"Everything is sculpture" opined once Isamu Noguchi.1 But is it? The exhibtion Isamu Noguchi in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, allows one to engage with, reflect on, immerse yourself in Isamu Noguchi's life and work, and thus to better approach your own opinion on Isamu Noguchi's firmly held conviction..... Isamu Noguchi, Museum Ludwig, Cologne Born in Los Angeles, California, on November 17th 1904 to an American mother and a Japanese father we've discussed the Noguchi2 biography on
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As here in the northern hemisphere winter cedes to spring, not only is nature once again reawakening from its long repose but so too is the international museum community; and that, one senses, with more vigour than in the most recent springs where the Covid pandemic induced upsetting of the established order of the museal ecosystem, through both enforced closures and fundamental disruptions of essential exhibition development processes, dimmed somewhat the promise of the annual spring blush.
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In 1997 Euro-popsters Aqua declared that "life in plastic, it's fantastic". And in 1997 a greater part of humanity would have readily, and unquestioningly, concurred with Aqua that plastic was indeed fantastic. And that plastics offered us an endlessly fantastic, undimmably bright, future.1 But that was 1997. Last century. An eternity ago. And, as so oft, the passage of time has shaken once firmly held convictions and forced fundamental re-appraisals of all that which once seemed so
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"It was one of those March days" reflects Philip "Pip" Pirrip in Great Expectations, "when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade".1 And thus exactly the sort of dithering, indecisive, capricious, March day when rather than surreptitiously rowing down the Thames towards Gravesend, one should seek refuge in the consistent climate and warming intellectual atmosphere of an architecture or design exhibition. Our five Great exhibition
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Each and everyone of us sits innumerable times each and every day in a wide variety of contexts, yet we rarely, if ever, consider the act of sitting. The exhibition Sitting reconsidered. Design, Observe, Stage at the Burg Galerie, Halle challenges us all to do just that....... MRS1 & MRS1 Low by Luis-Konstantin Schlicht, and uncredited student photographic works, as seen at Sitting reconsidered. Design, Observe, Stage, the Burg Galerie, Halle Originating in context of, and presented
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"...one only finds warmth of life and sincerity where human nature is allowed to flourish", opined the German designer Erich Dieckmann in 1931, "one shouldn't forget that in our apartments. Let's treat our contemporary homes to something humane. Something unelaborate, something provisional, with some leeway and space for things to grow as they wish over time."1 With the exhibition Chairs: Dieckmann! The Forgotten Bauhäusler Erich Dieckmann, the Kunststiftung des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt and
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"Exhibiting means selecting, emphasising, demonstrating as a model or an example", wrote Klaus Wille in his 1960 Diploma thesis at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm, continuing that, "the object is information. This information can be used for didactic, commercial or representative purposes. Aimed at individuals as consumers of products and ideas, the exhibition is used to educate, canvass and represent, to influence people, to get them to react in certain ways."1 The exhibition HfG Ulm:
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According to the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro February 7th marks the first day of spring. Which strikes us, as we're sure it does you, as a little early; however, there was reason in Varro's bold claim, for Varro further sets February 7th as the start of the year, and for all links February 7th with the rising of the west wind, a favourable, warming wind, whose arrival indicates the need to start cultivating your land and crops, specifically Varro advises, "these are things which
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Familiar as our objects and rituals of daily life are to us, to someone from the 16th century they would appear most, most, odd, just as their familiar 16th century objects and rituals would appear most, most, odd to someone from the 11th century: yet as Simon & Garfunkel teach us "that's not unusual, No, it isn't strange", for as societies develop they acquire new objects and rituals, daily life continually evolves anew alongside, and in conjunction with, new objects and new rituals. And if we
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The popular (hi)story of furniture design is, no-one could argue, a very male (hi)story.1 Which doesn't mean that furniture design is a profession at which males excel more than females, a profession for which males have a natural affinity above and beyond that of females, that females' natural domains are textiles and colours; much more is because that popular (hi)story of furniture design contains flaws, biases, inaccuracies and under-illuminated corners. A great many of which can be traced
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The contemporary systematics of the family Cactaceae recognises four subfamilies, Cactoideae, Maihuenioideae, Opuntioideae and Pereskioideae; is however a classification very much in motion, one very much in an ongoing process of re-evaluation, re-definition, re-assessment, one which undergoes regular revisions. ¿An ongoing re-evaluation and re-definition and re-assessment and revision which could see the addition of a fifth subfamily, the Craftoideae? With the exhibition Craft is Cactus. The
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According to Germanic folklore, "If January is frosty and cold, a green woodland will soon entice us". The implication being that a severe January is the necessary pre-requisite not only for a timeous spring bursting forth with new life, but also for a warm, (meteorologically) settled, summer. But in the frost and cold and dark and endlessness of January that green (deciduous) woodland is still a long way off, is unimaginable, is unreachable, is almost mythical; however, protection, and
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There are a great many and varied mediums via which to track the (hi)story of a region, the 2021 Bauhaus Lab chose plants; or more accurately, the 2021 Bauhaus Lab chose the (hi)stories of the flora in the region around Dessau as a medium for explorations of the human, social, industrial, political, economic, ecological, et al (hi)stories of the region. A telling of a local (hi)stories which enables access to both global considerations on, and questions concerning, our relationships with the
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1 x rounded piece of beech, 2 x quadratic pieces of beech, 3 x quadratic pieces of spruce... 1, 2, 3... An Ulmer Hocker1 With the exhibition The Ulmer Hocker: Idea ─ Icon ─ Idol the HfG-Archiv, Ulm, help elucidate that while an Ulmer Hocker is that simple, it is a deceptive, and highly informative, simplicity....... The Ulmer Hocker: Idea - Icon - Idol, HfG-Archiv Ulm The HfG Ulm: Idea - Icon - Idol - Bauhaus Arising from the Ulmer Volkshochschule, a post-War institution initiated by Inge
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In 1922 the Scottish novelist J.M. Barrie told the undergraduates at St. Andrews University "you remember someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December", an allusion to the summer of your life filling your darkening winter days with colour and aroma, and an analogy he neatly reinforces a little later with a, "you have June coming".1 But that was 1922. Roses were seasonal. Today roses are available all year round, which is not only symbolic of the short-sighted
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Our relationships with colour are invariably shaped and informed by the culture and society in which we were raised. A state of affairs that, equally invariably, leads to us all possessing relatively strictly defined understandings of colour, understandings of the psychology of colours or of the agency of colours or of the use of colours. With the exhibition Green Sky, Blue Grass. Colour Coding Worlds, the Weltkulturen Museum Frankfurt discuss the cultural relevance and social functions of
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Whereas politics, economics or sport in West Germany and East Germany are well and widely studied, and the similarities and differences regularly and publicly analysed and contextualised, thereby allowing for more refined, nuanced, popular understandings; design in and from the two Germanys remains, largely, a niche subject for a small band of specialists, and on a popular level something not only repeatedly reduced to a few works, institutions and protagonists, but also defined by
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In his 1961 short film Danish Design, Jørgen Roos tells how in the late 18th century the Danish artist Nicolai Abildgaard travelled to Greece and Italy in search of inspiration from classical art, and came back not only with artistic impetuses, but with classical furniture concepts he began to reproduce: "Abildgaard had become Denmark's first furniture designer".1 And while we'd argue about the validity of that claim, there is an undeniability in an understanding of not just furniture design,
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"November's night is dark and drear, The dullest month of all the year", opined Letitia Elizabeth Landon in 1836, however, 'twas not all doom and gloom, for, as she continues, "the November evening now closing in round Mrs. Cameron's house was of a very cheerful nature."* A cheerfulness in Mrs. Cameron's house/school occasioned by the gaiety associated with the rapidly approaching annual school prize-giving and ball; and a cheerfulness to banish the dreary darkness of a November evening that
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One could be forgiven for thinking that little would be as pointless as a Le Corbusier colouring-in book. So singularly achromatic is the popular understanding of Le Corbusier, a lack of colour reinforced by the dour, austere, round bespectacled, persona which so universally defines Le Corbusier: what, one asks oneself, could there possibly be to colour in a Le Corbusier colouring-in book? Yet in contrast to the popular Le Corbusier image, Le Corbusier's career was one undertaken in colour. A
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"Space and form are important elements in the creation of the [interior] environment", opined the Danish architect, artist and designer Verner Panton in 1969, however, he continues, "colours are even more important". And no-one, even those with but the briefest familiarity with Verner Panton, can oversee the colour in Verner Panton's work. Yet important as colour and space and form were for Panton, "in the creation of the [interior] environment", "l'homme reste l'élément central", man remains
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In days of yore October was known in Germanic lands as Weinmonat, Wine Month, Month of Wine, whereby thoughts were, unquestionably, less with the drink as with the grape and the harvest, and thus the promise of the new wine. And in many regards our exhibition recommendations can be considered a monthly harvest of the new crop of architecture and design exhibitions; specifically, and staying in Germanic registers, an Auslese, a considered selection of those well ripened concepts and premises it
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In her 1929 essay A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf, as a component of her reflections on the myriad subjects of 'women and fiction', reads her way, chronologically, through a bookcase of works written by women from across the centuries. Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, has the feeling of Virginia Woolf's bookcase, allowing as it does for reflections on, and a critical questioning of, the myriad subjects of 'women and design'....... Here
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In September 1951 the East German newspaper Neue Zeit informed its readers that, "whomever travels to Fürstenberg sees the beginnings of the new city, a city planned according to the "Principles of Urban Development".1 Whomever travels to Fürstenberg today arrives in Eisenhüttenstadt, the planned city that arose from those "beginnings"; and a city which, arguably, more than any other, stands proxy for the rise and fall of East Germany. With the exhibition Endless Beginning. The Transformation
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