This commission for a vacation house near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the Grand Teton Mountains, brought Mies van der Rohe to the United States for the first time, in 1937. These photocollages are a departure from the architect’s earlier photomontages. Instead of a composite image composed by cut–and–pasting different photographs, the photographic content is presented in dialogue with an architectural sketch. Rather than an external, urban scene, the nearly dematerialized architecture of the interior stages a view onto the surrounding landscape. The design is limited to spare horizontal lines that indicate the planes of floor and ceiling and slender cruciform columns that span between them. The overscaled and vividly textured landscape imagery was taken from film posters and magazines. It acts both as a visual extension of the architecture and an illusionistic space that distorts and rearranges the linear perspective of the drawing.
Gallery label from Cut 'n' Paste: From Architectural Assemblage to Collage City, July 10–December 1, 2013.