By Kate Eagen Johnson
ST LOUIS, MO. — “The story of Modernism in America is not simply about MoMA, Cranbrook and Los Angeles,” observed David Conradsen when describing the thematic thrust of “St Louis Modern,” an exhibition on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) through January 31. Conradsen, the Grace L. Brumbaugh and Richard E. Brumbaugh associate curator in charge of decorative arts and design, explained how he and exhibition co-curator Genevieve Cortinovis, research assistant at SLAM, wanted to spotlight the “architects, designers and makers as well as patrons and ‘movers and shakers’ who helped to nurture Modern design in the region.” They discuss the adoption of Modernism in St Louis and environs as seen in architecture, interior design, furnishings and related objects.
The joint exhibition and catalog mark the 50th anniversary of the completion of Eero Saarinen’s “Gateway to the West” Arch in 1965. The stainless-steel-clad, inverted catenary curved structure rises 630 feet above the Mississippi riverfront and is recognized internationally as the symbol of St Louis. While the co-curators address some antecedents, they ostensibly start the story of Modernism in St Louis in 1935. In that year, planning for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, the park where the Arch would eventually be constructed, began. Conradsen and Cortinovis focus their study on the period 1935 to 1965.
Topics addressed in the exhibition, and more fully in the catalog, include the relationship between St Louis’s civic development during the Mid-Twentieth Century and Modernist architecture and design; the promotion of Modernist design and merchandise by local department stores, including Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney and Famous-Barr, which Cortinovis termed “cultural centers at the time;” and the ways St Louisans incorporated Modernist design and products into their homes, offices and houses of worship.
Also highlighted is the role the Saint Louis Art Museum played as both a trumpeter and an adopter of the style by hosting traveling art and design exhibitions, acquiring Modernist art objects for the collection and by incorporating Modernist décor into its own facilities’ renovations during the Midcentury era.
The exhibition showcases 150 objects drawn from the collections of 30 lenders as well as SLAM. Items on view range from the maquette for a Harry Bertoia sculpture screen once installed in the Lambert-St Louis Airport Terminal to a Silver Swan electric oscillating fan designed by Jane Evans and manufactured by the Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company in St Louis. A particularly delightful surprise among the fine and decorative arts one expects to see in an art museum is a 1954 Corvette manufactured in St Louis. Homage is paid to various substyles including Art Deco, Machine Age, Biomorphic, International and Space Age.
The exhibition reflects the arc of Modernism, according to Conradsen. The first section addresses the question, “What is Modern design?” and illustrates the spectrum of experimentation that occurred during the 1930s before the emergence of a more unified view in the late 1940s. Cortinovis summarized the flavor of Modernism in St Louis as conservative in style, at times Classically inspired and marked by a preference for luxurious materials.
The 60-plus artists, architects and designers represented fall into at least one of the following categories: a sometime resident of St Louis, creator of an artistic work installed in the city, conceptualizer of a product manufactured by a St Louis factory, or the mastermind behind art products that were either displayed in the city or purchased by St Louisans. Furniture designer Victor Proetz, silversmiths Maria Regnier and Dwight Dillon, stained glass artist Francis Deck and textile artists Edna Vogel and Frannie Dressel number among the local Modernists reintroduced through the project.
Arguably the city’s most famous native-born Modernist was Charles Eames. He studied at Washington University and worked as an architect in St Louis before moving, in 1938, to Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, from whence he went on to even greater fame and glory. Eames’s post-1938 successes were covered proudly in the local press and designs such as “LCW” (Lounge Chair Wood) came to town as part of the important traveling exhibition “Modern Design is Good Business” in 1948. Cortinovis emphasized that, contrary to myth, Eames returned to St Louis many times after 1938.
“Charles Eames died here and is buried here. He was not only in Cranbrook and in Southern California. He didn’t just ‘jump ship,’ he came back quite a bit,” said Cortinovis.
The fact that the co-curators of “St Louis Modern” did not limit the scope of their exhibition to a consideration of local makers is somewhat atypical for an art-historical exhibition. There is a great deal of discussion centering on “style and idea” transmission, dissemination and consumption. As an example, they examined how architectural and interior design firms in St Louis incorporated Modernist design, both “one-offs” and mass-produced items, into their local commissions.
Asked to point to an exhibition highlight, Conradsen selected a bull’s-eye mirror designed by Victor Hugo Proetz, part of a furniture order he executed for the new home of his brother, Dr Arthur Proetz, between the years 1939 and 1941. Conradsen noted how the Classically inspired mirror topped by an eagle would never be mistaken for an early Nineteenth Century example in its “muscularity” and sophisticated pewter-based color scheme.
The curator further explained how Proetz’s furnishings illustrate a fusion of stylistic influences as one sometimes sees in early Modernism. The eclectic Proetz drew from the designs of the English Classicist Thomas Hope, the Art Deco mode and painted Swedish furniture. Even though he had moved to New York about 1934 to design custom furniture, Proetz continued to work for family and friends in St Louis. No less than Charles Eames called him “a bona fide genius.”
Another exhibition and catalog project aim was to encourage greater appreciation of extant St Louis Modernist architecture. With this in mind, Cortinovis pointed to a ceiling Isamu Noguchi created for the American Stove Company in the Magic Chef Building. A dramatic photograph of the entry showing the Noguchi ceiling appeared in a 1948 issue of The Architectural Forum. According to Cortinovis, Noguchi made only three such ceilings, the culmination of work he undertook in the 1940s involving small-scale biomorphic light sculptures he called “lunars.” The “lunar landscape” ceiling survives in situ but is now covered by a drop ceiling. Cortinovis hopes that renewed interest in this rare sculptural installation so well known in its day will lead to its “release” and restoration. The maquette, which served as the official model for the plasterers when they assembled the ceiling, is on view in the exhibition.
The companion volume contains eight contextual essays, an exhibition checklist organized by creator, illustrations of all of the objects in the show, as well as historic photographs of exterior and interior architecture, product displays, and art and design exhibitions. Mary Reid Brunstrom thoroughly explores the architectural component in her essays “Four Decades of Modern Architecture in St Louis, 1928–1968: An Expanded View” and “The Gateway Arch: St Louis’s Modernist Signature.” Conradsen and Cortinovis contributed the other excellent essays relating fine and decorative arts and design.
This project possesses a somewhat unusual slant for a Twentieth Century arts topic. We expect, and are quite comfortable with, a geographically focused, monographic approach for studies of Eighteenth Century American furniture, for example, but it is initially startling to view this particular style through this lens. Perhaps we think of Modernism as a sweeping international style possessing a basically unified aesthetic and so are surprised by what is seen here. Or perhaps curators in the Modernism arena have not yet turned their sights from individual object documentation and connoisseurship to the broader issues involving regional tastes and consumer patterns. Conradsen offered the reminder that “St Louis Modern” “is not one complete story nationally.”
Rather, Conradsen, Cortinovis and Brunstrom have honed in on the St Louis experience and have directed the exhibition and catalog toward those with connections to the Gateway City. For St Louisans, these museum offerings may conjure up memories, answer burning questions about historical happenstance, encourage appreciation of the city’s built environment and related arts and design — or any combination of the above. For an audience outside of the St Louis area, this case study reinforces the value of looking beyond the most famous “Modernist Meccas” when seeking a fuller understanding of the movement’s expression and dynamics in the United States. In that spirit, Conradsen invites all to “come to St Louis, see the exhibition, buy the catalog and experience the Arch.”
The exhibition is on view through timed, ticketed entry. St Louis Modern by David Conradsen and Genevieve Cortinovis with Mary Reid Brunstrom is for sale through SLAM’s museum shops.
For additional information, www.slam.org or 314-721-0072.
