Julius Shulman
Case Study House #22 (Playboy), Los Angeles, CA (Pierre Koenig, Architect, 1959)

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Images(4)

Artist Julius Shulman American, 1910–2009

CultureAmerican

Titles

Case Study House #22 (Playboy), Los Angeles, CA (Pierre Koenig, Architect, 1959)

Date1960

(not assigned)Los Angeles, California, United States

MediumChromogenic print

DimensionsImage: 22 × 16 1/2 in. (55.9 × 41.9 cm)
Sheet: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)

Credit LineGift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

Object number2009.1546

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionIt is difficult to find an image that captures the ideal California lifestyle better than Julius Shulman’s Case Study House #22. In the 1960s, Shulman was contracted to photograph the Case Study Houses—36 modernist structures, designed using modernist architectural theory and built with state-of-the-art industrial materials. His photographs were intended to demystify and humanize these constructions and extoll their clean simplicity and bold geometry. Case Study House #22, which Shulman called “one of my masterpieces,” highlights the dynamic structure of the steel-beamed, cantilevered Stahl House in the hills of Los Angeles. In this shot, a tuxedoed man surveys the twinkling city at his feet. Shulman’s aspirational photograph of the Stahl House did more than highlight the architecture—it turned a singular home into the embodiment of the star-dusted California dream.
Provenance[Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, California]; purchased by Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser, January 10, 2006; given to MFAH, 2009.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Signed in ink+ verso lower right: "Julius Shulman"

JShul-009

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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