It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. So went the 1940s—a decade split into wartime devastation and scarcity, followed by peacetime innovation and abundance.
Marking 80 years since the end of the Second World War, a show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art titled Boom: Art and Design in the 1940s plays on the double meaning of the word “boom” as either the rumble of weaponry or the boost of invention and progress. The exhibition will bring together more than 250 works drawn from the museum’s rich holdings of that decade—many being conserved especially for the show—and spans painting, sculpture, fashion, photography, furniture and design.
One section will include art connected to the war, such as a never-before displayed front-line photograph by Margaret Bourke-White, Air Raid over the Kremlin (1941), in which Moscow’s Red Square is lit up with bombs, gunfire and flares. The Waves uniform, designed by the Mainbocher fashion house for the women’s reserve branch of the US Navy, will also be on view, as well as a chair by the Danish American designer Jens Risom, which incorporates woven parachute straps.
Post-war opulence
Wartime fashion will be explored too, from the conflict’s impact on Parisian designers to a post-war return to opulent couture. A highlight is a jacket by the avant-garde designer Elsa Schiaparelli, with exaggeratedly deep pockets, replacing the need for a handbag at a time when women had been toting gasmasks everywhere.
Boom will also highlight achievements in post-war design, such as the work of the Japanese American artists George Nakashima and Isamu Noguchi who were held in internment camps by the US government during the war. Designs by Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Russel Wright and others will likewise be included. The exhibition will end with works from the late 1940s, such as abstract canvases by Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, and Pablo Picasso’s The Dove (1949), which was used as an aspirational emblem for unity by the World Congress of Partisans for Peace.
“The exhibition focuses on the art and design of the 1940s, not the political events of the period,” says the exhibition curator Jessica Smith, reflecting on how viewers today may experience the show. “A key takeaway that might resonate is the resourcefulness and determination of artists and designers to move forward with their work despite adversity.”
• Boom: Art and Design in the 1940s, Philadelphia Museum of Art,
12 April-1 September