Anchoring this introductory section is the first showing of MoMA’s recently acquired
collection of materials representing Friedrich Froebel’s development of kindergarten, with its “gifts” and “occupations” forming a spiritualized system of abstract design activities developed to teach appreciation of natural harmony and foster creativity in developing young minds. Other highlights include designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Glasgow), Magda Mautner Von Markhof’s Kalenderbilderbuch (Calendar Picture Book) (Vienna), designs by Laura Kriesch and Mariska Undi (Budapest), stools painted by children at Francesco Randone’s School for Art (Rome), and Lyonel Feininger’s comics (Chicago).
Avant-garde Playtime
The second section locates children and childlike perspectives in relation to well-known avant garde groups and movements of the 1920s and 1930s. Two tendencies in particular can be seen to connect concepts of childhood and the modern: one represented an attempt to recapture a childlike, untutored attitude toward the world, while the other sought to strip away extraneous elements to get back to the purest forms of human experience and language. The interplay of these two tendencies resulted in a variety of formal vocabularies and approaches to creative experimentation. Adults refreshed their creativity by opening themselves up to children’s perceptual worlds, but they could also design for children in ways that might release youthful energy and imagination, and thereby help shape the society of the future.
The works in this section represent how children’s innocently subversive mode of
questioning the world around them offered artists a means of challenging visual and social
conventions. Among the nearly 50 works on view are Alma Siedhoff-Buscher’s Bauhaus nursery furniture, puppets by Sophie Taeuber-Arp, toys designed by Ladislav Sutnar, a high chair by Gerrit Rietveld, and a child’s wardrobe by Giacomo Balla.
Light, Air, Health
The third section looks at how modernism revealed its greatest idealism in design for children between the two world wars, when a concern for the health and safety of the young was united with a determination to transform society. Medical, educational, and design reformers believed that light, air, and hygiene should permeate all aspects of a child’s early environments. Designers developed new modern schools, nurseries, clothing, and furniture that were simple, light, and flexible. Physical education, delivered through schools and clubs, encouraged children to participate in modern forms of dance, gymnastics, and sport, whether as a means of inculcating collective values or of promoting health and self-expression. Simultaneously the mental environment of the child also required attention; interactive picture books and toys led children on spatial, temporal, and imaginative journeys into the wider world of things and ideas.
Among the works on view in this section are John Rideout and Harold Van Doren’s SkippyRacer scooter from 1933; a glass desk designed by Gio Ponti; Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s designs for a girl’s school in Turkey; El Lissitzky’s Tale of 2 Squares, a children’s picture book; and children’s chairs by Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, and Kit Nicholson.
Children and the Body Politic
The fourth section reveals the involvement of children as both icons and intended audiences of designed propaganda in major political movements and conflicts from the 1920s through World War II. Many politically engaged modernists were more than willing to use their skills to raise consciousness about the perceived benefits of radical social change, and about the collateral damage to children in wartime. As symbols of domestic life, national identity, and the future, children were one of the key motifs in all forms of visual propaganda. Modern designers were also recruited for the causes of various state-run and political youth movements, to design uniforms, magazines, and custom-built environments for everything from clubs in the Soviet Union to children’s colonies in Fascist Italy. There was also a growing demand for modern products that would inculcate appropriate political beliefs, and for books, clothing, and toys that transposed adult politics into fictional worlds.
On view are Aleksandr Rodchenko’s photograph, Pioneer Girl; Roald Dahl’s The Gremlins;
children’s drawings of the Spanish Civil War; Hermína Týrlová’s animated film Vzpoura hraček (Revolt of the Toys); a Graf Zeppelin toy dirigible from 1930; and a Kozybac vest, which was designed under the British government’s Utility scheme in World War II to keep children warm.
Regeneration
The fifth section focuses on visions for constructing better, more egalitarian worlds during the baby boom years following World War II, and the exuberant reappearance of children in public urban spaces and modern, less formal school environments after the wartime experience of confinement or evacuation.
(1) Magda Mautner von Markhof (Austrian, 1881-1944). Kalenderbilderbuch (Calendar Picture Book), 1905; Woodcut. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder
(2) John Rideout (American, 1898 – 1951) and Harold Van Doren (American, 1895-1957). Skippy-Racer scooter, c. 1933; Steel, paint, wood, rubber. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
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