The following YouTube Video names Gio Ponti as the Father of Modern Design. Would you agree or disagree with that designation? Do you think more time and perspective is needed before that title is laid in cement?
Either way, the video is lovely.
Nice
little video.
Did Guastavo enlighten us in another thread about Ponti's sojourn in Venezuela -- when and why ?
Of course, modernism had many fathers and mothers. "Modern" is many children, a whole family, with siblings and cousins galore. Trying to designate a single parentage is an unnecessary exercise, isn't it ?
Long Term
I was thinking more in the long term, say 40 years from now, to whom will the distinction fall? As you are aware, the more removed we become from an era, the more we tend to think and perceive in sound bytes (bites?), except for connoisseurs of said era. Hence, Erte has become the Father of Art Deco. Stickley has become the Father of Arts and Crafts. Obviously, others, cousins, mothers, brothers, to use your analogy, created important works during those eras, yet they didn't "win" the title. They didn't become "The One" to the general public or in the historical context.
So, if you could have your vote, your influence, your "say", who would you pick?
And, on another note, why do I keep using so many "quotation marks" when I write in this forum??? Does anybody else find themselves doing that?
(Yes, I
do it a lot. I think it's a way trying to de-emphasize the finality or starkness of a statement, giving "permission" to correct oneself or be corrected, to soft-pedal one's point ?)
I submit that not everyone has decided that the designers you mention have been accorded the honor you give them, and that it is always too soon to brush many aside in the (understandable) effort to award a crown to one individual. The longer we delay that process, the longer we have to enjoy the variety that is represented by all the individuals who have contributed to the arts we pursue. In other words, it is not inevitable that the history books will declare a "winner" -- unless (in our impatience and ennui ?) we allow it to happen !
(Exclamation marks, and ellipses. . . may also indicate either irony, or indifference -- a way of taking the "curse" off on one's proclamations ?)
I was going to say that I would nominate Gio Ponti as one of the earliest Post-Modernists; some of his pre-war decorations would be right at home in the 'seventies !
Thonet leaps out of that list...
Thonet leaps out of that list because the B14 was the first truly mass produced chair.
But essentially a debate on father of MCM is going to be pretty meaningless as it presupposes there is one such figure, that we can all agree on a definition of 'father' and that any influence is objectively quantifiable.
I think my list might be more to the point
After all, Mid-Century Modern is essentially post WWIImodern designs that use a lot of the technology of wartime production. Yet through the Art Noveau, Deco, and Streamline periods, some designers of furnishings were so advanced and timeless that they continued to be considered iconic (and even popular) well into the classic MCM era and even today.
Designers like the already mentioned van der Rhoe's stuff looks well besides Eames, Nelson, etc.
Also, you can add to my original list Alvar Aalto, Eileen Gray* and Russel Wright.
Aalto, because his stuff STILL looks modern and current against anything from the 1940's and 1950's and I've read that Russel Wright was considered an early modern MCM designer, well before it became commonplace.
I guess Eva Zeisel* belongs there somewhere.
In MCM modern books, you see Josef Hoffman's Kubus Sofa in rooms of the MCM and considering it's from about 1910, it's amazingly timeless and modern.
Thonet did mass produce, but nothing he did before about 1940 looks particularly Mid Century Modern.
Oh yeah, Poul Henningsen's PH light penants from the early 1930's are darn modern too.
*Mother of Modern??!!
Hey at least we're all agreed...
Hey at least we're all agreed it wasn't Gio Ponti! Incidentally Michael Thonet was well dead by 1940 - but before the advent of mass produced 'modern (ist)' furniture, the Thonet no 14 (1850 ish) was one of only a very few designs deemed acceptable by Corbu et al in the early 20s. To talk about a 'Father of MCM' is to me a rather banal concept that could only come from someone weak on their design history coincidentally saddled with a Messiah complex. MCM is simply a chapter in a 150 year old story.
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