s most influential teachers and artists. His book Interaction of Color, published in 1963, influenced generations of art students, and his series of paintings Homage to the Square influenced the direction of Abstract Art and color theory. He designed furniture and was a printmaker as well. As a teacher, Albers was driven by the desire to open his students’ eyes to a different way of perceiving objects, colors, materials, art, and experience.
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Brenda Danilowitz is the Chief Curator of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, Connecticut and has written extensively on the Alberses for numerous books and periodicals. She and co-author Frederick Horowitz have just written a new book: JOSEF ALBERS: TO OPEN EYES, published by Phaidon Press.
The Bauhaus and The Farmhouse: Reflections on the Modern Movement in the South
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I like to imagine that inside every cathedral is a shed, and inside every shed is a cathedral…”—Frank Harmon, FAIA
The term “sustainability” is rapidly moving to the forefront of discussions about architecture, design and building practices. Blending the concepts of beauty, functionality, affordability, and sustainability becomes the task of the architect. Raleigh-based architect Frank Harmon has embraced this challenge for decades and has been recognized for his unique approach to problem solving. Since his firm was founded in 1985, they have completed over 200 architectural projects ranging in size from a tiny studio for an artist in Durham (which received four design awards) to the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation’s 70,000-square-foot headquarters in Raleigh (another award-winner). Frank Harmon’s firm was selected by Residential Architect Magazine as the Top Firm of the Year in 2005/2006. In 2003 the same magazine selected one of his projects as House of the Year.
Harmon’s philosophical approach to architecture is remarkable. He writes, “…we like to think that our work has both a soul and a conscience. The ‘soul’ is found in the spirit of the design and the craft of construction. The ‘conscience’ is represented by the manner in which our buildings embody a positive union between natural and built environment, and demonstrate a rigorous commitment to sustainable architecture. Essential to our design ethic is a commitment to sustainable architecture and a belief that architecture should make a didactic as well as physical contribution to the community. We want to leave to future generations a better environment than we received. We are committed to ensuring that both exterior and interior building systems and materials are non-toxic to the environment. We go to great lengths to ensure that our buildings are energy-efficient and environmentally conservative, and that the materials and products used in their construction contribute to ecological restoration. Hand-in-hand with these environmental ideals, we believe in using materials responsive to particular climates and settings, creating a comfortable, tactile, and friendly sense of place.”
Harmon’s list of completed projects in Western North Carolina includes the new iron studio at Penland School of Crafts, and will soon include the new Crafts Campus at UNCA Asheville. This building will house the school’s Wood, Ceramics, Metal, and Glass Arts majors. The state-of-the-art facility will be designed in accordance with green or sustainable design practices to underscore the university’s stated commitment to sustainability and conservation of natural resources. This project will serve as a canvas on which to build a structure that honors and celebrates the beauty of the North Carolina mountains in general and the UNCA campus in particular. The site — an old Buncombe County Landfill – will also serve as a laboratory for ecological site planning and renewable energy evaluation and demonstration.
For more information about Frank Harmon go to www.frankharmon.com.
This evening event took place at the Broadway Arts Building, 49 Broadway in downtown Asheville with live music by the Vollie McKenzie Trio, hors d’oeurves, a cash bar, and opportunities to bid on the silent auction which benefited the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.
The Modern Chair
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A presentation about the evolution of The Modern Chair…
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Architect and Mobilia owner Cynthia Turner, AIA traced the evolution of furniture design in a lecture entitled, “The Modern Chair”. From the early pioneers of modern furniture design through the post-war era, Turner discussed the impact of modern design on an object of everyday use, the chair. Industrial processes, materials, technology, ergonomics, philosophy and popular culture are all factors that influenced designers throughout the 20th century. Turner focused on seminal chair designs that have impacted the evolution of modern furniture and the colorful stories of their creators.
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A reception and raffle of a Wassily chair followed the lecture with proceeds benefiting the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.
Co-Sponsored by Mobilia.
Going Upstream: The Bauhaus in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin
…let us create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist. together let us conceive and create the new building of the future which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in a single unity, and which will rise one day towards heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith. Walter Gropius, Bauhaus founder, from the Bauhaus Manifesto
On Thursday, Nov. 30th, noted art historian and author Margret Kentgens-Craig spoke about the origin and development of the Bauhaus School of Design in Germany. Over its brief fourteen-year history, the Bauhaus was located in three different German cities and had three different directors. Despite these potential obstacles, the Bauhaus pioneered new ways of thinking about art and industry and the potential for partnership and collaboration between the two.
Founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919 by visionary architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus was a legendary school of art and design that had an enormous influence on modern architecture as well as the fine and applied arts. Instruction at the Bauhaus was based on the idea of finding unity between art, craft and technology so that artists, craftspeople and industry could form partnerships for the creation and production of well-designed products for everyday living.
The Bauhaus had eight areas of instruction, or workshops, including the furniture workshop, the photography workshop, the weaving workshop and the print & advertising workshop. Using this workshop-based educational approach as a guiding philosophy, the Bauhaus professors and students tended toward experimentation and innovation. It attracted some of the leading artists of its time to be on the faculty: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Lyonel Feininger among many.
In 1933, with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the growing threat to artists, intellectuals and Jews, the Bauhaus was closed. Many people associated with the Bauhaus emigrated to America and found a safe haven in the newly founded Black Mountain College. Josef Albers and his wife Anni, a weaver, came to Black Mountain and became core members of the BMC community until 1949 when Josef left to head the Dept. of Design at Yale. Black Mountain College carried on many of the ideas and practices of the Bauhaus in its classes. This presentation by Margret Kentgens-Craig explored the fascinating story of the Bauhaus as an important and formative predecessor of Black Mountain College.
Exhibit Photos
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Josef Albers
Black Mountain College Seal and Bookplate
The simple and bold design of the BMC seal was a symbolic expression of the idealistic vision of the college and the modernist esthetic of Josef Albers.
As explained in the text by Albers, the new emblem was meant to be very different from a traditionally ornate college seal. He wrote,
“…we have no inclination to play at being Greeks, Troubadors, or Victorians; for we consciously belong to the second third of the Twentieth Century.”
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Alvin Lustig
Book Cover Designs
Having studied under Frank Lloyd Wright and Jean Charlot, Alvin Lustig taught graphic design at the 1945 Summer Institute at BMC. After a stint as the Director of Visual Research at Look magazine, Lustig operated his own firm, designing light fixtures, furniture, fabrics, book jackets and magazine covers. Lustig’s ethic of good design and his bold graphic style has influenced every aspect of advertising and graphic design; it has become an element of the graphic iconography and pop culture of our society, the roots of which we often take for granted.
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Josef Albers
Album Cover Designs
Josef Albers is best known for his series of “Homage to the Square” color field paintings, however he also left behind a wealth of designs for everyday use. Albers’ album cover designs showcase his crisp, geometric style and his talents as a graphic artist.
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Josef Albers
P. Green
These screenprinted posters were designed for the Albers retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This signed edition, printed at Sirocco Screenprints, was offered only to upper tier museum members.
Exhibit Photos
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Robert Bliss
Lady Murasuki’s Fan Chair
Robert Bliss studied architecture at BMC with Lawrence Kocher and art with Josef Albers. He received a degree in Architecture from MIT, taught at the University of Minnesota, and retired as Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Utah. His design firm, Bliss & Campbell, has received many awards. The fan chair exemplifies the ingenuity and beauty of Bliss’ design work.
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John Urbain
Color Study
John Urbain’s color study exemplifies the student color exercises done for Josef Albers’ classes. John Andrew Rice said: “Albers was our glasses. When he came to Black Mountain his love affair with color was already in full spate; and color, I think, was his only love.”
John Urbain was one of several BMC students from Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Michigan, and among the post-war students to study at the college under the GI Bill.
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Hazel Larsen Archer
Hazel Larsen Archer first came to BMC as a student in 1994 and was appointed to the faculty to teach photography from 1949-1953. She is unquestionably the finest and most complete photographic chronicler of the college for much of its existence. This photograph shows the completed Studies Building.
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Exhibit Photos
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Robert Duncan, Cy Twombly, and Nick Cernovitch
Song of the Border Guard
Collaboration among artists working in different media occurred throughout BMC history and is exemplified by this publication, with poetry by Duncan, design by Twombly, and printmaking by Cernovitch. It shows the fine quality publications being done at the college, especially in the 1950s when literary work gained greater prominence.
Poet Robert Duncan, based in San Francisco, was in close contact with Charles Olson and others at BMC for many years, finally coming to teach briefly in 1956. Cy Twombly studied art at the college in 1951–52 in association with Robert Rauschenberg and Franz Kline. Nick Cernovitch began as a student in 1948 and explored many interests, eventually becoming a theatrical lighting designer.
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Karen Karnes
Casserole
Karen Karnes, along with her then husband, David Weinrib, ran the pottery at BMC from 1952-1954. Karnes’ classic casserole design was unique in that it was among the first such items made of a flameproof stoneware. Proving that utility and beauty can co-exist, its elegant and undeniably sturdy form has garnered high accolades from prominent gourmet chefs, thus earning it a place as an icon of mid-20th century studio pottery.
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Xanti Schawinsky + Ben Shahn
Ads for the Container Corporation of America
Herbert Bayer, one of the graphic artists at the Bauhaus, conceived a landmark series of advertisements for the Container Corporation of America untitled “The Great Ideas of Western Man”. For this series, he commissioned work by well-known artists from around the world including Ben Shahn and Xanti Schawinsky.
A student of the Bauhaus, Xanti Schawinsky came to BMC from 1936-38 to teach Art as well as Stage Design. Best known for his Constructivist-inspired abstract work as a painter, Schawinsky also worked as a graphic artist, photographer and theater designer.
Ben Shahn was born in 1898 in Lithuania and immigrated to the US in 1904. Shahn taught Art at the BMC Summer Institiute of 1951. Over time, he became one of the leading artists in the US. Shahn worked as a muralist, social activist, photographer and teacher. He is best known for his works of social realism and his leftist political view.
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Anni Albers
Hardware Jewelry
In an ingenious and witty demonstration that an artist’s imagination need not be limited by a lack of expensive materials, Anni Albers and BMC student Alex Reed designed and created Hardware Jewelry using humble utilitarian objects available at any hardware store. In 1946, these pieces were included in a show titled Handmade Jewelry at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Exhibit Photos
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Walter Gropius
Sugar Bowl
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Alvin Lustig
Design Magazine (Cover design)
The extensive coverage of BMC design programs in this 1946 magazine brought greatly increased attention to the college and especially to these programs. The college received more than 100 inquiries by letter as a result of the publication, as well as an increase in the number of art and design students.
Alvin Lustig, designer of the magazine’s cover, taught at BMC and was one of the most influential American graphic designers of the 20th century.
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Hazel Larsen Archer
Josef Albers Teaching
