Welcome A beautiful performanceObserver highlights a recently opened museum exhibition in a museum not in New York City, and places we know and like have attracted a lot of attention.
Rust Belt has had better days in the last 100 years, but what you can’t get from them is their architecture. Whenever I visit Cleveland, I tend to stay on the arcade, a huge structure that began in 1890 from 1890, once a shopping center in the Gilded Age and now the Hyatt. It’s roughly the same when you visit Detroit, where some funky beds and breakfasts take over the top-notch Art Deco building. These cities freeze in a beautiful state. If New York loses all its revenue tomorrow, future visitors may have to book a room within the Barclays Center.
Cleveland’s historical segments decorated with Cleveland are the theme of “Rose Iron Factory and Decorative Art”, which recently opened at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition tells the story of the first 30 years of the Rose Ironworks Studio, from the turn of the century to the Great Depression, and its lamps, grilles and ornaments have been felt with their talents for decades. Martin Rose, born in Mór Rosenblüh, moved to Cleveland from Hungary in 1903. He trained in Budapest and Vienna in Gothic and Baroque classical styles, but when he arrived in the United States he began to blend the organic art forms of acanthus and Nouveau. His story is a bit like the one depicted in recent movies Barbariansonly set to earlier and may not be a pro-hero.
An early example of studio work, Rose (c. 1904), showing the known level of detail of the company. The wrinkles of wrought iron petals seem to be big every day, elastic but not ideal. A simple sign of the same period, the colonial hotel’s barbecue and buffet are also similar to nature. These small details show how people in cities incorporate design into their lives. “We are the only ones in Cleveland, but in this European city of size, there are at least 200 small shops like us, and men are busy,” Ross told Plains dealers in 1905.
The masterpiece in this show, perhaps the best work that comes out of the studio, is Violin Screen Muse (1930). Rose brought French designer Paul Fehér and began to turn to art deco work, a work that was transferred on this screen to Art Deco. Its success stems from its different planes. First, you have steel bars, which are vertical and rigid, but styled with steel. Moving in from the outside, you have new angles to start to twist, but wait, other booms start to bend. The curves are interesting, but equally precise and start to sprout. Move further during the static process, the circular part spreads, and the plants begin to grow in it. Just when you think the command will completely break, the muse appears. She was naked, but a silver robe hung on her, as if she was tired and just had to take it off. Her body has realistic vulnerability and wrinkles, as she is the only real chaos in the scene that puts all order in a loose situation.
It’s a victory. Today, when designers try to merge natural and futuristic, we end up with Oculus.
“Rose iron mill and decorative artworksThe Cleveland Museum of Art has been watching until October 19, 2025.
More exhibition reviews
