Resorts at Sea: September: The Art of Moore-McCormack

“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.

Resorts At Sea - Jan 2013

Of the interior designers involved with the ships in this project, the one that may have the greatest name recognition is Raymond Loewy.

Fans of Mad Men … Which of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s accounts was the biggest? Yes, Lucky Strike, very good. Who designed the iconic packaging for Lucky Strike? … … … It was Raymond Loewy.

Few people have been so closely identified with their company: Steve Jobs and Apple, Hugh Hefner and Playboy, Walt Disney and, well, you get the picture.

Perhaps the biggest brand identity of the mid-20th century was that of Raymond Loewy. More often than not, if Raymond Loewy was listed as heading up a project, few, if any of the others involved were mentioned.

Apologies for the image quality. These are from the journal Pacific Marine Review. On the left, we have

a rendering of the Rio Hudson from October 1940. She, along with her three sisters were completed

as "baby flattops" - small aircraft carriers for World War II. On the right, are July 1950 renderings

of public spaces on the President Jackson. The Jackson, Adams, and Hayes were taken for troopship

duties during the Korean Conflict.

 

Loewy was involved with the interiors of Panama Lines’ Panama, Ancon, and Cristobal, the Rio Hudson quartette for Moore-McCormack, the postwar refit of Matson Lines’ Lurline, the President Jackson trio of 1950, Banner Lines’ Atlantic, and Moore-McCormack’s 1958 Brasil and Argentina.

 

Banner Lines' Atlantic was taken over by American Export Lines. On the right,

a sketch for the cafe on the Brasil/Argentina.

 

Any artists connected with any of the above projects were discovered almost by accident. Random Google searches have born some fruit, but a look at company papers, which seem to be scattered hither and yon, but mainly in Delaware and D.C., should prove useful.