How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today's Design Stars - Friedman Benda

How Cranbrook Became the Go-To
   Art School for Mid-Century Masters
        and Today’s Design Stars
The legendary Michigan institution is taking a fresh look at
its storied history, this time shining a light on the vital role
           played by women and people of color.
                                          By Ted Loos
                                          July 11, 2021

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

Now approaching its 90th anniversary, the Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Bloomfield Hills,
Michigan, has achieved fame and cachet within the art, design and architecture fields. It
is less well-known to the general public, despite its claim to being one of the most
influential aesthetic wellsprings in American history.

In the words of the design curator and historian Glenn Adamson, “It’s the closest thing
we’ve ever had to the Bauhaus.”

Now, a blockbuster show — “WITH EYES OPENED: CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART
SINCE 1932,” running from June 18 to September 19 — is taking over the whole of the
affiliated Cranbrook Museum of Art, telling the story of the school in more than 270 objects.
There’s an accompanying book replete with information on the superstars who have
taught or studied there.

Left: EERO SAARINEN TULIP CHAIR. Right: Circuit Landscape No. 1, 1973, by MCARTHUR BINION.
Above, clockwise from top left (photos by R.H. Hensleigh and Tim Thayer unless otherwise noted): RALPH
RAPSON ROCKING CHAIR, 1940; Cranbrook Academy of Art president Roy Slade (center), DANIEL
LIBESKIND (far right) and students with a model of ELIEL SAARINEN’s Cranbrook School for Boys campus,
1983 (photo by Richard Hirneisen); Nina Cho curved chair (photo courtesy of Cranbrook); Fox, 1950, by
Betty Ford (photo courtesy of Cranbrook); Cranbrook Academy of Art administrators in a critique with
painting students, 1942 (photo by Richard G. Askew); Maija Grotell VASE, ca. 1942; CHARLES AND RAY
EAMES storage units, 1941–51

The list of Cranbrook makers stretches from mid-century masters like CHARLES AND
RAY EAMES, HARRY BERTOIA and FLORENCE KNOLL BASSETT to some of today’s

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

notable designers and artists, including NICK CAVE, MCARTHUR BINION and CHRIS
SCHANCK.

The campus itself is a modernist masterpiece, designed in part by the great Finnish
architect ELIEL SAARINEN (the father of EERO SAARINEN, who also taught at
Cranbrook). He laid it out and designed its first buildings. Says Adamson, echoing his
remark about the Bauhaus, “It’s as close to a Saarinen Gesamtkunstwerk as you can get.”

The crown jewel is the late 1920s Art Deco–style Saarinen House, designed by Eliel and
featuring textiles by his wife, Loja, a teacher at Cranbrook, as well as furniture by Eero.
(Cranbrook kept up its distinguished role in architecture in later years, with DANIEL
LIBESKIND teaching there from 1978-85.)

An educational community that includes the museum, two research centers and a prep
school, Cranbrook was the brainchild of George Booth and his wife, Scripps publishing
heiress Ellen Booth. The couple took the first step in founding the institution in 1904,
buying 175 acres a mere half hour from Detroit, a plot of land that later grew to more than
300 acres.

Cranbrook’s Triton Pools feature sculptures by CARL MILLES, who served as artist-in-residence in the
academy’s department of sculpture from 1931 to1953. Photo by James Haefner, courtesy of the Michigan
State Preservation Office

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

In the 1920s, the Booths brought in Eliel Saarinen, who helped them plan the community
and served as its first president. The couple took their time in order to get the details right,
evolving the concept of Cranbrook over many decades.

“They had traveled to the American Academy in Rome in the mid- to late-nineteen
twenties,” says Andrew Blauvelt, the museum’s director and the organizer of the show.
“That was the model: a postgraduate place to go after you’ve done your studies.”

Although the United States boasts other great schools of similar ilk, like the Rhode Island
School of Design, Cranbrook has always been distinguished by the independence it
affords students.

                    Cranbrook Academy of Art library. Photo by James Haefner,
                        courtesy of the Michigan State Preservation Office

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

“We call it the art school for grown-ups,” says Blauvelt, a Cranbrook graduate himself,
who was a curator at the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, before assuming his current
position. “We’re trying to simulate the real world.” There are only around 140 students at
a time, making for a rich and intimate experience.

Another distinctive Cranbrook quality is what Adamson calls “a Scandinavian-Nordic
aesthetic, organic and livable,” which stands in contrasts to the Bauhaus’s Germanic
emphasis on pure functionality and derives at least in part from the Saarinen influence.

Cranbrook’s collections wing. Photo by Justin Maconochie

The 1980s was the last time the school’s legacy was examined in depth, when the
exhibition “Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision, 1925–1950” was on view at the
Detroit Institute of Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. But that show
“had an end date of nineteen fifty,” says Blauvelt, “and it really only focused on design.
So much blossomed after that period.”

Blauvelt also wanted “With Eyes Opened” to highlight the vital role of women and people
of color in Cranbrook’s story, which hadn’t been emphasized previously.

“With Eyes Opened” has nine sections covering a range of creative disciplines. The
acclaimed Chicago-based painter McArthur Binion, who shows with LEHMANN MAUPIN,
is represented in the section entitled Salon Abstraction by one of his Cranbrook MFA
paintings, Circuit Landscape No. 1, 1973, as well as a 2018 work from his DNA Series.

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

Left: Water from the Fountain of the Atom, 1938, by WAYLANDE DESANTIS GREGORY (photo by PD
Rearick). Center: Portrait of Diahann Carroll, 1966, by ARTIS LANE (photo by Jessie Mellon, courtesy of
Collected Detroit and the artist). Right: The Kings, 1966, by Mary Walker Phillips (photo by PD Rearick).

Binion, who was at Cranbrook from 1971 to 1973 and is known for his gridded
abstractions, was the rare Black MFA student at the time: “When I was there, there were
two of us,” he says.

He studied with the third-generation Abstract Expressionist painter GEORGE EARL
ORTMAN and thrived on interacting with the many visiting artists passing through campus.
“That’s how I met Dan Flavin, who then came to my first show in Detroit,” says Binion.
(Ortman is represented in the show by Homage to Eliel and Loja Saarinen — Five, I? from
1977).

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

Left: In this March 1939 photo, Maija Grotell, artist-in-residence in the department of ceramics from 1938
to 1966, is pictured standing with her students, including architect Harry Weese in the foreground (photo
by Richard G. Askew). Right: Myrtle Hall, the first black model at Cranbrook and a ceramicist, modeling for
painting students, 1940 (photos courtesy of Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and
Research)

It was the independent time and space, however, that really made him grow. “They treat
you like an artist,” he says. “Everybody has their own studio. There are no classes, no
grades. No one’s telling you what to do.”

When the Cranbrook Museum acquired Circuit Landscape, it was particularly meaningful
to Binion. “I believed in the work, and so I felt validated,” he says.

“With Eyes Opened” doesn’t stint on the modernist design achievements that made
Cranbrook’s name. The seating section’s Wall of Chairs feature showcases the talent of
the academy’s teachers. Harry Bertoia’s DIAMOND CHAIR from 1952 is a familiar work
that never gets old, as is Eero Saarinen’s TULIP ARMCHAIR of 1957.

Of course, Bertoia, who actually started as a Cranbrook student in 1937 and departed as
a teacher of graphics in 1943, was adept at more than seating, and the exhibition gives
his versatility its due, including his more abstract sculptural work, as well as a teapot he
crafted in silver-plated copper.

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

Jay Sae Jung Oh’s Savage chair, 2011, is made from found plastic objects and jute. Photo by R.H.
Hensleigh and Tim Thayer

Exciting newer names also appear in the Wall of Chairs, like Jay Sae Jung Oh. Oh’s
Savage chair, with its a wild, bulbous shape made from found objects covered in jute, is
a far cry from the restraint of the prototype for Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen’s 1940
Organic Design side chair, on display nearby.

Oh was a 2011 MFA graduate in 3-D design. So was Detroit-based artist CHRIS
SCHANCK, who shows with Friedman Benda and has gained fame for work in which a
drippy, messy surface is overlaid on elegant forms. He is represented here by his 2019
Alufoil chair, made of aluminum foil and resin.

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

CHRIS SCHANCK created his Alufoil chair,
                                                        2019, from aluminum foil and resin. Photo
                                                        courtesy of Cranbrook Art Museum

“I had a steep learning curve when I first began Cranbrook,” says Schanck. “I entered the
3-D design department with no professional or educational experience in the discipline. It
was a series of lectures by our artist in residence, Scott Klimker, on the history of radical
design that blew the doors open for me. It was like discovering a parallel universe or a
new drug.”

He notes that, despite the independence given to students, “you are not alone” at
Cranbrook and adds that he benefited from the potent combination of “brutal critiques,
intellectual generosity from visiting artists, chain-smoking conversations in the campus
bar, great friendships and hours of experimentation.”

Blauvelt, who is curating a 2022 show of Schanck’s work at the Museum of Arts and
Design in New York, sees the artist’s experimentations as part of Cranbrook’s
“commitment to craft that goes beyond obvious functionality — students and teachers are
constantly pushing the boundaries.”

Adamson, a contributor to the exhibition’s companion book, notes that ceramics and fiber
work are among the fields that Cranbrook faculty and students pioneered over the
decades.

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.

He points to the Finnish-born MAIJA GROTELL’s lovely stoneware vase from 1942 and
her footed bowl from the same year. “She was the most important modernist ceramist in
the country,” says Adamson, remarking on her influence on a whole generation of potters
through her 30-year tenure at the school.

“Her teaching was significant in that she introduced her students to technical know-how
— sophisticated wheel-throwing and glazing techniques,” he explains. “But also because
she was a masterful abstractionist who was able to combine rigorous pattern and shape.”

             Left: Jack Craig’s bronzed enamel cantilever light, 2018 (photo: PD Rearick).
             Right: Early Spring, 2000, by TOSHIKO TAKAEZU (photo by R.H. Hensleigh)

Among Grotell’s students was TOSHIKO TAKAEZU, who became an important Abstract
Expressionist ceramic artist and whose circa-2000 stoneware vase Early Spring is
displayed in the exhibition.

A parallel influence in the fiber field was Gerhardt Knodel, a longtime instructor and maker
of the three-panel fiber work Guardians of the New Life, 1987. Knodel taught, among
other notable talents, multimedia artist Nick Cave, who incorporates fiber in pieces like
the noise-making costumes known as Soundsuits that are his best-known creations.

Such rich cross-connections among mediums and generations are what spurred Blauvelt
to spend more than five years putting together this super-sized show. Although delayed
by the pandemic, “With Eyes Opened” is well-timed for the Maker Era. “It seemed like the
perfect moment for this,” he says, “and I’m just crazy enough to try.”

Ted Loos, “How Cranbrook Became the Go-To Art School for Mid-Century Masters and Today’s Design
Stars,” Introspective, July 11, 2021.