Fifties-inspired furnishings mix irony with nostalgia

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 1, 1996 | by Stephen Henkin

Innovative artist Edward Zucca transforms symbols of the recent past into commentaries on contemporary issues from high finance to environmental disaster.

Although artist Edward Zucca claims he doesn't employ a "conscious nostalgia" in constructing fanciful furniture laden with images of the fifties, the stamp is indelible. Robots, televisions, spacecraft and extraterrestrials abound in his unique work, which speaks of a more technofriendly era.

"I like that period," Zucca says. "I grew up in it. I like the way things were designed then. It was a more innocent and simplified time."

But for Zucca, affinity for things past is saved from sentimentality by his sharp wit and political commentary that compels viewers of his work to consider how far society has come since the placid Eisenhower years.

Fame is beginning to find the Wood-stock, Conn.-based artist, who relies on commissions to earn a living while creating conceptual pieces for galleries. "A master of animated satire, Zucca's flights of fancy ridicule contemporary society's fixation with and worship of technology," says Michael Monroe, curator-in-charge at New York's Peter Joseph Gallery. "Zucca's furniture begs a wide range of interpretations of his unruly and cunning imagination." The artist's work appears in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

In Zucca's creations, ideas and images often make surprising connections. No subject is too sacred for the craftsman, who describes himself as an "artist who works in the medium of furniture." Fifties panache strikes a nerve in his bold, sometimes-comedic portfolio of boxy television sets, human-figure lamps, "amoeba" tables and fantastic clocks. Yet Zucca maintains a fine balance between message and aesthetics.

The fifties iconography latent in the artist's work recalls a time when the post-World War II American home represented the pinnacle of civilization to those who had survived the Depression and the turmoil of war. Americans quickly became accustomed to a world of convenience and "extra hours of freedom for happier living." Indeed, with an abundance of electric refrigerators and other household appliances, faster and more-streamlined cars, television sets and stereos, the future seemed full of promise.

But Zucca believes that was a fallacy. "I'm antitechnology," he explains. "I feel it's stripping away our humanity. It haunts us." Television long has been a device of entrapment as well as the greatest exponent of nostalgia, says Zucca. The small screen became a part of American life during its golden age in the mid-fifties, making significant demands on viewers' time and attention. TV entertainment, no longer mere background noise that enhanced the environment encroached on life.

Technological advances during the fifties also bred widespread interest in science fiction. In Zucca's craft, sci-fi icons speak in innocent--and instructive -- terms. Monroe cites Zucca's Robot Bed (1995) as an example of the artist's ability to contrast the provocative against the practical and the playful against the ominous. "Wired into contemporary culture, Zucca's robots stand ready to serve and support man's insatiable desire for creature comforts," says the curator.

Zucca's art never gets bogged down in style, since its practical use always is accompanied by a strong message. Stock Exchange Clock (1992), with its protruding slot-machine handle, warns that investing is always a risk; Aliens Take Home a Souvenir (1992), depicting two aliens carrying off a piece of wood, predicts environmental disaster. Such content can promote dialogue on all levels: intellectual, social, political and religious.

Zucca's subject matter not only is grounded in fifties iconography but also is heavily influenced by an aesthetic derived from similar experiments in furniture design that flourished during that decade -- the era of American Moderne, characterized by the new synthetics developed during the war years.

Likewise, much of the humor in Zucca's art stems from imbuing even serious topics with carefully measured levity. "People are at first amused by my work [before they reflect on its meaning]," he says. Homo Sapiens Futurismo (1995) depicts the man of the future with almost no body and a lightbulb for a brain.

With Zucca's work, it's hard to tell where the provocative ends and the practical begins. Rocket Dining Table (1991), with its rocket-shaped legs, gives us pause to ponder the real value of the space race. Familiar icons of the fifties thus become forums for acerbic commentary on issues of both universal and individual concern.