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Curating Postmodernism
Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011 · 6:41 p.m. · 47m 26s
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but better yeah okay so it's a real pleasure to be here with you and i i think
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you thorough very much for your heart out in what could be more than i'm going to uh
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speak your language importantly or whatever all died about this exhibition
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on post modernism which as you can see covers the period from nineteen seventy to nineteen ninety
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and what i'm going to do is walk you through the activation i talked to a little bit about
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why would your it it the way we did um and this is a
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experience that i'll be doing a suggesting to you with this image which shows you
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what is like to go to the museum on the two on the underground so you see the poster here
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of grace jones in those rather extraordinary outfit you'll see that's
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coming up again later oh when you actually get to the activation
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one of the first things that you see is the same material that surrounds you and it's a
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particular projects the in this room filled with the
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work of vegetarians got around and their students and colleagues
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and their research trip to las vegas we focus on
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exactly the same subject right at the beginning of the exhibition
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you can see here in the shot ah be there on that plane
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actually just behind you there um also projected on the back wall or exhibition
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uh you also can see in the right hand side of that image i did show view this picture photograph
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that also appeared in this activation this on the wall over here which we go not you of all wall size
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and so for example the person that's walking words even images about the same size as a real person
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a little smaller and i know that when the nice got round came here to see
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in most then recently she focused on this image a great deal
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because layering sign it which layers of these of words and a graphics
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fill the streets state of las vegas and she
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and robert venturi of course it is very interesting idea
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that this was a landscape meant to be viewed from a car to be viewed as they said it thirty five miles an hour
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rather than on foot and it's a landscape talks to you all the time incessantly talking to
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you communicating to you and of course trying to sell you things as well so completely commercial landscape
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well bands that you might say of capitalism and
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one of 'em also constant communication compton words oh
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weeding out of this ah stays in the exhibition within
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introduce or visitors to a whole range of other architectural project
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uh that came around nineteen seventy is what usually one here because it's such a great example of
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the ideas from the stock learning from us they is being applied it to buildings by other architects
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so this is by charles moore who was a contemporary of insurance got brown someone they knew well
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and this is a project that they did in one in a new orleans louisiana
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i'm showing you how do you hear at night because i think it really emphasise the connection
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that more fell to las vegas and to see now over fee or that the actor goal
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a us almost set design of a casino that you might have their flatness use all these
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historical ornamental motifs for example corinthian columns arches and so on
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and of course the me on the on was something that
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was particularly interesting to venture install around you see it in
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the night time don't uh and also a really wonderful collection of
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photographs that are all the way down on that um on that wall inexact edition and you're here you have
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charles moore using the same material as a way of getting across
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an idea of pitch and uh kind of populism that's been um storms
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into the fabric of the architecture so again architecture that communicated architecture that's the
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but also one that speaks in the vernacular in the language of the everyday as well
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as in the language of classes and and so it's this collision of high and low
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that that sure it's got brown of course who sells trying to navigate
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this building is well served to address and this i think really brings you to
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he element about post modernism in its early stages and here i want to
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introduce to you uh another figure from this period out who is strong gay
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and uh i think that the movie known to most of you is very very
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important to the story of post modernism because someone other things he publishes a book
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late nineteen seventy is not the spot but but of subsequent one
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call the language of post modern architecture that's published in nineteen seventy seven
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based on earlier publications you've done in architectural design magazine a. d.
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and it's that's for the language of post modern architecture that
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really popular rises this term that had been used before several times
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going back into the early twentieth century and even before that
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but it's really charles chances work that puts the word post modernism
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you might say on the table for discussion and very quickly after that it's
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the news to the short film and fashion and art i as well as architecture
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but if we go back a few years earlier fax nineteen seventy two in fact to
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say here that learning from las vegas was published we find this from your book by jane
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written together with another architect named nathan solvers who also designed this rather wonderful chair
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which is on the cover of the book uh this was the dining chair that so over design for
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his own use his own house if you'd also designs and he had a dining room with brick flooring
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and so he thought that it would be good to have a chair on wheels like
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roll forward and back to the table instead of scraping along the floor of that's rough right
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so we use wheels off a wheel chair which were the most expensive part of the
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chair over half of its overall cost that the rest very cheaply made out of gas height
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jens hated this bright orange colour some insulation foam and then this seat was taken from a tractor
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and so over them from that so it's at
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hawk it's improvised it put together from other preexisting chart
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you might say something like uh do shop ready made and they were advocating
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is added to the um not only for the use of designers but also architect
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and they did a kind of survey of contemporary culture and
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claim to be finding this ad hoc attitude everywhere so they
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included rather wonderful pictures of everyday american like that they found
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like this extraordinary cadillac with that's being used as a platter
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for three three truck coming right up through uh the body of the car
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they went to a feminist political rally protest rally protest march
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and notice the way that americans were strapped to crucifixes as away oh protesting the weight
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of women's bodies are represented in the mass media so kind of political ad hoc isn't
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they went to places like casablanca in north africa and notice the
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ways that a local people there were using for example the side crates
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as housing material so these pieces of plywood with printing on them and you can
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see here in the middle one says this side of fragile glass do not drop
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an interesting way right next to this thing that says the side up you actually have text that's upside down
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and they were fascinated by this um by this use of
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text and preexisting imagery that almost seems to them like more
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holes below or little boxes or other pop are sort of
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what's life in use for everyday housing no they were very aware
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it would not be right to take too much aesthetic pleasure in something like this because of course
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this kind of architecture was produced by necessity in produced as a response to
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poverty the lack of resources of the inhabitants of these buildings but they still thought
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professional architects can learn from this example very much adventure in
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scott brown thought that they could learn from the example of these
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really non professional architects for developers who were putting up the casinos in las vegas
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and so charles james put this theory into practical us
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in this building which is call the garage over time the the reason for the name
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which of course refers to and reapply us renaissance below the the bill over time but
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uh the reason for this name bigger ah g. over time the this kind of joke name is
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that this building is built around a prefabricated or on which which you can see is the bar
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middle of this image it's covered with shingles behind the structure and jack's thought that
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this was the cheapest way that you can get a structure so it's rather like
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the use of gas five with the tractor see in macon silver chair something that
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already exists in the world that we can simply bring into the building for functional reasons
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but he then he did the same thing with the
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decorations so he covered it with preexisting again preexisting no work
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we're lumber is shaped elements like um pieces of of aside or pattern and
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corvallis there's moldings all of which she bought out of a local hardware store
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the longest or brought to the side and then have a group of local put together some screen door if you got the in sac
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a plaster cast of move uses had it that we got from the museum gift shop and press so you have a building
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very much put together um you know very ad hoc
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almost random fashion um despite all of its architectural references
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we didn't yes vision i think is is perhaps particularly interesting from church world point of view
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because we we created this buildings and you can see here on the left that share the ad hoc isn't chair that's
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the one that was actually on the cover of organisms over was kind enough to give it to us for the permanent collection
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uh we also then rick recreated a corner of the garage your time the
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and you can see it here in front of another uh architecture reconstruction in the back of the one in
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the backers of from the working has how line but you can see i think in this day and age
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precision of our or almost archaeological reconstruction of this building
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and it was very interesting to go through this process with
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j. x. because as he said it you're spending a lot more money and spending a lot more time making
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the copy of this building so the original was actually
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very cheap very fast and the copy is very exact
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and much much better built than the real house it's so we were
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making this kind of lottery fake of what had originally been this rather half
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very us the building and i think that's very interesting reasons and i'll come
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back to later in the talk having to do with the way that post modernism
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already in the nineteen seventies and i think he's went from being
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that's very radical style very outside or a very provocative megan ventures
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got grounds for certain las vegas is a very good example of
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that and ultimately became the style of luxurious style of corporate architecture
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um james was not the only one working in the style of course of the time one
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might think of a friend there is much better roundhouse are conceived and built exactly the same time
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in santa monica near los angeles and um light checks is use of prefabricated garage
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what gary did was take an existing a suburban house a ranch style
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houses we would say america and you covered it with other materials glass
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um shingles again corrugated metal chain link fence and created this kind of cubist
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composition out of it and you can imagine passing this house on the corner lot
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of a regular suburban block in santa monica i think you can get a sense of how
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very often guard how very radical this architectural style scenes
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when it first came around in the early nineteen seven beans
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another great example of that would be the work of a group called site s. i. t. e.
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which stands for sculpture environments replied by james whines
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a very inspired as the as the names full term environment suggest
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very much inspired by contemporary or as well as contemporary architecture
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so wines is really taking his signals from hardest like our state cock very mess
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um we don't consciously and especially gordon matter clark whose
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costs and um penetration through existing buildings you perhaps now
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once in his colleagues insight were given that the sort of commission of a
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lifetime in the nineteen seventies when a
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a chain store call best stores best products
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came to them and asked them to do a series the shops around
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america and best doesn't exist anymore but they were rather similar to walmart
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are kind of very low and a home products store but
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they were owned by a couple names in the inferences lois
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who are based in richmond virginia and we're very very uh accomplished contemporary art collectors
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among the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable collectors of pop art that in the early nineteen seventies
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and so they were extremely intellectual interested in bringing
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their ideas about our team used very mo and stores
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so you see what once in his uh callings came up with
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these extraordinary facade of the lift up we're told up into the air
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a corner made of rex that's slides out in the morning getting giving you entrance to the front
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door another example has of those are the pool peels off as if it were a sheet of paper
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this uh example which is near the alamo a famous military side of the nineteenth century in texas
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has a kind of appalachian wrecks that steals down from the side
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and here are the right using the bricklayer actually putting that's a
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short of avalanche together and they're on the left you see the
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group from site standing at the top of this thought humble right
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i'm looking down that's out once they're on the right hand
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side and so here you have another rather be sharply and
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exercise in architecture in this case the found object
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is not bigger or or the um suburban house
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but isn't instead the concept for format the big box store is very neutral or in the whole
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stores shops that sit on suburban sprawl
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suburban strips um very much like the
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kind of commercial strips that then sure install brand we're so interested driving past
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and as wine said i'm very much taking a page out of learning from las vegas this was
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again architecture to the view from thirty five thousand hours was architecture to be viewed from an automobile
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in almost any kind of cinematic way which i think is
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so powerfully demonstrated in the films that you see in this exhibition
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and i think wines as well as the insurance got brown had this idea that when you drove
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down the suburban strip you were having experience rather
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like you were walking of no so uh temporal experience
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and therefore um perhaps and narrative experience and so
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what wine who's interested in doing very literally here was
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creating a kind of rupture in that temporal flow of buildings taking something that normally would be very new
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very boring it making a a an object of interest but it's actually a sculpture work apart
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once inside also did a very
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this is not something we could represent in the show except for photography because it does not survive
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but i thought you would be very interested to see it on this was a project done for
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climbing realise that it was the fellow sitting behind a desk here in this image
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and he was the very first um entrepreneur hip
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hop clothing in your city in the early nineteen eighties
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and so they took this sort of ah deconstructed style that they've been using for best product
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and brought it to the show rooms that they did for willie smith was it rankled will wear
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so that what was silent into the i'm sure rooms that willie smith
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was building in new york city where you were showing very brightly coloured
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uh as i say a close for the hip
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hop generation very loose baggy clothes with extremely bright colours
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uh and you can see the what's i did was to create completely
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grey backdrop for these garments them really make them pop off the wall
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uh and they also used again this very post industrial almost apocalyptic style
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that um as one critic said suggested that you were still on the street you
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would just left when you walked into the into the room which part of the um
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enjoy the showroom here's another detail this one i think is particularly
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this thing because on the right you can see that they include these props in this
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case the shovel which of course is a very self conscious reference back to do shop
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and the idea of the ready made them for jobs one of you some very famous i'm ready made with a shovel
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entitled in advance of a broken arm and so this is the kind
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of knowing postmodern onto or historical precedents i think what you see here
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is this a highly conscious i'm working
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at the intersection or overlap between architecture
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and in this case interior decoration and fine arts also that
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design or starts you were huge and become one post disciplinary
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fluid proactive s. uh in the period of post modernism i think that's one of the most interesting things
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that happens during this period disciplines that had previously been very separate
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very discreet instead now come together another good example buttons here it would be wrong areas work
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uh not so much working as an architect yeah that's the w.'s
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now um but i'm really working as a designer or furniture and product
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so he creates equally provocative apocalyptic looking shop called one off
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that's originally located in covent garden london you see here uh and this
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is a is a good example of the kinds of things he's showing
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uh this is the so called concrete stereo designed
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in nineteen eighty two again using a prefabricated commercial components
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in this case the stereo parks the turntable or mentor and um and the turntable itself
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uh the amplifier components but he literally and gets them in blocks of reinforced concrete and then
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smashes awakened with a hammer to expose the underlying structure them so this is if you like
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kind of product a design for dark future almost looks like a kind of prop from
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of the only way or or another distill p. and science fiction film of the time
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um one of the other things that i think is worth mentioning about this particular
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body of work and i think willie where is a good example of this too
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is that you have is very high concept very radical set of
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design ideas that's being put in the service of something that looks initially
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like it might be quite and adjustable and certainly very
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difficult very challenging and has the air of something avant guard
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but it actually is also brilliant entrepreneurship brilliant salesmanship because it is
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so striking and as you can see in this image i think
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so camera ready in other words it it looks like the object is maybe not only to use in
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the home but also to create a sexy photograph that you you can then put enough in of design magazine
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and this was really the discovery that propel the most
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important of the post modern design groups which was meant those
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um i i assume that you all know something about memphis but just in case the
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main is new to you this is a group that was founded in nineteen eighty one
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let this manager is also asked to again is trained as an architect
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um like our it was art was trying to be a the architectural association
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in london before becoming a designer thoughts as similarly have been trained as an architect and
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then turns to uh the design of especially office equipment uh and for each for machines
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uh but he had is extremely intellectual um approach to his discipline really coming out
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of his architectural train so here you see him on the cover of don't mess
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magazine is rather typical post modern graphic style one thing just
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parenthetically that i i'll point out about this image is that
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post modern graphics are often very um wrote open very suggestive of digital
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design photoshop for example so even though they're made with cut and paste
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just scissors and glue in the photograph with the camera they look
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as though they were made by uh some kind of digital process
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i think that's one of the most interesting things about postmarked design it seems they anticipate
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the year of the internet even though of course an entirely predates that that um technology
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but at any rate here you have thoughts as floating in this world of suggestive forms
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uh he had been working in a right pattern and colour and
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improbable forms all the way since the late nineteen sixties and in fact
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like this one a so called ceramic totem that he created
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in the late sixties was very much informed inspired by the
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same points of reference that were uh influencing a rubber venturing
00:22:03
denise got around so just as they went to las vegas
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in the late sixties thoughts s. went to los angeles and he was really interested in the pop
00:22:12
architecture that he saw there he was interested in forms like gas cans or petrol
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parts at the gas stations that he was saying on the side of the road
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trendy designs of this period um and many uh sorry to work with men as
00:22:27
you can see that he started to use the same that i'm kind of destructive
00:22:32
pop forms ah it in his work although now it made much more slightly where is
00:22:38
this object is really handmade in a studio this one is made by a a porcelain
00:22:44
the facts are still using a skilled uh the skills of of um
00:22:49
very experienced workman to assemble it but suggesting some kind of machine manufacturer almost
00:22:54
uh using slim casting a instead of hand throwing to actually it should strap forms
00:23:00
but anyway so that's that's is at the centre of this group called men as valid as
00:23:05
i say in nineteen eighty one exactly thirty years almost to the day before we open our exhibition
00:23:10
and here you see them in this a so called boxing ring badly designed by one of their japanese um compatriot
00:23:17
you can see that a lot of the designers of much younger than sauce ass he was sixty four
00:23:22
in nineteen eighty one when the group was founded so at a time when you might have expected to be entering the decline
00:23:28
your seems actually expanding and uh had more energy than it ever
00:23:32
had and i'm doing rather more extraordinary design thing it ever had
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um this is the section devoted to and then there's the
00:23:41
exhibition uh you can see the magazine cover that i showed you
00:23:45
up on the left hand side there and whether the foreground a chair that
00:23:50
we show you in a second but l. a. or chair by peter shire
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um but first i want to show us applesauce asses for sure design
00:23:58
think it's very very typical of the way that that us um operate it
00:24:03
it's um it's entirely she in plastic laminates mostly
00:24:08
solid colours uh one block of pattern forming the
00:24:12
base and one thing that's very interesting about this particular design is that it marks were makes fun
00:24:19
of the idea of like kind of truth to materials or honest functions because as
00:24:25
you'll notice every part of it that supports the weight of the shell is black
00:24:30
which creates the sense that there's a code but that
00:24:34
is being observed in the design so black elements are supportive
00:24:39
but then the coat completely breaks down and is it away drowned
00:24:43
out by the sort of jazz soundtrack of other colours and forms
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some of which are quite ridiculous so for example shells that tilts
00:24:51
wanna diagonal which obviously is not very useful for holding your box up
00:24:56
for this uh rather absurd animated animated cartoon form
00:25:01
this character the centre for more fake human figure that's then on top of it
00:25:06
um but on top of the bookcase and shouting for your attention
00:25:11
uh thoughts asset that out in his view methodist objects can only with with very intense people
00:25:18
this gives you a sense of that intensity and here's the chair that i i mentioned a moment ago the bel
00:25:23
air chair uh again is very very high collar a power
00:25:27
would that matters associated with this was designed by peter shire
00:25:32
who introduced to a memphis the kind of west coast influence set
00:25:37
of influences you can see here the shark fin shape of the back
00:25:41
the um a beach ball shape of them you're a puts and here is this extraordinary
00:25:46
image of peter shire in the mid nineteen eighty seated in another one of his chairs
00:25:51
a shire was in fact the first person ever made the
00:25:54
observation to me that in a postmodern designs including those of memphis
00:26:00
we're always made principally for the purpose of taking a photo so they weren't back like the apical props
00:26:06
and i don't think that starts asked in particular ever really thought that
00:26:11
memphis was going to make any money and in fact i didn't make
00:26:14
very much money ah partly because the construction of the object was actually
00:26:18
very expensive and so although they look cheap and bitchy um in fact
00:26:23
they were made it very expensive lead by by local cabinet makers for instance
00:26:28
uh but leaving that aside i think what's really striking about the photographic
00:26:34
quality of these objects is how much space in the function like brands
00:26:39
like corporate brands and that's very strongly suggested in this image because of the shoes that
00:26:45
shire is wearing with these new balance logos on them which actually look a lot like the forms
00:26:50
in his own share and i think what you're saying in memphis is the absorption of a kind of
00:26:56
um commercial style into what had previously been a radical design
00:27:02
um projects and conversely the radical isolation of corporate style so what
00:27:10
could previously seen to be opposing ideas on the one hand commerce
00:27:15
and on the other hand some kind of design of one car that is now being fuse
00:27:20
it's something that i've been suggested by rock rubber and you're really nice got transcript las vegas
00:27:25
but talk about ten years actually be realising the work of memphis just memphis though
00:27:31
also in other industries other areas of design perhaps the most important one being pop music
00:27:36
and this is a shot of the section of the exhibition we devoted to the subject in your you see
00:27:41
figures like i'm laurie anderson there on the right david
00:27:44
byrne and then on the left of grace jones who um
00:27:50
uh sorry i'll get to christians and second but uh who is typical of the period
00:27:55
inner sort of mix and match sampling of
00:27:58
different kinds of um fashion styles and images
00:28:02
i just want to pause briefly and show you this a picture of a pair of turntables that we have
00:28:08
in the exhibition very different from uh from on eric's turntable because these are thieves
00:28:14
a sort of standard commercial a record players but they're very important
00:28:18
ones because they were owned by that hit pop musician grandmaster flash
00:28:22
who was one of the inventors of hip hop sampling of course
00:28:26
you would perform live on these um manipulated record with his hands
00:28:30
scratching each sampling other recordings and i think it's very interesting to consider
00:28:36
the way that hip hop appropriation of preexisting music is a
00:28:40
parallel to the preparation a preexisting materials and images in architecture
00:28:46
so just as charles moore uses las vegas the on classical uh ornaments possible columns
00:28:53
or just as troll changes the prefabricated raj here grandmaster flash is using preexisting
00:28:59
music which is a very interesting connection um button to get back to grace jones
00:29:04
here's the image that we use for the poster the kind of emblem of the exhibition
00:29:09
and uh this is about getting rather extraordinary design it does look very much like memphis design but it was
00:29:15
actually done earlier nineteen seventy eight so three years before
00:29:19
memphis is founded and it's a bit describe isn't maternity dress
00:29:25
um it as you can see it has a gigantic angular shaped in the middle
00:29:29
and that's the hide her pop from her pregnancy and it was warned by germs
00:29:35
her own baby shower to celebrate her upcoming birth which was held at four in the morning holiday club in new york
00:29:42
which is where you might expect questions the pro baby shower um and that the
00:29:46
ensemble was designed for her by oh john how good it was sort of over time
00:29:51
father of the child who was about to be born here and it's a i think a fantastic
00:29:57
example of post modern design input to the service of a
00:30:01
kind of celebrity culture and this extremely high impact again very photogenic
00:30:07
um creation of the almost super human being um one of the things that i think is
00:30:12
really interesting about grace jones is that everyone assumes that she's about six and a half feet tall
00:30:19
uh but actually she's only a little taller than i am which is to say about five foot eight um and
00:30:26
this costume you can see that are rough look of being assembled here
00:30:31
um is actually hollow from the back as you can see this exactly mirrors the
00:30:36
original construction that attraction for good standing there on the left with the white shoes
00:30:42
but this thing evaluating it as we're of rebuilding it and you
00:30:46
can see that what she did was simply hold on to the fan
00:30:50
put the hat on and stepped into this costume is that you were
00:30:54
stepping behind a podium like the one line behind the top ones that
00:30:58
and it creates the illusion which is absolutely enormous as you can
00:31:02
see it creates the illusion that she's almost like a piece of architecture
00:31:07
but it's all staged crap it's all fake it just a facade so just as venture in stock
00:31:12
around are very interested in the results of these
00:31:15
casinos in the idea of architectural style over substance
00:31:19
here you have another very different postmarked practitioner only a
00:31:23
few years later using the same principle but to present herself
00:31:26
as a as a celebrity ah it's closely parallel this other
00:31:31
projects reconnected is very interesting in its uh anticipation of photoshop
00:31:36
as i was saying a reference to the dumbest magazine a
00:31:39
few moments ago and this was also done by good for jones
00:31:44
it consists of a whole number of photographs than talking for which she then cut apart and then
00:31:50
cage together and and their products should create this image this image
00:31:55
of an impossible body and this um photograph was put on the cover
00:32:00
of whatever albums called island life a few years after he made
00:32:03
after he made it any shows are assuming this pose as our basque
00:32:08
that she could never have actually assumed in real life so again it's a kind of it's a piece of bakery
00:32:14
or a synthesis that creates an illusion of power that's not real
00:32:19
but obviously one that in jones case also refers to some quite um
00:32:24
provocative cultural materials so it deals with ideas of
00:32:28
the beauty and also primitive most of the black body
00:32:32
yeah well this is one of the black body the sexual as they should have the
00:32:35
female pop star and it almost rose those
00:32:37
stereotypes packet you those those stereotypes back interface one
00:32:43
i think what all that suggests is that the turn that
00:32:48
you see in matters and you see in someone like grace jones
00:32:51
is really from of quite outside or academic radical packed us
00:32:56
like you haven't learned from las vegas to something much more commercial
00:33:01
and
00:33:03
then sure it's got round themselves are an example of that so here
00:33:06
for examples of chair the design in the middle of the nineteen eighties
00:33:10
for now all the american furniture company and you can see that this has lots
00:33:15
of historical references in it was sort of chip and dale part shape of the back
00:33:20
uh the pattern which was taken off of of of terror curtains that along to
00:33:25
the grandmother of one of the people that worked in a butcher's got round office
00:33:30
and in fact it also refers to the whole tradition of architectural and design drawings
00:33:36
because the chair almost looks like it's made of paper looks like a flat
00:33:39
drawing that's been on for all the space something flat turned into something three dimensional
00:33:45
and in in this case i think that
00:33:48
the implicit or implied photogenic quality the camera
00:33:53
ready quality of the bel air chair is made very very literal by being so flat
00:33:59
so this is an object that operates almost entirely as image rather than as the functional thing
00:34:05
um and it also is a really good example of a kind of commercial turned
00:34:10
in post modern practised way from individual practitioners and forbes
00:34:16
branding and towards the phenomenon that we call design editing
00:34:20
in the exhibition what i mean by that is a company that hires on
00:34:24
architects and designers as celebrities and uses their name as a way of selling product
00:34:31
so here you have an all higher in on the very well known architects injuries got around here you have a lassie
00:34:37
it's uh the well well no talking metal work and watery form
00:34:42
hiring on all the rossi one of a number of more complex and they hired
00:34:46
to make these so called tea and coffee p. offices these very very luxurious object
00:34:52
uh holding ninety nine of each uh design ever made and
00:34:55
sold all we did very well the collectors or indeed to museums
00:34:59
this is an example of that because this was all directly to the v. n. a. when it was first manufactured
00:35:04
here you have a kind of closing up the loop that usually happens between designers and
00:35:09
museums usually goes out into the market becomes important in the museum acquires it in this case
00:35:15
the designer preamps that process and brings the object directly to the museum collection
00:35:21
well i just wanna close with discussion of one last designer
00:35:25
uh with you today um and he is also under mindy
00:35:30
uh he was the mastermind of the last the tea and coffee got a project
00:35:35
um and a service that you may just get on to this one and is also a the maker of
00:35:42
the um first very first objectively showing the exhibition and this brings us back to the early nineteen seven beans
00:35:49
so this is a project that uh it is really kind of ritualistic uh or ceremonial
00:35:57
a project again very reminiscent of an or work much more so than design object perhaps
00:36:03
and here what mandy did was to create this very
00:36:06
simple almost ideal form of a chair mounted on steps
00:36:13
bring it out to a stone quarry and pour gasoline all over it and light it on fire and then take a lot
00:36:20
of photographs of it and it it doesn't nineteen seventy four and
00:36:25
the image on the right was actually don't use binding d. as
00:36:30
magazine that he was editing at the time i
00:36:33
like single cost about the very important architectural magazine
00:36:38
yeah the reason we decided to start with this the image and make it first thing in the show
00:36:43
was that it shows i think a suggestion of post modernism as being you'll originally by
00:36:49
this idea of attack and destruction which is the subject i mentioned a few times already
00:36:56
but also the sense that something might rise from the ashes of this fire
00:37:00
like of the next of the mythical bird rises from its own funeral pyre
00:37:05
and it gives you the sense that pose monitors is something
00:37:08
like a kind of conflagration or fire burning out of control
00:37:13
so one doesn't know where it's going it's simply contains all of us lose energy you can say
00:37:19
well what happened with mindy after that is very interesting i hear you
00:37:23
see him presenting himself and that kind of capacity of the provocative or
00:37:28
so chris vine itself rather like the mannequin on that rather than as a protest march that i showed you earlier
00:37:34
um so you're displaying something like the one
00:37:37
thing we're this again provocative outsider often guard figure
00:37:42
and he um does lots of very interesting design projects that seem to exist on the
00:37:49
um interface not so much between art and design other
00:37:52
that i think is involved too but also between editing design
00:37:56
i think it's quite important that burning chair project wasn't better piece of work direction intended for magazine
00:38:03
hear what he's doing is essentially at a whole bunch of other designers work
00:38:07
and put them together into one set of um one set of furniture
00:38:12
to the project nichol infinite furniture or you will be lay vito in italian
00:38:18
yeah you can see that has this very just don't give a set of colliding forms ornaments
00:38:25
colour pink nice is thing was the overlays on some of the um some of the object
00:38:31
and of course it's completely hideous it's like the most likely for actually you can possibly imagine it's intentionally ugly
00:38:37
so he's doing this before man that's um when he wants this to be very adjustable he's not interested
00:38:44
in it becoming i suppose uh look like mentors would become sort of signature look at the designer decade
00:38:51
he's also oh operating in this the shopping and know that i've mentioned a couple of times so here
00:38:57
for example is the so called redesign of the chest of drawers that you did in the late nineteen seventies
00:39:03
taking this nineteen forties object and covering it with paints suggestive of the candidates the painting perhaps
00:39:09
taking a guy who'll be or in one corner so that looks like it to the sculpture and
00:39:16
essentially adding nothing it is known simply taking object
00:39:20
from the past and covering it with found one and
00:39:24
um it was a part is that he um engage in so
00:39:28
much that he actually produced this rather amazing thing called men didn't graph
00:39:33
and eating kraft we should like in drawing tool like french curve works tensile
00:39:39
but i give you all these motives that you could apply and any object
00:39:43
you wanted effectively turning any object in your life into them in the design
00:39:48
oh his most famous work from this period that was probably the priest chair
00:39:52
uh which was inspired by the work stops a lot another point to list painters
00:39:58
and here you see a couple of design drawings for the priest chair on
00:40:01
what he did was to scissor out cut out um actual uh photographs of
00:40:08
perhaps someone poke about syrup or perhaps from a counter not sure
00:40:13
into the shapes and when we went to make the actual chair itself
00:40:17
what he did was to get again reading a preexisting chair that was completely white
00:40:23
took a slide projector just like that one sitting over there and he
00:40:27
shot an image of the painting one to the service of the chair
00:40:31
and then just painted where all the dots of colour landed and that's how you you get the
00:40:37
the heart design proust i'll again great example postmodern
00:40:41
brick a large or combination of different reference points
00:40:45
so not only the point was paintings us rot but also broke
00:40:48
furniture with the scrolling forms and of course the modernist novelist marcel proust
00:40:53
who um lenses named as the time of the chair
00:40:56
you might say so we get this very editorial preface combining
00:41:00
things that already exist into an hold on what happens with mandy at the end of his career is very interesting
00:41:08
he's actually becomes as i already mentioned before the
00:41:11
kind of king or crown prince of the design editors
00:41:15
so he initiated that teen copying the arts is that with the lessee and he also makes
00:41:20
these ceramic collectibles these are not full scale
00:41:23
chairs but rather little trophy objects about this thing
00:41:27
and it reduces the not only in the original pattern but also in all of
00:41:31
these other colours so he's turned his own
00:41:34
designs into a kind of um server hitch
00:41:39
um charge me or trophy so something you couldn't
00:41:42
possibly take seriously so he sort of mocking himself here
00:41:46
um and i think it's it's the rendering of what had originally been something very well provocative
00:41:53
into something completely insubstantial and on challenging
00:41:57
and his acceptance of that anyway his gleeful embrace of that
00:42:02
tells you a lot i think about what happened post modernism from it's getting
00:42:06
to its hands so he begins with his burning chair ultimate signify or radicalism
00:42:12
uh although somewhat revolution light something on fire and ends with another chair were very different kinds
00:42:19
um where does pose markers and take us in the end well i think
00:42:23
that's very hard to say because one of the things that pose monitors it does
00:42:28
is to fracture or fragment the world of design into many many pieces
00:42:33
ah so that after post modernism we don't really have is of us anymore in fact we might not
00:42:38
be even able to speak of we anymore instead
00:42:42
what we have used different design culture's different or cultures
00:42:46
different architectural cultures cultures that all compete for attention in the same commercial landscape
00:42:52
very much like the landscape of signs that the jury and stop run showed us
00:42:57
um but i'll just close with one last thought for you which is that a figure like i way way
00:43:02
who is perhaps today's most famous contemporary artist partly because he's a dissident and
00:43:08
working exactly not radical tradition that was being are explored by men genie and others
00:43:14
in italy in the nineteen seventies but he's not want that to a completely different geography
00:43:19
and so he emerges really in the early nineteen nineties
00:43:22
making works like this one where he simply uh the drops
00:43:27
extremely valuable han dynasty aren't so a two thousand year old ceramic object
00:43:32
that really deserves to be an easy and you simply let's
00:43:35
it's latch on the ground his feet or um my last slide
00:43:40
another a similar projects where he took a base whole series of these ancient
00:43:46
romans and then covered them with coca cola logo that he painted on my hands
00:43:51
and i think this is particularly interesting in a kind of nice way to leave
00:43:55
you because it's it just the way that corporate language in corporate identity enters into the
00:44:03
literally enters into the body of the postman objects by the early nineteen nineties so next was it
00:44:09
understanding of the way that or try this relates to other structures of value creation
00:44:16
and also i'll act of vandalism much more shocking in
00:44:20
fact them entities burning chair because of course medieval that
00:44:24
share themselves and so it was his white you might say to go and burn it and take a photograph
00:44:29
what i way way is done is to season object to take an object
00:44:34
that everybody considers valuable and in a way to ruin it
00:44:37
work to clean it perhaps it only has his own or work
00:44:41
so that you could no longer understand it adds up to your authentic artifact
00:44:47
well a couple of interesting details about this might expand your reading of the work
00:44:53
one is that it's quite possible that the ceramic or itself is a fake
00:44:57
because he thought it on the street market in beijing and of course the beijing antiques market or notorious
00:45:04
for having lots of fakes and so one thing that he might be planning on here
00:45:08
is your uncertainty as to the value of this object to begin with so that's very interesting
00:45:14
but then the other thing that i think crucial to the meeting of the art work is that i way way new
00:45:20
already very early in his career that by taking in ancient
00:45:24
objects with a lot of valuable sort of museum value might say
00:45:29
um and displacing in this manner pickings coca cola logo on
00:45:34
it it was not only the storing it in some sense
00:45:37
but he was also actually adding value to it by turning it into a piece of contemporary art
00:45:43
and i can certainly tell you haven't seen insurance only for those objects because we had the power
00:45:48
for the show that this is work maybe many
00:45:51
multiples many many times more what and when the dorms
00:45:56
what then took chinese han dynasty or it would be worth and so
00:46:00
here you have one object data destruction that is also an actor qualification
00:46:07
but the struck the strong evaluate deconstruction of value but also the creation of value
00:46:13
and i think in a way that is the story of post modernism in
00:46:17
a nut shell story postmarked is and you know kind of condensed brief form
00:46:23
it that gives with one hand takes with your from the other end results i think in a state of
00:46:30
ironic high we where or confusion about what we actually think about
00:46:35
these objects that were making it's very similar to the kind of
00:46:39
stimulated hyperactive confusion that venture it's got ground
00:46:44
felt when they drove down the um stripped las
00:46:48
vegas uh as denise got brown said at the time we were jolted out of our aesthetic skins
00:46:54
souls lectures by this electrical environment they were seen and they didn't know what to make of it then
00:47:01
and perhaps we don't know what to make of an object like this ourselves or
00:47:04
indeed post modernism as a whole but perhaps in that open ended and beat us
00:47:10
complex state of enthusiasm excitement is where post modernism left us for better or worse
Conference Program
Vernissage de l'exposition Las Vegas Studio
Sept. 21, 2011 · 6:09 p.m.
Quand l'architecture et le cinéma transforment les territoires délaissés
Sept. 22, 2011 · 6:36 p.m.
PechaKucha 'Lumière
Sept. 24, 2011 · 8:22 p.m.
Las Vegas, Film, and the Mobilized Gaze
Oct. 19, 2011 · 6:33 p.m.
Metaphors We Live In
Oct. 26, 2011 · 6:33 p.m.
Craftsmanship
Nov. 8, 2011 · 6:34 p.m.
L'épaisseur des lignes
Nov. 9, 2011 · 6:32 p.m.
La controverse Learning from Las Vegas
Nov. 16, 2011 · 6:46 p.m.
Dans le paysage urbain
Nov. 22, 2011 · 6:38 p.m.
An Aggregate Body
Nov. 23, 2011 · 6:46 p.m.
Curating Postmodernism
Nov. 30, 2011 · 6:41 p.m.
Pièces à conviction – Une périphérie prend forme
Feb. 22, 2012 · 6:05 p.m.
Pechakucha 20x20
Feb. 23, 2012 · 7:03 p.m.
Espace, Lumière, Structure. 7 Concepts
Feb. 28, 2012 · 6:32 p.m.
Suburbia does not exist. Strategies for dense city growth
March 14, 2012 · 6:38 p.m.
CONSTRUCTIVE REACTIONS. The Architecture of Kurtogpi
March 27, 2012 · 6:32 p.m.
Les coulisses de Malley
March 28, 2012 · 6:38 p.m.
Débat critique - Projets de première année
April 3, 2012 · 5:15 p.m.
Ensamble studio
April 16, 2012 · 6:36 p.m.
Le travail d'ingénieur et le projet de modernité
April 18, 2012 · 6:35 p.m.
RUR: PROJECTS
April 24, 2012 · 6:20 p.m.
Conférence du cycle 'Pièces à conviction
May 8, 2012 · 6:34 p.m.
260 views
Paysages intérieurs
May 15, 2012 · 6:35 p.m.
Yona Friedman, Genesis of a vision
Sept. 19, 2012 · 6:13 p.m.
Working in Mumbai
Oct. 4, 2012 · 6:40 p.m.
Yona Friedman and the Gost of Utopia
Oct. 10, 2012 · 6:13 p.m.
Global Holcim Awards 2012 Gold
Oct. 12, 2012 · 6:06 p.m.
Just what is it that makes Friedman so appealing ? hier et aujourd'hui
Oct. 17, 2012 · 6:07 p.m.
Pour une histoire culturelle de la construction
Nov. 12, 2012 · 6:35 p.m.
Partage d'expérience
Nov. 21, 2012 · 2:17 p.m.
Hall Of Mirrors
Feb. 20, 2013 · 6:09 p.m.
Happy Street
March 13, 2013 · 6:29 p.m.
Pier Luigi Nervi : l'architecture comme défi
April 17, 2013 · 6:09 p.m.
Pier-Luigi Nervi, entre ingénierie et architecture, chantier et images: Part 1
April 24, 2013 · 6:34 p.m.
110 views
Pier-Luigi Nervi, entre ingénierie et architecture, chantier et images : Part 2
April 24, 2013 · 7:22 p.m.
Présentation de Riccardo Morandi
May 1, 2013 · 6:30 p.m.
Présentation des conférenciers, MM. Aurelio Muttoni & Mario Alberto Chiorino
May 8, 2013 · 6:31 p.m.
Présentation de Robert Maillart
May 8, 2013 · 6:33 p.m.
131 views
A dispute of the ephemeral and permanent in architecture
May 21, 2013 · 12:04 p.m.
Peter Cook
May 27, 2013 · 6:12 p.m.
Radical Pedagogy: a collaborative projec
Oct. 29, 2013 · 6:32 p.m.
L'exploration du possible
Nov. 26, 2013 · 6:39 p.m.
Power of Place
Dec. 6, 2013 · 6:06 p.m.
Recommended talks
La Suisse face à l'IA
Laurent Alexandre, Chirurgien, spécialiste des NBIC, e-santé et bioéthique, auteur de "La mort de la mort" et "La guerre des intelligences", fondateur de Doctissimo
March 15, 2018 · 5:41 p.m.
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