DE STIJL
The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, Vol. XX, No. 2, Winter 1952 – 1953
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Philip C. Johnson [foreword]
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Philip C. Johnson [foreward]: DE STIJL. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1952. First edition [The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, Vol. XX, No. 2, Winter 1952 – 1953. Printed 3-color stapled wrappers. 16 pp. 25 black and white illustrations. A fine copy.
7.5 x 10 stapled softcover bulletin with 16 pages and 25 black and white photographs and illustrations of the work of Theo van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietveld, Georges Vantangerloo, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, J.J.P. Oud and others. Published on the occasion of an exhibtion of DE STIJL, held at the Museum of Modern Art from December 1952 through February 1953. Features a Chronology by Alfred H. Barr, Jr.; forword by Philip C. Johnson; and "De Stijil" by Alfred H. Barr Jr., (adopted from his classic book Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936).
Never formally organized, the artists associated with De Stijl were united by shared aesthetic concerns, which they expressed in De Stijl (The Style) magazine, published by Van Doesburg from 1917 to 1931. In their work, these artists were at once theoretical and practical.
The articulated De Stijl concepts in highly formal paintings such as those by Mondrian and Bart van der Leck, and in the elegant but functional furnishings and architecture of J. J. P. Oud, Rietveld and others. Using only spare, elementary forms and primary colors, De Stijl artists embodied utopian ideals in utilitarian forms that achieved true universality.
Terence Riley noted that the early tastemakers at MoMA understood their job was to separate “the wheat from the chaff.” Few people rose to that challenge with more vigor than Philip Johnson, the young head of the Department of Architecture and Design. Alfred Barr’s insistence on including Architecture and Design as a fully functioning department within MoMA was a radical curatorial departure, which seems only obvious today.
“Adrenalin was running high; machine worship was running wild. After all, the influence of Marinetti's machine-crazed Futurist movement was not so long before . . .
"My catalogue text seems juvenile today, with its quick, unsubstantiated judgments thrown around and conclusions reached without documentation or research. Nevertheless, the thrust was clear: anti-handicraft, industrial methods alone satisfied our age; Platonic dreams of perfection were the ideal. Complexity and uncertainty were not the aim of the 1934 show.
"It was a piece of propaganda by the great preacher and proselytizer for modern art Alfred Barr. I was his willing acolyte...By the end of the thirties the aesthetic of the machine had been rapidly absorbed into the design movements of the time, and needs no further historical mention. More interesting is in the later story, the development of the "moderne," the French Art Deco, and the neoclassical.
“Sixty years ago our horizon was bounded by Piet Mondrian, the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe. Since then Neo-Expressionism, Deconstructivism, and Historicism all have flourished." — Philip Johnson, from his foreword to MACHINE ART, 1994
MOMA Press release dated October 16, 1952: “The first historical retrospective exhibition in America of paintings, sculpture, architecture, typography and furniture by the influential group of primarily Dutch artists known as de Stijl (1917-27) and led by the well-known van Doesburg, Mondrian and Oud will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, from December 17 through February 15.
“To show how de Stijl principles are still a force today, a selection of work by contemporary artists and designers reflecting the influence of this movement will form a concluding section of the exhibition.
“De Stijl was one of the longest lived and most influential groups of modern artists, according to Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Director of the Museum Collections, who has written the introduction to the show. “From the very beginning it was marked by extraordinary collaboration on the part of painters and sculptors on the one hand and practical designers on the other . . . . Two elements formed the fundamental basis of the work of de Stijl, whether in painting, architecture or sculpture, furniture or typography: in form the rectangle; in color the “primary hues, red, blue and yellow.”
“The exhibition will include paintings by Theo van Doesburg, Mondrian and Van der Leek, sculpture by Vantongerloo, models of buildings by Oud and Rietveld, furniture by Rietvold, and posters, lettering and magazines designed by these and other members of the group, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, an original member of de Stijl, designed the exhibition and is bringing it to New York from Amsterdam and Venice where it has been on view. The exhibition is under the direction of the Museum's Department of Architecture and Design, and is being brought here under the sponsorship of the Dutch Government.”