DESIGN—CORRELATION
Architectural Record Publishers offprint
Frederick J. Kiesler
Frederick J. Kiesler [Author, Designer], Berenice Abbott [Photographer]: DESIGN—CORRELATION. New York: F. W. Dodge Corporation, 1937. Architectural Record Publishers offprint. Slim quarto. Plain card covers. Wire spiral binding. 8 [ii] pp. Printed acetate sheet reproducing the bottom half of Marcel Duchamp’s “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass).” Elaborate mise en page by Kiesler. INSCRIBED by Kiesler on colophon page. Colophon page and blank rear panels spotted. Textblock loosening from binding at top and bottom. A good example of a rare document actively sought by multiple constituencies.
Kiesler’s biomorphic ink inscription reads to The Architectural Forum’s Director and Chief Howard Myers. FK. /
8.75 x 11.75 Publishers offprint from the May 1937 [Volume 81, pp. 53-60] edition of The Architectural Record featuring a seven page article about The Large Glass, with a printed acetate sheet reproducing the bottom half of Marcel Duchamp’s masterpeice. The work was photographed by Berenice Abbott [courtesy of the Photographic Division, Federal Arts Project, WPA] specifically for Kiesler’s article. This offprint also resides [sans inscription] in the Frederick J. Kiesler Papers, [Folder 1], The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Acquired from the estate of an Architectural Forum Art Director.
Duchamp’s Glass is the first x-ray painting of space. — Frederick Kiesler
Frederick Kiesler and Marcel Duchamp met in the mid-1920s in Paris and stayed in contact until the early 1950s when, for reasons still unknown, their friendship suddenly seems to have fallen apart. During those 25 years, Kiesler and Duchamp worked within the same vein, both occupied with predominant themes like perception and mechanisms of visions. They shared the same friends in Paris and frequented the same intellectual circle in New York. In 1937 Kiesler published his first article on Duchamp´s Large Glass based on the extensive use of photomontage and on a free association of images. Five years later, Duchamp rented a room in Kiesler´s apartment for twelve months.
Also in 1942, Kiesler designed the gallery Art of This Century for Peggy Guggenheim in which he installed a Vision Machine to look at a series of reproductions from Duchamp´s Bôite en Valise. During the 1940s Kiesler and Duchamp collaborated on several projects such as the cover of the 1943 VVV Almanac and the exhibition Imagery of Chess at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. In 1947 they worked together again in Paris at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme for which Kiesler designed the Salle des Superstitions. A few months later, Kiesler executed a portrait in eight parts of Marcel Duchamp which can probably be considered the last collaboration between the two artists.
From 1937 to 1942, Kiesler was the director of the Laboratory for Design Correlation within the Department of Architecture at Columbia University, where the study program was more pragmatic and commercially oriented than his deep, theoretical concepts and ideas, such as those about "correalism" or "continuity," which concern the relationship among space, people, objects and concepts.
“During the 1930s, Kiesler devoted much of his time to elaborating his design theories, publishing articles (including a series in Architectural Record on "Design Correlation"), and lecturing at universities and design conferences around the country, gaining notoriety for, among other things, his exhortations on the mean-spirited character of the American bathroom and the pressing need for a nonskid bathtub. He also called for the founding of an industrial design institute (for which he prepared architectural plans in 1934) and eventually persuaded Columbia University to allow him to set up an experimental Laboratory for Design Correlation within the School of Architecture. This laboratory, which functioned from 1937 to 1942, was the testing ground for many of Kiesler's biotechnical ideas. During this period, he actively experimented with new materials and techniques, such as lucite and cast aluminum, and executed some of the extraordinarily sensual, organic furniture designs that presaged the form-fitting, ergonomic concepts of the 1940s and 1950s.
“By 1940, Kiesler was already well aquainted with the Surrealist movement through his close friendships with Marcel Duchamp, Matta, and Julien Levy, who, in the 1930s, was the first art dealer to exhibit Surrealist works in New York. His ties to the movement were further strengthened by the immigration of many European Surrealists to New York at the onset of World War II. He had an ongoing dialogue with the Surrealist artists Yves Tanguy, Andre Breton, Kurt Seligmann, Matta, Joan Miro, Andre Masson, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, and Luis Buhuel, all exiled in New York during the war.
“Kiesler's Greenwich Village apartment at 56 Seventh Avenue was a haven for visiting and emigre Europeans. They were not only welcomed there by Kiesler but by symbols of America — the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building were clearly visible from his penthouse apartment (which was otherwise described by the doorman as a cross between a studio, apartment, and junk shop). 33 Among his many guests were Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, Mies van der Rohe, Hans Richter, Jean Arp, and Piet Mondrian. Kiesler generously introduced the newcomers to curators, critics, and dealers — Philip Johnson, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., James Johnson Sweeney, Sidney and Harriet Janis — as well as to other artists and prominent friends such as Arnold Schonberg, Frank Lloyd Wright, Martha Graham, E.E. Cummings, Virgil Thomson, Edgard Varese, and Djane Barnes. Committed to fostering an active exchange of ideas among artists of all disciplines and nationalities, Kiesler also relished the potential drama of these encounters. The spirit of the old Vienna cafe days remained with him, and most of his evenings were spent talking with his friends at Romany Marie's or other Village haunts into the early hours of the morning. He never took phone calls before noon. “ [Lisa Phillips]