Scottish architect, painter and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh was the recent subject of a major retrospective which opened in his native Glasgow last May, and has traveled to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In conjunction with this tour, ITC has released a new typeface family, ITC Rennie Mackintosh, which comes in two weights, light and bold, and includes an ornament font.
Click here to learn more about the development of ITC Rennie Mackintosh.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh is the architect most closely associated with Glasgow. He was born in this city in l868, and in a relatively short career as an architect there, he left his imprint indelibly in startlingly modern designs. His acknowledged masterpiece, the Glasgow School of Art, is celebrating its 100th anniversary, and it stands as the lasting memorial of Mackintosh's vision.
Mackintosh was the first architect of the modern movement to find inspiration in his Scots heritage. He interpreted this esthetically as having a simplicity and honesty of line with the influence of nature and natural elements. Mackintosh had a total vision, designing buildings from the inside out. In contemporary terms this could be called "holistic" architecture: the interiors with their impeccably wrought details-fittings, furniture, textiles ceramic tiles, wall coverings, carpets, even cutlery-were a total complement to his unique architectural structures. Mackintosh's work is presented with the straightforwardness of black and white, with materials like stained pine, dressed stone, sailcloth, even screen-printed brown paper for wall covering, as well as the new material-concrete. These were all seized as part of his architectural and design vocabulary.
In his use of glass and ceramic details within his constructions, Mackintosh seems to have relished the happy accidents of air bubbles and uneven light penetration. Color was always used sparingly as a lyrical counterpoint to his broader themes.
Historically, Mackintosh fits into the category of artists who were greatly honored and then subsequently forgotten in their own lifetimes. At his peak, l896-l9l0, the originality of Mackintosh's style was worshipped in Germany and Austria, and he gained a reputation in Europe never truly equaled in Great Britain. (It was at this time that he completed his new design for Glasgow School of Art-a work that architect Robert Venturi has said could only be compared with the power of Michelangelo). In l900, Mackintosh was fêted in Vienna for his contribution to the 8th Vienna Secession; this led to friendships with contemporary designers like Josef Hoffmann and the commission to design the Warndorfer Music Salon. In l902, the Mackintosh Room at the Turin International Exhibition in Italy was also enthusiastically received, and he went on to exhibit in Moscow and Berlin.
His lasting legacy is most evident in the Glasgow School of Art, which he designed totally from its formidable pre-Deco exterior through the thousands of integrated details including woodwork, decorative borders and trims, thematic inlays, stained glass windows, distinguished furniture pieces and highly original lamps.
Despite this success, and with his undoubted influence abroad, Mackintosh's career in Glasgow declined. Few private clients were sufficiently sympathetic to want his "total design" of house and interior, and he was incapable of compromise. The onset of the World War I then dashed all close links with Germany and Austria.
By l9l4, Mackintosh had despaired of ever receiving recognition in Glasgow, so he and his wife and collaborator, Margaret, moved to Walberswick on the English Suffolk coastline, where he painted many flower studies in watercolor. In l9l5, the couple settled in London, and for the next few years, Mackintosh attempted to resume practice as an architect and designer. The designs he produced at this time, including the conversion of the house of W.J. Bassett-Lowke in Northampton, show him working in a bold new style of decoration using primary colors and geometric motifs. It was an output of extraordinary vitality and originality, which went virtually unheeded in England.
In l923, the couple left London for the then cheaper South of France where Mackintosh finally gave up all thought of architecture and devoted himself entirely to painting landscapes. He died in London, of cancer, on December 10, l928, leaving behind an estate valued at a little over $l20. But nearly 50 years later, a Mackintosh chair sold at Sotheby's for $l3,600. In 1994 another Mackintosh chair sold for $4l5,000. This year Mackintosh and his work are the subject of a series of exhibitions and a bevy of publications. A major exhibition which opened in his native Glasgow in May, travels to the Metropolitan Museum in New York in November and subsequently to Chicago and Los Angeles.
Mackintosh was inspired and incapable of compromise. As the father of modernism, he was a man decades ahead of his time. He understood the gentle and fine qualities of restraint, modesty and visual integrity. With courage he went down his own linear road. It took another generation and another millennium to understand the power of his genius.
Learn more about the Glasgow School of Art, which was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Take an online tour of The Mackintosh House, a reconstruction of the principal interiors from the Glasgow home of the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) and the artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh (1864-1933).