The Errant Æsthete

Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury

Currently on exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art through January 6th, Birth of the Cool examines the broad cultural zeitgeist of “cool” that influenced the visual arts, graphic and decorative arts, architecture, music, and film produced in California in the 1950s and early 1960s. The widespread influences of such midcentury architects and designers as Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, John Lautner, and Richard Neutra, have been well-documented. Less well-known are the innovations of a group of Hard-Edge painters working during this period including Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Fredrick Hammersley, Helen Lundberg and John McLaughlin, whose work retains a freshness and relevance today. Birth of the Cool revisits this scene, providing a visual and cultural context for West Coast geometric abstract painting within the other dynamic art forms of this time.

 

ABOVE: Julius Shulman, photograph of Case Study House #22 (Pierre Koenig, architect, Los Angeles, 1959–60), 1960. © J. Paul Getty Trust.