Bruce Goff: Material Worlds is the first comprehensive study to map the full scope of Goff's creative practice — moving beyond his celebrated houses to examine the collections, bricolage, painting, and music that shaped one of American modernism's most singular visions.
About This Book
Bruce Goff spent his career building against the grain. While midcentury modernism refined itself toward minimalism, Goff was covering suburban homes in sequins, coal, and goose feathers — an architecture of colour, texture, and outright fantasy rooted in the American Midwest and Great Plains. Dubbed the "Michelangelo of kitsch," he drew on Native American art, science fiction, queer modernism, and East and Southeast Asian culture to forge something entirely his own. This groundbreaking publication expands the critical conversation around Goff's architectural practice to encompass his mixed-media bricolage, personal collections, and lifelong engagement with painting and music — presenting a body of previously unpublished work alongside a new architectural photography portfolio by artist Janna Ireland.
Key Features
- 296 pages of thematic essays, previously unpublished works, and new architectural photography
- Essays by curators and scholars; photography portfolio by artist Janna Ireland
- Published by Yale University Press
What You'll Discover
- How Goff's rejection of minimalist aesthetics produced an architecture of fantastical material invention — cellophane, coal, goose feathers, and sequins as genuine building fabric
- The relationship between Goff's distinctive architectural drawings and his broader creative practice across painting, music, and mixed-media bricolage
- How influences including Native American art, science fiction, queer modernism, and East and Southeast Asian art and music shaped a body of work outside any mainstream lineage
- New perspectives from curators and scholars situating Goff's idiosyncratic single-family houses within a wider cultural and material context
About the Author
Alison Fisher and Craig Lee are the authors of this study, with thematic essays contributed by a range of curators and scholars specialising in Goff's diverse cultural influences. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 296
- Dimensions: 230 x 292 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780300284072
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and designers interested in American modernism outside the mainstream canon, scholars of material culture and vernacular building, and readers drawn to the intersections of architecture, queer history, and folk and indigenous influences.