Amazing guy!
I was fortunate last year to meet Laslo's only Son and tour his home, which was furnished in some really unique pieces his Father designed and many of which his son grew up with.
See wikipedia link for some good info.
also LAMA did a sale a few years ago, the Hudspeth ranch house, which was one of Laslo's largest commissions... many one-off designs and a few pieces sold for astronomical prices, see: http://www.lamodern.com/html/previous_sales.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Laszlo
alexandersforum...
I get the idea he was influenced either by Hans Wegner, or by those that influenced Wegner. He seems to take a piece (more than a few, but by no means most) that Wegner has worked out with traditional European aesthetic principles and then rework it through a kind of improvisational, or to be metaphoical, West Coast jazz kind of take on Wegner.
I mean no insult to him. Maybe it was even a bit the other way around. Americans often times pioneer ideas, because of our country's tendency to encourage individualism and then ignore the fruits of its most creative. And our individualist artists and craftsmen, literary figures and film makers, because they lack support groups and guild organizations and too often sophisticate gate keepers, often do their most remarkably innovative work without the same high level of training in the mastercraftsman tradition of Europe, and so produce work that undeniably original and brilliant, but not always wisely and profoundly worked through to standards of Europeans. The Eames and the Wrights were exceptions, but I can think of many American innovators that never took their innovations to a level of refinement that could earn them the recognitions of being among the world's greatest in their fields. The last 30 years either we have improved, or the European mastercraftsman tradition has declined, probably a bit of the former and a lot of the latter, and the gap has closed between Americans and Europeans, but the gap in ultimate refinement has in my opinion, always been there.
Perhaps also, he was completely uninfluenced by Wegner, but viewed through my presently superficial hindsight, it seems possible that he was.
The sofa link looks like Wegner with a few kinks in the surfaces.
I noticed a horizontal cabinet on legs that looked like he took a Wegner cabinet I've recently commented on and intentionally altered the dimensions of it almost to the point of caricature. Of course, its also possible Wegner saw Laszlo's cabinet and said, "Hey, this guy is really onto something here, if he had just gotten the proportions of the cabinet and its negative space right." Or perhaps they were uninfluenced by each other. But after reading Picasso's very candid comments about his influences and his desire (need almost) to play off and be stimulated by the works of others he thought exceptional, and noting my sensitivity and awareness of the work of others in every field I have worked or dabbled, I cannot help but wonder about Laszlo and Wegner, or Laszlo and the Cranberry school, or Laszlo and Danish Modern generally.
Paul Laszlo
Paul Laszlo was a in creditable designer and designer of furniture
I first saw his work over 40 years ago when i went to Beverly Hills California
to see what then was our "Rich Relatives" The home was done by Paul
Laszlo and as a young kid his work
still sticks out in my mind. back then they did not have the 25,000 sq feet mansions on every corner like they do now and I can top you for a extra 10million. It was just a nice 8000 sq feet home done by Laszlo in the Best part of Beverly Hills on Benadict Canyon Road. around the corner from Jimmy Stuart, Lucy Ball and Jack Benny . I was told back then that he did all the movie stars but He was the one who chose them. His furniture if you can find it other than overpriced 1st dibs is great. He died in 1993 at the age of 93 worked till the end ,
dcwilson
Is this the...
dcwilson
Is this the cabinet you mean? http://www.architonic.com/mus/gal/4105313
It reminds me of Wegners stuff, but I can't find anything on architonic that comes close. Do you have a link for the Wegner cabinet?
It seems to me that Laszlo had a quite varied output. Some of his pieces are more 'pop' and could have been designed by George Nelson and some are more sculpted wood pieces, which could have been by Wegner and others. This chair which he did in 1951, looks like it could have been 10-20 years earlier. Much heavier looking than what other designers were making at the time...
http://www.architonic.com/4106730
Love this next chair by the way... Nelson is quoted commenting on the design as well..
http://www.architonic.com/4104215
More Laszlo...
And I like the chair, too, because...I'm a split back fan. I have to wonder, however, if there was some Mickey Mouse allusion there.
Regardless, what really intrigues me about Laszlo is his insistence on violating his own dominant forms with countrapuntal forms. It doesn't always work, but he tries it frequently. To me, it his distinguishing characterstic as a designer. Frankly, it may be what keeps him from greatness. I don't know. I'll have to keep processing his furniture for awhile. This table below is a good example of what I mean.
It is a conventional Danish Modern coffee table in its dominant formal theme--long, horizontal, flat surfaces emphasizing a thinness and leanness, but then suddenly POW!! he inserts not one but two large, round dowels running the length of the table leg end to leg end. He even puts a pair of brass bracelets on the dowels to completely contradict the unadorned modernist form of the rest of the table.
This is a classic example of introducing complexity and contradiction and ornament to modernist design about ten years before Robert Venturi wrote his book and about 20 years before post modernism came into its early manifestations.
Hence, Laszlo appears in retrospect to be something of a proto post modernist in this respect. But instead of adding classical revival ornamentation, Laszlo seems to experiment with injecting a kind (now don't get offended) of tastefully abstracted Trader Vic south seas look into the underpinning of the overall modern look of the table.
This table is quite remarkable. It mystifies me how it can work at all. By work, I mean I don't understand how he can get these flat rectilinear surfaces (even beveled to exaggerate that horizontal flatness and sense of overhang) to cohere harmoniously with these two, round dowels. Part of me thinks that it doesn't work, that its too much of a contrivance; that its being different for the sake of being different, but something about it just does work, after you quit resisting and let it be what it wants to be.
Laszlo seems to me one of the few modernists who intentionally contradicted his own dominant forms (essentially what jazz does to itself at times). And he did it often in his work. I would say he did it often enough that it had to be intentional.
More Laszlo...Pt. 2
Another way of illustrating what I mean by violating the dominant form one sets up would be to look at Hans Wegner's Ox Chair. First, the round head rest at the top is contrapuntal with the rest of the chair. Second, Wegner lops off the sharp ends of the "ox horns" that one's eyes expect to see. I think Wegner's shorn ox horns were a bit of a joking allusion to the life of a father in a household by Wegner. He has agreed to let the agressive points of his manhood be shorn-off his manhood in exchange for being the kindly overseer of a brood. He's an ox pulling a heavy load, not an agressive male ready to gore an opponent over turf and a female. But I digress.
Whereas, say, Wegner was not above violating his own forms with decisive counterpoint, occassionally, Laszlo seems to have made it his own defining style.
I think the high prices of Laszlo's work can easily mislead one about what its position and significance in design should be. The high prices are inextricably tangled up for the moment in the collector craze for anything above average from old Hollywood, defiantly American, and one off and hand made. This inflates Laszlo's prices in a way unrelated to what his true significance to design may or may not be. Would his work be pulling these kinds of prices, if he had served the affluent of Cleveland? I doubt it. At the same time, I think the sort of old Hollywood market branding might also obscure that the man remains underappreciated for what he was up to. Frankly, in my mind, the jury is out on how good his work is in relation to the acknowledged modernist masters. It is easy to regard him as a light heavyweight who catered to the stars and did a lot of idiosyncratic, borderline tasteless, different for the sake of being different takes on Mid Century modern for the Hollywood elites that wanted to buy status to keep them from being reminded of how they grovelled to the knuckle draggers in Peoria for box office in a low brow and crass film industry.
More Laszlo...Pt. 3
But looked at another way, Laszlo's furniture could be viewed as an iconoclastic virtuouso's unique jazz and swing inspired take on modernist design that was subsidized by perhaps the 20th Centuries largest, most ingenious, and most influential colony of artist refugees. Hollywood of the 30s, 40s and 50s attracted much of the greatest talent of Europe in graphic arts and music and film. There was steady work, high pay, good weather and no brown shirts there. Whether you were from Berlin, or Hoboken, it was a great place to sit out the depression and the war. In short, there were alot of persons in old Hollywood, directors, producers, stars, musicians, art directors, etc., who were knew great art and design when they saw it. For this reason, Laszlo needs to be given a serious, long look to understand what he really was up to. There's something about his work that seems like a lot of American stuff of the time. It is unhesitatingly experimental. Most of it was bad. Some of it was brilliant. The Eames are far easier to place, because they not only innovated, but they popularized what they innovated and they had the imprimatur of an acceptable, known pedigree--Cranbrook. Laszlo was a guy the affluent of Hollywood went to when they wanted modernist design that was unique, so that for the next pool party, or dinner party, the guests understood they had the good taste and money to have some thing one off. It is a long tradition for the affluent to want such things to distinguish themselves from the riff raff. An Eames lounge chair was all well and good, but there were thousands of them. Get Paul Laszlo to do your house and the Van Johnsons and Desi Arnaz's come to dinner to mix biz with pleasure, they won't be bored with the same damn table they saw at the William Powells last week. Now, remember, these Hollywood nouveau riches were alot more like you and me than the old wealth of Boston, Newport, Connecticutt, or of Europe. Some of them weren't rich at all, just making good enough money and divorced enough from their roots to want to indulge themselves while they had the chance. Do these sorts of persons selecting Paul Laszlo (he was probably the guy Victor Laszlo was named for, as the Cassablanca screenwriters were a couple of wiseacre New York street kids who had never been to the Casbah) make him special? Yes. Do they make him a great designer? No.
Still, there is something about Laszlo's designs that gets under one's skin and makes one think about them far more than the typical custom designer of modernist furniture.
I apologize for not being resolved on him yet, but that's how it is sometimes.
dcwilson
.......WELL DC you nailed it on Paul Lazlo i could not have said it better if my fingers were talking to the key board ... as i said earlier he was the designer to the stars!! and that is how he will be remembered . He more than likely had small custom shops around t he country making up unusual pieces of furniture for the Big stars and I hate to say i don't know if he had a contract account with the major furniture houses.
i do know for a fact he was hired and worked for Herman miller for a very short time and it did not work out . so for that you might see a few George Nelson vs. Hans Wagner vs Paul Frankel, style in his works.
Paul Frankel, TH Robbsjohn Gibbons, and William Billy Hanes , Karl Springer were world class interior designers, were the Eames,Jacobsens,Saarines,Mies,were both
architects and designers, The top four were told what to do for the client, I doubt that the other architects would have listened to any one other than there own minds,
adding
At any of the auction house Paul Lazlos stuff is bringging the highest price , I think you said it It is the star factor It could have been at
Luci,Jimmy Stuarts,Jack Benny,William Powell, living room , and the list of old hollwood goes on and on as Paul Lazlo clinents,
I have read that William Billy Hanes started out as a actor had some morals issues back then and went on to be come a great Hollowood Interior designer,
One more add about this LRF
People forget Hollywood is a big industry town, the movie equivalent of a Detroit in cars, or a silicon valley in tech. As such it has a huge number of persons with in it with lots of money. And as with any industry town, it becomes interested in its own heritage eventually and up and coming persons and the elders both seek to hold onto parts of that heritage themselves, that has been lost as the industry town continues to evolve. Hollywood people since the decline of the studios have looked back longingly at the lost glamor of the old Hollywood and try to recover and preseve bits and pieces of it in many ways. Buying up the old artifacts of the old designers that served this glamorous age of Hollywood is one of the ways that it is done. This is sort of a long winded way of saying that today's Hollywooders themeselves have sufficient wealth to bid up this sort of thing to astronomical prices even if the rest of the modernist afficionados of the world could care less about it. Laszlo and the other Hollywood designers you mention might also be related to a fashion designer like Don Loper, though I think for the most part they are better at furniture than Don Loper was at clothes. But regardless of how interesting of a subculture Hollywood was and still is, our focus on Paul Laszlo and his Hollywood peer designers should still try to get behind the image and get to the furniture and evaluate: how good was it?
Koen, are you out there? I could use some help on this one. The Belgian mastercraftsman in you will probably bridle a bit at taking the time to think about this tiny group of designers from Hollywood, but I think Mr. Laszlo might provoke some interesting insights in you nonetheless...even if you don't like his work, which I suspect you will not. He's just not elegant enough in terms of his solutions is my guess as to what Koen will say. But who knows? The kid from Antwerp always surprises me with what his learned eyes can pull from the innards of a design.
Regardless, LRF, thank you for a lively and informative exchange on this subject.
I saw at my favorite ...
I saw at my favorite store today a table designed none other by Paul Lazlo for Brown Saltman ,
I would love to take a peak at what young hollywood likes today . I do know that Brad Pitt is a self proclaimed Design addict (Hell-o Brad if you are reading this ) between diaper changes but the rest of the crew who knows what they like Demi Moore like nice clean Modern as i saw there home in Architectural Digest 4 months ago. While Barbra Streisand could never make up her mind she liked 4 different styles from DECO TO DISCO some like to drive Toyato Prius for the environment others like a Range rovers, for the cool effect
As of this writing I really don't think the next Paul Lazlo has come out of the box. One thing about him he
was good, and class act . The other class act was TH Robbs John Gibbons who did have a early day contract with John Widdcome he did the earlier day movie Stars Like Douglus Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and the Dohenay estate early day founders of Beverly Hills
i did read along the way that Cecil B. De mile Louis B, Meyer Adolf Zuker
had there set designers at the studio design the interiors of there home, If they could not do a good job who could ? Can you imange what a Buzzby Berkley designed living room would look like WILD
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