Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design

by Kristina Wilson

The first investigation of how race and gender shaped the presentation and marketing of Modernist decor in postwar America

In the world of interior design, mid-century Modernism has left an indelible mark still seen and felt today in countless open-concept floor plans and spare, geometric furnishings. Yet despite our continued fascination, we rarely consider how this iconic design sensibility was marketed to the diverse audiences of its era. Examining advice manuals, advertisements in Life and Ebony , furniture, art, and more, Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body offers a powerful new look at how codes of race, gender, and identity influenced―and were influenced by―Modern design and shaped its presentation to consumers.

Taking us to the booming suburban landscape of postwar America, Kristina Wilson demonstrates that the ideals defined by popular Modernist furnishings were far from neutral or race-blind. Advertisers offered this aesthetic to White audiences as a solution for keeping dirt and outsiders at bay, an approach that reinforced middle-class White privilege. By contrast, media arenas such as Ebony magazine presented African American readers with an image of Modernism as a style of comfort, security, and social confidence. Wilson shows how etiquette and home decorating manuals served to control women by associating them with the domestic sphere, and she considers how furniture by George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames, as well as smaller-scale decorative accessories, empowered some users, even while constraining others.

A striking counter-narrative to conventional histories of design, Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body unveils fresh perspectives on one of the most distinctive movements in American visual culture.

Genres: Design, History, Art, Nonfiction

264 pages, Hardcover

Published April 13, 2021

Reviews

[Brian crisp · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited when I heard of Dr. Wilson's scholarship regarding race, gender, and their intersection with Modern design in the United States. The introduction provided a clear methodology for her discourse, focusing on counter narrative as a means to nuance and better understand the roles of race and gender in the design era between the late 1940s to the 1960s. Quickly, Wilson reinforces the lines of demarcation by omitting the voices of prominent designers who were female and POC. Florence Knoll, Eva Zeisel, George Nakashima, and Isamu Noguchi find no voice in Wilson's work (Gregory Ain and other queer voices are also missing). This lacunae has an unfortunate result in the scholarship. Asserting that women and POC are subjugated and silenced during this era while silencing these voices in your scholarship buttresses, not dismantles, the system you critique. This coupled with assertions that are never supported made for a frustrating read. We can thank Dr. Wilson for beginning the conversation, and we can hope other's with a more astute lens continue this work.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body by Kristina Wilson was an analysis of the design trends of Mid-Century Modernism and how they codified Whiteness through cleanliness and control and prescribed heteronormative gender roles; and on the other hand, how these trends had a counter-history in the African American community as a design philosophy associated with upper class comfort and community. Phew. Sorry for the long sentence, but it was a lot to cover!

Just as a general critique, I found Wilson's book to be a little less lucid than the last one we read. I'm not sure if that was due to her writing style or the way this book was organized, but I found that some of her main ideas were harder to grasp, whereas in the last book I felt things were a little more delineated. For example, the chapters felt oddly grouped to me as opposed to the last book; I thought it was strange to go from grouping the chapters by books and authors, then by magazines, then by design, and later decorative accessories, instead of grouping them by all by aspects of design for example. I found the chapter on the magazines to be pretty effective, but the first chapter on the design books felt like I was receiving too much information from too many different players at once. I also thought that in her chapter on Herman Miller she talked enough about other designers like Charles Eames to set us up differently to expect analysis of both.

I think my biggest critique is that in talking about heteronormative gender roles, Wilson could've gone deeper, perhaps using queer theory. When she introduced the idea of Modern design enforcing heteronormative gender roles, she explored this idea using feminism. However, I mostly found the instances of sexism that she discussed to be so overt that its almost hard to see this as a counter-history. And actually, in her introduction, she does not acknowledge this feminist, gender-concerned lens as a counter-history at all, and the ideas that she has as for future studies of counter histories are all race-based. But what about non-heteronormative counter-histories?

And since these feminist discussions so frequently revolved around sex, I feel like queer theory could have complimented these ideas well, and further offered her a chance to explore another counter-history. I am not sure where she would've found queer counter-history examples to discuss here, but I feel like they have to be somewhere! Perhaps some queer magazines from the 1950s would've been a good place to start? While they weren't advertisement heavy because of their illegality at the time, they began gaining wider audiences through the late 1950s and early 60s in the years before Stonewall.

But at the very least I know there must’ve been a queer designer whose work she could’ve included. I just have a hunch that something could've came from exploring queer dialogues around Modern design to strengthen her argument about heteronormativity, and to make it more unique from the already heavily studied heteronormativity of the Mid-Century Modern period. After all, she concludes her book by saying that she hopes the reader has realized that there are multiple counter-histories of Modern design, yet she only covered the singular counter history of Modern design in African American contexts.

Maybe I am being too hard on poor Wilson, so let me say what I liked: I thought her analysis of the counter-history of African Americans using Modern design was great, and her side by side comparisons of ads in the magazines were very effective. She really leaned into the tenets of Critical Race Theory that acknowledge that racism is ordinary and race is constructed. Her chapter on accessories was where some of her arguments about White people and Black people viewing design materials differently really came together. Her discussions of owning cultural objects versus appreciating them really drove some things home for me: namely, why sometimes I feel uncomfortable about people owning these types of objects and why other times I don't.

I also really appreciated her historical contextualization of everything, and was fascinated by her discussions of money. The historical contexts of suburbia and the growing Black consumer market were really valuable to showing when and how Modern design was used. When she talked about how these pieces were supposed to be affordable and showed the prices of the items and the salaries that could afford them, I had a blast using an inflation calculator. It's funny because one of the pieces she mentioned was about $40, which equates to about $500 today. Maybe its because I am not in the monetary bracket of consumers that these magazines cater to, but I would not consider a $500 piece of furniture cheap!

I did learn so much about Modern Design from this book that I think had remained for most of my life subliminally detectible, but ex-nominated. So ultimately, thank you Kristina Wilson for nominating all of this uncomfy-ness with Modern design.

[bookblogjourney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kristina Wilson investigates how race and gender influenced–and were influenced by—the development and marketing of midcentury Modern decor in postwar America, presenting a striking counter-narrative to conventional histories of design. This is the first investigation of how race and gender shaped the presentation and marketing of Modernist decor in postwar America. This book is about very interesting stuff about how midcentury modernism was marketed towards different parts of America. Something that was about exclusivity and cleanliness for White communities and aspirational for Black communities and constricting for women. Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design by Kristina Wilson is a thought-provoking book that explores the intersection of design, race, and gender in postwar America. Published in 2021 by Princeton University Press, this book offers a fresh perspective on mid-century modernism, revealing how design reinforced white identity and heteronormative gender roles. Wilson, a professor of art history at Clark University, draws on a wide range of sources, including print media and objects, to support her arguments.
Kristina Wilson’s work provides a critical analysis of the power dynamics at play in mid-century modern design, highlighting the ways in which design reflected and shaped societal norms. Her book has been praised for its nuanced and intersectional approach, which sheds new light on the complex relationships between design, identity, and power.