Ikuo Hirayama
Early 2000s Chinese Modern Paintings and Screens
Wood, Giltwood, Paint
Early 2000s Chinese Modern Paintings and Screens
Paint, Wood, Giltwood
Late 20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings
Mixed Media
People Also Browsed
Mid-20th Century Chinese Decorative Art
Steel
2010s Contemporary Landscape Paintings
Paper, Acrylic
Mid-20th Century Chinese Art Deco Chinese and East Asian Rugs
Wool
Antique 19th Century Chinese Wall-mounted Sculptures
Wood, Lacquer
Early 20th Century Chinese Decorative Art
Wood, Lacquer
Mid-20th Century Asian Hollywood Regency Tapestries
Textile, Wood
20th Century Chinese Chinese Export Paintings and Screens
Brass, Gold Leaf
Mid-20th Century Indian Agra Paintings and Screens
Paper
Antique 19th Century Wall-mounted Sculptures
Wood, Giltwood, Lacquer
Antique Late 19th Century Chinese Late Victorian Scholar's Objects
Stone
20th Century Chinese Chinese Export Paintings and Screens
Brass, Gold Leaf
20th Century Chinese Scholar's Objects
Bone, Porcelain
Mid-20th Century Chinese Screens and Room Dividers
Gold Leaf
Mid-20th Century Chinese Figurative Sculptures
Stone, Jade
20th Century Chinese Chinese Export Paintings and Screens
Brass, Gold Leaf
Antique Early 19th Century Chinese Paintings
Silk, Paper
A Close Look at modern Furniture
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”
Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.
Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.
It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.
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