Mid2Mod: Dave Brubeck

Showing posts with label Dave Brubeck. Show all posts

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Dave Brubeck's "House In the Sky"

In 1949, while still a student, architect Beverley David Thorne was introduced to Iola Brubeck by mutual friends who knew they were both jazz aficionados. When they met, Thorne had no idea that she was the wife of famous jazz pianist Dave Brubeck.

She told Thorne that she and her husband had purchased a rugged lot with a war bond her husband's father had given him after World War II. The lot was high in the hills and had a spectacular view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. "Oli" Brubeck's only requirement was that the house be a single-level design, so Thorne built just such a house perched atop an outcropping of bedrock 25 feet up from the street.

The house was completed in 1954, and, as a result of its stunning cantilever design, it has received tremendous attention ever since.

From jazzwax.com

trianglemodernisthouses.com

jazzwax.com

Thorne and Brubeck at the house in the mid-1950s
jazzwax.com

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Hard-Edge style

First called "Abstract Classicist" by art critic Jules Langsner and art professor Peter Selz when first exhibited in 1959, this style of painting soon became known as Hard-Edge for its abrupt transitions between color areas, and it looked right at home in the California houses designed by Richard Neutra and other well-known architects of the day. These paintings were considered "the essence of cool," and were on the walls of the most fashionable people of the mid-century era.

Popular Hard-Edge painters of the 1950s and 1960s were John McLaughlin, Lorser Feitelson and his wife Helen Lundeberg, Karl Benjamin and Frederick Hammersly. Imagine Miles Davis or Dave Brubeck tunes wafting through the rooms where these or similar paintings hung. You can almost hear the sound of ice in the cocktail glasses too.

From berkeleydailyplanet.com