ARTS & ARCHITECTURE: THE ENTENZA YEARS
Barbara Goldstein [Editor], Esther McCoy [essay]
Barbara Goldstein [Editor], Esther McCoy [essay]: ARTS & ARCHITECTURE. THE ENTENZA YEARS. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1990. First edition. Folio. Olive cloth decorated in copper. Printed dust jacket. Black endpapers. 248 pp. Over 500 black and white and 2-color illustrations. Interior unmarked and very clean. This hardcover MIT Press edition is out-of-print. The thin jacket paper is faintly ruffled [as usual] and trivially edgeworn, otherwise a fine copy in a fine dust jacket.
10 x 13 hardcover book with 248 pages over 500 black and white and 2-color illustrations reprinted from the original issues of Arts and Architecture magazine from 1943 to 1959. The original layouts and color breaks are preserved here. A beautifully realized production that simply must be seen to be believed. Only a legendary magazine like Entenza's Arts and Architecture could have inspired such a magnificent tribute. Art directed by Lorraine Wild.
The contents of this book read like a veritable rosetta stone of West Coast Postwar Modernism. Check it out:
- Introduction & Epilogue by Barbara Goldstein
- Remembering John Entenza by Esther McCoy
- 1943: Ray Eames; A Cave House by Ralph Rapson and David Runnels; A Prefabrication Vocabulary by R. M. Schindler; Sifting the Double Talk by Jacob I Zeitlin; Notes in Passing; Designs for Postwar Living winners.
- 1944: Jackson Pollock; Prefabricated Housing by Charles Eames, Herbert Matter, Buckminster Fuller; Minorities and the Screen by Dalton Trumbo; Arnold Schoenberg Peter Yates, Abstract and Surrealist Art in America Sidney Janis, Color Music Abstract Film Audio Visual Music James and John Whitney.
- 1945: What is Langscape Architecture? by Garret Eckbo; Announcement of the Case Study House Program; Russia Fights with Film Robert Joeseph; Henry Moore by Eva Maria Nuemeyer.
- 1946: Alexander Calder; Charles Eames by Eliot Noyes; A Revelutionary Structural System Konrad Wachsmann, Notes in Passing; Gyorgy Kepes
- 1947: Two Gardens by Eckbo, Royston and Williams; House in industry by Konrad Wachsmann and Walter Gropius; Ad Reinhardt; Jewelry by Margaret DePatta; Styling Organization Design by George Nelson; Art in Industry by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
- 1948: 100 Houses by Gregory Ain, Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day; Drive-in Restaurant by John Lautner; Office Building by Raphael Soriano; Wood Shapes by James Prestini; What Is Modern by Alfred Auerbach; Design and the Machine by Jan de Swart.
- 1949: Hans Hoffmann; Project for a house in Santa Barbara by Oscar Niemeyer; Mountainheads from Mole Hills Victor Gruen, Paul Ellsworth; One of a Hundred Gregory Ain; Notes in Passing; Garden pottery from the California School of Art, including student John Follis' nascent attempts at his Architectural Pottery!
- 1950: The House of George Nakashima, Woodworker.
- 1951: The Comprehensive Designer by Buckminster Fuller; Santa Barbara House by Richard Neutra; The Ladera project (hundreds of Eichler Homes in by A. Quincy Jones and Frederick E. Emmons; Idea and Pure Form Sibyl Moholy Nagy; Architecture in Mexico Esther McCoy; the Rise and Continuity of Abstract Art Robert Motherwell; Adolf Gottleib; Art Summoned Before the Inquistion Jules Langsner; Architecture in Mexico; House Sydney Australia Harry Seidler; Sam of Watts Jules Langsner.
- 1952: Water Play, a Fountain by Wayne Thiebaud & Jerry McLaughlin; Architect-Builder-Site-Home and Community A Quincy Jones and Frederick E Emmons; Notes in Passing; the Bread of Architecture Bernard Rudofsky,
- 1953: Harry Bertoai; Courtyard Apartments by Craig Ellwood;Steel Frame House by Pierre Koenig; Bernard Rosenthal, Gibson Danes, Japanese Packaging Theodore Little.
- 1954: the Mathematical Approach in Contemporary Art Max Bill, R M Schindler, Roberto Burle Marx, Music Column Peter Yates, UPA Jules Langsner.
- 1955: Pinwheel House Peter Blake, Two Income-Unit Structures Raymond Kappe, Rico Le Brun, Jules Langsner, Claire Falkenstein, Michel Tapie, Cityscape and Landscape Victor Gruen.
- 1956: June Wayne Imagist, Jules Langsner.
- 1957: Concrete Shell Forms by Felix Candela; House in Florida by Paul Rudolph; House by Thornton Abell; the language of the Wall by Brassia and Edward Steichen Small House Killingsworth Brady Smith; Pocket Guide to Architectural Critisim Jules Langsner, Music Column Peter Yates
- 1958: Urban court House by Stanley Tigerman.
- 1959: Isamu Noguchi; Constantino Nivola; Dore Ashton.
Editorial Associates for Arts and Architecture included Herbert Matter and Charles Eames. Julius Shulman was the staff photographer. The Editorial Advisory Board included William Wilson Wurster,Richard Neutra, Isamu Noguchi, eero Saarinen, Gardner Dailey, Sumner Spaulding, Mario Corbett, Esther McCoy, John Funk, Gregory Ain, George Nelson, Gyorgy Kepes, Marcel Breuer, Raphael Soriano, Ray Eames, Garret Eckbo, Edgar Kaufman, Jr. and others luminaries of the midcentury modern movement.
In 1938, John Entenza joined California Arts and Architecture magazine as editor. By 1943, Entenza and his art director Alvin Lustig had completely overhauled the magazine and renamed it Arts and Architecture. Arts and Architecture championed all that was new in the arts, with special emphasis on emerging modernist architecture in Southern California.
One of the pivotal figures in the growth of modernism in California, Entenza's most lasting contribution was his sponsorship of the Case Study Houses project, which featured the works of architects Thornton Abell, Conrad Buff, Calvin Straub, Donald Hensman, Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, J. R. Davidson, A. Quincy Jones, frederick Emmons, Don Knorr, Edward killinsworth, Jules Brady, Waugh Smith, pierre Koenig, Kemper Nomland, Kemper Nomland Jr., Richard neutra, Ralph Rapson, Raphale Soriano, Whitney Smith, Sumner Sapulding, John Rex, Rodney Walker, William Wilson Wurster, Theordore Bernardi and Craig Ellwood. Arts and Architecture also ran articles and interviews on artists and designers such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, George Nakashima, George Nelson and many other ground-breakers.