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  Norman Bel Geddes Art Deco Streamline Medal 25th anniversary of GM 1933

  NORMAN BEL GEDDES (1893 – 1958) USA

  Medal 1933 (Commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of General Motors)

  Silvered bronze

  Signed: Norman Bel Geddes [copyright mark ] 1933

  Exhibited: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 16-Jan. 7, 2001, Mint Museum of Craft & Design, North Carolina, May 3-July 28, 2002

  Illustrated: Johnson, J. Stewart, American Modern 1925-1940: Design for a New Age, Harry N. Abrams & The American Federation of the Arts, 2000, p. 127

  Diameter:   3″

  This medallion, commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of General Motors, is an example of the Streamlined style that dominated architecture and design in America from the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s. With its abstracted, teardrop-shaped vehicle form depicted in motion, with the tall winglike element rising from its center, the overall effect is one of speed and movement—characteristic of the Streamlined style and appropriate to the automobile and airplane age. Norman Bel Geddes was trained as a theatrical set designer but best known for another project for General Motors, the Futurama exhibition at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. This exhibit, through which visitors were propelled on a giant conveyor belt, depicted a utopian vision of America in the near future, a world dependent on the speed and efficiency of the automobile for work and recreation.

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  Carlotta Corpron, Light Cubes, Gelatin silver print c. 1947

  CARLOTTA CORPRON (1901-1988) USA

  Light Cubes c. 1947

  Silver gelatin print, patinated steel frame

  Signed: Carlotta M. Corpron, Denton, Texas, RM6 #1081.47 (stamped on back)

  Framed size: H: 13 ¾” x W: 16 ¾”

  Price: $40,000

  Corpron became a teacher at Texas Woman’s University in 1935 and in 1942 she led a light workshop at Texas Woman’s University for photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Although he praised her rapport with her students, Moholy-Nagy did not encourage Corpron’s independent photography. More influential on her work was the arrival of Gyorgy Kepes, who came to Denton to write a book in 1944. His interest in Corpron’s work prompted her to produce several series of photographs that were the most original of her career. At his suggestion Corpron experimented by placing white paper cut in simple shapes within a perforated box that was open at one end. When flashlights were shined through the holes onto the paper shapes, interesting patterns of light and shadow were reflected. The resulting abstract photographs comprised Corpron’s “Light Patterns” series.

  In her “Light Follows Form” series she extended her exploration of the modeling properties of light to three-dimensional form. In this series, she used light filtered through Venetian blinds or glass to dramatize a plaster cast of a Greek head. She also experimented with solarization, a process in which already exposed negatives are exposed. Works such as Solarized Calla Lilies (1948) convey a surreal elegance, but Corpron favored more original methods of expression. She regarded her “Space Compositions” and “Fluid Light Designs” series as her best work. In the former she used still-lifes composed of eggs, nautilus shells, or glass paperweights, usually combined with a curving reflective surface, to produce an illusion of receding three-dimensional space. She emphasized distortions of form that occurred in her egg photographs by experimentation during the development process. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth.