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)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

Explore Further

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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