The inaugural exhibition at the Wolfsonian in Miami Beach, Florida

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 1995 by Wendy Kaplan

The inaugural exhibition at the Miami Beach museum opens November 11 and will remain on view until April 28, 1996. Entitled The Arts of Reform and Persuasion, 1885-1945, it is comprised of 256 objects drawn largely from the collection and examines the power of design as a key element in late nineteenth-century reform movements, as an agent of modernity, and as a vehicle for propaganda. The primary purpose of the mainly chronological exhibition is to explore the ideological and practical reasons why a given object was created and how design has contributed to our perception of the modern world. The three sections of the show are entitled "Confronting Modernity," "Celebrating Modernity," and "Manipulating Modernity: Political Persuasion."

"Confronting Modernity" analyzes the conflicts between the anti-modernist and modernist design movements. Most influential was the arts and crafts movement, which added social reform to the design agenda of the 1880s and 1890s. These reformers believed that the industrial process had stripped the craftsman of his individuality, so they vowed to change society by reinstating handcraftsmanship. Joy in labor would be restored and anonymous and shoddy work would be banished. Practitioners sought solutions that had evolved in response to local climate and geography. Buildings were crafted of local materials, reflected vernacular building traditions, and fitted into the landscape. In furniture, straight lines based on the structure of the piece replaced ornate curves, solid native woods were used instead of imported veneers, and unnecessary decoration was eliminated.

Britain was the center of the arts and crafts movement, and the exhibition includes several examples that illustrate the philosophy and design principles of the British movement. The sideboard shown in Plate VI was designed by Ernest Gimson, an architect who retreated to the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire to pursue the simple life. He used seventeenth-century cabinetmaking techniques and evoked the shape of a cupboard of that era. The central strut of the top section is curved like a plow handle.

The arts and crafts movement took many forms on the Continent, where countries that had never been industrialized did not share the British movements repugnance for the machine. Germany and Austria, for example, followed the British precedent by advocating simplicity, integrity, and utility when making everyday objects, but rejected John Ruskin's and William Morris's sanctification of anything handmade. In the exhibition the work of those who still favored handwork, such as Henry van de Velde (see Pl. VII), is contrasted with furniture made at the Werkstatten (literally workshops, but really factories) (see Pl. V). Since the aim of the Werkstatten was to provide quality at an affordable price, they favored any method, including machines, that would improve standards of production and make the country's goods competitive with imports.

At the turn of the century the reform movement took on a political overtone, now known as romantic nationalism. It was a time when Norway was striving for independence from Sweden, Finland from Russia, and Hungary from the domination of the Hapsburgs in Austria. At the same time, a newly unified Italy was looking for a shared past to bind its different regions together. Native crafts, the use of local materials, and vernacular buildings were considered integral to each country's heritage, and their preservation and revival became part of the movement to forge a strong national identity. Thus the high-ceilinged, log-framed living room of the architect Eliel Saarinen's house near Helsinki, Finland, was inspired by buildings in the remote, unspoiled wilderness of Karelia (now part of Russia), which was idealized as the repository of all that was essentially Finnish (see Pl. III).

The art nouveau aesthetic was yet another way designers attempted to come to terms with the modern age. Like the proponents of the arts and crafts movement, the art nouveau reformers rebelled against cluttered Victorian interiors and revival styles. Both groups championed organic structure and required that an object reflect "the use for which it is destined and the material from which it is formed," as Siegfried Bing (1838-1905), a protagonist of art nouveau, put it.(1) Both movements tried to encourage the revival of host crafts without slavishly copying them. Drawing inspiration directly from nature, the art nouveau designers hoped to create forms appropriate for the new century. Although most closely associated with France and Belgium, art nouveau variants existed in Italy (Stile Floreale or Stile Liberty), Germany (Jugendstil), the Netherlands (Nieuwe Kunst), and the Austro-Hungarian.empire (Sezession). Since the Wolfsonian has the most outstanding collection of Stile Floreale and Nieuwe Kunst objects outside Italy and the Netherlands, the exhibition will focus on these manifestations of art nouveau.

"Celebrating Modernity" demonstrates that despite ambivalence about technology in the years between the two World Wars, artists responded positively to modern design. The second generation of futurists celebrated the technological marvels of the modern age as well as all forms of violent struggle, including war. They argued that technology had altered not only the material but also the spiritual and intellectual aspects of daily life. Their later alliance with the Fascist party is exemplified in the portrait bust of Benito Mussolini shown in Plate IX. The sculptor has projected the whirling motion and sense of simultaneity that characterize futurist design by imposing the Italian dictator's distinctive profile on a sphere. On a more popular level, travel posters employed images of swift motion made possible by the advent of trains, steamships, and cars.