Review: Make mine Mingei

Some forms of beauty come fairly small and “simple,” so blithely at home in themselves that they never shout. If you walk past them, it’s your loss. Fortunately, the Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park makes it hard to overlook the suavely declarative and engagingly decorative beauties in “Masters of Mid-Century California Modernism: Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman.”

Buy your ticket or show your membership card, and there they are, right away: dozens of remarkable objects, each one stylishly redolent of another era that, at least in this comfy context, hasn’t grown very old. The Ackermans are now deep into their 80s, but it’s the 1950s and ’60s that linger so alluringly in this pleasing show.

This exhibition evokes the last era in which classic modernism had the ripe confidence of its axioms, and the fullness of its over-used ashtrays (and no, smoking is not OK at the Mingei). The serenely charming retrospective runs into January at our most handsomely intimate local museum, quite lovingly curated by Jo Lauria and Dale Carolyn Gluckman.

They had to campaign a bit for the museum to permit some brightly colored wall surfaces instead of the bare white that is the oldest and dullest modernist cliché. That added resonance is an excellent touch for it helps unify the ensemble nature of the Ackerman treasures. The show explores an era that has regained popularity, as in “Birth of the Cool: Calfornia Art, Design and Culture at Mid-Century,” which recently finished its run at the Blanton Museum in Austin, Texas.

The married Ackermans’ interlaced bodies of work seem nuptial by mutual sympathy, not joined by doctrine or program. Look at the design totems of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements, or the more floridly textured modernity of Frank Lloyd Wright and his followers, and one can hear the solemn whisper of a command: this-is-how-it-must-be.

The Ackermans were not disciples, preachers or form-givers in that sense. Their delicious attitude seems to be: take it or leave it, but we’re having a great time. And they made a very good living.

Jerome has created mostly paintings, mosaics and ceramics, and was the main business wiz of their design workshop, with some craft labor in the apex years farmed out to village workers in Greece and other countries. The couple founded Jenev Design Studio in L.A in the early ’50s, heyday of the stark Case Study Houses and mass-marketed Streamline Moderne. Evelyn brought her flair for the jauntily simplified and serendipitous to ceramic and enamel pieces, mosaics, textiles and carved wood.

Jenev quickly became ERA Industries Inc., which had a long life of many decorative, practical and architectural applications. The Ackermans were dependable stars of the now legendary California Design shows, mostly at the Pasadena Art Museum. In this exhibit, pieces are often infallibly posed to reveal organic relationships, and the art has the feeling of a close-knit family reunion.

Lofty critics Kenneth Clark and Clement Greenberg probably never used as praise the phrase, “What’s not to like?” But it came to mind as I wandered the exhibit. Animals often inspired their endearing work, such as Evelyn’s mosaic “Cats” table, its almost animated felines ablaze in rich highlights of red, gold and orange, or Jerome’s recent, terrific “Alligator” teapot of hand-thrown stoneware. More ambitious is Evelyn’s big, witty textile, “Monkey,” which shows seven simians at play in tail-touching arabesques, mounted before an orange panel.

Far smaller, yet as enticing, are her finger puppets from 1964, first made for daughter Laura’s nursery school but later marketed by ERA. There is a touch of the old Florentine guild shops’ versatility in the Ackerman production, a harmonic convergence of skills. Their shared style has had a constantly evolving suite of delicate or emphatic geometries, biomorphic shapes, folkish themes, splashy colors and whimsies that inevitably call to memory LP covers, logos, UPA cartoons, fashion accessories and the era’s hip movie titles (Saul Bass, etc.).

The Ackermans were conspicuous stars in the L.A. Times’ Home section and other publications. Maybe they should have had their own pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. I fell under the spell far enough to briefly think that a custodian, pushing a broom of blue fabric through the gallery, was an Ackerman motif. This irresistible show even comes with a little sonic flavoring, some recorded jazz.

The art now transcends trendiness. Like a pixie mascot, there is an early ’50s photo of Evelyn, still quite cool in her modified, Audrey Hepburn haircut. Mr. Magoo should arrive any day now and hopefully, won’t knock anything down.

Event info

What: “Masters of Mid-Century California Modernism: Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman”

Where: Mingei International Musuem, Balboa Park, San Diego

When: Through January 10, 2010. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

How much: $7 adults, $5 seniors, $4 students and active military.

Contact: (619) 239-0003; www.mingei.org

David Elliott, the SDNN movie critic, reviewed art in Chicago and is the son of a ’50s modernist architect.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Arts & Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.