Designblog

Shapes contain shapes.

This pipe is a monument.

The company designed the pipe to be feminine. An infinite triangle, with an elitist and delicate exterior shape, but at the same time graphic and geometric. Frail but strong.

A woman.

The pipe contains more shapes in the shape. Pipoo 8 has three shapes. The lower dark trapezium made of briar, the transparent upper part made of acrylic and a black plastic cylinder.

We can admire her. How two different materials become unified shapes that contain inside the black cylinder, making a unity of one strict object. There is no possibility to change it, I must accept how it is.

About 15 cm long, it can become part of your body but you can also compare it to a Bic, looking like something alien.

It’s gorgeous.

This is not a vase. It is Carnival.

The vase contains more shapes in a shape. It has three shapes. A wooden rectangular with sharp edges leaning 8 degrees towards the right. A fluorescent green rectangular with rounded corners made out of cardboard, whereas its centre has a phallic transparent glass.

Mike Kelley once said: “With my work I not only want to reach the most educated viewer, but the most lazy viewer as well”.

About 44 centimeters high. Screaming for attention. One cannot avoid the sight of this illuminating green situation.

It’s a glossy disaster.

The step from traditional Mexican textile patterns to (soft) porn seems to be quite a big one. How would can you link these too subjects? They don’t seem to have too much in common. For at least as far as I know there’s no fetish movement that is sexually obsessed with traditional clothing that is hand made by Indian tribes of Middle America. But ey. You never know…

Anyhow: One posibble solution to this riddle goes by the name of Jeff Koons. If you try to find a book with the tagword “kitsch” you will find almost nothing – if it wasn’t for Jeff Koons. With his work I have the same ambiguous love-hate relationship that is characterizing my affiliation to Indian art as well. I described this in my first entry. So to close this blog I chose a book titled “The Jeff Koons Handbook”. Since everyone is familiar with Koon’s Balloon dogs I want to invite you to take a look at his photographic “art” – or rather: bad, bad kitsch…

– koon – 3

The second book I chose is titled Mexican Patterns – A design source book. As the title suggest already this book is meant to inspire modern designers. Content wise the book is dealing with the very traditional and yet so vivid patterns of current Mexican textiles. Or in the words of the author Chloë Sayer: “Contemporary Mexican textile design derives its richness and variety from the fusion over centuries of decorative skills from both old and new worlds.”

This mix of traditional elements and modern influences makes the patterns so appealing and at the same time so open to the exploitation for kitschy designs. The patterns seem to be almost as vulnerable to this as the habits and customs of their creators are to the influences of the so-called modern world.

Again I have this strange mix of feelings: On the one hand there is the recognition of the craftsmanship and the tradition. On the other hand I can’t help getting the feeling that it’s all merely kitsch…

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While looking for a book I was in search of something with a personal link to me since this is the first time I expose myself on this blog. Finally my choice was a book called “Indiaanse Tekens en Symbolen” (Indian signs and Symbols) written by Carren Caraway. I chose this particular book for no better reason than for the fact that I have a very strong love-hate relation to Indian symbols and forms of art embracing them. I always found them fascinating and pleasing to look at. But on the other hand they inherit an enormous risk of slipping into kitsch. Especially in pieces of so-called modern art these Indian symbols are often abused to produce gaudy trash. This picture I scanned from page 200 represents the Raven. He’s the central figure in the mythology of the Haida – a tribe that lived on the North West Shore in Canada.

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“subjective library” images and flickr tag-cloud

Read the reflections of A and C group’s journey into the Rietveld Library’s Design and Art section. This journey to investigate, made our fascinations, preconceptions and hidden desires manifest. How does a subjective book choice create a personal mirror and leaves traces of tags, connecting Design to Art, exposing autonomy in both.

Read about the subjective, open and intiutive first book choice from the Design section of our library. Wonder about the tags connected to those accounts. Follow the continuing story as a second book is selected based on those tags created. Witness the third posting in which those sets of tags lead us from Design to Art. A move that forces us to reflect upon the connection between them both.

Follow the continuing accounts of the three succeeding investigating postings by clicking on the yellow link. Experience the total list of tags created during this “Subjective Library” Project.

LIST OF TAGS:

3289 days, A4, cover, funky colors, television, unatractive, film photography : fauna, flora, interesting, lines, strange, fluffy, simple, horrible, brainwork, complicated, proud, “to know” : disorder, game, grid, systematization, “One Minute Sculpture” : library, swindler, breaking news, library loser, extraordinary, talented : space, absence-presence, framework, surrounding, returning : abnormal, rediscover, choice, plain, others : 1000, 754., direction, signs, city, direction, traffic, political, posters : blue Pinocchio, screaming, spine of book, blue, Pinocchio, blue fairy, eyecandy, contemporary, folk, mentality : not getting there, unknown, judging by covers, content, connection, strangers, subject : supermarket, theft, housewife, tiny, midlife crisis, multilingual : logic, question, reason, consciousness, interest, remarks, impossible, mathematical, perspective : attraction, strange, swissfolk, art, death, life, love, Maurizio Cattelan : cover, old book, unique, obsession, miniature : Anita, eyes, portrait, dominant, name, color, film : Wiener Werkstätte, characteristic, hand work, mass fabrication, original, process, realization, detail, photography, the nude : cheap fashion, funny, random, tattoo, tribe, weird, mysterious, tribe : attraction, new texture, action, quick, warning, a priori, new, amusement, choices, eye-catching, eyes, random : escape reality, library, overflow of impulses, fruitless reality, jostling time, absorbing force, déjà-vu : arrange, industrial, library, architecture, museum, self-made, Andreas Gursky, index : city, nomadic, reality, funky, colors, interiors : contrast, fat, texture, typography, culture, nudity : conceptional, distance, no image, steps, thinking space, braille : cat, compulsive, font, chaos, subjective, illustration, objective, random, Tadao Ando : airplane, airport, choice, structure, worldmap, 756, 80’s, human, machines, unique, flying : dot, jewelry, shapes & forms, yellow, children, fun, paint, playful, all colors, blue, green, theory : extraordinary, life, normal, objects, absurd : 80’s, desire, fashion, party, techno, desire, fabrics, orgasmatic : alchemy, identical, methaphysics, mysticism, mythology, Arabic, identical, inaccurate, ladies, naked, orient, sculptures, stereotypes : Canada, Indian symbols, kitsch, raven, Indian art, Mexico, Jeff Koons, porn : attraction, gold, meeting an old lover, recognition, cheap, irresistibility, not psychology, wrong, beauty, compare, contrast, couple, same, similarity, together, two books, ugliness : connection, embroidery, hundred years, death, funerals, general terms, invisible, object, spirit, visible : color, feeling, personal story, feminism, graphic : first sight, mystery, old-fashioned, bloody, mad, rituals, revelatory, Yin : oblivion, automatic lives, bottom shelve, eat, mantra, story-making, colorful, dogs, double-take, eat sleep, vases, vegetables : attracted, nothing, black, disturbing.

still curious read the books involved at the Gerrit Rietveld Library, (catalogue numbers are included).