Last weekend the Walker Art Center opened its doors to reveal its most recent acquisition, a new exhibit titled “Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960.” This dynamic, multimedia collection occupies three galleries and features such artistic manifestations as paintings, sculpture, photographs, furniture, toys, clothing and examples of fashion and architectural designs. The collection, organized by the Brooklyn Museum of Art, includes almost 250 works, all of which are linked by a shared “vital forms” aesthetic. In other words, the works all draw inspiration from nature and biomorphic shapes, representing a widespread artistic convention of the World War II and post-war period.

In moving away from the hard and mechanical lines characteristic of the decades preceding the war, this newer art defied rigidity and defined a new locus of intersection for popular culture and fine art. This resulted in both romantic and functional curvalinear and flora-inspired motifs in everything from architecture to fashion to jellybean-shaped California swimming pools.

These artistic trends had solid links to their cultural context, such as the unique and infamous milieu of 1950’s America and its blossoming consumerism and prosperity.

Socio-political as well as cultural factors contributed to artistic development, and innovations in material due to wartime shortages along with rising consumer demands fostered the expansion and evolution of these “vital forms.” The exhibit also explores artistic evidence of the post-war ambivalence between anxiety and optimism during these rather tumultuous years of the atomic bomb and the Red Scare.

“Vital Forms” is really one of the most appealing exhibits I’ve seen at the Walker over the last few years, and its inclusion of such pop culture artifacts as Barbie dolls, a surfboard, Candy Land, hula hoops, the Slinky and a sparkling white 1954 Corvette push a good part of the exhibit beyond the realm of esoteric theoretical art. The collection also boasts works by such notable artists as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Roy Liechtenstein, Chuck Close and Mark Rothko.

Television screens are stationed around the galleries with various film clips including images of hordes of hula-hoopers and footage from the World War II era. Clear vinyl sculptures and mobiles hang from the ceiling, and Formica figures into the exhibit considerably.

The 1954 Corvette (shining under track lighting and the close watch of militant but well-pierced museum guards) represents the fruit of advancements in production materials and fiberglass, which allowed for the development of a novel, curvaceously sensual breed of automobile whose backseat was perfect for necking in.