More—and More!—Is More
By Richard Lacayo
Fall 2004 Style & Design
Less is more? For much of the 20th century, Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe's famous formulation was a guiding principle of design and
not just for architects. But even when pared-down Modernism was
at the height of its prestige, there was a countertradition of
glorious excess. "Glamour: Fashion, Industrial Design,
Architecture," an exhibition that runs from Oct. 9 through Jan.
16 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, traces an aesthetic
of surplus and superabundance that continually bursts forth in
clothing, buildings, automobiles and objects—a taste for luxury,
spectacle and even pure, shameless glitz that has exploded
unmistakably into the present.
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His life and death recalled in images
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