FISHER, Alison; LEE, Craig; MAJUMDAR, Sheila (eds.)
Bruce Goff: Material Worlds
“I’ve been controversial ever since I started. I can’t help it. I’m neither ashamed nor proud of it. That’s just what happened.”
—Bruce Goff, 1979/80
This mesmerizing catalogue accompanies a major retrospective celebrating the unbounded creative practice of American architect Bruce Goff (1904–1982). Best known for his groundbreaking, idiosyncratic single-family homes in suburban and rural areas across the US, Goff charted an alternative narrative for a modern architecture imbued with individuality, materiality, and fantastical invention.
Dubbed the “Michelangelo of kitsch” by architecture critic Charles Jencks, Goff rejected the minimalist aesthetics and the metropolitan worldview of his modernist contemporaries. Instead, his work was inspired by everyday consumer goods and building practices from small towns and cities in the Midwest and the Great Plains where he grew up, trained, taught, and based his practice.
In this environment, Goff found fertile ground for an expanded range of architectural forms and materials. His homes featured domes, spirals, and tetrahedrons and a wide variety of materials including natural elements such as coal and goose feathers and manufactured products like astroturf, cellophane, glass cullet, and sequins. Importantly, this decisive break with convention was built on learnings from his lifelong mentor Frank Lloyd Wright.
Bruce Goff: Material Worlds is drawn primarily from the Art Institute of Chicago’s vast Bruce Goff collection and archive, including spellbinding architectural drawings, elaborate architectural models, and a selection of Goff’s ambitious, little-known abstract paintings. It also mines Goff’s diverse collections, including seashells and crystals, popular magazines, clothing, and Japanese and Chinese embroidery. These personal objects illuminate his unusually broad range of influences encompassing Native American art, queer modernisms, science fiction, and East and Southeast Asian art and music.
The catalogue features contributions by Lawrence Chua, David G. De Long, Penelope Dean, Alison Fischer, Scott Herring, Janna Ireland, HadleyJerman Bruss, Kelly Keegan, Craig Lee, Paula Lupkin, and Nolan Vallier; it also includes a portfolio of commissioned photography by artist Janna Ireland.
[publishers’ note]
Published by Art Institute of Chicago / Yale University Press, 2025
Design by Content Object, Kimberly Varella with Gabrielle Pulgar
Monographs / Architecture / Painting