If this sounds like a remembrance of things past, well, it is. Specifically, it’s a remembrance of things post-modern, modern and more. They have a term for it: Modern retro. It’s not about recreating the past, say Neil Bingham and Andrew Weaving in their book Living with Mid-Century Modern Style – Modern Retro (available at Goodwill Bookstore), but taking the best designs of the period (particularly from the 1920s to the ’70s) and more than admiring them from afar, actually enjoying them in your own home.
Ah, the 1920s! It began with a decade that saw the birth of styles like Art Deco (defined as the "middle ground between orna-mented historic revivals and the unadorned"). Think rich, densely grained woods that were painstakingly handcrafted. Then there were such "startling, innovative" movements as De Stijl and the Bauhaus. It was the best of times style-wise.
Enter the 1930s with its "softer aesthetic" vis-a-vis the "hard-edged" look of the early Modern Movement. Evident was the Scandinavian influence as designers like Alvar Aalto experimented with bending and laminating wood into supple organic forms (that were both decorative and functional). Of course, Aalto was better known as the master of bent laminated wood.
Then came the 1940s to the 1950s, an era marked by war, austerity and recession. Indeed, it was the worst of times. The war forced designers to adapt and create new materials that gave birth to improved methods of design production. Truly, necessity is the mother of invention.
The closing years of the 1940s saw a sudden boom in population and a consequent demand for new consumer goods (like modern furniture, lighting, housewares, appliances, etc.) from the then upwardly mobile generation. The rapid advances in science and technology were making the world smaller every day – and design more and more internationalized so that a flat in New York would strangely look somewhat like an apartment in Zurich, Switzerland.
The 1950s were all about innovative designs, too. There was Charles Eames who designed his (still) famous (most desired object of the time) lounge chair and matching ottoman (which are still in production). In Italy, a designer named Gio Ponti was making waves with new forms in ceramics, glass and furniture. And there was all that glass from Scandinavia. But sitting alongside an Egg chair designed by Arne Jacobsen, for instance, could be an 18th-century clock. Apparently, the period was characterized by people’s desire to hold on to the rich past that men – and women – gave their lives for to preserve during the war. After all, isn’t it to the past that we owe the present?
Danish (furniture) delights dominated the ’50s with much of the furniture made of teak. The book describes teak as that lovely wood imported from the Philippines.
And now, we’ve come to the 1960s. It was a period of "provocation, revolution (sexual and otherwise), extremes." The flower power/hippie generation was shouting "Make love, not war!" The mop-haired Beatles from Liverpool were making ripples on the music scene. Yeyeye! The Beatles made a trip to India to learn yoga where it all began. Suddenly, there was new interest in all things Eastern and Oriental.
The mid-’60s saw the focus of hot new design shift from America to swinging London, which became the new capital of style. The baby boomers had grown up and were now the younger generation that you’d see in discos dancing to the sounds of Herman & the Hermits and the Rolling Stones. The hot topic of the day was the rise and fall of the skirt length – from mini to midi to maxi. It was a "period of radical social change which showed in the world of design," the book notes.
The ’60s gave rise to two art movements: Op and Pop. Of course, Op came from the Op Art movement of British painter Bridget Riley, whose bold canvases were splashed with such intricate geometric patterns they could make your head spin. Like seeing swirling, distorted images when you’re spaced-out or on an LSD trip, remember?
On the other hand, Pop was a more approachable style, more welcoming and friendly. It was at this time that the Americans introduced the concept of gracious living.
In the 1970s, there were revivals of the ’60s, fueling a reinterpretation of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Even ordinary people were collecting 19th-century furniture and learning design history, giving rise to Post-Modernism in the late ’70s.
And what was the people’s bible for home furnishings then?
In the ’60s and much of the ’70s, it was the Habitat catalog. But in the late ’70s, a new design gospel, according to the Ikea catalog, came to challenge the old. The Swedish company kept to the classic tradition of Scandinavian modernism to create a design-conscious yet very affordable home lifestyle that to this day, continues to influence people’s furniture buying habits.
According to Bingham and Weaving, even today, it’s the pieces of furniture from the late ’60s and ’70s that command the highest prices in auction rooms and galleries of modern art dealers (like the extraterrestrial Djinn sofa designed by Olivier Mourgue and used in the space station scene of Stanley Kubrick’s epic movie A Space Odyssey).
They point out that in putting together the Modern Retro look, lighting was a vital element. Thus, designers came up with such bright ideas for lighting at home or at work, from something romantic to something hip.
And what’s the perfect example of a Modern Retro design?
Why, it’s the Glass House designed by Philip Johnson! It’s all about transparency, designing open living spaces with no dividing walls. Which calls to mind Mies van der Rohe’s famous line "Less is more." Of course, Mies means a living room must not only have fewer pieces of furniture – it must also have fewer walls.
More or less, that sums up a most colorful, nay, explosive era in the history of interior design.