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And Then There Was Cool

Written by Kira Matica

The Birth of the Cool Exhibit at Blanton Museum.

Photo: Julius Shulman, 'Case Study House #22'

Architect Pierre Koening, L.A., 1959-60

Though it seems like only yesterday we were referring to the 1950s as “postwar,” the new millennium calls for a more historical “mid-century” title as well as a retrospective review of where it all began. The Blanton Museum of Art has obligingly provided both. Through May 17th, the Blanton is hosting the fifth and final display of the touring exhibit Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury. Organized by the Orange County Museum of Art, the show offers a panoramic sketch of the 1950s West Coast origins of “cool.” It marks the period where American style found a counterweight to the East Coast tastemakers, which had hitherto held a monopoly on American culture.

Karl Benjamin, 'Black Pillars,' 1957

Birth of the Cool, taking its title from the seminal 1959 Miles Davis album that defines the era’s sound stretches to encompass the paintings, architecture, furniture design, music, and television emerging from California in the mid-century period. Through more than 200 objects, we see how West Coast lifestyle came to influence mainstream American style.

Well-placed placards inform us that there is often more than meets the eye to what we are seeing. The seemingly innocuous television show “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” plays on a small-screen. Since most of us weren’t teenagers in the 1950s, a placard next to the screen reveals the underlying tension between crewcuts and longhairs that lurks beneath the sitcom surface.

Office of Charles and Ray Eames

Turning the corner and leaving television behind, visitors see a collection of Eames chairs, including prototypes that eventually led to what is perhaps the most recognizable (and still wildly popular) American furniture style. A number of Julius Shulman’s photographs provide glimpses of home interiors and help contextualize the minimal look of molded-plywood and space-age plastic chairs. The stark, suspended lines of architecture by modern masters such as Richard Neutra, Pierre Koenig, and Jon Lautner are depicted as showcases for the mid-century lifestyle. Whether or not women really did sit with their arms slung on couchbacks in effortless displays of curvaceous grace, these photos sure do purvey the impression of some truly cool West Coast living.

And what would any of these interiors have been without a well-appointed cultural exhibit of their own? A set of paintings by Karl Benjamin, Helen Lundeberg, Frederick Hammersely, and Mahavishnu Orchestra guitarist John McLaughlin reveal the kind of blocky bright colors that captured the slick veneer of ‘50s style. These artists played with the line between flatness and depth, developing their characteristic ambiguous, hard-edged surfaces.

Photo: Julius Shulman, 'Case Study House #21'

Of course no California cocktail party would have been complete without the emotive jazz soundtrack of Miles Davis, Chet Baker, June Christy, Dave Brubeck, and Gerald Mulligan. The highly innovative sound that arose within this legendary musical circle can be appreciated in the “jazz lounge” section while listeners contemplate intimate candid portraits of the musicians as they casually create the world of aloof appeal (they’re not even looking at the camera) that would come to be known as “cool.” Jazz fans will marvel at the collection of William Claxton photographs, capturing jazz giants jamming at leisurely pool parties, sometimes playing in their trunks.

These clusters of the cultural capital are arrayed in their epoch-making simultaneity with the aid of a 1959 timeline that stretches for nearly the full length of one of the exhibit rooms. There the chaotic eruption of tailfins, computer chips, sitcoms, and JFK onto the American scene can be witnessed in all their stunningly self-assured glory. An amalgam of contradictions, at once buttoned up and hanging loose, this was a period when the Primettes were becoming Supreme and little Olivia Newton Johns were just waiting to swap their poodle skirts for, if not leather, then at least some impossibly dark shades and a mean rhythmic snap.

The Blanton (200 E MLK Blvd) is free to members, UT students, and children under 12; admission is $7 for adults, $5 for seniors, $3 for non-UT college students, $3 for ages 13-21. Thursdays are free admission day. The museum is closed Mondays. Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury is exhibiting Feb 22—May 17.

To read more goings on in the Ausin art world, read the Short Stokes art events and calendar.

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