JEAN-MICHEL FRANK
Adolphe Chanaux
Adolphe Chanaux: JEAN-MICHEL FRANK. Paris: Editions Du Regard, 1997. First edition thus [expanded from the 1980 first edition]. Parallel text in French and English. Black cloth stamped in white. Photographically printed dust jacket. 264 pp. Color and black and white photography. Former owners circular emboss on half-title page. Dust jacket spine uniformly sun-faded, otherwise immaculate. A nearly fine copy. 9.25 x 12.5 hardcover book with 264 pages and over 300 black and white and color photographs of Frank's furniture and household objects. Based on the 1980 design by by Andree Putman, and with photographs by Jacques Boulay. A beautifully produced monograph authored by Jean-Michel Frankšs former studio Partner Adolphe Chanaux. Monograph on the French designer who reinvented the vocabulary of decorative arts between 1932 and 1940 when he worked in Paris, New York, and South America. Frank was inspired by neoclassicism and the abstraction of primitive arts which became the foundation of a minimalist style today.
Jean-Michel Frank (1895-1941) was the most influential French interior designer of the 1930šs. He is known for minimalist interiors decorated with walls of straw marquetry, sofas of creamy leather, screens of mica, and plain-lined but sumptuous furniture. Frank was inspired by the abstraction of primitive arts, bringing to the 1930s an original style whose elegance won him the loyalty of a wealthy and elite clientele. Frankšs style of understated luxury perfectly complemented the Picassos and Braques his clients hung on their walls.
In 1915 he was informed the death of his two elder brothers, French soilders on front line, and then his fathers subsequent suicide. Four years later he lost his mother who had been in an asylum for several years. In the first part of the 1920šs he traveled the world. It was in Venice that he first met the cosmopolitan society, and the Parisian decorator Adolphe Chanaux. Together in 1932 they opened their shop in Paris. During the winter of 1939 he left France for South America and the United States. Tragically in 1941, he committed suicide while in New York. His subtle sense of understatement and minimal design is still a influence on interior designers even to this day.
Spreads from this volume can be viewed here.
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