“Why they were built in the first place remains a mystery of
corporate decision-making,” said Moore-McCormack’s chairman about Argentina
and Brasil at a U.S.
Congressional hearing.
Entering service towards the end of 1958, Argentina
and Brasil were laid up by the fall
of 1969, victims of the jet age, which cut into passenger loads, and increasing
labor costs.
Several months back, author David Hendrickson forwarded me
pages from booklets detailing the artwork on these ships. (We’ve been trading
info back and forth like baseball cards.) And recently, I stumbled across a
copy of the Argentina
booklet on eBay. Had. To. Have. It.
What was unique about the art on these ships is it was mix
of new and old. This was in part thanks to Raymond Loewy, who styled several Moore-McCormack ships, Matson's Lurline, and more. In the library was Vanitas
by Jan Vermeulen, a contemporary of Rembrandt. In the Casino Lounge: Georges
Michel’s Approaching Storm. Michel,
according to the text, rarely signed his works, Approaching Storm was an
exception. The Sala de Argentina housed Indians
on the Lower Mississippi by Felix Marie Ferdinand Storelli, court painter
to Louis-Philippe, King of France after the Bourbons were restored to power
after Napoleon.
I’ve tried to track these pieces down through an auction tracking sites. There are visual variations of Vanitas and Approaching Storm, and a plausible description of Storelli’s work, but without an image, it may well be a variation, too.
Compare those works to the one below. Very dynamic, very
fresh. There were four 16 foot panels each on Argentina
and Brasil lining the walls of the
café balcony. You see the artist’s name? Rikki? Yeah, that’s a pseudonym. I
haven’t been able to crack that one … Yet. The Brasil booklet says they believe the mural technique of baked
enamel on aluminum was an innovation. It was, in 1952 when Peter Ostuni used it
for the First Class Cocktail Lounge (aka: Navajo Lounge) on United
States. Granted, Ostuni’s panels were
not this large, and last I checked, size was not an innovation, merely an
evolution.
This has lead to theories of how much design influence these
two ships had on Holland
America
when they bought them in the early 1970s. There are definite “genetic” traits
at work, and I will explore them soon.
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