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Oral History Interview with Massimo Vignelli, 2011 June 6-7

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Oral History Interview with Massimo Vignelli, 2011 June 6-7 Oral history interview with Massimo Vignelli, 2011 June 6-7 Funding for this interview was provided by the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Massimo Vignelli on 2011 June 6-7. The interview took place at Vignelli's home and office in New York, NY, and was conducted by Mija Riedel for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. Mija Riedel has reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview MIJA RIEDEL: This is Mija Riedel with Massimo Vignelli in his New York City office on June 6, 2011, for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. This is card number one. Good morning. Let's start with some of the early biographical information. We'll take care of that and move along. MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Okay. MIJA RIEDEL: You were born in Milan, in Italy, in 1931? MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Nineteen thirty-one, a long time ago. MIJA RIEDEL: Okay. What was the date? MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Actually, 80 years ago, January 10th. I'm a Capricorn. MIJA RIEDEL: January 10th. Ah, okay. MASSIMO VIGNELLI: [Inaudible.] [They laugh.] MIJA RIEDEL: No, actually, that sort of makes sense. Did you have siblings? Were your parents involved? MASSIMO VIGNELLI: No. No, I was an only child. MIJA RIEDEL: You were an only child, okay. Were you interested in art, design, architecture from very early on, as a young, young child? I know when you were a teenager, it became an interest. MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Well, I started very early. I started to be interested in design when I was 14 years old, basically, and before I was just like anybody else, any other kid. I was playing with everything. I loved to do stage sets, by cutting a piece of board and making a cut in three sides, flipping it down, making the stage. [Laughs.] MIJA RIEDEL: Really? MASSIMO VIGNELLI: And then picking up everything and imagining stories there. It was great. That was one of my favorite games, spending hours and hours and hours. But then one day I'd seen a mother of a friend, who was fixing her house in the country, and she had some furniture made. And I didn't know that could be done, so I was fascinated, and I liked it. And then she had magazines, and I started to look at magazines and I got involved into the field of architecture, and I loved it, and design. From the very beginning, it really was always architecture and design, which is easy to understand, because in Italy it was always much closer. But this was still during wartime. And then after the war, of course, things got much more fused between one and the other—between architecture and design—because they were—there was a great need for this. There wasn't enough furniture available, so then the architects designed furniture and designed everything else. That was around, and that started the whole Italian design phenomenon, but it was more or less because of that. Then, when I was 16 years old, I went to work in the office of the Castiglione architects, very good architects at the time, and they were working the whole field of design. They were designing product design, designing beautiful radios, telephones. They designed furniture; they designed exhibitions; they designed buildings; they designed just about anything—flatware. So when I'm working there as a draftsman, I noticed that, and I learned that an architect should be able to design everything from the spoon to the city, as Adolph Loos predicted. So I always wanted to try myself on every one of these things, and I was looking for every opportunity. And that's what I've been doing ever since, basically. MIJA RIEDEL: Did you draw a lot as a child? It seems that if you were a draftsman, you must have drawn— MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Not nature, no, not nature things, not figurative things. I was more interested in design, really. So I was designing furniture; I was designing tombs; I was designing anything. MIJA RIEDEL: Tombs, did you say? [Laughs.] MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Yes, because they were less complicated. One of the greatest things about a mausoleum, it has no bathrooms. [Laughs.] It has no windows. MIJA RIEDEL: Right. MASSIMO VIGNELLI: And what spoils architecture most of the time is windows, as you know. They're the most difficult thing to place. MIJA RIEDEL: Right. And what did your parents do? Were either of them involved in design? MASSIMO VIGNELLI: No. My father had a background in pharmacy, and then he set up a little chemical company producing salicylic acid, which is used as a preservative. But I couldn't stand the smell of that, chemicals. And I was not interested; I was really interested in design. My father wanted me to become a chemist, and I wanted to be an architect. So one day, I just picked up everything I had, and I went to sell it to a thrift shop, and I bought a T-square—[laughs]—a triangle, and a board, and then a drafting board, and then— MIJA RIEDEL: How old were you? Do you remember? MASSIMO VIGNELLI: I was 15–yes, 14, 15. And then—so my father realized that that was the end of it—[laughs]—of his dreams. And so my father was already sick—he had heart disease—and dying, when I was 16, so—but just in time to see that, at that point, I am going to art school. And of course, the month before I went to every other school, I was always flat. I was not interested. The moment I went to the art school, I was the best. [Laughs.] And so my father just had a glimpse of that before dying. But ever since, it was always very rewarding, because I was always the best. [Laughs.] Interesting class, interesting school, and a legend. "That kid is good." My work was hanging on the walls. MIJA RIEDEL: So he was able to see you succeeding, a glimmer of–[inaudible]. MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Not much, no, just in the beginning. But this was a tremendous incentive for me. My passion for architecture was growing, growing, growing. So I was reading everything and meeting every architect, because I knew the names. I was interested to meet them. I became a groupie, an architecture groupie—[inaudible]. MIJA RIEDEL: [Laughs.] MASSIMO VIGNELLI: So I was collecting architects, in a sense. And then in '49, I was 18 years old and I had the CIAM [Congrès internationaux d'architecture modern]. The CIAM was the information organization of modern architecture started by Le Corbusier. And they had annual conferences. And in '49, they had one in Italy, in Bergamo. So I went there. MIJA RIEDEL: In Palermo? MASSIMO VIGNELLI: No, Bergamo. MIJA RIEDEL: Bergamo. MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Near Milano. And so I had an opportunity of meeting all my gods. That was the Valhalla of the architecture. That really was, in a sense, the Valhalla. All the great architects were there from everywhere in Europe, and in Italy as well. So in one shot I met all of them. I was the young kid, and so everybody would say, "Who's that young kid?" because I was younger than architecture students, still younger. And then, of course, I went to the next conference again, and helping the Italian community to set up whatever they had to do at that time for the conference. So I was very much involved. So during that time, during all that time, since I was a teen, I was always working—since my father died, basically, I was always working part-time as a draftsman in all the best architects' offices. So my school has been really the architects. They were—best. So by the time I went to [the] school of architecture, I knew more than anybody else. I knew more than my teachers, as a matter of fact. When you're young, you're like a sponge, and you're so curious, every detail about the life of everyone—all things. I knew the dates when all the architects were born, things like that—where they went to school and so on and so forth. I knew already that, for instance, both Le Corbusier and Mies and others had been working as draftsmen in the office of Behrens, and details like that, and what they were working on and so on. These things I knew from that long time ago. Isn't it amazing? That's passion. MIJA RIEDEL: Yes, and who, when you were that age, was most significant to you? Who would you say were your major influences? MASSIMO VIGNELLI: Well, Le Corbusier, by far. Le Corbusier was great because he was not only [a] tremendous form-giver, but he also—socially involved—[inaudible]—projects, and so on and so forth. He was a man of vision, courage, and determination, three things which I always like in my life. [Laughs]. And so Le Corbusier was a great mentor.
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