Review: Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary, by Anthony Denzer

Abstract

Anthony Denzer ; Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary ; New York: Rizzoli, 2008. v + 236 pp., 33 color and 80 b/w illus. $60.00, ISBN 9780847830626 In this long-overdue monograph on the work of Los Angeles architect Gregory Ain (1908––1988), Anthony Denzer expands upon earlier essays by David Gebhard and Esther McCoy.1 While these earlier works form a solid introduction to Ain's career, Denzer goes further in probing the relationship between Ain's progressive politics and his innovative residential work. He also more fully explores the leftist affiliations (or accusations of such) of many of Ain's clients and argues persuasively that their shared principles led to an impressive number of commissions. Gregory Ain was born in Philadelphia in 1908, the son of a Jewish political dissident who had earlier been exiled to Siberia for his activities as a Menshevist Marxist. The father's strongly held political beliefs would have a life-long impact on those of his son. In 1911 the Ains moved to Los Angeles, and five years later they relocated to the desert commune of Llano del Rio, a socialist experiment that dissolved two years later. In 1924 Ain intended to enroll in the architecture program at the University of Southern California (USC), but his father insisted that he study math and physics at UCLA. That year he attended a lecture by Rudolph Schindler and soon befriended the Austrian architect and his wife, Pauline, who introduced him to a circle of avant-garde and leftist …