A neon sign from the Postmodernism Exhibition currently on display at the V&A © Victoria and Albert Museum 2011

As the second part of the Interviews with Jane Pavitt and Glenn Adamson, this post will focus on Glenn Adamson’s fascinating take on what the Postmodernism exhibition means for Postmodernism and as a result of some fascinating questions put forward by students on the History of Design Masters programme at the RCA and V&A, he engages with the complex issue of coding and double coding.

Q: Could you describe what your job is and what it entails?

A: I am Head of Graduate Studies at the V&A, which means I direct the museum’s side of the course. I also curate exhibitions for the V&A (including the recent show Postmodernism, Style and Subversion 1970 to 1990 which I co-curated with Jane Pavitt), advise on museum projects, and publish historical, theoretical and critical texts.

Q: What was your path into the creative/design world?

A: I discovered design history without knowing what it was called. As an undergraduate, I took a class on Chinese ceramics. That started me on a path of researching ceramic history, which broadened gradually into craft history and theory (my principal area of expertise). I’ve also developed a strong interest in contemporary art. After getting a PhD at Yale studying all those subjects, I worked for five years at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – an organization that funds experimental research and exhibition-making for design and material culture. I came to the V&A in 2005.

Q: Can you describe a particularly memorable moment in your career?

A: It would be hard to forget the encounters we had with postmodern celebrities like David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and Annie

Earthenware cup with coloured glazes from China 8th Century © Victoria and Albert Museum 2011

Lennox, but the incident that stands out most for me was the very first time I held a T’ang dynasty (about 8^th century) pot in my hands and fell in love with it – I always feel that in some way, my career as a design historian has been an attempt to live up to that moment and other ones since where an object has enchanted me in ways that prompted exploration.

Q: In your opinion, what is the difference between critiquing work created as art and work created for use, like product design?

A: I think it’s a continuum or maybe even just a shift in emphasis. You can treat a design object like an art work (Duchamp started doing so a century ago after all) and you can also treat an art work like a design object, by considering its production and distribution narrative. So to me, the difference is in the manner of questioning, not the supposed inherent nature of the object, or even the maker’s intention, which leads me to the next question…

Q: How much weight do you give to the intent of the author in critiquing their work, and what do you think the benefits of teaching theory and the history of design to artists/designers is?

A: I guess the answer is ‘some.’ When you can recover intention – not always the case, even if you have textual evidence, because that evidence can be misleading, sometimes purposefully so – it is obviously to be taken into account. But I don’t think history is a matter of reconstructing past intentions alone. It is also the attempt to recover a broader sense of experience, what French theorists sometimes call mentalité. Theory indeed is a great tool in achieving this goal and we use an unusually broad repertoire of conceptual apparatus, ranging from emphatically critical traditions such as Marxism and Feminism to the more putatively objective techniques of anthropology, sociology, economics, theories of technology, etc. There is no untheorized history – only historians that haven’t considered the theoretical underpinnings of their own practice.

Maine Bedin (for Memphis), Super lamp prototype, 1981. Painted metal with lighting components. V&A: M.1-2011 © Victoria and Albert Museum 2011

Q: Do you have some thoughts on the future of the History of Design Masters course?

A: In many respects our future is already being realized in the present. Our main goal, probably, is to expand the geography of design history (both its objects and the places where it is practiced) and we have made big strides in this respect by establishing a specialism for Asian design, and recently taking part in the publication of a book called Global Design History. Another objective of mine has been to restore production to a central role in the history of design, after some time in which consumption was prioritized. We need to do this without going back to earlier modes of working, which could be neutrally empirical or monographic (sometimes hagiographic). New technologies also offer design history wider horizons, both in the sense that they are there to be studied, and also give us new ways to configure our own scholarly community.

Q: Could you briefly describe the timeline for a major exhibition project such as the Postmodernism exhibition?

A: The whole process took about 4 years. We began with a 6-month phase of reading theory and secondary literature, to get a sense of the lay of the land. Once we had appointed an assistant curator to support the project logistically we were able to move into a more concerted research phase, lasting perhaps 18 months, in which we visited archives and museum collections, interviewed designers, and consulted primary texts most important for our subject were probably runs of magazines such as Domus or Artforum. We were also making acquisitions all this time – about 90 in total – which was an important spur to research in its own right, as each object needed to be fully described and documented. This phase of work led into the research and writing of the book, which was complete about 6 months before the exhibition opening – much of this work was editorial as we had a large number of contributors. About 15 months before opening, we appointed designers and shortly thereafter fixed our object list. Working with the Exhibitions Department at the V&A, we secured all loans for the exhibition and began laying out the design for the show (for more on this see cialis india genericon the exhibition’s website) Finally, construction of the space and installation took about 6 weeks.

Q: Do you now consider postmodernism as over, now that there is a retrospective?

A: We put dates of 1970 to 1990 on the project, because we felt that postmodernism as a movement had declined or reached a state of paralysis by then. Its initial ability to destabilize affairs simply had been spent by then. This is not to say that postmodernity ended in 1990 of course! Indeed that condition, as described by theorists like Fredric Jameson, seems to be just getting going. You could say that postmodernism (the movement) was like an early warning system for this ever-enlarging condition of hyper-reality, instant networking, and commodification.

i-D, no 28. The Art Issue, August 1985. Styled by William Faulkner, design by Terry Jones, photograph by Nick Knight, featuring Lizzy Tear. V&A: NAL.PP.22.J © Victoria and Albert Museum 2011

Q: Do you think that Postmodernists are selfish and self-indulgent?

A: Certainly they can be! But I don’t think this is an intrinsic feature of the movement, any more than it was of modernism, surrealism or futurism. There is a ‘self regard’ in postmodernism’s DNA but to me this is more like a laudable self-awareness than selfishness. I often say that a postmodern object is like a cartoon character with a thought bubble above its head, which you can read – it tells you more than what is on the surface, even while emphasizing that surface as a space of play and possibility.

Q: Charles Jencks talks about double-coding to describe postmodern architecture, but it is an activity we see throughout all types of postmodern cultural production.  Is it possible to more-than double-code i.e. triple or quadruple code?  Were postmodernists doing this and what are the theoretical implications?  Does it act like double-coding to erase the value of meaning, or is something more/different going on?

A: I like the idea of triple or quadruple coding. A contemporary artist, Ryan Gander, recently said to me that art now begins at the level of the double bluff and goes from there – it’s a question of how many levels you can think on simultaneously. This makes art (or design, which can function in a similarly conceptual manner now) sound like a chess game and also makes it sound exhausting, but this sort of internal complexity can be thrilling and pleasurable too. It’s worth noting that postmodernism’s multiplicity was also lateral, not just in depth. It was pluralist, and its greatest success was in fracturing expectations about style – so we no longer think of ourselves as working to a single shared ‘look.’ This is ironic, since postmodernism itself was such an extreme style and did indeed sweep through ever genre of design in the ‘80s – fashion, tv and film, graphics, interior decoration, etc. But its techniques of complete fragmentation and its prioritization of difference over unity really transformed ideas of design, such that ‘post-postmodern’ culture is defined not so much by stylistic coherence, but by this issue of multiple self reference, and also other ‘externalities’ that lie outside of design and art proper, such as technology (the internet), ethical imperatives (environmentalism), and perhaps production strategies (as in the Chinese economic boom).

©2011 Katherine Elliott. All Rights Reserved.