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M.2011.132 Greg Noll (b. 1937, active Hermosa Beach) Surfboard, c. 1960 Polyurethane foam, fiberglass cloth, polyester resin, wood Height: 114 in. (289.56 cm); Width: 22 in. (55.88 cm) LACMA, Gift of Matt Jacobson, M.2011.132 Photo © 2011 Museum Associates/LACMA / View full image
Within the culture and honour-roll of surfing, Greg Noll is one of its ‘legends’. Born in San Diego, Noll moved with his family to Manhattan Beach, California at the age of 3 years. He began to surf at around eleven, joining surf clubs and later, the Los Angeles County Lifeguards. He was introduced to surfboard shaping by another legend of the surfing world, Dale Velzy – credited with being the first commercial board shaper who opened a professional surf shop in Manhattan Beach in 1950. Noll was part of the United States Lifeguard team who competed in the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games which had a considerable impact on the Australian surfing scene.
In 1954, Noll moved to Hawaii, finishing high school and continuing to surf. He gained notoriety in 1957 when he became one of a group of surfers who took on big waves at Waimea Bay, Hawaii. The seasonal wave breaks at Waimea can be anything between nine to fifteen metres and is still recognised as an important destination for big wave surfing. Watch the short film on this famous surf spot.
Greg Noll surfing in Waimea Bay, Hawaii 1957
The board-shaping skills that Noll learned in California evolved into his own very successful business in the 1950s at Hermosa Beach, California. He also made a series of short surf films in the late 1950s before giving up surfing in 1969 after riding what is reputed to be the largest wave ever ridden at Makaha, Hawaii. Having secured his reputation as the most fearless surfer known, he turned to commercial fishing in Alaska. With resurgence in longboards in the 1990s, he resumed board shaping and organising longboard surf events. He continues to make a limited number of boards and replicas for collectors from his home in Crescent City, California.
The surf board included in ‘California Design: Living in a Modern Way’ is representative of this great ‘classic’ era of surfing when finding and catching waves and breaks was all that mattered to a generation of young men for whom jobs, marriage and mortgages meant little by comparison. As Greg Noll has said, ‘I’m not sorry for being a fun hog for all of my life’.
The longboard was the original form for surfboards when they were first manufactured in the United States in the 1920s. They evolved from the Polynesian and Hawaiian boards made of solid wood used in the ancient practice of Hoe he’e nalu, a kind of stand-up paddle boarding. Construction materials for longboards evolved from plywood and balsawood through to fibreglass and polyurethane foam. The longboard or ‘Malibu’, typically 4 to 6 metres in length, dominated the surf scene up to the late 1960s and 1970s when short ‘performance’ boards (made famous by renowned Australian surfer, Nat Young) introduced a revolution in style and board manufacture. Vintage longboards now attract high prices on the collectors market and have assumed iconic status in the history of surf culture.
‘California Design 1930–1965: Living in a Modern Way ‘ which opens at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) on 2 November 2013 with talks, tours, and special events will introduce Australian audiences to a broad spectrum of industrial, architectural, commercial, fashion and craft design from California. Organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) the exhibition presents over 250 objects. The publication California Design 1930-1965: Living In A Modern Way is the first comprehensive study of mid-century modern California design which offers new research and ideas about the furniture, ceramics, graphic and industrial design, architecture, metalwork, textiles and fashion produced in the Golden State.
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M.2011.132 Greg Noll (b. 1937, active Hermosa Beach) Surfboard, c. 1960 Polyurethane foam, fiberglass cloth, polyester resin, wood Height: 114 in. (289.56 cm); Width: 22 in. (55.88 cm) LACMA, Gift of Matt Jacobson, M.2011.132 Photo © 2011 Museum Associates/LACMA / View full image
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Barbie’s fashion and furniture has changed considerably since the mid twentieth century. Barbie’s Dream House 1962 (illustrated) exhibited in ‘California Design 1930–1965: Living in a Modern Way’ in 2013, epitomised the modern Californian design that led to the manufacture of innovative and creative toys for children, providing children with the perfect modern space in which to act out their dreams of the future.
You may not expect furniture designers Charles Eames (Charles Eames, Jr) and Ray Eames (Ray-Bernice Eames) and toy creator Mattel Inc to have much in common, and yet both were interested in design for children and began making products in Los Angeles, California, during the mid twentieth century. Their works reflect the modern aesthetic and cutting-edge design that were emerging from the state at the time. From the mid twentieth century on, ‘the aesthetic, material, and technical innovations in design for children were remarkable, closely paralleling, and at times directly influencing, other areas of visual culture’.
Charles Eames, Ray Eames ‘ESU (Eames storage unit)’ c. 1949
Buff, Straub & Hensman 1955–61 ‘Recreation pavilion, Mirman House, Arcadia’ 1958
Mattel, Inc. ‘Barbie’s Dream House’ (interior) 1962
The 1962 Dream House is simple and functional. Its cardboard construction and compact size was made to be easily folded and carried by a handle. The box in which it comes transforms into the house itself: the lid unlatches at the top and two cardboard leaves fold out to form the floor and sides. It is remarkably modest, with a single room serving as both living and bedroom, and no kitchen or bathroom included. Despite the lack of amenities, there are homely touches, with books on shelves, a framed picture of Barbie’s relatively new boyfriend, Ken (illustrated) (who appeared on the scene in 1961), and a collection of records. All accessories are made of cardboard, and the accompanying furniture — much like today’s offerings from IKEA — would have been assembled at home by the owner.
Mattel, Inc. ‘Barbie’s Dream House’ (exterior) 1962
‘Barbie Teen Age Fashion Model’ (Barbie #1) 1959 & ‘Ken doll’ 1961
Mattel introduced the iconic Barbie doll in 1959, and it quickly became the company’s best-selling product and the world’s best-selling doll. Barbie was different from the traditional baby doll, as she was a teenager wearing a chic swimsuit. Her extensive wardrobe allowed young girls to act out their own dreams of a California life, with accessories including a comfortable but modern cardboard ‘Dream House’, complete with television and Scandinavian-inspired furnishings.
According to the Los Angeles Times’ Home magazine in 1951, the ‘California look’ was typified by ‘glowing color, originality of treatment and simplicity of design’. The sleek form and exterior detailing of the early Dream House is reminiscent of a bungalow or ranch-style dwelling and, together with its minimalist Scandinavian-inspired furniture and bright colours, is perfectly in keeping with this look. It provided children with an example of modern aspirations and a space in which to act out their dreams of the future.
Mattel Creations was founded in 1945 by Ruth and Elliot Handler, along with their friend, Harold Matson, and initially produced wooden picture frames and doll houses before going on to create musical toys. In 1959, Mattel Inc launched the ‘teen fashion model’ Barbie, named after the Handlers’ daughter, Barbara. The first Barbie wore a black-and-white swimsuit and cat’s eye sunglasses. In her debut year, she had 22 ensembles, and while some of these were domestically themed, most were glamorous and sophisticated. One of these outfits — titled ‘Suburban Shopper’ and produced from 1959–64 — is displayed with the Dream House (illustrated). The full-skirted blue-and-white cotton sundress came with a straw hat, a pearl necklace, a pink telephone and a straw bag filled with fruit.
Barbie’s taste in fashion and architecture has changed considerably since the mid twentieth century. The house’s current incarnation is an elaborate, three-level townhouse complete with elevator, in her now signature pink. However, Barbie’s more humble beginnings, with the small but stylish and durable Dream House c. 1962, epitomise the modern Californian design that led to the manufacture of innovative and creative toys for children.
Laura Mudge is Senior Program Officer, Children’s Art Centre, QAGOMA
During ‘California Design 1930–1965: Living in a Modern Way’, complementary works by two Collection artists are on display in the Watermall, at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG). Despite being separated by a generation, and by the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, the works of Scott Redford and Ed Ruscha echo similar sentiments about the culture and architecture of their coastal homes.
As Ed Ruscha arrived in Los Angeles, California, in 1956, Queensland’s Surfer’s Paradise was beginning its rise to national pre-eminence as the holiday destination of choice for Australians who could afford it. In emulation of the North American model in Florida, its first canal subdivisions were being approved by the Albert Shire Council, and multistorey motels were under construction, designed to entice Australian holidaymakers to the strip of beachfront that became known, in 1958, as the ‘Gold Coast’. The Queensland Government officially proclaimed the Gold Coast a city the following year.
The arrangement of works by Ruscha (b.1937) and Queensland artist Scott Redford (b.1962) in QAG’s Watermall during ‘California Design 1930–1965: Living in a Modern Way’ illustrates the similarities in their choice of motifs (signs, surf culture, vernacular architecture) as well as to their responses to particular urban milieus, resonant with local histories and anecdotes. Both artists make the prosaic into the iconic in response to their particular environments.
In 1956, Ruscha journeyed west via Route 66 from Oklahoma — where his family had moved in 1942 — to Los Angeles. There he attended the Chouinard Art Institute until 1960, before it changed its name to the California Institute of Arts. He found employment at an advertising agency for a short period, but saw the creative freedom of an artist as more rewarding and held his first solo show at the Ferus Gallery in 1963.
Much of Ruscha’s art is about being ‘on the road’ in America. The graphic visual environment of Los Angeles and southern California, with its advertising hoardings and neon signage was a constant source of interest for Ruscha. This culture of cars, highways, gas stations and road signs nourished his painting as well as his important photographic book works of the 1960s, such as Twenty-six Gasoline Stations (1963), Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), Thirty-four Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967), and perhaps his best known, Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966).
Two suites of gelatin silver prints included in the Watermall display, Some Los Angeles apartments 1965/2003 and Vacant lots 1970/2003 (Paul Eliadis Collection of Contemporary Art, Brisbane), derive from Ruscha’s book works of the 1960s. The first numbered editions of these photographs were issued in 1989 and Ruscha has referred to the production of these limited‑edition prints as ‘raiding the ice-box’.
Vine intersects four other streets 2003 encapsulates much that is typical of Ruscha’s oeuvre. Santa Monica and Hollywood Boulevards, Vine Street and Sunset Strip are names that have been mythologised through films, novels, TV series, songs and products. The intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, for example, is steeped in LA folklore: ‘Hollywood and Vine’ is where the radio, movie and music industries established their offices and studios in the 1920s and 30s. Landmark sites, such as the city’s first high‑rise office (the Taft Building) and Capitol Records, are also located here. The art scene seamlessly merged with the world of night clubs, surfing, music, cars and street culture. Neither the Gold Coast nor Los Angeles were ever celebrated as bastions of high culture: both were vaguely seedy and dismissive of convention and authority, and both represented an opportunity for greater freedom. They were rock ‘n’ roll towns.
The Gold Coast that Scott Redford grew up in was, by the mid 1970s, a freestyle fusion of Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where a derivative modernist aesthetic had been shoe-horned into an ocean-side strip of high rises, hedonism and surf culture. Redford’s Miami High School song emulated the jaunty cadence of the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, and the school’s sign referenced the free-standing letters of the iconic Hollywood sign. The canary yellow of Redford’s Automatic for the people (SURF) 1997 is a kind of third-tier reference to both the Hollywood sign and to the reflective pool of imitation and derivation; this hybridisation continues in his Surf painting/Modernist house 2000, which draws on the styles of celebrated Californian émigré architects Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler, whose works merge for Redford with the 1950s and early 1960s houses on Broadbeach’s Old Burleigh Road. Proposal for a Surfer’s Paradise Public Sculpture/GC Cinemas 2006 is perhaps his most emphatic nod to the culture and architecture of mid-century California, meshed with private nostalgia and an homage to his hometown.
Despite being an ocean apart, the geographies and cultural identities of southern California and Queensland’s Gold Coast share much vibrant, ‘un-stuffy’ and fertile ground, especially for these two artists, who each embraced the contradictions and peculiarities of their time and place.
