Not your average houseplant!

Museum Practicum: Objective Blog, American Swedish Historical Museum

Oktavia LaBarge, October 30, 2013

            

Title: Aralia

Year: Designed c. 1928, produced c. 2010

Material: Linen

Creator: Josef Frank

Collection: American Swedish Museum: Josef Frank: The Enduring Designs of Josef Frank: Courtesy of Svenskt Tenn, Stockholm, Sweden 

This is a piece of fabric, titled Aralia, designed by Josef Frank, a well known designer and architect.  It is in the special exhibition, Josef Frank: The Enduring Designs of Josef Frank, at the American Swedish Historical Museum.  Josef Frank is considered a pioneer in Swedish modern design and is well known for his natural patterns composed of bright and bold colors.  This is revealed in the work, Aralia, which is meant to represent a common houseplant. However,

Frank creates an interesting design with his use of bold colors.  Frank was inspired to create this design when he was commissioned to decorate a villa in the Hohe Warte in Vienna.

The label that is placed next to the Aralia fabric describes the influences on the design and how they align with his design aesthetic. It also describes the importance of Frank’s design discussing the different uses of the fabric.  The label states that in 1939, Josef Frank used the Aralia fabric for a bedroom and living room design for the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco.  The Golden Gate Exposition was a fair and celebrated the creation of the Golden Gate bridge.  The Aralia is very important to Swedish design, so important that in 1994, the design was made into a postage stamp commemorating 150 years of Swedish design, which you can still buy today!   

Josef Frank was born in Austria in 1885.  In 1933, due to the rise of Nazism in Vienna, Frank and his wife moved to Stockholm.  Throughout his life, Frank’s designs were very popular with the Swedish.  This fabric is on display at the American Swedish Historical Museum to reveal popular modern Swedish design aesthetics.  It is a special exhibition

called, Josef Frank: The Enduring Designs of Josef Frank and is open Spring 2014. Many of the fabrics that are on display in the special exhibition are reproductions of the past made by a department store in Sweden called, Svenskt Tenn.  

The exhibit itself has a very unique and interesting design.  There are multiple fabrics that were created by Josef Frank that are all hanging from rods.  They look like unrolled fabrics from a fabric store.  This makes the textiles seem more accessible by having them displayed this way.  When you first walk into the museum and turn left, you see a large animal-shaped rug hanging on the wall of the exhibit.  The rug reveals the design ideas of Frank by having a natural object composed of bright bold colors. When you turn right you see two unrolled fabrics hanging against a white wall.  Having this juxtaposition of the bold colors and the white wall really makes the design ideas almost jump off the fabric.  Next to the Aralia fabric is a very basic chair with Frank’s design twist.  The chair is painted a bold red which nicely compliments the bold colors in the Aralia fabric.  The chair still has this naturalistic feel by the simplicity of the design and the neutral colored seat.  

As you continue into the special exhibition, the walls are all lined with the brightly color fabric.  Throughout the space, are different furniture pieces which reveal how the fabrics which Frank designed are used in furniture design.  It was interesting to see how the fabrics looked on different chairs and couches and consider the bold of statements they would make in someones house.

If someone wanted to learn more about Swedish Modernism they could consider researching information about Swedish design aesthetics. Someone might also want to visit the American Swedish Museum and learn more about the Swedish culture.  In addition, someone could consider taking a modern art history class. At the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, they offer modern art history classes online.  This person could also consider reading the book, Josef Frank: LIfe and Work, by Christopher Long to learn more about the work of Frank.

Someone who might not be interested in Franks designs or the Aralia textile would be someone with a more classical design aesthetic.  This could be someone who does not like using bright and bold colors in interior design.  They may think that the modernist design is tacky and overwhelming.  I believe that many artists who worked before the modernist movement in the early 19th century would probably really dislike this design aesthetic.  They would probably consider the designs of Frank very childlike and unrealistic.  

To further engage viewers with the Aralia fabric and the other textiles by Josef Frank, the museum could consider creating a coloring book composed of the different naturalist designs.  This would allow visitors to color in the fabrics with their own color choices and compare their designs to the designs of Frank. It would be very interesting to see how visitors interpret the motifs of Josef Frank’s design.