FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jennifer Hyle
Tel. (805) 893-4608
jhyle@uam.ucsb.edu
"Paul Tuttle Designs"
First Retrospective Exhibition of a Remarkable Designer’s 50-Year Career
October 10, 2001 – January 13, 2002
University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA - The first retrospective of Santa Barbara-based Paul Tuttle's extraordinary design work will be exhibited at the University Art Museum, UCSB, October 10, 2001 - January 13, 2002. The exhibition, curated by Marla C. Berns, director of the Museum, will survey his 50-year career, primarily as a furniture designer, and showcase more than 60 unique examples of seating and tables. It also will highlight the five homes he designed in Santa Barbara early in his career.
The public is invited to attend a free opening lecture and reception Tuesday, October 9th. Michael Darling, Assistant Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, will deliver the keynote lecture, "Paul Tuttle: Cosmopolitan Conversations," which will examine Tuttle's groundbreaking achievements in relation to the broader developments of post-war design. The lecture will take place at 5:00 p.m. in the Hatlen Theatre, UCSB, and will be followed by a reception and exhibition preview at the Museum until 8:00 p.m.
"Paul Tuttle Designs" will occupy five of the Museum's galleries and will be organized chronologically, beginning with examples of his earliest work and ending with the most recent designs he considers his "essence" pieces. Large-scale photographs will be used extensively to contextualize his creations and to suggest the scope and nature of his aesthetic vision. Quotations by the artist will provide additional insights into his design philosophy.
The installation is being specially designed by Robin Donaldson (AIA), architect and principal of the Santa Barbara/Los Angeles firm of Shubin + Donaldson Architects, in collaboration with the University Art Museum's designer, Paul Prince. Using industrial materials in an innovative way, Donaldson is creating an understated design that suggests an abstracted domestic context for the work.
Tuttle stands out among mid-to-late twentieth-century designers in his avoidance of trends or styles and his uncompromising commitment to solving design problems in an original way. Working within a modernist tradition, Tuttle's oeuvre is distinguished by an elegance of line, purity of materials, fascination with structure, and delight in small details. Although crafted with precision and with exquisite taste, his furniture often exudes a distinctive quirky playfulness that reflects the designer's belief that a sense of fun should be part of a work's purpose.
Tuttle's impressive oeuvre is noted for its combination of gorgeous woods (from basic walnut, cherry and maple to the more exotic zebrawood, purpleheart, pearwood, and wenge) with materials such as steel, glass, cane, and various types of upholstery. Regardless of how aesthetically beautiful or freshly inventive his creations are, they are always intended to be functional.
Essentially self-taught, Tuttle briefly attended the Art Center School in Los Angeles (now the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena). His intuitive talent captured the attention of Alvin Lustig, a pioneer of modern graphics and interior design, who taught there. Tuttle worked briefly in Lustig's studio, and also apprenticed with architects Welton Becket and Thornton Ladd.
Tuttle's earliest furniture dates to the 1950s and shows his modernist commitment to structure and material. By the mid-1960s he had produced a body of work distinctive enough to earn him a "retrospective" exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum. Five of these early pieces will be included in this exhibition. Foremost among them is the widely recognized "Z" chair (1964), which he designed to "challenge metal to do something that was completely impossible in wood." He won the prestigious Carson Pirie Scott Young Designers Award for this chair in 1966.
In the late 1950s, Tuttle began pursuing independent architectural work. This exhibition will include vintage and contemporary photographs and selected drawings of Tuttle's five commissions in the Santa Barbara area, which were completed in the 1960s. Especially noteworthy is Tuttle's own studio/residence (completed in 1962), which is essentially a small "box" anchored to the site by a long wall. A deeply recessed terrace extends the living space into the canyon and the north-south orientation takes full advantage of ocean and mountain views.
Although much of Tuttle's earlier work emphasized the warmth and tactility of wood, his focus shifted in 1968 when he was hired by the Swiss firm, Strässle International, to design furniture. The contractual arrangement with Strässle provided him an opportunity to test new materials and adapt technology to his sophisticated design sensibility. In particular, he explored the structural and aesthetic potential of tubular and strap steel, resulting in some of his most popular and distinctive pieces. This section of the exhibition will feature 17 works from the Strässle years, including Tuttle's beautiful 1976 Arco chair, with its simple taut lines and steel-leather combination. This piece won several prestigious awards, including the American Society of Interior Designer's International Product Design Award. His 1972 Nonna rocker, a blend of smooth tubular steel and beech, met the challenge of designing a bentwood rocker more comfortable than the Thonet classic.
In addition to his acclaimed work in Switzerland, Tuttle successfully navigated a parallel career as a freelance designer in Santa Barbara when he moved there in 1956. The exhibition will highlight the most productive period of Tuttle's "Santa Barbara Years," 1982-2001, when he designed over 200 chairs, tables, lounges, carts, benches, and easels, as well as entire interiors for offices and private residences. The number of designs he produced during these twenty years reflect Tuttle's expansive creativity and his refusal to be content with easy solutions to any one design challenge.
Tuttle received a design grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982, launching a period of intense creative exploration. In the same year, he formed a productive partnership with Bud Tullis, a master craftsman with a studio in Solvang, California. The Tuttle-Tullis team produced an array of custom seating and tables for clients, primarily dedicated patrons and collectors in Santa Barbara and the Los Angeles area.
In the past five years, he has completed some of his most significant designs, achieving the "essence" he has long sought in concept and material. "For me, it is about getting absolutely to the truth, a bare minimum, where there is just no excess at all," said Tuttle. The final section of the exhibition presents the six chairs, one chaise lounge, and one coffee table Tuttle identifies as "essence" pieces in which he has resolved their structure, form, materials, and details (or lack thereof). The 1996 Super Z chair, a dynamic linear composition in stainless steel supporting the gently curving pearwood seat and back, is the final resolution of an idea Tuttle began exploring in 1964. The Pisces table (1997) reveals the undisputed beauty of Tuttle's free-form lines, apparent in the shape of the glass top and curved appleply base.
"It is a tribute to his integrity, authenticity, and untiring sense of joy that Paul Tuttle has spent fifty years striving for these culminating moments and avoiding the pressures to succumb to the changing trends of the late 20th century," said Berns, exhibition curator. "The exhibition will capture the essence of his lifelong commitment to resolving design challenges in freshly inventive ways."
The University Art Museum Council will present "Tuttle-ations," an exhibition preview and tribute dinner and auction on Saturday, October 6 at the University Art Museum. Tickets for this fundraising event will be limited. For ticket information, call 805-893-8266
University Art Museum Hours: Tuesday 12 - 8 pm; Wednesday-Sunday 12 – 5 pm.
Closed Mondays and major holidays.
Admission is free.
Docent tours at 2:00 pm Saturdays.
Park in Lots 3, 22, or 23; parking is free after 5 pm and on weekends.
Museum phone: (805) 893-2951.
Exhibition Hotline: (805) 893-7564.
www.uam.ucsb.edu
Editor’s Note: Slides or electronic images available on request. For a selection of photos, please visit http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/tuttle_preview.html
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