I’m very interested in the historical pairing of non-Western (particularly “tribal”) art with contemporary interiors. It’s a match-up that’s been going on for quite awhile now and reaches back to the personal collections of Picasso and Matisse, the use of the “primitive” in Art Deco, etc. The photo above appears within an article in Modern Magazine (Fall 2009) about Florence Knoll’s 1960′s interiors for the headquarters of CBS. Here we see the contemporary / tribal combination again, in this case with a framed textile serving as counterpoint to the sleek sofas and steel-framed tables that fill the space. I wonder how Knoll selected the piece and what it represented to her — I also wonder what the textile is exactly. Is it Indian? Is it a South American mola?
[...] another fascinating historic shot offered by Modern Magazine (previously posted about here). Reprinted in their third issue, the image originally appeared in the catalog for the 1965 [...]