DOCSLIB.ORG

The Issue Was Raised of Personal and Creative Behavior in Society Made Barren by Social Roles and the Dominating Hierarchy of Mass Production

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Issue Was Raised of Personal and Creative Behavior in Society Made Barren by Social Roles and the Dominating Hierarchy of Mass Production THE ISSUE 4 WELCOME 6 STAFF AND CONTRIBUTORS 10 TOKYO by ayaki aron hortz INFINITY CIRCLE 15 ANTI-WARHOL ON THE DANCEFLOOR by valentina rossi 22 VISTA RADICAL by guido molinari AN INTERVIEW WITH PAOLO DEGANELLO 30 THE (POTENTIAL) ONGOING AND OMNIVOROUS ARCHIVE by cristina baldacci 36 EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED by daniela lotta AN INFINITE DECORATIVE REPERTOIRE 41 LIQUID SUNDSCAPE by giordano pozzi 44 THE HOUSE OF EQUISETUM by lorenzo rebediani INFINITY, LANDSCAPE, GARDEN... 49 SAUL BASS AT THE XIV TREIENNALE DI MILANO, 1968 by paola nicolin 58 SENT FROM THE MOON by marco tagliafIerro POSITIVE AVANT-GARDES 64 POLTRONOVA, THE RADICAL FACTORY by francesca balena arista 74 RITUALS AND ARTISTIC PRACTICE by jeffrey walkowiak 81 SNAPSHOT n.4 NASA images 2 TASSINARI/VETTA (L. SONNOLI) TASSINARI/VETTA INTERNATIONAL 8 – 10 NOVEMBER 2013 FAIR OF TORINO CONTEMPORARY ART WWW.ARTISSIMA.IT FONDAZIONE TORINO MUSEI CAMERA DI COMMERCIO DI TORINO MAIN PARTNER UNICREDIT COMPAGNIA DI SAN PAOLO PARTNERS FIAT, ILLYCAFFÈ, NIKON REGIONE PIEMONTE FONDAZIONE PER L’ARTE MODERNA OFFICIAL CARRIER GONDRAND PROVINCIA DI TORINO E CONTEMPORANEA CRT MEDIA PARTNERS VOGUE ITALIA, CITTÀ DI TORINO L’UOMO VOGUE “The word ‘Infinity’ like ‘Spirit’ and some other expressions of which the equivalents exist in all languages, is by no means the expression of an WE idea, but of an effort at one.” L Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka Infinity, as in without an end, the time that passes when we don’t give ourselves a time CO frame. This is what happened with the fourth issue of Fruit of the Forest – unexpected things, a change in program, births, rebirths, losses, ME rediscoveries; maybe as it should be for an experimental magazine, more like a physics lab than a periodical. The word “infinitive” has led us to the concept of the archive, to symbolism, to NASA images, to interpreting history, to artistic practices stumbling once again upon the 1960s and 1970s, and to the radical movements as if in the players and in the history of those investigations we might find our own identity, the foundations of an interdisciplinary way of thinking. -(ma) 4 FRUIT OF THE FOREST IS AN EXPERIMENTAL ART AND DESIGN MAGAZINE FOUNDER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MICHELA ARFIERO info[at]fruitoftheforestmagazine.com FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR GIORDANO POZZI MAGAZINE DESIGN ALESSANDRO GORI. Laboratorium mmxi GRAPHIC DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATIONS STEFANO MANDRACCHIA INTERN TOMMASO SORGENTONE COPY EDITING JEFFREY YOUNG N. 4 CONTRIBUTORS AND WRITERS FRANCESCA BALENA ARISTA, AYAKI ARON HORTZ, CRISTINA BALDACCI, MEGHAN DELLACROSSE, DANIELA LOTTA, PAOLA NICOLIN, GUIDO MOLINARI, LORENZO REBEDIANI, VALENTINA ROSSI, MARCO TAGLIAFIERRO, JEFFREY WALKOWIAK TRANSLATIONS EMILY LIGNITI COVER IMAGE Arredare i deserti, Superstudio, 1969 Photo credit and thanks to Cristiano Toraldo di Francia BACK COVER IMAGE Katarina Vladimirov Young COPYRIGHT © 2013 FORTINO EDITIONS LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ALL REASONABLE EFFORTS HAVE BEEN MADE TO CONTACT THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OF THE IMAGES USED. WE APOLOGIZE TO ANYONE THAT WE HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO REACH published by 8345 NW 66TH ST suite 4367 Miami FL 33166 USA t +1 347 534 3015/t +39 041 810 6864 (ita) www.fortinoeditions.com 5 MICHELA ARFIERO is a CRISTINA BALDACCI, PhD, is an MEGHAN DELLACROSSE is co-founder of Fortino Editions, art historial and contemporary a writer living between New a publishing company that art critic. She writes for various York City and Andes, a hamlet mixes artisanal practice and magazine and publishing in the Catskills. Her work technology in a unique vision. houses, she collaborates with focuses on performance art Projects range from an iPad the Università degli Studi, rooted in the late 1950s–early app magazine to art and design Milano and the Università 1960s in relation to the Fluxus fanzines, books and catalogues Iuav, Venezia. Her main areas group, the artist-run Something in limited editions. of research are the sculpture, Else Press, and other related public art, Gerhard Richter and contemporaries. She has FRANCESCA BALENA ARISTA the archive as a strategy and performed with Alison Knowles works as an architecture and art form. and considers that, and similar design critic for various media. experiences, an extension of She holds a degree from EMILY LIGNITI is a freelance her research. the Faculty of Architecture translator and editor with a in Florence and holds a PhD penchant for film as well as ALESSANDRO GORI takes in Industrial Design and contemporary art and design. a cross-disciplinary approach Multimedia Communication She works for various publishing to graphic design. He works in from the Politecnico di houses and cultural institutions Florence and is the founder of Milano. From 2003 to 2008 in Italy and New York. Laboratorium studio. she was the curator of Centro Studi Poltronova historical archive and she curated the exhibition Superarchitettura Reloaded at the International Festival Design Parade 2008 (Villa Noailles, France). She is teaching interior design at the Design School of Politecnico di Milano and collaborates with Andrea Branzi and Michele De Lucchi architects. 6 AYAKI ARON HORTZ was born GUIDO MOLINARI is an art and editor for the Italian magazine in Tokyo. In 1999 he founded design critic who lives and Abitare. She is a regular Studio Hortz, a consultancy works between Bologna and contributor to Artforum and office in Japan for food and Venice. He has worked with authored essays and articles for fashion. He has been a curator the magazine Flash Art since several international magazines. in Italy for Japan Brand events 1995, is an exhibition curator, She is now finalizing her new since 2009. and teaches the Theory of book on sculpture, image and Perception at the Accademia storytelling. DANIELA LOTTA is an art critic di Belle Arti in Venice. and curator. She is interested in GIORDANO POZZI is a designer the relation between contem- PAOLA NICOLIN is an art historial and artist living between porary art, fashion and design. and critic who teaches at Luigi New York City and Verona. She teaches at ISIA/Faenza and Bocconi University in Milan. the University of Bologna. Author of Palais de Tokyo. Sito LORENZO REBEDIANI is a di creazione contemporanea “plants-man” and researcher STEFANO MANDRACCHIA is (Postmediabooks, 2006), of strange plants. He studies a painter and a graphic Castelli di Carte. La XIV environmental architecture at illustrator. Triennale, Milano 1968 the Politecnico in Milan and (Quodlibet, 2011) and Being works in landscape design. Cattelan (Abitare, 2011); she holds a PhD in Theory and History of Arts and a Master’s degree in History of Architecture. From 2007 to 2011 she has been serving as art 7 VALENTINA ROSSI is an MARCO TAGLIAFIERRO is an JEFFREY YOUNG is an editor, independent art curator. She independent art critic and writer, and photographer. He collaborated with the MACRO curator whose work investigates lives in Prague. Museum in Rome and other the relationship between art important Italian cultural and design. He attended the KATARINA VLADIMIROV YOUNG institutions. She curates a Domus Academy and Fabrica is a painter and illustrator and project called MoRE: Museum looking for signs among currently loves the depths of Refused and Unrealised different artistic disciplines. He of drawing. She was born in Art Projects and is a member has curated many shows with Ljubljana and lives in Prague. of the collective “personal a focus on the newest effectonsale.” generation of Italian artists. TOMMASO SORGENTONE is a JEFFREY WALKOWIAK lives student of modern literature and works in New York City. and collaborator of Fortino He is an art world professional Editions. He is based in Milan who contributes writing and and in his spare time is a skater. his curatorial practice to many different projects. He has been a visiting critic at MIT Visual Arts Program, Art Omi International Residency Program, and Parsons School of Art and Design. 8 INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION PHOTOGRAPHED FROM THE SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY COURTESY: NASA ARCHIVE SNAPSHOT 9 THE “first CIRCLE” MAY BE FOUND IN THE RED DISC THAT FLOATS ON THE HINOMaru—thE CIRCLE OF THE SUN —OR THE NISSHOKi—thE SUN-MARK FLag— AS THE JAPANESE FLAG IS CALLED TOKYO INFINITY CIRCLE by ayaki aron hortz THE SUN, WHICH IN Japanese MYTHOLOGY AS NARRated IN THE KOJIKI, their most ancient text, is celebrated in the figure of the “goddess” Amaterasu, the greatest divinity in the Shinto religion, from which, according to legend, Japan’s imperial family directly descends: a goddess worshipped at the Ise Shrine, a place that is demolished and then rebuilt as an exact replica every twenty years (this year marks the sixty-second time). The light from the moon should be refracted on the circular surface of the gravel mountain inspired by the shapes of Mount 10 TOP VIEW OF ISE GRAND SHRINE, 1953 ISE, JAPAN. AUTHOR: HONDA TERUO. SOURCE: ASAHI SHIMBUN, PRESS PHOTO 1954 MASTER- PIECE COLLECTION ASAHI SHIMBUN Fuji in the garden of the Silver Pavilion. Located here is one of the most famous and ancient “tea ceremony” rooms, the prototype which all others that followed aspire to and which references another circle—the green, almost fluorescent, mirror of a cup of matcha tea. And yet that simple and modest cup of tea, so crucial to Japanese culture, for which they even elaborated a “ceremony” and to which Kakuzo Okakura dedicated a long essay, The Book of Tea (Cha No Hon) in 1906, seems to have inspired even Heidegger regarding the concept of Dasein. As Fosco Maraini admirably explains in his Ore Giapponesi,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Italy Creates. Gio Ponti, America and the Shaping of the Italian Design Image
    Politecnico di Torino Porto Institutional Repository [Article] ITALY CREATES. GIO PONTI, AMERICA AND THE SHAPING OF THE ITALIAN DESIGN IMAGE Original Citation: Elena, Dellapiana (2018). ITALY CREATES. GIO PONTI, AMERICA AND THE SHAPING OF THE ITALIAN DESIGN IMAGE. In: RES MOBILIS, vol. 7 n. 8, pp. 20-48. - ISSN 2255-2057 Availability: This version is available at : http://porto.polito.it/2698442/ since: January 2018 Publisher: REUNIDO Terms of use: This article is made available under terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Article ("["licenses_typename_cc_by_nc_nd_30_it" not defined]") , as described at http://porto.polito. it/terms_and_conditions.html Porto, the institutional repository of the Politecnico di Torino, is provided by the University Library and the IT-Services. The aim is to enable open access to all the world. Please share with us how this access benefits you. Your story matters. (Article begins on next page) Res Mobilis Revista internacional de investigación en mobiliario y objetos decorativos Vol. 7, nº. 8, 2018 ITALY CREATES. GIO PONTI, AMERICA AND THE SHAPING OF THE ITALIAN DESIGN IMAGE ITALIA CREA. GIO PONTI, AMÉRICA Y LA CONFIGURACIÓN DE LA IMAGEN DEL DISEÑO ITALIANO Elena Dellapiana* Politecnico di Torino Abstract The paper explores transatlantic dialogues in design during the post-war period and how America looked to Italy as alternative to a mainstream modernity defined by industrial consumer capitalism. The focus begins in 1950, when the American and the Italian curated and financed exhibition Italy at Work. Her Renaissance in Design Today embarked on its three-year tour of US museums, showing objects and environments designed in Italy’s post-war reconstruction by leading architects including Carlo Mollino and Gio Ponti.
    [Show full text]
  • How the Memphis Movement Made Kitsch Cool | Financial Times
    Design How the Memphis movement made kitsch cool The Italian design group may have been ‘an exuberant cocktail of bad taste’, but its influence lives on Edwin Heathcote NOVEMBER 20 2020 Has there ever been any worse design than Memphis? Or any better? The provocative, self- consciously cartoonish furniture collective that splattered garish colour over the high-end galleries, fashion stores, hotel lobbies and loft apartments of the 1980s still splits opinion. But those pieces that caused such a furore then are now in museums all over the world, their colours still as vivid, their forms still as joyously ridiculous as 40 years ago. The work continues to make waves — as well as big money at auction — and is being recognised with Memphis: Plastic Field, an exhibition at Milton Keynes’s MK Gallery. It had been due to open this week, but has been postponed until it is safe to do so. It was 1980 when Ettore Sottsass invited a group of young designers to create a new movement and a new aesthetic. Or, at least, a new collaborative studio. They gathered in the small Milan apartment that Sottsass shared with his wife Barbara Radice, sitting around a table covered in his Bacterio patterned laminate, a sickly morass of black squiggles like organisms under a microscope. Sottsass was provoking a younger generation of designers to kick back at what they all saw as a moribund late-Modernist scene in the city. A meeting of the Memphis group in Asolo, Italy, December 1983 (founder Ettore Sottsass is fifth from the left) © Courtesy Memphis Srl Radical Italian designers had, in the 1960s and 1970s, already questioned the cycle of capital and consumption, the churn of Milan’s massive furniture industry as well as its ponderous architecture.
    [Show full text]
  • Project by Massimo Iosa Ghini Realization Ceramiche Cerdisa Lighting Iguzzini Illuminazione
    Installation IN/OUT (9 x 5 x h 6 m.) Project by Massimo Iosa Ghini Realization Ceramiche Cerdisa lighting iGuzzini Illuminazione Cosmos and chaos, body and mind, rules and exceptions, individual and community, natural and artificial…represent the dualism of open borders within human life. Massimo Iosa Ghini’s dialogue investigates this theme of Open Borders, interpreting the ceramic material within its dual meaning of abstract, impalpable and mental shape but also organic, primitive and bodily. The installation represents the volumes of two basic units, meant as paradigm of human beings’ universal values. The outdoor wavy surface is covered by ceramic material, bended and fractured, then opened to the contamination and potentiality of random re-configuration. The chromatic and tactile variety of Ceramiche Cerdisa products allows to create this vibrant and rich pattern. The indoor pure volume is characterized by white bright tiles, evoking a suspended and ethereal temporal dimension. Open border identifies the open space of contamination between opposites polarities: inside and outside, individuality and close encounter. MASSIMO IOSA GHINI Considered one of the best known Italian architects and designers, Massimo Iosa Ghini (Bologna, 1959) takes part in the 80s in the avant-garde of Italian architecture and design founding the cultural movement Bolidism and joining the Memphis group of Ettore Sottsass. In 1990 he opened the Iosa Ghini Associates, which nowadays operates in Milan, Bologna, Moscow and Miami, developing projects for main international groups and developers, designing residential, commercial and museum spaces, cultural installations, areas and structures dedicated to public transport and also retail chain stores projects. Among product and furniture design he design for leading companies such as Moroso, Cassina, Poltrona Frau, Snaidero, iGuzzini, Fiam, Zumtobel, Duravit, Silhouette and Yamagiwa.
    [Show full text]
  • Design and Architecture for the Dawn of the Personal Computer
    the development of computing mainly in the USA and in the UK, but there is still the lack of a broader historical account of that phenomenon in Italy. This paper attempts Design and Architecture for the Dawn of the Personal to bridge this gap by presenting an interpretation of what was the vision and endeavor Computer of Adriano Olivetti's Company by the early 50s to foster a pioneer research agenda for the design, construction and commercialization of the (personal) computer. This The Pioneer Vision of Adriano Olivetti vision included also a remarkable investment in architecture, product design, advertising and media for an industry that should be unified under an extraordinary high standard for visual communication. João Rocha The society Ing. Camillo Olivetti & C. was best known for its early success with the manufacturing of typewriters and was founded in October 1908 in Ivrea, a small Évora University I Department of Architecture city 50 miles north of Turin, at the foot of the mountains around the Valle d´Aosta, [email protected] Italy, by Camillo Olivetti (1868-1943) an industrial engineer who studied at the Politecnico di Torino. His son, Adriano Olivetti (1901-1960) was a chemical engineer and industrialist whose personality compelled him to become a leading entrepreneur Abstract. In 1952 the Italian Olivetti Company opened a study laboratory on and patron of the arts. When Adriano took over the company succeding to his father, electronic calculators in New Canaan, USA; in 1955 it created an electronic all Olivetti products were based on mechanical technologies and it was Adriano who research laboratory in Pisa and two years later, co-founded a company to gradually started to transformed the company into a modern factory.
    [Show full text]
  • Ettore Sottsass & the Memphis Group Inside a Collector's Home
    GRIEDER CONTEMPORARY Ettore Sottsass & The Memphis Group Inside a Collector’s Home November 24, 2017 – February 23, 2018 Opening hours: Fri, 11 am – 6 pm and by prior arrangement Grieder Contemporary is delighted to present the exhibition: Ettore Sottsass and The Memphis Group – Inside a Collector’s Home, marking the official inauguration of its new gallery space in Küsnacht/Zurich. After extensive renovation and extension works by Fuhrimann & Hächler architects, the newly built annex of the Modernist villa is now ready to welcome Grieder Contemporary's first exhibition in Küs- nacht with works by Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group. The exhibition will showcase masterpieces of the acclaimed designer and artist Ettore Sottsass, as well as other objects by members of the Memphis Group sourced from an original private interior collection from the early 1980s. Original vintage furniture and objects will send us back in time and allow us to immerse ourselves in a collector's household, a liv- ing environment transferred in its entirety to a gallery space. Ettore Sottsass founded Memphis in 1980 together with former colleagues from Studio Alchimia and a younger generation of architects and designers. In 1981 it counted among its members Michele de Luc- chi, Matteo Thun, Marco Zanini, Aldo Cibic, Andrea Branzi, Shiro Kuramata, Michael Graves, Javier Mariscal, Barbara Radice, Martine Bedin, George J. Sowden, Masanori Umeda and Nathalie du Pasquier. Memphis, named after a Bob Dylan’s song: Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, was a successful attempt to kickstart a radical change and emancipation from the international Modernist Style of the 1960s.
    [Show full text]
  • Ettore Sottsass Exhibition to Open at the Met Breuer
    EXHIBITIONS Ettore Sottsass Exhibition to Open at The Met Breuer The radical designs are juxtaposed with objects that inspired the artist as well as works created by his contemporaries. By SELIN ASHABOGLU Best known for his pivotal role in the creation of the Memphis Group—a famously bold furniture and product design collective in Milan whose daring shapes and colors arguably defined the 80s aesthetic—Ettore Sottsass is the subject of the upcoming Met Breuer exhibit "Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical" in New York. The 20th-century Italian architect and designer's unconventional geometric pieces will be displayed alongside objects that influenced him, objects that were inspired by him, and objects by his design contemporaries, from July 21 to Oct. 8. Ashaboglu, Selin. “Ettore Sottsass Exhibition to Open at The Met Breuer,” Architect Magazine, July 6, 2017. Now primarily known for his Memphis Group days, Sottsass began his career with modernist designs that contributed to practical furniture systems and even computer design in the 1950s. However, he soon stepped away from functional forms in the 1960s and eventually founded the Memphis Group comprised of 20-year-old international artists in 1981. Its name a reference to the Bob Dylan song “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," the collective created pieces with materials, colors, and shapes that seemingly clashed to create loud and, at times, unsettling designs. Sottsass' contemporary, English furniture designer Jasper Morrison was once quoted as saying, "It was the weirdest feeling, you were in one sense repulsed by the objects... but also immediately freed by the sort of total rule-breaking." Ashaboglu, Selin.
    [Show full text]
  • Sottsass Poster.Qxd 25/5/07 12:07 Pm Page 1
    Sottsass Poster.qxd 25/5/07 12:07 pm Page 1 Ettore Sottsass is a distinguished designer of his generation best known for his Ettore Sottsass – Work in Progress founding role in the early 1980s Memphis collective. His ideas have had as much of 29 March to 10 June 2007 an impact as his designs, which over a 60-year period have moved from ceramics to Design Museum, Shad Thames London SE1 2YD mainframe computers and from poetry to pragmatism. Ettore Sottsass’s 90th 10.00-17.45 daily birthday in September 2007 was celebrated by a retrospective exhibition of his life and T: 0870 833 9955 work at the Design Museum in London, titled ‘Ettore Sottsass – Work in Progress’. www.designmuseum.org Umbrella and newspaper stands – 1955 His early career Valentine portable typewriter – 1969 Ettore Sottsass was born in 1917 in Innsbruck, Austria, to an Italian architect father and Austrian mother. The family moved to Turin so that he could study architecture Cabinet 75 – 2006 there and in his student days he encountered the most progressive Italian designers and architects of the day. After serving in the Italian army in the war he The Olivetti era returned home to work for his father on housing projects, before moving to Milan Sottsass travelled to New York in 1956 to work in George Nelson’s studio and on his in 1946 to curate a craft exhibition. He then set up his own architectural and return to Italy was invited to design furniture for Poltronova, near Florence. He was Trono chair – 2006 industrial design practice making limited editions of ceramics, jewellery and one- also appointed as design consultant to Olivetti’s new electronics division where he Efira – 1986 (Ettore Sottsass and off pieces of furniture.
    [Show full text]
  • 12 / Interiors&Architecture
    12 / INteriors&architecture i nterni aprile 2012 INteriors&architecture / 13 Dentro casa, Il sole A Bologna, uNA cornice anni trenta DIveNtA ‘palestra’ domestica per trovAre coN uNA serie di accenti A tutto toNDo, DAll’ArchItetturA Al DesIgN D’INterNI, uN modo di abitare innovativo, equIlIBrAto e ArmoNIoso. Nel segNo DI uN colto made in Italy progetto di Massimo Iosa Ghini foto di Santi Caleca testo di Antonella Boisi Dettaglio Della piscina Di proDuzione mioblu al livello interrato. pagina a fianco, il fronte suD, prospiciente il giarDino, completamente aperto con vetrate Di proDuzione Schüco. elementi frangisole in lastra stirata Di FilS. le luci Del giarDino sono proDotte Da iGuzzini, la pavimentazione esterna è Di Graniti Fiandre. 14 / INteriors&architecture aprile 2012 interni movimento bolidista e adepto del gruppo Memphis con Ettore Sottsass, progettista dei Ferrari Store di tutto il mondo, nonché di vari hotel in Europa, delle aree aeroportuali Alitalia e del recente IBM Center di Roma, si ritrova in questa interpretazione. Sta di fatto che la sua nuova casa-studio-laboratorio espositivo, “vi abitiamo da qualche mese” spiega in una linea di continuità con la precedente pubblicata su INTERNI circa vent’anni fa, si propone come una virtuosa palestra in cui, la situazione di coincidenza tra le figure del progettista e dell’utilizzatore, consente il monitoraggio di un piano di realtà più evoluto e maturo rispetto al passato. “La casa di un progettista” spiega l’autore “è sempre uno strumento di rappresentazione che restituisce anche un minimo di sperimentazione. E mixare i due ambiti con la pratica quotidiana resta un percorso stimolante”.
    [Show full text]
  • Catalogue021 Product2 Catalogue021 Poltronova Is Synonymous with Radical Design
    product2 catalogue021 product2 catalogue021 Poltronova is synonymous with radical design. Right from the outset [1957], the Italian brand has sought out collaborations with revolution- ary artists and designers, including Archizoom, Superstudio, Vignelli, Au- lenti, Ernst, Michelucci, DDL, Hollein, Coates and Arad. Despite being an outsider, Poltronova in fact played a key role in an ep- ochal revolution. Based in provincial Tuscany, where the mass produc- tion of objects and furniture was virtually unknown, it rode the wave of rebellion that was breaking onto the international style scene. Under Ettore Sottsass’ artistic direction from 1959 to 1972, Poltronova laid the groundwork for postmodernism applied to objects for everyday use. The result was iconic products like the Joe armchair, the Ultrafrago- la lamp/mirror, the Superonda modular sofa and the Mies chair. And al- though they were created in a certain sense for fun, all these products are still in production as singular and offbeat centrepieces for domestic set- tings. Today, under the dedicated and passionate leadership of Roberta Meloni, Poltronova continues to be one of the most prestigious “Made in Italy” brands, keeping alive its unusual identity made up of fantastic ob- jects handcrafted from high quality materials. Poltronova is synonymous with radical design. Right from the outset [1957], the Italian brand has sought out collaborations with revolution- ary artists and designers, including Archizoom, Superstudio, Vignelli, Au- lenti, Ernst, Michelucci, DDL, Hollein, Coates and Arad. Despite being an outsider, Poltronova in fact played a key role in an ep- ochal revolution. Based in provincial Tuscany, where the mass produc- tion of objects and furniture was virtually unknown, it rode the wave of rebellion that was breaking onto the international style scene.
    [Show full text]
  • Memphis 40 Years of Kitsch and Elegance
    Press release Memphis 40 Years of Kitsch and Elegance 6 February 2021 to 23 January 2022, Vitra Design Museum Gallery The Memphis group was one of the most unusual phenomena to appear in the world of design in recent decades. It emerged in the winter of 1980/81, when a group of young designers eager to break away from the dogmas of functionalism and industrial design formed around the Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass. The group’s first collection, presented at Milan’s Arc’74 gallery in September 1981, was an international sensation. Characterized by garish colours and wild patterns, the Memphis designs seemed to have walked straight off the pages of a comic book and gave rise to a completely new look in which popular culture, advertising aesthetics, and post-modernism merged in a crazy medley. The exhibition »Memphis: 40 Years of Kitsch and Elegance« at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the group’s foundation through its creations, presenting furniture, lamps, bowls, drawings, sketches, and photographs that give insight into the world of Memphis. Exhibits include works by such well-known members as Ettore Sottsass, Michele De Lucchi, George Sowden, Martine Bedin, Michael Graves, Barbara Radice, Peter Shire, Nathalie Du Pasquier, and Shiro Kuramata. The group’s declared aim was to overcome the dictates of functionalism, celebrate the banal and everyday, and break the taboos of good taste. Its design philosophy was also influenced by the emergence of the information society. Like television and computers, Memphis objects were meant to communicate with the viewer and tell their own unique story.
    [Show full text]
  • Food Lovers Gift Guide 2020 GIFTS for the FOOD [AND COFFEE/TEA] LOVER
    Russell Brightwell Food Lovers Gift Guide 2020 GIFTS FOR THE FOOD [AND COFFEE/TEA] LOVER DPHome Black Granite Platter $2,500.00 DPHome is a collaboration with New York sculptor Don Porcaro. Our aim is to offer beautiful tabletop items sculpted from exquisite and in some cases rare marbles and stone. George Sowden Sereno Fruit Bowl $325.00 Englishman George Sowden was a co-founder of the Memphis Group in Milan in 1981. This stainless-steel bowl for Bodum bears the hallmarks of Sowden’s designs in metal and ceramics in the 1980s and beyond. No longer in production. Limited Edition Ettore Sottsass Fruit Bowl $750.00 Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) is most often associated with his iconic red Olivetti Valentine typewriter from the 1960s and the Postmodern Milan-based Memphis Group he founded in the 1980s.This limited edition of his 1990 ES14 wooden bowl commemorated the 100th anniversary of Etttore Sottsass' birth. 574/999 24 Michael Graves Water Pitcher $350.00 Michael Graves was a noted American architect and designer of consumer products. As well as principal of Michael Graves and Associates and Michael Graves Design Group, he was of a member of The New York Five and the Memphis Group and professor of architecture at Princeton University for nearly forty years. He was recognized as a major influence on architectural movements including New Urbanism, New Classical Architecture and particularly Postmodernism and was one of the most prominent and prolific American architects of the latter 20th century. He designed more than 350 buildings around the world but was perhaps best known for a teakettle.
    [Show full text]
  • Architects Read Architects
    20/01/2017 diffusione:55000 Pag. 70 N.1/2 - gen/feb 2017 La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato LookINg AROUNLJ EVENTS LEFT, THE LOCATION OF BOOKCITY MILANO 2016 ATTHE SFORZA CASTLE; BELOW, PATRIZIA RANZO; BOTTOM, VIEW OF SALA BERTARELLI DURING A READING. """ Patrizia Ranzo reads Ettore Sottsass Archìtect, designer, urbanist, painter, photographer, writer: Ettore Sottsass crossed ali these disciplines, during the course of his life. Patrizia Ranzo (architect and designer) offered a 360-degree reading to narrate a personality that can be seen as 'magical' in certain ways, in his personal as well as professional relationship with beauty, design, technology and art. From writings by Sottsass like Scritto di notte (Adelphi Milan 2010), Scritti 1946-2001 (Neri Pozza Milan 2002), Oggetti come memorie (in Casabella no. 386/1974), and many others, a prófile emerged of a versatile artist, engrossed by everything that has to do with mankind and generates civilization and beauty, perceptible in ali his projects. Ettore Sottsass explored different languages, techniques and materials in Constant research, always approaching new challenges "Sottsass created objects charged with civilization, fragments of existence. In him writing carne prior to the project. At the same time, he used objects and images as iftheywere words." Patrizia Ranzo explained. "Sottsass always asserted the primary importance of words. In a cosmic idea of time, not linear, but where past and present are fused," she continued "And he has left a 'heavy legacy to every designer, who in his relationship with objects is called upon to generate new forms of civilization " • Danilo Signorello ARCHITECTS READ ARCHITECTS Ettore Sottsass, Gio Ponti and Alessandro Mendini are the focus of three readings organized by Interni at Sala Bertarelli of the Sforza Castle during the latest edition of Bookcity Milano 2016 (18/20 November) 70 January-February 2017 INTERNI 20/01/2017 diffusione:55000 Pag.
    [Show full text]