There are monsters and freaks, fantastical creatures, burlesque dancers in Mata Hari-like costumes and robotic futuristic ladies at Lasvit's "Monster Cabaret" show launched during Milan Design Week at the recently restored venue of the Teatro Gerolamo (until 22nd April).
The idea was simple - presenting a new and very original collection of pieces full of colours and bizarre shapes by a group of versatile well-respected designers who reinterpreted the monster theme - and doing so via a fun and surreal show.
Over one hundred Neverending Glory chandeliers by Plecháč & Henry Wielgus Jan shine on the stage, providing a very original background story for the performers.
Lasvit's art director Maxim Velčovský's "The Independant", a totemic structure, comprising 111 televisions strapped to its body to broadcast "its master's voice", primordially rises instead from the middle of the auditorium, hinting at mind control via digital images.
A pack of glass monsters, some small, others bigger and including glassware and lighting collections, look down from the third floor of this theatre originally built for puppet shows.
There are no monstrosities, but extremely ironic, joyful and crazy pieces, all of them created in glass in collaboration with the best Bohemian artisans, with the hope of striking a link between glass as an eternal material and monsters as timeless and immortal presences.
The best thing about the pieces on display is their diversity: there is a scarily irresistible design fable behind the "Who's Looking At You" mirror by Maurizio Galante and Tal Lacman.
The piece features 101 pink egg-shaped eyes and green scales, but, though scary, the monster remains a mirror revealing the face of the person reflecting in it, making the onlookers feel monstrous, and at the same time encouraging them to accept the monster within each and everyone of us.
Tales of heroes and monsters are told by the vintage piece "Saint George and the Dragon", created in 1925 by Jaroslav Brychta, while a malicious figure from Swiss fairy tales that can drive people mad or make them passionate with an evil eye upon his forehead inspired Raja Schwahn-Reichmann the piece entitled "Dancing dog", a wooden dog with a crystal eye and pieces of colourful glass scattered at its feet.
Playfulness prevails in Flix and Flex, the Golem evoking monsters by designers Fernando and Humberto Campana. They seem to have a vaguely human shape, but actually came down from space as proved by their (glass) skin sculpted in the shape of chips and technologically advanced elements.
There is instead a dichotomy behind Moritz Waldemeyer's Mori Monsters and Maarten Baas's BHSD collection - the pieces look rather cute for what regards their shape, but they may be hiding something sinister inside them.
Waldemeyer's designs - inspired by two monsters originating in Persian mythology, the Ghoul, a grave-digging spirit which devours the dead, and Jen, an evil spirit who takes possession of people's bodies and inhabits them - come in transparent glass, but LED lights inside them summon up the monster within.
Maarten Baas's monsters are instead named like scientific discoveries in a laboratory (BHSD-001, BHSD-002, BHSD-003...) and, though they look cartoonish with their small feet, they do have extremely sharp and scary teeth.
While these are fantasy monsters, Czech Maxim Velčovský opted instead to rediscover and reinterpret a monster from his childhood when he lived in Prague in Lenin Street, located nearby Lenin Metro Station, and learned about Lenin at school and even read fairytales about the Soviet leader. His glass Lenin may look at first glance like an ordinary statue of the leader, but, close up, the statue reveals extremely long and disproportioned left limbs.
Stanislav Müller's geometric and robotic figures are instead lifted from Japanese folklore, but geometry also appears in Alessandro Mendini's rhombic vases Rombo 1 and 2, in five different combinations of colours and with a face that has lot its humanity to become rigidly robotic.
There are also more subtle interpretations of monsters such as the minimalist ones by Oki Sato, chief designer of Nendo, that are based on the invisible and elusive yōkai spirits from Japanese folklore. The designer in this case suggests us there are four different "somethings" under a glass sheet - something small, something long, something jagged and something big - but we can't actually see what the monsters look like, we can only perceive their presence by the shape they trace under the glass.
There is instead a kind of crazy irony in Fabio Novembre's Pinocchio-meets-Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian man "Toyboy", a glass man with five limbs that actually hint at the world of sex toys.
Apart from being fun, this unique glass artwork collection featuring 16 designers actually reflects the monstrosity of our times: interviewed about their personal monsters for the advertising materials accompanying the event, the designers involved mentioned modern horrors like wars, racism, intolerance, violence, narrow-mindedness, greed, fascism and stupidity.
But is it possible to talk about such serious issues with a cabaret show and a design display and actually manage to reach out to visitors? Yes, it is.
Lasvit received the final confirmation that this format worked pretty well yesterday when its "Monster Cabaret" won the coveted wooden horse of the prestigious Milano Design Award for its installation that, combining exclusive glass designs and dancers from Prague burlesque, interpreted at its best the nature of interior design offering a future conceptual vision for this discipline. You'd better join the design freaks while they're in town then.
Is it a long tube or some sort of flexible pipe? That's probably the main question some of the visitors of the SaloneSatellite at Milan Design Week will be wondering when seeing Leila Boukhalfa's rope.
The concept behind this piece was actually developed last year by Ief Spincemaille, but the artist felt his 65-metre long and 30-cm thick rope could have a new and different life when activated by different designers.
Costume and set designer Boukhalfa is the first of three creative minds Spincemaille chose to play with the rope: Boukhalfa gave a functional spin to the Rope turning it into an object for sitting and lying on or playing with.
"Rope" is just one of the protagonists of the showcase organised by Regional Belgian institutions Flanders DC (formerly Design Flanders), MAD Brussels and Wallonie-Bruxelles Design Mode (WBDM).
This year the three institutions decided not to hold a Belgium Is Design exhibition in Milan's city centre as usual, but to focus on events at the SaloneSatellite and at the Fuorisalone.
Quite a few of the pieces on display at the SaloneSatellite are characterised by a playful mood: "Table Hulot" by Gewoon David (Just David), the alter ego of David Degreef, is a surrealist take on the classic table in which the conventional flat surface has been ironically turned into a dish from which you can eat. Degreef used to be a primary school teacher and you can definitely spot a childlike gaiety in this "dish with legs", as the designer describes it on his site.
Amorce Studio's minimalist modular shelf "Rack" and their "Amar" felt stool are the tangible proof that simplicity is often the best choice.
"Rack" can indeed be easily assembled and disassambled with just one gesture; "Amar" looks instead like a flat grey felt rug, but, once you pull the bright yellow strings around it, you obtain a solid star-shaped structure that forms a stool vaguely reminiscent of the Italian Christmas cake called "pandoro".
Laurent Verly's multifunctional, adaptive dÖt wall hanging system has a graphic quality to it, while PaulinePlusLuis (Pauline Capdo and Luis Bellenger) came up with a ceiling lamp called "Grenadine" that seems inspired by the pleating techniques behind origami.
Their floor lamp "Luciole" is instead vaguely reminiscent of Bruno Munari's "Concavo-Convesso" installation as the design is formed by two parts, a floor light and a coloured metal net suspended above the lamp via an almost invisible thread.
Avant-garde fans will enjoy the Fuorisalone display supported by MAD Brussels: Studio Plastique's designs are based on minimalist forms, while Nele Verbeke and Linde Freya Tangelder of Collectif Brut, a new collective of six emerging Belgian designers focusing on collaborative projects, create objects characterised by an architectural, sculptural and emotional potential.
Pierre-Emmanuel Vandeputte's chairs and table combine industrial design with craftsmanship and look the uncanny clash between a camping furniture set and folding medical beds.
There is one critique to move to the organisers as this time the two main displays seemed less rich compared to the ones presented in the last few years. Besides, there was also less variety and not many designers producing textile-based pieces. Still, "Made in Belgium" fans can check out the Design Map available on the Belgium Is Design site and discover up and coming or established creative minds presenting their work in other locations all over Milan during the next few days.
Creative minds travel to Milan Design Week not just to showcase their products, but also to get inspired or discover new collaborators for innovative projects. Among them there is also Belgian visual artist Alexia de Ville.
After her education in Fine Arts and a few years spent in London developing patterns for clothes and accessories, Alexia launched in 2014 a wallpaper company.
Tenue de Ville is not your average wallpaper brand, though, since Alexia has a Haute Couture approach to it: she mainly designs by hand her patterns, textures and motifs in her Brussels-based workshop and gets the products manufactured in a Belgian factory that respects the highest sustainability standards.
Her latest collection of wallpapers, entitled "Saudade", is a dream of abstractions inspired by childhood memories and by Alexia's travels to the East and to Japan in particular.
Colorful spray-can landscapes are juxtaposed to marbled textures and mineral effects; Japanese graphics and Art Deco nuances combine together, while metallic shades shine through splashes of soft pinks, bluish greens and bright tones.
Alexia's rhythms are more similar to an artist's or a Haute Couture atelier's: she produces one collection a year, but her workshop is a laboratory of ideas.
She develops indeed patterns also for fashion designers and works with other creative minds: her latest collaboration is the lookbook for the "Saudade" collection, shot by fashion photographer Laetitia Bica who added to the wallpapers a surrealist touch.
What prompted you to launch Tenue de Ville? Alexia de Ville: I have an artistic background and studied Fine Arts in school. Then I went to London to study for a year and began doing patterns by hand. I started the brand applying my graphics onto T-shirts and dresses. "Tenue de Ville" in French indicates a sort of casual-smart dress code and that mood informed my designs. I did that for about four years and then I extended my patterns also to stationery, wallpapers and fabrics for interior design. A wallpaper printing factory owner spotted me and asked me if I wanted to start a brand with him and that's how I refocused on wallpapers.
How does the creative process behind the wallpapers work for you? Alexia de Ville: I love to use my artistic background, so I usually start from drawing with felts-tips, coloured pencils and inks. Besides, I take a lot of images and photographs, and I also collect images through Pinterest. I love to travel and, when I do it, I take a lot of pictures and put them all together in moodboards to create a kind of atmosphere for a collection. At the same time I do a lot of research with painting, watercolour, drawing, collages and all sorts of printing techniques. Then I start scanning my work as of course you have to pass through the digital approach to create the repeated patterns. I really like the rhythm of this process and I think this is what defines my brand as well as I always try to give an artistic gesture to the wallpapers.
Where does the Japanese inspiration for your new collection, entitled "Saudade", come from? Alexia de Ville: I think there has always been a kind of Japanese influence in my collection, but this time it is more clear because we used the Shibori techniques for some of the wallpapers. Two years ago in Summer we did a lot of Shibori experiments and I reused some of them in this collection; I also included a copyright free pattern from a kimono and a cherry blossom tree, even though that has a connection with paintings by Van Gogh and shows how Japan always influenced central Europe. Last but not least, I went to Japan two years ago, so I took a lot of pictures. Maybe that's another reason why this influence can be seen so clearly in the new collection!
There is a lot of talk in design at the moment about sustainability, and your products are manufactured following eco-friendly principles, can you tell us more about this aspect of your production? Alexia de Ville: We produce in Belgium in a factory that has been going for 50 years. Even though this is an industrial space with big machines that can manufacture hundreds of metres of paper, they do have an artisanal approach. For example, you always have two people there who are colourists, so, if we say we want a little bit more of blue, they add a spoon of blue in the paint and so on. This is a very interesting aspect of the production that I didn't know at all as I came from a Fine Art background and I find this really intriguing. We also use a FSC certified paper to ensure sustainable forest management, so all the trees cut to make our products are then replanted; besides, all the inks we use are water-based and they are not as polluting as other dyes.
Going back to the more artistic aspects of your work, how did the collaboration with Laetitia Bica happen? Alexia de Ville: I noticed Laetitia's work in Milan last year. There was an exhibition of Belgian designers and I went to the opening. The postcards advertising each Belgian artist were really cool: they showed a portrait by Laetitia of the designer with the object they had created, but it was well done and the object was the real protagonist. I thought it was a very clever way to present the work and I kept the postcards. When it came to finding a photographer for my new collection, I immediately thought about Laetitia. She is not only a photographer but an artistic director. She really understood that I wanted to have a collaboration with her and I wanted to show my product, while giving her some space to show her interpretation of my work. We already know we will collaborate together for the next collection.
So far you have worked with artists and interior design companies, but your prints and patterns could adapt to garments as well: would you ever work with a fashion house? Alexia de Ville: We have sold two patterns to the girls behind Belgian brand Wavelength. They are actually architects and they produce one small collection of clothes a year collaborating with a pattern designer or an artist. As I said I love the creative process behind my work, so seeing my patterns applied to textiles is always exciting. At the moment we are focusing on wallpapers, but we are expanding a bit and we started an e-shop where we sell limited edition stationery, posters and cushions.
Is this the first time you go to Milan Design Week and what do you expect from it? Alexia de Ville: We went last year as well and I was very impressed. Everywhere I go I feel like I'm seeing the same objects and type of sets and settings, but Milan Design Week is different. Maybe it is because they have all those wonderful locations and palazzos, but the way they install things is modern and contemporary and I think the event is the best I have ever seen when it comes to design and it is definitely not to be missed.
Image credits for this post
Photography Laetitia Bica / Courtesy of Tenue de Ville
Most events on schedule during Milan Design Week naturally focus on fields such as architecture and interior decor (with the odd fashion or technology twist), but this year there seems to be space also for pondering about social issues.
Born in Tbilisi, but living and working in Berlin, Chachkhiani studied Mathematics and Informatics at the local Technical University, before turning to Fine Arts at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
The first installation for la Rinascente - "Under The Midday Sun" (until 22nd April) - occupies the eight windows overlooking Piazza Duomo. The windows feature prototypes of unfinished sculptures, representing fragmented figures of a cotton picker, a horse and a tiger.
The pale blue figures contrast with the dead bushes and trees surrounding them and seem to be caught up in a wind storm threatening to sweep them away.
This is actually a strong metaphor behind the fragmented figures: while the installation looks back at history and at cotton pickers who had very low wages, it also focuses on our modern times and to the fact that, while certain manual jobs may be disappearing, even in modern times we do have poorly paid jobs that are crushing people's minds and souls, radically transforming or even destroying them, like a strong wind can alter a landscape.
Chachkhiani's windows have therefore a double nature, as they look back at history while reshifting the discourse to some of the key issues of our society, making in this way a contemporary statement about unemployment and workers being paid less than the minimum wage.
The project also assumes a more radical meaning since it is displayed in the windows of a department store, so a temple of capitalism, even though la Rinascente during Milan Design Week mainly uses the windows as art displays and does not employ the trendy installations inside them as background decor to sell products.
The installation is accompanied by a film, "Cotton Candy", the second part of this commission by la Rinascente to Chachkhiani.
The film is an intimate and emotional story of a grandmother who takes stock of her life while watching a circus performance with her granddaughter and finally manages to have an internal dialogue with herself that revolves around the themes of melancholy, grief and sadness.
The ending remains open, but more people will get a chance to find their own interpretation for the film conclusion in the next few months: Vajiko Chachkhiani's projects for la Rinascente will indeed leave Milan after the local design week to be displayed in international museums of contemporary art.
Last year Ron Gilad was appointed creative director at Danese and since then he has created for the Italian design company minimalist pieces based on simplicity of forms and expression.
Though modern and hinting at technology, Gilad's functional pieces still have links with Danese's past and in particular with the designs developed for the company founded in 1957 by Bruno Danese and Jacqueline Vodoz by creative minds such as Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari and Franco Meneguzzo.
Gilad does not like standing still, though, and has a passion for transformations and the possibility of experimenting with dichotomies such as craftsmanship Vs industry and human beings Vs technology.
To coincide with Milan Design Week, Gilad has therefore launched a collaborative project presented at Villa Danese, the 1800s mansion and company headquarters located in Via Canova 34, Milan.
The designer invited Michele De Lucchi and Richard Hutten to add their touch to his pieces, injecting a quirky playful vitality and a special rhythm in their primitive geometrical precision, precarious balance and minimalist fragile forms.
Moving between industry and visual experimentation, mass production and small-scale fabrication, the designers created versatile products such as vases, fruit and decorative bowls and candle holders that can easily become the focal point in a room while engaging in a dialogue with any kind of decor, from modern to classical.
Among this year's new pieces there is also a lamp (Ina 2007) designed by Carlotta de Bevilacqua that employs light as an instrument, performing a function and radiating personality.
Through these collaborations Gilad hopes Danese will become a sort of research laboratory producing commercial pieces while preserving its role of experimental ground for creative minds. Hopefully Gilad will take things further in his next collaborations in future by picking creative minds from other disciplines, including fashion, textile design and photography. It would indeed be intriguing to see what kind of results he would get by opening the doors of the Danese workshop to professionals from other fields.
As you walk into the spaces dedicated to the exhibition "Atelier Mendini. Le Architetture" (Atelier Mendini. The Architectures”; until 6th May) at Milan's La Triennale, the first instinct is looking around to spot other visitors.
You know indeed that, in case nobody was around, you would yield to the temptation of starting to play with the colourful wooden constructions on display and dream about miniature adventures.
The most visionary minds would even push things further and wonder if, once disassambled, cut into smaller pieces and reassembled, the geometrical forms in front of them could be reinvented as avant-garde architectural pieces of jewellery.
These reactions are somehow perfectly understandable as the architectures created by brothers Alessandro and Francesco Mendini quite often look like toys, colourful pieces capable of putting a smile on people's faces or fill them with wonder.
La Triennale is currently celebrating the brothers via the "Atelier Mendini" exhibition that coincides with Milan Design Week. Yet the event is not just a way to pay homage to the brothers but the the entire team behind their atelier and to their historical partner, Abet Laminati.
The Mendini brothers have indeed been working with the iconic Bra-based company for 50 years, since Alessandro was part of the Alchimia group.
The collaboration focused on interior design pieces and architectural projects as well: decade after decade Abet turned into reality the Mendini brothers' visions and the principles explained in the 1984 Alchimia Manifesto.
Architectures rules supreme in the exhibition at La Triennale: 26 wooden models are on display on tables covered in Abet Laminati surfaces, accompanied by drawings, photographs and videos.
Among the most famous architectures there is a model showing the restyling of the Groninger Museum: Atelier Mendini came up with the concept and the project, but Michele De Lucchi, Philippe Starck, Coop Himmelb(l)au and artist Frank Stella contributed to the work.
The Mendini brothers' glossary informs the architectural language of the museum with its golden tower and patterns evoking the iconic pointillist "Proust" chair.
The starting point for all these architectures is very simple: the brothers always move from the immediate needs that the project they are working on should fulfil, and combine them with a precise geometrical and mathematical vocabulary. Then, as soon as they can, they put an arty spin on the project, letting their imagination run wild, but combining equal doses of function and imagination.
Every design or architecture is a complex adventure but the brothers are not scared to embark on such a journey as they are helped by all the members of their team working together in the Atelier Mendini, located in via Sannio, in the southern part of Milan.
There are quite a few examples of the Mendinis' architectures on display, among them there's also the model for the Bruno Bianchi Swimming Centre in Trieste, the Milan Triennale foreign branch in Incheon, South Korea, and the iconic Puppet Theatre in the Gardens of Milan's Triennale. All of them are characterised by bright colours that contribute to introduce a great degree of dynamism to the structures.
Alessandro Mendini has always denied hierarchical orders and believed there are no distinctions and boundaries between different disciplines such as visual and performing arts, architecture and science.
This point is reflected in the models, drawings and miniatures on display at La Triennale, if you didn't know they were representations of actual buildings, you could indeed easily take them for works of art, illustrations of fantastic worlds and colourful arty sketches.
"Atelier Mendini" is not a retrospective but a chapter in a story that is still being written and that will hopefully inspire younger generations of visitors. As for Abet Laminati, maybe the time has come for them to branch out into other disciplines and do a caspule collection of garments or accessories such as bags or jewellery inspired by their most famous laminated surfaces like the new one designed for this exhibition by the Mendini Atelier (the Op Art-evoking "Merletto", lace). Somehow you know that it would be a hit.
Image credits for this post
1 - 5, 8 and 10 "Atelier Mendini. The Architectures", La Triennale, Milan, Italy, ph. Alessandro Arcidiacono.
6 and 7 Groninger Museum. Groningen, The Netherlands, 1989-1994 Alessandro Mendini, Francesco Mendini with Alchimia - Alessandro Guerriero, Giorgio Gregori, Bruno Gregory and with Alex Mocika, Gerda Vossaert, Pietro Gaeta for the interiors. Invited architects: Michele De Lucchi with G. Koster, F. Laviani (interior of the pavilion of Archaeology and Regional History), Philippe Starck with A. Geertjes (interior of the pavilion of Decorative Arts), Frank Stella (unbuilt design for the pavilion of the Arts 1500-1950), Coop -Himmelb(l)au (pavilion of the Arts 1500-1950); lighting design, Piero Castiglioni; colour design, Peter Struychen; construction director, Team 4; structural engineering, Otto Wassenaar - Ingenieursbureau Wassenaar, Haarlem.
9. Triennale di Milano. Incheon, South Korea, 2009. Alessandro Mendini, Francesco Mendini with Seok Chul Kim - Archiban and with Andrea Balzari, Young Hee Cha, Bruno Gregory, Giovanna Molteni, Emanuela Morra. Triennale di Milano headquarters, currently in use as offices and headquarters of a Korean television broadcaster. Abet Laminati.
11. Teatro dei Burattini. Giardino della Triennale, Milan, Italy, 2015. Alessandro Mendini, Francesco Mendini with Alex Mocika, Giovanna Molteni. Open-air puppet theatre for children in the Triennale gardens. Abet Laminati.
12 - 13. Alessandro and Francesco Mendini in their atelier.
14. Alessandro and Francesco Mendini, ph. Andrés Otero.
15. Merletto (Lace), 2018. Alessandro Mendini, Francesco Mendini with Giovanna Molteni. HPL laminate, digital print. Abet Laminati.
Italian architecture and design magazine Domus is currently directed by Michele De Lucchi, but it was founded 90 years ago by Gio Ponti and Giovanni Semeria.
Ponti directed it until the early '40s and then again from 1948 to August 1979 (he died two months later); Alessandro Mendini followed him as editor of the magazine.
To coincide with Milan Design Week (17th - 22nd April), the Galleria Carla Sozzani is dedicating to the architect and designer a special exhibition.
"Domus 90. Gio Ponti" (opening tomorrow until 6th May) celebrates the 90th anniversary of the publication through 50 years of Ponti's work, archival materials such as magazine covers, photographs and a series of letters and notes to his friends that Ponti used to draw and illustrate by hand.
Born in Milan in 1891, Giovanni Ponti, graduated in architecture in 1921; he opened his own architectural studio, but soon started nurturing a strong interest for art and in particular painting and the power of craftsmanship.
Presented at the Biennale of the Decorative Arts in Monza, Ponti's pieces for Ginori were often featured on international magazines and eventually won him in 1925 the Grand Prix at the Parisian Exposition des Arts Décoratifs.
When he began directing Domus, Ponti's key starting point was the house, conceived in the late '30s as a locus in transition towards the modern era.
According to him art, architecture and design had to work together in this environment to guarantee the people living inside it not just a comfortable living space, but a genuine inspiration.
When Ponti went back to directing Domus after the Second World War he shifted his attention on the changes society had gone through, but his vision still mirrored the interests he had in different disciplines.
One section of this compact exhibition is dedicated to the covers that characterised Domus between 1939 and 1940: they seem extremely colourful for those historically dark times; the covers for the May and June 1940 issues feature the colours of the Italian flag, but they are ominously employed to mark the Italian entry into the war.
After the conflict Ponti worked on industrial buildings and offices including the new headquarter for Pirelli designed in 1950 (and completed in 1961) with architects Antonio Fornaroli, Alberto Rosselli, Giuseppe Valtolina and Egidio Dell’Orto and engineers Arturo Danusso and Pier Luigi Nervi.
A decade later he designed the Concattedrale Gran Madre di Dio in Taranto one of his last large scale projects, characterised by diamond-shaped windows that seem to frame sections of the sky (these geometrical features were replicated by Ponti in his ceramic designs and pieces of furniture as well).
In the meantime Ponti kept on working on Domus: under his direction the magazine often published long features about the work of Italian designers exhibited at key events at Milan's Triennale, but the best thing about his tenure was that Ponti had an all-encompassing approach that meant he was equally interested in architecture and in the decorative arts.
Ceramic remained one of his favourite materials even though, after his work with Ginori, he applied his skills and passion for geometries not just to interior design pieces but to tiles as well.
At the same time he also produced designs linked with the fashion realm: among the displays at the exhibition fashion fans can discover Domus covers inspired by accessories such as gloves, but also his textile design called "the Mediterranean Law".
The fabric, showcased next to a rare design by Ponti, a Visetta sewing machine from 1949, embodied his thoughts about conceiving the Mediterranean area as a rich and modern inspiration for Italy (Ponti developed the Mediterranean theme from his passion for Bernard Rudofsky).
The exhibition is complemented by the work of photographer Giorgio Casali (1913-1995) who contributed for 30 years to Domus with his black and white or colour images showing architectural details, furniture and interior decor.
Given the limited gallery spaces and materials included, "Domus 90. Gio Ponti" should be conceived as a brief introduction to the work of the Italian architect and designer, but it could also be read as an intriguing visual summary of Italian graphic design between the '30s and '40s. Look at some of the early Domus covers on display and you will discover a sort of rough and simple beauty that is totally missing from the perfect, digital and airbrushed covers of modern architecture, fashion and design publications. Decades may have gone, but, through them, Ponti the polymath still seems to be reaching out to all the creative minds willing to listen to him.
Fashion design students are usually introduced to the history of fashion, but first and foremost to its very foundations via the principles and norms that regulate the structure of a garment. Most designs are based on classic pattern cutting methods, but there are critics who state these systems could be considered as obsolete as they are based on a quantified approximation of the human body, which means that problems and inconsistencies may arise between the existing models and body dynamics.
Swedish designer Rickard Lindqvist is among such critics: originally trained as a men's tailor, Lindqvist completed his studies with a PhD in fashion at the Swedish School of Textiles. A designer and researcher, he has also worked as a consultant for Nudie Jeans and Vivienne Westwood before he started looking for an alternative method to classical pattern making.
Lindqvist eventually came up with a system that he calls "Kinetic Method" and that is based on an approximation of the body visualized through balance lines as well as key biomechanical points.
According to this method, garment construction starts from the structure of the body and the material qualities of the fabric and the model is developed through concrete experiments using the cutting and modeling of fabrics on living models. In this way Lindqvist suggests alternative solutions to improve the functionality of the garments that protect our bodies.
Lindqvist co-founded with Jimmy Herdberg the Swedish design studio Atacac that is developing the technique further and creating experimental patterns. The two creatives also came up with an alternative price system for their garments: the pieces can be digitally visualised and sold online before they are produced, they are therefore priced for sale before they are manufactured according to an algorithm similar to that used for flight tickets with dynamic pricing, that means a lower price before the item is produced, a "normal" price when the item is stocked and an increased price when the goods are about to run out of stock.
The Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria, Spain, is currently offering a two day course (16 hours) explaining Lindqvist's kinetic patterns in May (you can read more about it here). The course is divided in three section, offering participants an introduction to kinetic methods, a practical demonstration and a focus on the basic principles to develop the key points to design legs, shoulders and arms.
The course hopes to encourage and expand the vision and ability of the participants, allowing them to acquire new resources and skills.
These free kinetic patterns allow users to make a series of garments such as jackets, coats and trousers: among the designs on offer there is also the Pod driver jacket, originally designed for the drivers of Bzzt pod taxi, a firm operating a kind of electrical tuck-tuck service in Stockholm, and featuring special pockets ideal to carry objects when driving the pod and wearing at the same time a safety belt.
Enjoy experimenting with the free patterns and don't forget to reward Atacac by sharing them with your friends (as requested by Lindqvist and Herdberg themselves on the site).
There is a terrific dichotomy in the photographs of dancers taken by George Platt Lynes (American Ballet Theater's official photographer from 1934) between the '30s and the '40s. Maria Tallchief is portrayed as she exercises, her outstretched legs at a right angle, while ballerinas Mary Ellen Moylan and Diana Adams stylishly pose in their tutus in stark sets. Though the images have a modernist flair about them, they still look conventional.
Lynes' images of naked or scantily dressed male performers Fred Danieli, Nicholas Magallanes and Ralph McWilliams are instead erotically charged: in these private works the young men look like perfect marble statues or languidly pose for the camera.
You could easily read these images from different points of view, they do tell indeed a narrative that intertwines the history of dance with wider issues like gender, sexuality, homosexual erotics and the power of the body.
The 16 silver gelatine prints by George Platt Lynes are part of Nick Mauss' exhibition "Transmissions", currently on at the Whitney Museum of American Art (until May 14th).
Mauss acted as curator, artist, choreographer, scholar and writer for this event that focuses on the relationship between American modernist ballet and the avant-garde in New York from the 1930s to the '50s.
Mauss selected photographs, paintings, sketches, drawings, illustrations and sculptures from the Whitney Museum archives and from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library, where he studied photographs and slides that highlighted the connections between dance and art history.
Mauss argues that something important happened in New York between the '30s and the '40s: "The avant-garde experiments of the previous decades in Europe incited a particularly intense cross-contamination, and an overt articulation of homosexual erotics long before the emergence of a public language arond queerness," he states in a press release.
"Looking at modern American art of this period through the prism of ballet reveals a tangle of interrelationships, collaborations, derivations, and hybrid aesthetic programs that feel surprisingly contemporary."
In this curatorial adventure that promotes a unity of the senses and a synesthetic approach to art and dance, Mauss proceeded by comparisons and juxtapositions: sculptures of figures and dancers by Elie Nadelman are presented next to modernist and streamlined pieces such as John Storrs' aluminum, brass, copper and wood "Forms in Space" (1924) or Man Ray's nickel plated and painted bronze "New York" (1917/1966), while Mauss' own works - enamelled mirror panels inspired by his archival research and created employing the verre églomisé, a reverse glass painting technique popular in the 1930s - add a touch of colour to the spaces.
Cecil Beaton's photograph of poet Charles Henri Ford in a costume designed by Salvador Dali for Vogue (1937) may not be so unknown in the digital era, but some of the black and white 1930s images by photographic collective PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French and his wife Margaret) are less known to the public and they look intimate and sensually evocative with bodies posing in geometrical configurations.
Costume fans with a interest in ballet will rejoice at seeing Pavel Tchelitchew's modernist costume sketches for Ode (choreographed by Leonide Massine for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1928), Variations on Euclid (premiered as Expanding Universe; choreographed by Ruth Page, c. 1932) and Errante (choreographed by George Balanchine for Les Ballets 1933, c. 1933) and his set design for Nobilissima Visione (also known as St.Francis; choreographed by Leonide Massine for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, c. 1938).
Fashion and ballet combine instead in Tchelitchew's black and white photograph of a window display for shoes inspired by the Nobilissima Visione set (a display that wouldn't look out of place in one of the trademark windows dedicated to art and footwear in the Florence-based Ferragamo shop...).
Visitors with an interest in more traditional costume designs with a fantastically whimsical twist about them will instead prefer Dorothea Tanning's colourful sketches for dancers Merriam Lanova, Beatrice Tompkins and Shirley Weaver in The Night Shadow (choreographed by George Balanchine for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, 1945) that featured uncanny face masks and headdresses (see the bejwelled antlers on the deer's head, the flamboyant feathered bird head or the ship complete with waves...).
Mauss also tried to establish new correspondences: a black and white photograph shows dancer Jacques D'Amboise in a translucent costume designed by Paul Cadmus for Filling Station, choreographed by Lew Christensen, and Mauss recreated a similar costume in see-through organza, trimmed in red and with a red heart embroidered on the chest.
There is more to discover between stage models, Serge Diaghilev's calling card, an enigmatic photograph of Loïe Fuller's staring eyes, ballet programmes and extracts of videos showing L'Après-midi d'un faune (Afternoon of a faun, 1938), Aurora's Wedding (1941), La fille mal gardée (1942) and Harlequinade (1956) and rehearsals of Balanchine's choreographies.
Among the most interesting photographs there are 800 mesmerising (and rarely seen) colour slides by dance critic Carl Van Vechten projected on a wall, and unique gems that show key moments in the history of dance, such as Martha Swope's black and white image showing dancers Arthur Mitchell, the first African American principal dancer in a major American ballet company, and Diana Adams, a white, Southern ballerina, rehearsing a pas de deux for Agon (1957). The exhibition notes remind us that their coupling was met with controversy and television stations refused to air recordings of their pas de deux in Agon until 1968; after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Mitchell went on to co-found the Dance Theatre of Harlem with Karel Shook.
"Transmissions" also features a new choreography, there are indeed daily performaces in the Whitney's eighth-floor Hurst Family Galleries, conceived by Mauss in response to archival material and the objects in the show.
But, rather than being just another excuse to attract visitors, this choreography involving 16 rotating dancers (from professional ballerinas to modern dancers) is directly inspired by the materials included in the exhibition and responds to them.
Watch the dancers perform and you will see movements that evoke the daily gestures and routines of a dancer's practice including barre exercises, but also a balance between art and contemporary dance, what Mauss calls the "movements, styles and irreverent attitudes" of poses borrowed from the exhibited images and film footage.
American painter Gerald Murphy who helped repainting the Ballets Russes' scenery soon after arriving in Paris, stated that the corps de ballet was "the focal center of the whole modern movement in the arts." After seeing "Transmissions", you will realise that Murphy's statement can be applied not just to one but to different troupes that, through their choreographies, costumes and stories, inspired and informed many other artists, creative minds and disciplines.
Image credits for this post
1. George Platt Lynes, Tex Smutney, 1941. Gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm). Collection of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University; courtesy the George Platt Lynes Estate.
2. George Platt Lynes, Ralph McWilliams, 1952, 1941. Gelatin silver print, 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm). Collection of the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University; courtesy the George Platt Lynes Estate.
3. Nick Mauss (b. 1980), are you being, 2015. Ink, marker, pastel, gouache, and cut paper, 23 1/2 x 18 in. (59.7 x 45.7 cm). Collection of the artist, image courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery.
11. Carl Van Vechten slides, photographed by Nick Mauss. Courtesy The Carl Van Vechten Trust and The Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
In our digital times postage stamps may be deemed rather passé as we all prefer sending emails and quick messages via technological devices. Yet stamps still manage to fascinate us as they represent geography and history, while also being tiny travelling capsules of art and beauty.
It was only natural therefore for Italian artist Elisabetta Di Maggio to turn them into the main material for her installation at Venice's T Fondaco dei Tedeschi (Calle del Fontego dei Tedeschi, Ponte di Rialto).
The lifestyle department store features on its fourth floor a vast space dubbed the "Event Pavilion" dedicated to free exhibitions of contemporary art.
Curated by Chiara Bertola, "Greetings from Venice" (until November 25), is a site-specific installation tackling themes such as the flow of time, the geography of places and people and the value of memory.
For this new work Di Maggio studied the Byzantine patterns of the floor of St. Mark's Basilica and of the main Venetian palazzi, paying attention to their architecturally perfect geometries.
She then proceeded to recreate them inside the Event Pavilion employing one hundred thousand used postage stamps from all over the world.
Images showing the background research for the project are particularly intriguing, but also the photographs taken when Di Maggio installed the mosaics in collaboration with her team of students from the Marco Polo High School in Venice who acted like a sort of Medieval workshop.
The artist went through a painstakingly slow and long process dividing the stamps by origin and colours and then arranging them into maps.
A transparent glass structure allows visitors to walk on the intricate geometries created by the postage stamps: the effect is visually striking since, from far away, the installation looks like a mosaic floor made with tiny tiles; close up you can instead discover flowers and butterflies, kings and queens, planes and spaceships, animals and fish, musical instruments and religious paintings portraying the Madonna and Child.
The installation has some great historical connections with the building: located at the foot of the Rialto Bridge and built in 1228, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi was a trading post for German merchants.
Functioning as a palace, a warehouse, market and living quarters, the Fondaco was therefore a lively and safe place where German merchants could keep their goods bought locally or arriving from Nuremberg, Judenburg and Augsburg.
Rebuilt between 1505 and 1508 after its destruction in a fire, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi remained a symbol of the mercantile power of Venice, an important platform for economic trade and a bridge between Eastern and Western cultures until 1797, the year that marks the fall of the Venetian Republic.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the building was turned into the offices of customs control and eventually became the Central Post Office (1930-2007).
In 2008 Benetton bought the building and launched a controversial restoration project, entrusting it to Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his studio OMA. The palace reopened to the public two years ago as the T Fondaco dei Tedeschi (operated by DFS Group).
Considering the history of the building, the stamp mosaics could be interpreted as paper ruins, as an ephemeral and fake archaeological discovery that actually unveils to visitors the various roles the buildings had throughout the centuries, revealing at the same time Di Maggio's techniques and favourite themes.
In her artworks Di Maggio often used surgical scalpels to cut surfaces and discover the dimensions behind them, working as an archaeologist. "I started with sheets of tracing paper and now work on large or small leaves, soaps, porcelain and other surfaces, including building plaster," Di Maggio explains about her technique. "I spend hours cutting these materials into sections and the result are works that share a common theme: the shapes nature assumes in its spread and organization."
The mosaic tiles at the Fondaco may be hiding other stories as well: the more you look at the stamps, the more you think about travelling (as stated above, Di Maggio employed used stamps for her installation), communication networks, information transmission and the time it took in the past to reach out to someone and the time it takes nowadays to spread real or fake pieces of information or transmit and share data. In a nutshell, there is more than meets the eye behind these tapestries of humble stamps.
Image credits for this post
1 - 2 Elisabetta Di Maggio's "Greetings from Venice" installation, ph. Matteo De Fina
3 - 6 Background research for Elisabetta Di Maggio's "Greetings from Venice" installation, ph. Matteo De Fina
7 - 12 Work-in-progress stages of the Elisabetta Di Maggio's "Greetings from Venice" installation, ph. Francesco Allegretto
13 - 17 Installation of Elisabetta Di Maggio's "Greetings from Venice", ph. Matteo De Fina