Though the Body's Still Warm, The Cold War Is Collectible
1991: The Cold War ends. A new collecting opportunity begins. History take note: Norman Brosterman, lone devotee of the Techno-Future, was there.
At the "Modernism" antiques show in Manhattan last fall, Mr. Brosterman showed the world the meaning of modernism, as defined by Norman Brosterman. While other dealers gloated over their Stickley and Art Nouveau, Mr. Brosterman showed up with paintings of enemy missiles zooming over Washington and mannequins in NASA helmets and spacesuits decked out for the space race.
"Courreges?" a passer-by asked, looking at one of the silver suits.
"Grissom," Mr. Brosterman replied.
A 39-year-old Manhattan antiques dealer who lives on the Upper West Side and has a studio in NoHo, Mr. Brosterman was feeling a bit philosophical this week as he looked over his collection, which includes a bronze ray gun, a wooden model of a third-stage rocket and moody landscape paintings that forsake willows and waterfalls in favor of searchlights, missiles and mushroom clouds.
"There's something sweet about it," he mused. "The cold war is already looking antique."
If his sales at the "Modernism" show are any indication, Mr. Brosterman is either out of his mind or ahead of his time. But he is unwavering in his belief that the 20th century will be remembered not for uncomfortable furniture but for "the big idea," or what he described as "the great big dream of breaking away and leaving the planet at high speed."
For him, the enduring imagery of the century is to be found in a pair of low-tech Project Gemini space gloves with light bulbs on the fingertips, and in eerie paintings of nuclear devastation and futuristic cities-of-tomorrow under the sea. Paintings by Alexander Leydenfrost, Ray Pioch, Chesley Bonestell and other artists who worked from the early 1900's through the 1960's and drew evocative renderings of the future for publications as diverse as Life and Mechanix Illustrated are more than pretty pictures to Mr. Brosterman.
"They are a way of reaching back into history and grabbing it," he said.
This little-known genre of art and design, which flourished among artists and designers long before much of it became reality, does not have a name. For now, Mr. Brosterman is calling it "The Art and Design of the Techno-Future."
The themes range from the Red Menace to the exploration of the solar system, but they share a celebration of technology and what Mr. Brosterman calls a gee-whiz vision of the future. In the paintings, the gee-whizness is often rendered in swooping, whooshing forms lighted from behind by mysterious sources.
Today, the hyperbolic imagery of the cold war seems particularly distant, glinting in the memory like a meteor in the sky.
"Missiles! Plutonium!" Mr. Brosterman exclaimed with a hint of exaltation. "So much anxiety! So much money!"
He called Chesley Bonestell, who rendered booster rockets for Wernher von Braun and specialized in astronomical art, the granddaddy of the genre. Among Mr. Bonestell's paintings, which often featured extrapolations of known rocket designs, was a 1948 illustration for Collier's magazine. It depicted an atomic bomb attack on New York City, with Queens already obliterated.
Mr. Brosterman is also fond of the artist Frank R. Paul. In Mr. Brosterman's living room, among Mission furniture that he considers trappings of his "former life," is a drawing by Mr. Paul of two men in protective masks and suits trying to deactivate glowing orbs. The scene includes a third man, lying dead in the background, who apparently wasn't able to.
Some of these artists, coincidentally, will be included in the exhibition "Blueprint for Space: Science Fiction to Science Fact," which opens on Jan. 14 at the I.B.M. Gallery in Manhattan.
Mr. Brosterman, who practiced architecture until the early 1980's, achieved a bit of fame several years ago for his extensive collection of architectural building blocks, which are now part of the permanent collection at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. He said he learned more about modern design from those toys than in architecture school.
Now a part-time sculptor, Mr. Brosterman stumbled onto the Techno-Future while attending antiques auctions and browsing at flea markets. "The architect in me was always looking at drawings and technical things," he said.
Several years ago, he started noticing a type of modern art he had never seen before. "I didn't know what it was, exactly," he said. "It had a certain take on the 20th century, but it wasn't a movement I had heard of."
As is his wont, Mr. Brosterman began buying, selecting drawings, paintings and sculpture he deemed iconic. He would not divulge all his sources, but he has procured material from the artists themselves and from advertisements in the back of comic-book collector magazines.
Among his prized possessions are a pressurized right-hand Gemini spacesuit glove that is marked "Size: Shepard"; spacesuits made for Gus Grissom and Edward White, and a Project Mercury helmet, which he said was bought from a dealer who bought it from a friend of an astronaut. The spacesuits are for sale for $20,000 apiece.
A while back, he got hold of a space meal, but sold it because there was no Tang.
Interestingly, the most commonly asked question at the "Modernism" show was not "Why?" but "Where did you get this stuff?"
Which could bode well for Mr. Brosterman.
"As far as I'm concerned, this is the most compelling memorabilia from the 1960's you can find," he said of his astronaut objects. "The idea of leaving the planet happened during our lifetime, which is remarkable. Twenty thousand years from now, when people look back on this era, what do you think they're going to remember? The Beatles?"