Vital Forms: American Art in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960

by Brooke Kamin Rapaport

Book Overview

From the Studebaker, the Slinky (R), & the Eames chair, to the TWA terminal, paintings by deKooning & mobiles by Calder, this fascinating book examines how artists & designers responded to atomic-age... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872731456
• ISBN13: 9780872731455
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Brooklyn Museum of Art
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 2.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Unique book about a great era in American design

Although this book was published as a companion to a museum exhibition, it is one of the few volumes available on the important subject of post-WWII art and design in America. There are many books to be found about individual artists and designers of the period, but hardly any cover the era from as broad a perspective as this one. This is quite an oversight considering that the art and design that emerged during this time succeeded in putting America at the forefront of the art world for the first time in history. Among the iconic artists, designers and other innovators you will find in the book are Raymond Loewy, Ray & Charles Eames, Isamu Noguchi, Russell Wright, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Willem De Kooning, Georgia O'Keeffe, Earl Tupper and Morris Lapidus; and the book is heavily illustrated with their unforgettably influential imagery: Eames chairs, Noguchi coffee tables, the Formica boomerang pattern, the Fontainebleau Hotel, Russell Wright and Eva Zeisel tableware, Jack Lenor Larsen fabrics, the Cadillac Biarritz, the Predicta television, hula hoops and kidney-shaped swimming pools. It a fun and highly informative book about the ever-fascinating art and design of one of the most important periods in the whole of American art history