Unmaking Things
Design/Art
In Conversation with Emilie Voirin: Portrait of a Designer
// Emilie Voirin is a French product designer working in London. She is currently attending a MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Art. //
Emmanuelle is Shy © Emilie Voirin 2010
With strong concept-led projects and an impressive series of limited editions, Emilie Voirin’s collection of works does not seem to give in to easy categorisation. The clever Independent Arms which play on the fact that people sit on the arms of a sofa regardless of whether there is someone in it or not (see below), or again the rattan chair Emmanuelle is Shy, which hides the face of the sitter are both very playful, pictorial pieces with vivid narratives supporting them.
She has also produced much more literal products, such as her collection of cups exhibited at IMM Cologne International Furniture Fair Germany in 2008, which feature a rubber band to prevent them from slipping from your hands. Such hybridity in her practice makes it difficult to label Emilie and the temptation to put her in the loose, formless category of Designart is tempting.
A highly controversial term and difficult position to hold, Emilie has kindly agreed to explore with me the ins and outs of what it means to be a ‘design artist’, and the shortcomings of being categorised as such.
Carte Blanche : The Designer as Curator
Last time I went to Paris, I paid my usual respects to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. For a long time the only decorative arts museum I thought worthy of the name (that is before I started working at the V&A) the museum has pride of place at the tip of one aisle of the Musée du Louvre. The ‘Arts Décos’ as we call it, is a rather small museum compared to its gargantuan host, which manages to encompass in its few galleries the history of material culture from the middle ages to the present day – with a particular emphasis on furniture. If the museum has certain flaws in its curatorial line, there is one thing that it does particularly well – and that is to engage with contemporary designers. The contemporary gallery is a large open space with a selection of recent acquisitions, simply displayed on a large carpet. The objective there is not to try and categorise designs into movements and styles straight as they come out of the studios, but rather to give them visibility, while carefully nurturing the museum’s collection.
Jasper Morrison, Take a Seat! © Justine Boussard 2009
On the left hand side of this large, almost ‘uncurated’ area, is a very peculiar space: the galerie d’actualité. The “current” gallery, as one could translate it, is a 150m2 room the museum curators have kept aside to give them the opportunity to exhibit very contemporary pieces, without necessarily acquiring them in the collection. It also enables the museum to display objects of craft, which tend to be under represented in the modern collection.
Once a year, the museum grants the designer of their choice a Carte Blanche, the free reign to use this gallery to curate their own exhibition. The curators lay out the technical conditions and restrictions of the space, and the designers come up with ideas for what to exhibit. It doesn’t necessarily have to be their designs – but it very usually is for obvious practical reasons. To present what can happen when designers become curators, I have chosen two very opposite examples: minimalist British designer Jasper Morrison and iconoclast Dutch designer Maarten Baas. When the ‘exhibitee’ becomes the ‘exhibitor’, we curators have something to learn about our job…
Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935
Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935, Reviewed by Colin Melia
// Royal Academy of Arts, 29 October 2011 to 22 January 2012 //
// Colin Melia is an MA candidate in History of Design at the Royal College of Art. His interests include twentieth century architecture and paper architecture. //
Richard Pare, Shabolovka Radio Tower, 1998, Photograph, 154.8 x 121.9 cm © Richard Pare
It is perhaps appropriate that as Anish Kapoor’s orbit tower nears completion on the Olympic site, the granddaddy of enormous climbing frames everywhere should stand (albeit in model form) in the same city. Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, built in 1920 to commemorate the Russian Revolution, was intended to dwarf the Eiffel tower and project messages of socialism across the clouds yet rather predictably was never constructed. Today, a ten metre tall model of Tatlin’s Tower stands in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts, looking like some kind of deranged and bizarre children’s play area; disappointingly, its true function is to greet visitors to Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935.
The Difference in Repetition by Emile de Visscher
// Designers are renowned for their incredible capacity to reach across a wide range of disciplines to inform their own practice. Today in Design/Art, design engineer Emile de Visscher looks at philosophy for inspiration, and dexterously lays out for us how a four-decade-old French classic, Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, can help understand contemporary design creation – and make it move forward. //
“One day, perhaps, the century will be Deleuzian” Michel Foucault once declared. Gilles Deleuze is considered as one of the major philosophers of the 20th century. His books are mines of ideas that have influenced many creative fields, to such an extent that they can sometimes appear too prolific and complex. In 1969, Gilles Deleuze published Difference and Repetition, his first book not related to the study of other philosophers. The theses presented then are precursory to the changes happening now in manufacture and design. I will try to explain how and why this incredible work is still relevant in the contemporary design field over 40 years after its release.
“Art as Design History?” by Ruth Mason
In 1991 an English translation of Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space was finally published.1. Those unable to read the French original had had to wait since 1974 for this enormous feat to be achieved. But the wait was worth it, and Lefebvre’s ideas have subsequently been hugely influential across a broad range of academic disciplines.
Insulation I © Eliot Jones
Indeed, twenty years later, the artist Eliot Jones continues to be inspired by Lefebvrian concepts of space. His self-titled ‘spatial interventions’ are constructed from ‘found-materials’ that he physically and functionally reconfigures into new spatial arrangements. His work raises interesting questions about space and materiality, two topics which are fundamental to contemporary Design Historical research. How do the questions raised by Jones’ work relate to contemporary trends in Design Historical scholarship?
Branding the city: Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s lettering in Glasgow
// This article is a follow up to Helen Kearney’s First Things First on graphic design as subversion. To complicate the story, I will be discussing another case of appropriation, that of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s early 19th century lettering by the people of Glasgow, to try and understand the effects of its use and abuse in a contemporary context. //
Hairdresser using Mackintosh's lettering, Studio, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow City Center © Justine Boussard
“It is very amusing – and in spite of all the efforts to stamp out the Mackintosh influence – the whole town is getting covered with imitations of Mackintosh tea rooms, Mackintosh shops Mackintosh furniture etc – It is too funny – I wonder how it will end.”1. Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh, wife and work partner of famous Glaswegian architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh [1868-1928], wrote this comment in 1904, in a letter to a friend. Little did she know that a hundred years on, their work would still be a major part of Glaswegian visual culture. (more…)
‘Dangerous Liaison’ or a Happy Marriage? Design, Art and Craft
// Today we have invited another guest writer to contribute to the column. Using her research on post-war Wales, design historian Fflur Gwynn invites a third speaker to the discussion between art and design: craft. //
‘At Cross Purposes? When Art History Meets Design History’
Bowl, Italy, 1560 © Victoria and Albert Museum
// On Saturday 22nd of October 2011, the Courtauld Institute Research Forum hosted a conference on the relationship between Art History and Design History. Ruth Mason, a History of Design Student at the Royal College of Art, attended the day long talk in London and gives us her insight on the ins and outs of the conference. //
The Practice Of Naming Furniture
Marcel Breuer, Wassily, 1926-1928, photo © Victoria and Albert Museum
Why do we give proper names to serial manufactured objects? Beyond obvious differentiation and designation needs, I believe that there is a lot to learn from carefully looking at the words we choose to designate object matter. The practice of naming objects is particularly florid in furniture design, and even more particularly in chair design. The chair is the most ubiquitous object in our Western homes and except in cases of extreme ingenuity, furniture designers merely create eternal variations on the same concept – all chairs are tools for sitting if I can borrow Le Corbusier’s expression. So, is a proper name a prop to try and circumvent the generic essence of furniture design? Does furniture need a name to be ‘design’?
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Julia Lohmann, leather bench and sheepstomach lamps, 2004, photo © Royal College of Art
Contemporary design galleries are at the heart of the design/art debate. The territory they occupy, at the crossroads of the commercial showroom and the academically curated design museum, is unstable, undefined and it is up to each gallery to write their own agenda. Borrowing from the vernacular of the art gallery, they offer a space where the avant-garde of design can bloom, away from the constraints of serial production and distribution, questioning the boundaries of their own practice. The large umbrella of works exhibited through these privileged spaces – from limited edition ceramics to exclusive technological breakthroughs – leave us to wonder where design stops and art begins – and whether it is the right question to ask. To discuss these issues further, we have asked London gallerist Libby Sellers to give us her insight on the value of categorization in design.
