More--and More!--Is More

By Richard Lacayo

Less is more? For much of the 20th century, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's famous formulation was a guiding principle of design and not just for architects. But even when pared-down Modernism was at the height of its prestige, there was a countertradition of glorious excess. "Glamour: Fashion, Industrial Design, Architecture," an exhibition that runs from Oct. 9 through Jan. 16 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, traces an aesthetic of surplus and superabundance that continually bursts forth in clothing, buildings, automobiles and objects--a taste for luxury, spectacle and even pure, shameless glitz that has exploded unmistakably into the present. --BY RICHARD LACAYO