Rebecca Houze, Ph.D
Professor of Art and Design History
Northern Illinois University
As the academic year draws to a close with the usual frenzy of final
projects and spring critiques, I have been reflecting on my travels over the
past several months as a Visiting Researcher for the TVAD (Theorizing Visual
Art and Design) research group, which is hosted by the University of
Hertfordshire’s School of Creative Arts. It was enriching this year to meet so many
energetic students and faculty in a wide range of disciplines, from
contemporary craft to architecture, and from graphic and product design to
heritage studies.
In the autumn term, October 2016, I
had the opportunity to meet with students in Antje Illner’s contemporary craft
seminar. I presented there a short talk on Emilie Bach (1840-1890), founder of
the Imperial-Royal School for Art Embroidery in Vienna in 1874. Bach was very
active in the Austrian reform of design education in the last part of the
nineteenth century, and sought to revive historical needlework patterns from
the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She advocated for
craftsmanship, quality, and creativity in the face of industrialization, and
believed that education was the key to cultivating taste. The students in the
seminar asked questions that led me to explore Bach’s personal and professional
circumstances in more detail in preparation for a paper on this topic. I presented it at the conference, "Design Discourse: Jewish Contributions to Viennese Modernism," at the MAK—Museum of Applied Art in Vienna, organized last fall by Elana Shapira, Design Historian at the University of Applied Art in Vienna.
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"Corner and detached subject in blanket stitch," in Emilie Bach, New Patterns in Old Style |
My TVAD lunch talk, “Textiles, Fashion, and Design Reform in
Austria-Hungary Before the First World War: Principles of Dress,” presented
highlights from my book of the same title (Ashgate, 2015). The book is the
result of my research in the museums of applied art and ethnography in Vienna
and Budapest over the past fifteen years. It argues that the modern movement in
Vienna was energized by an Austrian-Hungarian love of textiles and of dressing
up at the end of the nineteenth century, which shaped museology, educational
programs, and the history of art, as well as innovations in modern design. The
conversation among students and faculty following the talk sparked hypotheses
about the role of psychoanalysis and of architecture in that milieu, a reminder
that “Vienna 1900” was a dynamic center of intellectual and artistic activity
that continues to fascinate us today.
I also had the pleasure of speaking about my more recent
book, New Mythologies in Design and
Culture: Reading Signs and Symbols in the Visual Landscape (Bloomsbury
2016) with design students in School of Creative Arts Associate Dean Research Steven
Adams’ design workshop, and with those who attended my evening Design Talk, as
part of the series convened by Julian Lindley. This project took as its point
of departure Roland Barthes’ familiar 1957 book, Mythologies, a collection of short, brilliant essays on French
popular culture at that time. The essays in New
Mythologies examine some our most potent popular symbols today, such as the
Nike swoosh, the McDonald’s golden arches sign, and BP’s “Helios” logo, and
urge readers to be critical, responsible producers and consumers of our contemporary
designed world.
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Parody of BP Logo designed by Laurent Hunziker, 2010.
Winner of Popular Choice in the Greenpeace UK Rebrand BP Competition.
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A highlight of my fall visit was meeting faculty and
students in UH’s DHeritage program, and hearing the students’ presentations of
their research in progress. The day-long symposium was particularly
interesting to me as my own research has moved increasingly in the direction of
heritage studies in the past several years. My current project looks at
relationships between the built environment of world’s fairs and of new
national parks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in both
Europe and America, where they were designed as powerful expressions of
national identity.
As you might imagine, I came back to Chicago from my fall
visit to UH consumed with new questions and ideas for future projects! It was
thus a privilege to be able to return to the School of Creative Arts again in
February 2017.
My visit to campus in the spring term continued
conversations that had started the previous fall. It was a distinct pleasure,
for example, to attend Grace Lees-Maffei’s lively Graphic Design &
Illustration module, and to lead a “New Mythologies” workshop in which groups
of students deconstructed familiar icons, such as the Beats headphones logo,
the Pringles potato chip trademark, and the international accessibility
(wheelchair) symbol. Eva Sopeoglou, with whom I share an interest in the ideas
of nineteenth-century German architect and art historian Gottfried Semper,
invited me to talk with her First-Year Interior Architecture students and
doctoral student colleagues, who, in February, were in the midst of organizing
an exhibition on urban revitalization in the historic train depot district of
Old Hatfield. I shared with them a part of my current project on historic
architecture and open-air museums of cultural heritage in the American
southwest.
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| Hopi House, Grand Canyon, Arizona, designed by Mary Colter, 1904 |
That same week I attended two fascinating presentations:
Artist Femke De Vries’ TVAD talk, “Dictionary Dressings,” and the 2017
Hertfordshire Association of Architects Annual Lecture, “Zaha Hadid Architects:
Recent and Past Project,” gloriously illustrated and delivered by architect Jim
Heverin. DeVries’ presentation derived from her installation and book of the
same title, which is a creative exploration, indeed subversive reading, of textual
clothing definitions. If a glove is a “covering of the hand,” for example, then
a “glove,” she asserts, might logically be understood as a pocket or a bandage.
Most exciting was the opportunity to participate in UH’s
History Department Conference at the seventeenth-century Cumberland Lodge. Staying in the gracious, elegantly appointed country house, which looks out on
the green expanse of Windsor Great Park, gave the weekend a dream-like quality.
The talks were challenging, the food was delicious, and the company was
stimulating and entertaining. Among the most memorable talks I attended were
John Styles’ address on the history of fashion, Ceri Houlbrook’s discovery of
shoes hidden in the walls of historic homes, Bridget Long’s paper on needlework
education for girls in the eighteenth century, and Emma Battell Lowman &
Adam J Barker’s talk on writing Canadian history in the “settler colonial
present.” Particularly moving was the screening of the powerful film by Tim
Slade, The Destruction of Memory, based
on the book of the same name by Robert Devan. The film traces the destruction
of cultural artifacts and heritage sites as acts of war in several contexts,
including in the ongoing war in Syria.
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| Windsor Great Park |
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| Dorney Court |
In addition to presenting and attending academic talks,
workshopping papers in progress with members of the TVAD reading group, and
making the acquaintance of new colleagues during both my fall and spring term visits, I also had the opportunity to see
local sites and landmarks, including the Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint
Alban, the origins of which date to at least the mid fourth century, Letchworth
and Welwyn Garden Cities, designed by visionary urban planner Ebenezer Howard
in the early twentieth century, and the charming fifteenth-century Dorney Court
in Buckinghamshire.
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| The Spirella Building, previously a factory for the progressive Spirella Corset Company, Letchworth Garden City, 1912 |
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| Ebenezer Howard medallion, Welwyn Garden City |
Understanding history relies upon intellectual discourse,
which often takes place at conferences and symposia—traditional physical meeting
places for the exchange of ideas. With our many new technologies for
communication today, international travel for such meetings may seem less
necessary; however, the ambiguous space between individuals at a video
conference simply cannot compare with the spontaneous conversation in the
corridor, the lounge, or at the dinner table. I am grateful to the School of
Creative Arts for inviting me to participate in its TVAD research group, a
generous and inspiring commitment to fostering academic exchange.
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