Art Deco California

Newsreel Theatre 'Rio' (date unknown)

This design makes good use of a small urban lot by maximizing the advertising space. The design above the marquee is one unit, the design below another. The projecting marquee attracts the attention of both driver and pedestrian. The exterior could be of concrete, plaster, terra cotta, glass or plastic, the lettering in copper or white metal.

Newsreel Theatre 'Town' (date unknown)

Note on reverse: "This spectacular design has been planned to care for a change in theatre patronage. It is meant to speak up to the people to come in and see what is inside, and is planned for a locality where the newsreel has become an attraction."

Newsreel Theatre 'Sign' (date unknown)

Note on reverse: "This theatre is built with a glass front so the lobby may be viewed from the street. This makes the front entertaining in itself and stresses the fact that entertainment is housed within. The poster cases are designed to sell the show."

Newsreel Theatre 'Park' (date unknown)

This theatre is designed with a glass front. The box office has an automobile entrance to the parking lot with an automobile exit on the other side of the building. At night varicolored lights play on the façade and the building forms its own reflective background.

Newsreel Theatre 'La Vona' (date unknown)

Note on reverse: "This theatre shall be its own advertising and the front shall sell the picture. Each row will have different colored lighting arrangements and the whole will be a blaze of color with the new fluorescent lighting units."

Newsreel Theatre 'Diana' (date unknown)

Note on reverse: "This theatre is designed to be built in plastic.."

Newsreel Theatre "Pix" (date unknown)

Note on reverse: "This theatre is designed for a residential neighborhood of modern character. It will be built of glass and stone."

Newsreel Theatre, Oakland, San Francisco (1942)

Lee's rendering depicts an eye-catching marquee, probably with a revolving and illuminated globe, attached to the three-story retail and office building in downtown Oakland.

Chino Theatre, San Bernadino County

Night and day perspective drawings (1947)

Academy Theatre, Inglewood, Los Angeles (1939)

The rendering shows a super streamlined design built up from overlapping circles. Glass block and a stark white finish enhance the sleek modern image. Lee developed the design of the tower to depict a reel of film unwinding.

Disney Theater (1939-1941)

The Disney Theatre was used for private screenings on the Disney lot. Lee's concept shows a glistening exterior of shiny materials, perhaps glass or ceramic tile. To add height and presence to the building, Lee set the entrance up on a podium and accented the semi-circular Streamline Moderne façade with vertical tower forms. A broad overhanding marquee echoes the circular form of the façade; its recessed lights illuminate the glass-walled foyer and the area around the entrance.

Fox Theatre, Redondo Beach, Los Angeles (1937-1939)

These concept drawings replace the previous Spanish Colonial Revival façade with Streamline Moderne designs, current in the late 1930s.

Picwood Theatre, Los Angeles (1946)

The Picwood was designed as a neighborhood theatre on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles. The design epitomized the modern post-war aesthetic, which required simple lines, inexpensive building materials and quick construction to satisfy the post-war boom. The simple curved pylon was a landmark in the flat landscape of one- and two-story building.

Helix Theatre, La Mesa, San Diego

This concept drawing, probably executed before World War II, uses simple curved forms of Streamline Moderne in the building. A huge sign with a spiral or helix-shaped tower dominates the façade. (oddly, the date is given as 1947-48)

Helix Theatre, La Mesa, San Diego (1947-48)

A later concept drawing shows a scaled-down design which is more conventional in massing. Streamline forms can still be seen in the sign area and in the porthole window on the right wall. However, the chief design elements have evolved from the smooth to the angular, with walls, marquee and canopies project out and up at angles.

Hopkins Theatre, Oakland, San Franciso

This elaborate concept drawing, from 1939-1941, shows a Streamline Moderne design using convex and concave curves, a prow-shaped pylon, and angular massing.

Lakewood Theatre, Lakewood, Los Angeles (1944-1945)

Probably hoping to get a larger commission than just a theatre, Lee produced this perspective sketch of his concept for a theatre integrated with a bank and a retail store. The Los Angeles suburb of Lakewood was a post-war phenomenon, when thousands of houses were built in record time, creating an entirely new community. Lakewood needed everything for its shopping center, banks, stores and of course a motion picture theatre.

Lakewood Theatre, Lakewood, Los Angeles (1944-1945)

This later rendering was far more streamlined than the earlier version, with curving walls, porthole openings and prow-like pylons. The airplane flying overhead reinforces the streamlined imagery.

Puente Theatre, La Puente (1947-1948)

Lee's sketch offers a prototype for a theatre that could be built cheaply and quickly. The simplest means of quickly constructing a theatre-sized space was to build a Quonset hut, a method devised in the late 1930s using small wood members to create an arched truss frame, which was then often clad in metal for warehouse purposes. A number of motion picture theatres were built in this way. They offered inexpensive rapid construction of theatre spaces in small towns such as La Puente, an agricultural community east of Los Angeles.

Studio Theatre, Hollywood (1931)

Drive-in theatre, Ventura (date unknown)

This earliest-known concept for a drive-in theater by Lee, the Ventura Drive-In, shows a sophisticated use of illuminated triangular forms massed alongside the large illuminated screen structure and along the edges of the parking lot, creating an advertising sign for the theater out of the drive-in form itself. The sharp-edged forms are clearly Art Deco in character, a style that is sometimes called Zig-Zag Moderne. The design vocabulary was adapted from usage current in theatre design at the time.

Drive-in theatre, Arcadia, Los Angeles (1948)

The drive-in theatre concept was first tried in the mid-1930s but only after World War II did the idea gain widespread acceptance. Lee designed several drive-in theaters, a type especially suited to the mild climate and car-dependent economy of Southern California. The drive-in allowed the whole family to go to the movies in the family car, with no need for a baby-sitter. It also proved especially popular with dating teenagers, who found drive-ins the ideal refuge from watchful adult eyes. The drive-in was also cheap to build. A large piece of land, a structure to display the screen and smaller buildings for tickets, refreshments and the projector were all that was needed. The parking lot was usually graded to provide the parked cars with a good angle for viewing the screen, and each space was equipped with a speaker that could be hooked to the dashboard to bring the sound into the car.

Max Factor Building, Hollywood (1935)

In 1935 Lee submitted two designs for the remodeling of Max Factor's showroom and manufacturing facility on Highland Avenue in Hollywood: an elegant Streamline Moderne high-rise, shown in this rendering, and a more modest Art Deco concept, which today houses the Hollywood Museum.

Department Store
(concept drawing, undated, never built)

Office Building/Retail Stores
(concept drawing, undated, never built)

Office Tower/Retail Stores
(concept drawing, undated, never built)

Office Tower/Retail Stores
(concept drawing, undated, never built)

Office Tower/Retail Stores
(concept drawing, 1926, never built)

Office Tower
(concept drawing, undated, never built)

"S. Charles Lee, born Simeon Charles Levi in Chicago in 1899, was the son of American-born parents of German-Jewish ancestry, Julius and Hattie (Stiller) Levi. Lee (who later changed his name from Levi) grew up in the Chicago of Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Lee's own favorite building was Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott Department Store. He also grew up with the evolving motion picture; he went to vaudeville theatres, nickelodeons,and early movie houses. A tinkerer interested in mechanical things, Lee built three motorcars as a teenager. His interest in mechanics took him to Lake Technical High School in Chicago.

He started out in architecture in 1915 by working after school in the office of Chicago architect Henry Newhouse, a family friend. Newhouse specialized in theatre design: small motion picture houses, nickelodeons and remodeling storefronts into theatres. After graduation in 1916, Lee attended Chicago Technical College, graduating with honors in 1918. His first job was as architect for the South Park Board of the City of Chicago. During World War II he enlisted in the Navy. After his discharge in 1920, he entered the Armour Institute of Technology to study architecture. The course followed the principles of the Ecole des Beaux Arts and this training is reflected in the composition and imagery of his later drawings. It is also reflected in his own emphasis on the plan as the driving force of the design. This practical approach would serve him well in his many commercial designs.

Other influences on the young architect were Sullivan's lectures in his architecture classes and Wright's work, particularly Midway Gardens and Wright's house and studio in Oak Park. Lee was also impressed by the 1922 Chicago Tribune tower competition, which juxtaposed historicism with modernism. Lee considered himself a modernist, and his career revealed "both the Beaux Arts discipline and emphasis on planning and the modernist functionalism and freedom of form."* He was also a pragmatist, designing his buildings to support and enhance the commercial ventures they housed."
[by Ann Scheid, 2000]

• In addition to the images, all the commentary/captions above is/are quoted or adapted from the S Charles Lee Collection website at UCLA Library.
• Alternatively, the collection is accessible from the Online Archive of California (there may be additional items here: my current bandwidth throttling prevents deep delving)
• Classic movie theaters designed by S. Charles Lee.
• Art Deco Society of California / Art Deco Society of Los Angeles.
• Art Deco buildings in California.
• Previously: Walter Burley Griffin.
  
• Amazon.

Hofkleiderbuch

This wonderful watercolour sketch album of the Court livery (the distinctive costumes of the nobility) relates to the reigns of Counts Wilhelm IV and Albrecht V in 16th century Bavaria. The Duke Dress and Heraldry post from last year - featuring a related manuscript - gives a little more background.

'Hofkleiderbuch (Abbildung und Beschreibung der Hof-Livreen) des Herzogs Wilhelm IV. und Albrecht V. 1508-1551 - BSB Cgm 1951' is available at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. [click 'Miniaturansicht']


Fortunately, I happened to save and upload these images last month, but posts might be a little scarce for a while. It's not because of the silly season (so much, anyway) but because I have managed to max out the month's dsl load a.g.a.i.n. HD youtube has a lot to answer for. *sigh*

Update: Pants Optional. Ha!

De Aetatibus Mundi Imagines

The Illustrated Ages of the World

Francisco de Holanda (Hollanda) (1517-1585) was a painter, historian, architect and humanist philosopher from Portugal.

He apprenticed under his father as a manuscript miniaturist at the royal court in Lisbon and was sent to Rome by King João III in 1538. For the next nine years, Holanda studied among the notables of the Italian Renaissance, including Parmiagianino, Giambologna and, most significantly, Michelangelo.

It was Michelangelo who introduced Holanda to the classical ideals of the Renaissance which were given voice in Holanda's best known written work, a Neo-Platonic treatise on art in three volumes, 'Da Pintura Antigua' (1548). The second volume features dialogues with Michelangelo (during the period he painted the Sistine Chapel) and Giulio Clovio, among others, making Holanda, along with Vasari and Condivi, one of the 'official biographers' of Michelangelo. The book series played an important role in spreading the tenets of the Renaissance in Portugal.

Other works of note produced by Holanda include drawings of Roman architecture, studies of Italian art and architectural heritage, painted portraits and a survey of Lisbon urbanisation.

Among Holanda's surviving books of drawings, 'De Aetatibus Mundi Imagines' is the most important. Over thirty years - from 1543 to 1573 - Holanda sketched and painted designs intended to portray the history of the world according to the bible. It is one of the treasures of the National Library of Spain and is available online in full (150+ folio sketches, 15 of them coloured).

The sketchbook (or the significance and attribution of same) was only discovered in the mid-20th century. There is scant accessible commentary about the work online, although, with the publishing of a facsimile edition in 1983, a book review attempts to give a (critical) guide to the artistic merit of Holanda's biblical illustrations:

"The quality of Holanda's drawings in 'De Aetaibus Mundi' is decidedly uneven. The great majority cannot claim more than modest merit either as imaginative conceptions or works of art. As the series continues they become increasingly dependent on Antwerp prints, in particular those of Gerard de Jode [..]; nor can it be said in extenuation that Holanda improved on his engraved models either artistically or iconographically.

In striking contrast to the more or less routine and derivative nature of the great bulk of the drawings, the first four [..], which illustrate the first four days of the Creation (Genesis, I, 1-19) are extraordinarily impressive and original."

The author of this piece (see below) goes on to question whether or not Holanda is in fact the designer of those Genesis-inspired pages in any event (seen after the frontispiece, above; the rest of the images in this post are in no particular order).

I'm less persuaded by a fussy high-art critic than I am by my own eyes. The complex symbolism and dazzling designs - even if derivative - in this series of intriguing drawings calls to mind alchemy treatises and horror movie motifs as much as it does religious iconography. That evocative attribute alone qualifies it as worthy material for a post on BibliOdyssey methinks.

• 'De Aetatibus Mundi Imagines' is online at Biblioteca Digital Hispánica but I'm not sure if I can link directly to the html version. If this doesn't work, click the link at the bottom of this page. Or choose number four twelve on this page or search for 'Aetatibus' from this page. Beyond that, there is a flash turn-the-pages version - a bit wonky in firefox - but I don't know if the whole manuscript is available. [sorry, everything on this site appears to be cookie-controlled and they time out back to the front page and I don't remember the way in from there, although I *think* it's within the 'Obras Maestras' section.]
• I saved more than thirty other manuscript page images in this webshots album. I didn't adjust these images at all, so the drawings are fairly shiny. I reduced the brightness and scrubbed out a few stains in the images above. [Update 2015:] Webshots evolved, as sites do, but regrettably, all the images I posted to my Webshots account were deleted by Webshots a couple of years ago because I had apparently failed to do *something* - as I later discovered - during their changing of account statuses. It was a random decision to (fortunately) post all the above images to Flickr.
• The critic quote above (by John Bury) comes from a 1985 edition of The Burlington Magazine. Page one is available to non-subscribers through JSTOR. That appears to be the most specific commentary on this sketchbook online as far as I can tell.
• This multi-lingual site has excerpts/commentary about Holanda relating to a 2006 translated version (into Italian) of 'Da Pintura Antigua'.
• I like the (short) biography at Filosofia Portuguesa best [trans.] / Wikipedia.
• The Life and Works of Francisco de Holanda (in Portuguese), appropriately enough from Escola Secundária Francisco de Holanda (text excerpted from a book by Jorge Segurado). [trans.]
• Laura Camille Agoston's long article - '16th century AD' - in the 2005 Renaissance Quarterly [print version / html version] is a fairly critical review of Holanda's 'Roman Dialogues' by a Michelangelo scholar ("Holanda's Michelangelo is protean rather than divine").
• 'History 1450-1789: Portuguese Literature and Language' gives an overview of the cultural milieu in which Holanda was situated, with an emphasis on the influence of travel and empire.
• 'Dialogues with Michelangelo' by Francisco de Holanda (translated by Charles Holroyd) 2007 at Amazon. All other works by or about Holanda (or Hollanda) seem to be either unavailable or out of print. I was unsurprised to see that one of the books - 'The Bible Illuminated' - relates to Holanda and William Blake (and - or by - Swami Bhaktipada). Blake was the first person I thought about when I saw the sketches by Holanda.