Art in the Mad Men Years — A Fond Farewell

arttextstyle — Sun, 17 May 2015 21:54:09 +0000

We’ll be sad to see the last of Don Draper and Peggy Olson tonight (is it just me, or does anyone else think that Peggy and Jimmy Olsen could be related, except for the spelling, of course?). The series is set in between 1960 and 1970 — remember Pete’s father dying on American Airlines Flight #1 in 1962; Kennedy’s assaination the day before Roger’s daughter’s wedding in 1963; Don getting tickets to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965 and this season’s premier with Don watching Nixon announcing troops in Cambodia in 1970?. The series’ sets and costumes are carefully designed, to highlight the clothing, furniture and design of the period. That’s a period that we are nostalgic about. Happily, we live with some classic furniture from those years, including a desk, server and beds by the late Edgar Anderson, a couple of Kennedy rockers, Bertoia side chairs, a Saarinen table, re-issued Uten.silo Wall-Alls and an Arredoluce Monza Triennial floor lamp. We also have the good fortune to promote important artworks from that period, which was a seminal one for contemporary textile art. Here, in honor of Don, Joan, Peggy and rest of the guys, a gallery of fiber art from the Mad Men years.

1962

52r WARP IKAT SPIRAL, Ed Rossbach, 3’ X 9’, 1962, photo by Tom Grotta

1964

1ma/r Studium Faktur, Magdalena Abakanowicz
sisal
54″ x 43″ x 9″, 1964, photo by Tom Grotta

1965-66

21t PATH II, Lenore Tawney, linen
74″ x 30″, ca. 1965-66, photo by Tom Grotta

1966

146mr Eclate de Braise, Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, wool, 33″ x 24″, 1966, photo by Tom Grotta

1967

1jo/r WARSZAWA
Jolanta Owidzka
wool, linen and metallic thread
90″ x 68″,1967, photo by Tom Grotta

1968

2ws Untitled, Wojciech Sadley , mixed media, 32” x 24”, 1968, photo by Tom Grotta

1969

Talking Trudeau-Nixon by Helena Hernmarck
shown at the Lausanne Biennial in 1969, 51″ x 153″, photo by Helena Hernmarck

1970’s

2lk Primitive Figures Bird and insects, Luba Krejci, knotted linen, 40.5″ x 44.5″ x 2″, circa 1970s, photo by Tom Grotta

(For still more on mid-century design, there’s Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today currently at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, which considers the important contributions of women to modernism in postwar visual culture. In the 1950s and 60s, when painting, sculpture, and architecture were dominated by men, and women had considerable impact in alternative materials such as textiles, ceramics, and metals.)

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Art in the Mad Men Years — A Fond Farewell