Marcel Breuer's Influence On Litchfield County Unfolds In "Breuer's Bohemia" Screening
Local filmmaker James Crump shares his film on Breuer's influence and band of bohemians in mid-century Litchfield County.
The Stillman House. Photos courtesy Breuer's Bohemia
Marcel Breuer’s clean-line Brutalism, counterbalanced with the lightness of glass and restraint, came to define mid-century modern architecture. While he is responsible for flashy public displays of concrete bravado like the Whitney Museum as well as internationally renowned furnishings, Breuer’s most intimate achievement is a cluster of striking homes in Litchfield County, Connecticut, commissioned by locals like industrialist Rufus Stillman.
The new film Breuer’s Bohemia, written and directed James Crump, who happens to live in the striking home Breuer built for Stillman, gives the architect the kudos he’s due while not shying away from the tawdry details of the life and times of Breuer’s louche group of haute bohème benefactors. A special screening of Breuer’s Bohemia will be held at the Bantam Cinema and Arts Center on March 13 as a fundraising event for the center and the recently formed Litchfield Arts Council. The movie has been shown in small gatherings around the area but this is the first opportunity for locals to see the story of this regional enclave on the big screen.
“In making this film, it was edifying to learn about this stalwart progressive community that coalesced around Rufus Cole Stillman, a veritable catalyst for change and a partisan for the new,” said Crump. “Stillman was certainly challenging tradition and the bourgeois status quo in every way. He and his cohort were very open to the new postwar liberal spirit and atmosphere of hope associated with modernism, which they moved from theory into practice with manifest results throughout Litchfield County.”
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Litchfield Arts Council Vice President Jessica Russell, and Kyra Hartnett, of Twenty2 Wallpaper, featured in the film in her Marcel Breuer-designed home. Crump also authored a companion book of Breuer’s Bohemia that will be available at the screening as well.
The houses Breuer built for his wealthy benefactors, Stillman most influential among them, were the setting for a generation of parties, antithetical to the usually buttoned-up Litchfield County community, with its sleepy towns and regal colonial architecture. But it wasn’t just the shape of the houses that didn’t fit the Connecticut mold. At the fabulous parties thrown in these homes were scenes of mid-century decadence, free love, and revolutionary leftist thought.
Bourgeoisie Bohemians with funds to indulge any vice rendered some of these beautiful homes broken. Crump doesn’t shy away from these stories and the resulting film is riveting as much for its human dimensions as it is for the beautiful images of Breuer’s work.
Wellfleet Cottage
“I would hope that local audiences would take away greater awareness of the visionary progressive community spearheaded by Stillman,” said Crump. “But also the historic creative communities that inspired him, for example, the bohemian circles that formed around artist Alexander Calder before the Second World War in Roxbury and Marcel Breuer’s Wellfleet enclave from the mid 1940s. Litchfield would be a very different place today were it not for Stillman’s advocacy for, and great friendships with, both Breuer and Calder.”
Since the Bantam became a nonprofit arthouse in 2020, Executive Director Robert Kwalick says, there has been particular pride taken in promoting the work of artists who live locally. He said for Crump to make a piece so intimately tied to the area is additionally special.
“There is some buzz around this screening,” said Kwalick. “A group of people attached to this architecture wants to see it preserved. As a nonprofit, we are always in a two-way dialog with the community. An event like this can spark a lot of interest in something like a better understanding of Breuer’s legacy.”
The style Breuer innovated became such a ubiquitous trend through the 60s and 70s that his innovations often get overshadowed by where later architects took his inspiration. Breuer’s Bohemia illuminates the artist’s impact and the life (and lifestyle) that informed it. Crump’s film is a treat for any architecture enthusiast, but for locals, it’s also a regional artifact, a distillation of a point in time that shook the world of design — the epicenter of which was Litchfield, Connecticut.
Breuer’s Bohemia
Screening March 13, 7p.m.
Bantam Cinema and Arts Center
115 Bantam Lake Rd, Bantam, CT
(860) 567-0006
