Publication

  • Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia
    Andrew Blauvelt
    Editor
    Greg Castillo, Esther Choi, Alison Clarke, Meredith Davis, Hugh Dubberly, Ross Elfline, Adam Gildar, Craig Peariso, Catharine Rossi, Simon Sadler, Felicity Scott, Susan Snodgrass, and Lorraine Wild
    Contributors
    Walker Art Center, 2015
  • GRANTEE
    Walker Art Center
    GRANT YEAR
    2015

Haus-Rucker-Co, Environment Transformer/Flyhead Helmet, 1968. Courtesy of Archive Zamp Kelp. Photo: Haus-Rucker-Co, Gerald Zugmann.

The publication Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia accompanies an exhibition of the same title examining the art, architecture, and design of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. The catalogue surveys the radical experiments that challenged societal and professional norms while proposing new kinds technological, ecological and political utopia. While the turbulent social history of the 1960s is well-known, its cultural production remains largely under-examined. In this publication, scholars examine a range of practices, such as: radical architectural and anti-design movements emerging in Europe and North America; the print revolution in the experimental graphic design of books, posters, and magazines; and a new form of cultural practice that merged street theater and radical politics. Through a profusion of illustrations, interviews with select artists, and new scholarly writings, this publication explores the hybrid conjunction of hippie ethos and the modernist desire to fuse art and life.

Andrew Blauvelt is senior curator of design, research, and publishing at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. He has organized numerous exhibitions and award-winning publications and web-based initiatives for projects, such as: Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life (2003); Some Assembly Required: Contemporary Prefabricated Houses (2005); Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes (2008); and Graphic Design: Now in Production (2011). He is a frequent contributor to other publications, including The Future is Not What It Used to Be (Istanbul Design Biennial, 2014); I Read Where I Am (Museum of the Image Breda, 2011); and Conditional Design Workbook (Valiz, 2013). He is the recipient of the 2011 Philip Johnson Exhibition Catalogue Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

Greg Castillo is an architectural historian and associate professor at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkley, and a research associate at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia. His research has focused on the politics of design of the early Cold War-era as well as during the counterculture moment that followed. He has delivered invited lectures at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the National Gallery of Denmark; and numerous universities in the United States and abroad. He is the author of numerous articles, anthology chapters, and the monograph Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design (University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

Esther Choi is assistant professor at Ontario College of Art and Design University and a PhD candidate in the history and theory of architecture at Princeton University. She received her MDes in the history and theory of architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and an MFA in photography from Concordia University. Her research interests center on the entanglements between art, architecture, and science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the coeditor of Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (MIT Press, 2010) and the forthcoming volume, Architecture Is All Over (ACTAR, 2015). Her work has been supported by Society for Architectural Historians, Princeton University, Harvard University, and the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Alison J. Clarke, professor of design history and theory and director, Victor Papanek Foundation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, trained at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, before gaining her doctorate in social anthropology from the University College London. Clarke is the editor of Design Anthropology: Object Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Springer Vienna Architecture, 2010) and the author of Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America (Smithsonian Books, 2001), which was made into an Emmy-nominated documentary. Her work explores the histories, politics, and social relations of material culture. She is a regular media contributor to programs, including the award-winning series The Genius of Design (BBC), as well as author of the forthcoming Designer for the Real World: Victor Papanek and 1970s Design Activism (MIT Press).

Hugh Dubberly is a partner in Dubberly Design Office, a San Francisco information, interaction, and service design consultancy. An influential figure in Silicon Valley design and technology scene since the 1980s, Dubberly managed graphic design and corporate identity at Apple in the 1980s and created the technology-forecast film Knowledge Navigator, presaging the Internet and interaction via mobile devices. Later at Netscape, he became vice-president of design with responsibility for the company's web presence. He has taught in the design programs of San Jose State University, the Art Center College of Design, Carnegie-Mellon University, Stanford University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Institute of Design, Northeastern University, and the California College of the Arts. Most recently he edited the column "On Modeling" for the Association of Computing Machinery's journal, Interactions, and in 2014, was elected to the CHI Academy.

Ross Elfline is assistant professor of art history at Carleton College, where he teaches courses in the history of art and architecture since 1945. His current research focuses on radical architecture in Italy, Austria, Britain, and America in the 1960s and 1970s, with particular emphasis on the Italian avant-garde collective Superstudio, the subject of his book manuscript. His additional research interests include conceptual art in America and Europe; the history and theory of the neo-avant-garde; sound-based art; and poststructuralist, feminist, and queer theories.

Adam Gildar is owner and director of Gildar Gallery, based in Denver, Colorado. Since 2012, the gallery has showcased emerging contemporary artists and worked to expand the legacies of important historical figures. Previously, he served as the editor and publisher of Illiterate, an arts and literary publication, online community, and gallery space. Gildar is also currently the director of ArtPlant, an arts organization dedicated to cultural exchange. Through ArtPlant, he developed and is cocurating the 2015 Biennial Ambassadors program, an artist exchange and exhibition between Denver and Mexico City for the Biennial of the Americas.

Craig J. Peariso is assistant professor of the history of art and visual culture at Boise State University, Idaho. A former Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University, his work has appeared in the journals Third Text and the Journal of American Studies, as well as in the volumes The Scandal of Susan Sontag (Columbia University Press, 2009) and Media and Revolt: Strategies and Performances from the 1960s to the Present (Berghahn Books, 2014). He is the author of Radical Theatrics: Put-Ons, Politics, and the Sixties (University of Washington Press, 2014).

Catharine Rossi is a senior lecturer in design history at Kingston University, London, engaged in researching, writing, curating, and teaching the history of design past and present. Her research interests include Italian design and architecture, contemporary craft and design, and socially and politically driven practice and interpretation. In 2014, Rossi curated the installation Space Electronic: Then and Now at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. Her publications include The Italian Avant-Garde: 1968–1976 (Sternberg Press, 2013), coedited with Alex Coles, and Crafting design in Italy: From Post-War to Postmodernism (Manchester University Press, 2015).

Simon Sadler teaches the history and theory of architecture, design, and urbanism at the University of California, Davis, where he is a professor in the Department of Design. His publications include Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (MIT Press, 2005); Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism (Architectural Press, 2000, with Jonathan Hughes); and The Situationist City (MIT Press, 1998). His research explores the holistic and libertarian tendencies of Californian, British, and Italian design. He is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Researcher at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.

Felicity D. Scott is an associate professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is director of the PhD Program in Architecture (History and Theory) and codirector of the Program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (CCCP). In addition to numerous articles on contemporary art and architecture, she is the author of Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics after Modernism (MIT, 2007), Living Archive 7: Ant Farm (ACTAR Editorial, 2008), and Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counter-Insurgency, forthcoming on Zone Books. She was also a founding coeditor of Grey Room, a quarterly journal about architecture, art, media and politics published by MIT Press since 2000.

Susan Snodgrass is a senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a critic, she has written for both print and online publications, most notably for Art in America, for which she was a corresponding editor (1994–2013), and for ARTMargins online (www.artmargins.com), for which she is the publication's coeditor. She has contributed articles and essays to numerous other periodicals and publications, and is the editor of several books and exhibition catalogues. Since 2010, she has served as a mentor for the AICA-Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writing Workshop. Her current curatorial projects focus on the architecture and design of Ken Isaacs.

Lorraine Wild is a graphic designer, educator, writer, and historian in Los Angeles. Her award-winning design firm, Green Dragon Office, focuses on collaborative work with artists, architects, curators, editors and publishers. She also serves as a creative design consultant to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on publications, exhibitions, and design. She is a member of the faculty at CalArts, where she has taught the history of graphic design among other courses. Wild has written numerous essays on graphic design that have been published in books, such as: Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires, and Riots: California and Graphic Design (Metropolis Books, 2014); Graphic Design: Now in Production (Walker Art Center, 2011), and Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History (Abrams, 1989).

The catalogue is designed by the Walker's design director Emmet Byrne, who provides creative leadership for the Walker's brand identity. His work has been featured in numerous publications and exhibitions, including Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design (Architecture Association), Work Product: Designs from the Walker Art Center (Herron School of Art & Design), and the 2014 Istanbul Design Biennial. He has received numerous book design awards, including the International Center for Photography's Infinity Award for best publication of the year, AIGA 50/50, and the Core77 Visual Communication Award for the exhibition catalogue Graphic Design: Now in Production.

Founded in 1940, the Walker Art Center is a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and the active engagement of audiences. Focusing on the visual, performing, and media arts of our time, the Walker takes a global, multidisciplinary, and diverse approach to the creation, presentation, interpretation, collection, and preservation of art. Walker programs examine the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities.