what , if anything do you guys think about the designer/ artist paul evans.
is his stuff "good"?
auction records the past two years have been astronomicaly high .
three or four years ago he was a bit of an aqcuired taste.. perhaps he still is but, a very expensive acquired taste at that. any other designers like him that deserve the spotlight? or that will steal the show as he has? nakashima was one that came to mind.. his stuff five yaers ago was about one tenth of the results nowadays.....
my 2 cents
good Paul Evans is, well, quite good. and that's usually the one-off studio stuff rather than the Directional stuff. (i especially like some of the sculpted wall cabinets -- more art than furniture). the latter still reeks of cheesy 70s to me -- though i gather that those of the younger generation don't have the same negative association with that.
i doubt evans'll reach nakashima levels. the latter's easy to like -- c'mon, it's beautiful wood wonderfully constructed and designed with modernist sensibilities. can't say the same re evans -- funky brutalist and sometimes scary. more of an acquired taste.
Paul Tuttle link...
He's from out in my neck of the woods. A respected cabinet maker i know locally used to build things for him. i like his stuff alot. http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/tuttle_preview
To have Tuttle's stuff in your house...
I agree that some of his stuff is designy and some of it (i.e., some chairs and chaise) may not pass the Laz-y boy comfort test, but there is no law that says that all furniture in a room has to be first and foremost comfortable. In fact, I like having a mix of fabulously comfortable things that I sit in and fabulously interesting things that I reflect on from my comfortable perch. I don't want to be limited to having interesting paintings on the wall and interesting sculpture on a table or mantle. I want some visually sophisticated, delighting furniture forms punctuating the space of a room, too. For this reason, and because Paul Tuttle truly did take the modernist idiom in striking, beautiful and challenging new directions, I think he's one the next generation or two of designers will be able to go back and mine richly for new forms. Tuttle was rather amazing in his ability to avoid the cliches of modernism. Take his ARCO and Super Z chairs for examples: http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/tuttle_arco.htmlhttp://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/tuttle_superZchair.html
FWIW, I've heard the Super Z chair is quite comfortable. Can't speak to the ARCO and neither seems the least bit over-designy to me.
Tuttle was, imho, perhaps the definitive early (perhaps even proto) post-modernist in that he consciously referred to and explored the relationship between the form of the furniture and the form of other objects (e.g., the chaise dragster) with a purity of contradiction that Venturi could articulate, but rarely achieve.
And I find his Easel a brilliant formal simplification. http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/tuttle_easel.html
His Super V chair would be ghastly to look at in a room, despite a certain formal brilliance but then what exceptional, envelope-pushing designer hasn't occassionally pursued formal process to a point that he/she conceives some thing new, uncliched, and formally rigorous that is also just plain hideous and can't resist the temptation to produce it and see if someone else likes it? http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/tuttle_superV.html
So: Mr. Tuttle ain't perfect and to the extent that you dislike the philosophy and aesthetics of the post-modernism he evolved toward, you are probably justified in disliking Tuttle's later stuff. But if you are, like me, fond and respectful of artists who skillfully and authentically worked in both modernism AND post-modernist idioms (e.g., Phillip Johnson), then I would say you might consider re-engaging Paul Tuttle's work. Like a lot of acutely bright persons, what he did has an acuity and complexity that yield an intially off-putting, seemingly idiosyncratic originality that over time is revealed to be simply the work of an exceptionally gifted artist.
My brain hurts
Sorry DC but in my book any design that needs to be eloquently explained in order to be appreciated 'properly' is a failure. You don't need a doctorate in the ramifications of the post-war constructivist art deco influece on post modernism blah blah blah to look at a Saarinen tulip table and know that it's a good, useful and beautiful table.
I agree whole heartedly, JC...
We must just have differing design preferences, because I lack the degree you're referring to and I got what I got about Paul Tuttle furniture instantly, without reading anything by anyone else. Frankly, I've never encountered people who knew of or had any opinions about Paul Tuttle outside my neighborhood, which, given that Tuttle apparently has more notoriety than I realized, certainly betrays the limits of my knowledge about designers' reputations. As I said, I only discovered his work through some local cabinet makers who worked for and admired him greatly. To me the excellence of his work remains unmistakeable from first glance. Sorry about the headache, though.
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