The Language of Things —

I’ve just finished Dejan Sudjic’s excellent book The Language of Things; Design, Luxury, Fashion, Art. How We Are Seduced by the Objects Around Us. I’ve drawn up the extracts I want to remember, this is mostly within the contexts of design vs art and my perennial fascination with collecting.

It is just possible that we might be on the verge of a wave of revulsion against the phenomenon of manufacturing desire, against the whole avalanche of products that threatens to overwhelm us. However, there is no sign of it yet, despite the outbreak of millenarian anxiety about the doom that faces us if we go on binge-flying. Even the return of the selling of indulgences, a practice abandoned by the medieval church and now resurrected in the form of carbon offset payments, is not stopping us from changing cellphones every six months.
— pg 6
Just a few of these useless objects re-enter the economic cycle as part of the curious ecology of collecting. but collecting is in itself a very special kind of fetish, perhaps one that is best understood as an attempt to roll back the passing of time. It might also be an attempt to defy the threat of mortality. To collect a sequence of objects is, for a moment at least, to have imposed some sense of order on a universe that doesn’t have any.
— pg 21 

The aims of the first hoarder/curators of the great cabinets of curiosity were to amass more treasures than could be seen by one man in a lifetime of travel, thus collecting objects is directly equitable to the collecting of time. Most people would say to a lesser or greater extent that their objects are a good representation of them, that maybe they are defined by them in some way. It stands to reason then, that these objects that are imbued with the owners personality, continue on after the owners death, and should keep the collector alive in some small way.

Somewhere between these two versions design is the idea that design is a public service. It’s notable that the in Britain one of the first industrial-design practices that emerged in the 1940s called itself the Design Research Unit, a name calculated to suggest that it was a branch of the Welfare State more than any kind of commercial activity, even though it was actually started as the subsidiary of an advertising agency.
— pg 26

Some one once said that design is a social discipline, (requiring conversation, discussion and collaboration) if only because it has social consequences. I can’t remember who and google won’t tell me – any help greatly appreciated!

The machine works away diligently and fills our bookcases with ill-printed volumes, its criterion is cheapness. Yet every cultured individual should feel ashamed of such material abundance. For on the one hand, ease of production leads to a diminished sense of responsibility, while on the other abundance leads to perfunctoriness. How many books do we genuinely make our own? And should one not possess these in the best paper, bound in splendid leather? Have we perhaps forgotten that the love with which the book has been printed, decorated and bound creates a completely different relationship between it and us, and that intercourse with beautiful things makes us more beautiful?
— Josef Hoffman, The Manifesto of the Wiener Werkstätte, 1905
— pg 116

Sudjic sees it as a Hoffman justifying luxury. It seems more interesting to me in the kindle vs book (non) debate, and beyond that, as an easy first example of ‘the medium is the message’. I’m also fascinated by what we choose to have in our homes, and choose to elevate as ‘special’, (multiple versions, collectors sets, or luxury materials), and how we give chunks of ourselves to objects and things in the hope that they might extend our personalities or somehow make them more tangible and accessible to others.

It is a curious paradox that even the most materialist of us tend to value what might be called the useless above the useful. Useless not in the sense of being without purpose, but without utility, or at least with not much of it.
— pg 167
[On MOMAs treatment of design in an art gallery]
The price for a Swedish-designed – though carefully selected US-made – version of a chromium-plated self-aligning steel ball bearing to be placed in the same context as Fernand Léger’s painting of a ball bearing was to caption it exactly as if it were a painting. There was nothing more than a blank announcement of date, media and name to distract the visitors from their reverential contemplation of these sacred relics. Nothing about what this undeniably beautiful object was for, or how it was made, could be included.
— pg 172

I can share this frustration, whilst admirably trying to put design and art on the same platform the curators have wrongly treated the design as art. Not only does this impose an implicit hierarchy between the two subjects it also strips the design of everything that makes it design: it’s context and process of creation. Like an embarrassed child the labelling denies the ball bearing’s heritage. As Sudjic goes on to say ‘For design, context and process are essential’.

Dejan Sudjic, The Language of Things (London: Penguin, 2009)

 

Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector —

I went enthusiastically to the exhibition about collecting – those who know me well know that I like collecting, collections and collectors a lot. I did my final year project on it at university and it’s been a mild obsession ever since.

I was disappointed to find that this riotous, spectacular and curiosity inspiring subject had been presented in the most sterile way I’ve seen yet. Artists’ collections had been shown next to one example of their work, but in lots of cases it was a photography collection next to some photographs or a taxidermy collection next to some taxidermy. In this sense the exhibition did a very blunt job of drawing a line between the inspiration and the art it inspired, in most cases making the artworks look like bad copies of the collections.

The worst offender was the display of abstract painter Howard Hodgkin’s collection of Indian pictures. The pictures are small intricate paintings that have a strong use of colour. Outside the room was hung a piece of Hodgkin’s work, all big brush strokes and block colour. Yes, the use of colour was an obvious thread but other than that, this lone, decontextualised artwork, when hung next to the collection (of paintings!) seemed frankly inferior. Surely this is not the point of the exhibition? An exhibition which is dealing with both artist and collection should showcase each in it’s best light but this reduced both somehow.

The other aspect which was lacking was the critical angle about the politics of collecting itself. Whilst collections as artworks was tackled as a topic in the Martin Wong/Danh Vo piece, the idea of artists acquiring items as a whole collection, or from other collections was absent, as was the idea of ownership or authorship through collecting. In the case of Howard Hodgkin the fact that the pieces in his collection had been created as art, had then been collected and returned to object status, loaned to the Ashmolean Museum as ‘His’ collection and then displayed at the Barbican again seems to be a journey that could benefit from some curatorial scrutiny.

Of course all of these gripes are just that – an enthusiast rambling, and there were good bits. Showing all the packing cases that the collections and artworks had come in (albeit in a corner) was brilliant, and I liked the rugs which were liberally strewn around each area. 

(N.B. I’m sure some of these issues are at least touched on in the audio guide or the book, but I shouldn’t have to pay £40 to get a bit of thoughtful insight when I’ve already paid £12 to get in.)

 

Jake and Dinos Chapman: Come and See

Come and See at the Serpentine Sackler Centre is showing from 29th November 2013 – 9th February 2014 This raucous exhibition of the Chapman Brothers work at the Serpentine Gallery is brilliant. Fun and violence crash together in detailed intricate pieces from the Hell landscapes up to the large mouse-trap-esque assemblages – all presided over by eerie and interested Klu Klux Klan inspired, smiley patch toting, socks and sandals wearing figures (presumably us, the visitor!).

The apparent flippancy with which some of their materials are treated – gloss paint drips, rough cut plywood is left unsanded and items are hacked and screwed together in a seemingly uncaring way - is contrasted to the curatorial side in the artists. This side frames and hangs the crude sketches, labours over the tiny skeletons and micro-narratives in the hellscapes and gets haphazard combinations of objects made into presumably expensive and unwieldy bronzes, only to cover up the material with gloss paint and glue. Their work is comfortable in it's disregard for 'proper' process and finish quality and gains weight through it's scale, repetition and spectacle- the amount of work on show is invigorating. Whilst I don't think I'd be excited about living with a Chapman Brothers piece, I left feeling energised and wanting to make more stuff.

 

Autumn Exhibition Round-Up

The Museum of Everything: Another fantastic show, this time the Museum was out of it's Primrose Hill space and had taken up residence in Selfridges (I imagine a fairly contentious choice- but come on, to try and separate art and commerce is just naive and anyway I think these guys genuinely bring something great to the world and the more people that see it the better.)

The show was again outsider art and the obsession and otherness of the work was brought into the space by a series of small, packed rooms similar to previous exhibitions. This was really effective at giving a sense of discovery and strangeness, especially when you consider you were in Selfridges. I wish the book was more similar to the exhibition and less of an art book, although I understand why the work in the book is placed on white spreads and is quite 'proper' looking. However there is the digital version of the show for guys like me who enjoy the slightly more chaotic form of the exhibition: http://www.digevery.com/room1.html

Wellcome Collection- A Charmed Life

The standout bit for me in this exhibition was the layout of the charms in the center of the room. I also liked how visible the methods of collection were, (see photo below) where there were gaps from other objects collected at the same time which were now lost- being able to understand a little bit more about an objects story post-use or post-context, once it had entered the world of the 'collected object'.

Pitt Rivers:

Wonderful as ever.

Ashmolean Museum:

A very well designed space and a nice place to have a walk around. I'm not mad into archeology but there were some great moments throughout the museum. The older part of the museum with the paintings in was entirely different in feel, more chambers and carpet and warmth than the informative, new, open space where you enter.

I really liked this quote in the exhibition about how the museum came to exist, (John Tradescant the elder to John Tradescant the younger to Elias Ashmole to The University of Oxford). On the cabinet of curiosity:

"I am almost persuaded a man might in one daye behold and collecte into one place more curiosities than hee should see if hee spent all his life in travell."

Design Museum: Terrence Conran

A superbly put together revelatory show which highlighted to me how much Conran has contributed and effected design in the UK.

Design Museum: Designers in Residence

A really good exhibition design to this one. I particularly liked Will Shannon's reformed chipboard/concrete furniture.

British Museum:

Classic museum going experience. Nice old stone.

Hunstanton Beach Huts

  On a recent beach walk at Hunstanton I came across these huts. Apparently not available for sale these permanent sheds are passed down through families. I guess I like the romance of rocking up on a blustery day making some tea and hunkering down in a blanket on the porch to read a book. They looked to good not to photograph.