Alvin Lustig's Copy
MIES VAN DER ROHE
Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson: MIES VAN DER ROHE. New York: the Museum of Modern Art, [1947]. Octavo. Tan cloth stamped in black. 216 pp. 200 black and white plates. Ex-Libris plate from Arthur A. Cohen and Elaine Lustig Cohen on front pastedown endpaper. Alvin Lustigšs ownership signature (lustig) in pencil on front free endpaper. According to Elaine Lustig Cohen, Alvin Lustig never saved the dust jackets from the books he bought and kept in his office, preferring the textures and colors of binding cloth over paper. Spine cloth lightly discolored, and one page loose and laid in, otherwise a very good copy.First edition. The first English-language monograph devoted to Mies van der Rohe. Mies occupied the epicenter of the modern movement and this hagiography is one of the primary reasons for Mies's dominance. From the Bauhaus to Chicago, Philip Johnson explains exactly why you need to be intimately acquainted with the work of this German master. Mies's aphorisms "Less is more" and "God is in the details" are shortcuts to understanding the rigorous intellectual and spiritual foundations of his architecture.
Philip Johnson contributed the introduction to THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF ALVIN LUSTIG (New Haven: Holland R. Melson, Jr. [1958]). Elaine Lustig Cohen designed many projects for Philip Johnson over the years, including letterhead, books and architectural signage.
The lives and careers of Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson most famously intertwined in their partnership for the Seagram Building in New York -- and the design of the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois clearly inspired The Glass House design. The Farnsworth House embodies Miesšs idea of "skin and bones" architecture, providing an enclosure with a clearly understandable order, counter-balanced by free-flowing open space to suggest freedom of use, clarity and simplicity, and using contemporary materials.
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