A Milano, il papa di PoMo è morto!
Jan. 3rd, 2008 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI wouldn't normally be so affected by the death of such an old man. But Ettore Sottsass -- who died in Milan on Monday, aged 90 -- wasn't just any old man; he was Postmodernism's most important industrial designer; the Pope of Postmodernism. Born in 1917 -- the era of the Futurists -- Sottsass lived long enough to out-future the future.
A design consultant at Olivetti between 1958 and 1980, he's the man who made the bright red Valentine typewriter you can see on the cover of Takako Minekawa's Roomic Cube album. He's the man who founded design group Memphis Milano when he was
already in his 60s, a group which made the boldest, zappiest, zingiest Postmodern forms of the 1980s. Memphis made the exuberant, chunky, blotchy Carlton bookshelf (I picked it up as a motif for my Classicism and Atrocity essay in 2002). Sottsass was the subject of a tribute track ("Memphis Milano") on Haruomi Hosono's brilliant 1982 album Coincidental Music which, in his honour, I'd like to play for you today:
Haruomi Hosono: Memphis Milano (1982) (mp3 file, 10 mins 27 secs, 9.6MB)
Ettore trained as an architect, and architects bloom famously late and live famously long. At 90, he seemed just to be getting into his stride. Whereas peers like Joe Colombo perished too early to see their Space Age designs celebrated by a future age which had somewhat lost its youthful pizzaz, Sottsass became a sort of "living national treasure" (for Italy, naturally, although he was born in Austria and sometimes seems to have been valued most in Japan). In advanced old age he was still advanced, and seemed to be celebrated more than ever. In Trieste right now you can see "I Want To Know Why", a big exhibition of his work whose opening he was still well enough to attend in December. "I would like the visitors to leave crying," he said at the time. "That is, with emotion."
Sottsass went out on the crest of a career wave. In 2006 the LA County Museum mounted the first major US survey of his work. In spring 2007 the Design Museum in London had a big show dedicated to him, with the optimistic (and very Sottsassian) title "Work in Progress". Here's a Vernissage TV skim-round video:
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I have a short article in the current edition of US design magazine ID which actually mentions Sottsass. It's about German design company Sieger. "While designers at this company known for its sumptuous bathroom fittings don't yet soak in saunas or walk around the office in towels, they're free to recharge spiritually in a specially-designed meditation gazebo out in the sculpture garden, a gift from Ettore Sottsass." The issue is titled New and Notable, and that's what Sottsass, the playful Pope of PoMo, continued to be, even at 90.
A design consultant at Olivetti between 1958 and 1980, he's the man who made the bright red Valentine typewriter you can see on the cover of Takako Minekawa's Roomic Cube album. He's the man who founded design group Memphis Milano when he was
already in his 60s, a group which made the boldest, zappiest, zingiest Postmodern forms of the 1980s. Memphis made the exuberant, chunky, blotchy Carlton bookshelf (I picked it up as a motif for my Classicism and Atrocity essay in 2002). Sottsass was the subject of a tribute track ("Memphis Milano") on Haruomi Hosono's brilliant 1982 album Coincidental Music which, in his honour, I'd like to play for you today:Haruomi Hosono: Memphis Milano (1982) (mp3 file, 10 mins 27 secs, 9.6MB)
Ettore trained as an architect, and architects bloom famously late and live famously long. At 90, he seemed just to be getting into his stride. Whereas peers like Joe Colombo perished too early to see their Space Age designs celebrated by a future age which had somewhat lost its youthful pizzaz, Sottsass became a sort of "living national treasure" (for Italy, naturally, although he was born in Austria and sometimes seems to have been valued most in Japan). In advanced old age he was still advanced, and seemed to be celebrated more than ever. In Trieste right now you can see "I Want To Know Why", a big exhibition of his work whose opening he was still well enough to attend in December. "I would like the visitors to leave crying," he said at the time. "That is, with emotion."
Sottsass went out on the crest of a career wave. In 2006 the LA County Museum mounted the first major US survey of his work. In spring 2007 the Design Museum in London had a big show dedicated to him, with the optimistic (and very Sottsassian) title "Work in Progress". Here's a Vernissage TV skim-round video:
[Error: unknown template video]
I have a short article in the current edition of US design magazine ID which actually mentions Sottsass. It's about German design company Sieger. "While designers at this company known for its sumptuous bathroom fittings don't yet soak in saunas or walk around the office in towels, they're free to recharge spiritually in a specially-designed meditation gazebo out in the sculpture garden, a gift from Ettore Sottsass." The issue is titled New and Notable, and that's what Sottsass, the playful Pope of PoMo, continued to be, even at 90.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 01:26 pm (UTC)The truly, truly, really next thing would be to break out of these revival cycles altogether. But that's very, very difficult. Postmodernism is like a quicksand: every time you think you've grasped a firm solid thing you can pull yourself out with, you realise it's made of sand too.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 01:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 01:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 04:16 pm (UTC)I don't believe that description of post-modernism is correct. Post modernism isnt part of a sequence, or a "loop we're stuck in", it's the all encompassing realisation that our labels and linear sequences arent accurate; that they're merely subjective (and thus ultimately flawed) attempts to make sense of the world around us.
I think you've taken the post-modern label too literally. "post modern design" means "design made after the post modern realisation" not "design of the post modern style ie. revival recycle "retro-necro"".
To me, there will always be subjectivism and the objectivism defining reality. I've made this point many times before on this blog.
Modernism is subjectivism, It tries to catagorise and improve, to make sense of the world around it. "Modernism" will always exist i this sense, but it will always be overshadowed by post-modern Objectivism: that there is no ultimate truth, but paradoxically that is the ultimate truth.
Anonymous thinks your blog is becoming a tad stale. subjectively he's absolutely right. Objectively his opinion means nothing.
You retort with "Ah yes but thats because of post modernism; when we break through that then we'll be at the next thing", which begs the question "what's stoping you from "breaking free" of postmodernism Momus? Show us the 'next thing'". You'll desperately try to be on the bleeding edge of "now" and when you think you've done it you'll say "Ive done it!" but anon will say "meh, this is old". And postmodernism will see you both for the frauds you are -- subjectivists, neither wrong nor right.
Post-modernism isnt a "fad", it's a philosophy of such fluidity it will always be relevant.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 04:27 pm (UTC)Caged in.
Date: 2008-01-03 04:44 pm (UTC)I said to myself, with thoughts of your post yesterday, that could only be a cage if you let it be. A culture cage, if you like illiteration.
Then I stretched the analogy too far and was trying to imagine what it would be like to be a little person trapped on one level of her shelves. Would I try to go up or down a level? Would I think it was wise to just climb on the supporting edge and go to each shelf up and down? But really, the shelves just were holding that little person at a point in space and to really explore, my friend would have to learn to fly or at least to live without the support of the shelf underneath him.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 04:51 pm (UTC)There is an ultimate truth, you just don't know it yet. Haven't you heard of the G word.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 05:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 05:37 pm (UTC)What's stoping you from "breaking free" of postmodernism Momus? Show us the 'next thing'".
One of my favourite themes is that there's no place outside culture, outside society. If I'm born in the period of PoMo, the things I make and sell in that society will be PoMo. If, after the Islamic Revolution, all music is banned except devotional music, then I will no doubt be making devotional music or no music, and we will be "beyond PoMo".
Call this cultural determinism if you like, but remember Escher's drawn hand drawing the hand drawing it. We're determined by culture, but we also determine it. Whether this is "objective" or "subjective", though, I neither know nor care.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 06:03 pm (UTC)I'm not refering to the cultural periods. I'm refering to foundations of modernism and postmodernism - their philosophies.
"Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end."
"New", "progressive" and "better" are subjective, that is why objectivism is not an aspect of modernist philosophy. Think of modernism as the new enlightment. The philosophy behind modernism is nothing new - Man-kind has always strived to create the new, progressive and better, and it always will.
Post-modernist philosophy took it one step further. It questioned the very notion of meaning itself. It realised that there is no universally true way of defining "new", "progressive" or "better". The only thing that truely changes are the subjective perceptions of the beholders. That is objectivism.
"One of my favourite themes is that there's no place outside culture, outside society"
What you really mean is you can't escape your own subjective reality, and that we're all intricately linked in a web of cause and effect.
"remember Escher's drawn hand drawing the hand drawing it. We're determined by culture, but we also determine it. Whether this is "objective" or "subjective", though, I neither know nor care.
Thats not the point. I was pointing out your use of term post-modern was wrong in the reply above.
Momus: 1 + 1 = 3
Kuma: uh, no. thats wrong.
Momus: I dont care about mathematics.
Kuma: then stop quoting formulas you're getting wrong?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 06:06 pm (UTC)The question is why you still alive you look dying. haha!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 06:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 06:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 06:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 06:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 07:00 pm (UTC)I think his work is far too interesting to be neatly packaged (and diminished) by a label like 'postmodern.' The arid mind-games that are, typically, the province of what gets called postmodern are far from what he was trying to do. He states it himself when he says ""I would like the visitors to leave crying," he said at the time. "That is, with emotion."
His work made me happy and, corny as it sounds, I'd like to thank him for that.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 07:10 pm (UTC)I wouldn't characterize PoMo as being all about "arid mind games". Really, that chunky, colourful, playful Carlton bookshelf is about as PoMo as you can get. It's clearly different from the arid reductions of mandarin Modernism. It's about breaking the rules, about fun, about absurdity, about colour. And if it does remind us of Ikea MDF flatpacks and certain McDonalds interiors, that's because they're essentially PoMo rooted in the 80s too, and because Memphis Milano really came up with some quite populist and popular styles.
For some reason I'll always associate that Carlton bookshelf with this New Order video:
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That's really the look and sound of PoMo's golden age.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 07:33 pm (UTC)And the PoMo idea that "there is no objective truth, but paradoxically that is the ultimate truth" isn't subjective? At least you yourself admit that to call the idea that there's no objectivity "objective" is paradoxical. It's also, obviously, highly problematical, which is why I'd rather not attach terms like "subjective" and "objective" to cultural eras. All it does (as it did above) is attract Christians who square the circle by proclaiming their totally subjective idea of God the ultimate in objectivity.
Was he PoMo though, Mo?
Date: 2008-01-03 07:36 pm (UTC)WikiP says the Memphis Group “hoped to erase the International Style where Postmodernism had failed, preferring an outright revival and continuation of Modernism proper.”
Wotever, some beautiful vases for Bitossi here:
http://www.pron.it/prodpart.asp?idprodotto=725#
Re: Was he PoMo though, Mo?
Date: 2008-01-03 07:40 pm (UTC)"In the 1980s, Sottsass was one of the founders and the leading figure of the Memphis Group, whose colorful, ironic pieces departed considerably from his earlier, more strictly modernist work, and that was hailed as one of the most characteristic examples of Post-modernism in design and the arts."
Re: Was he PoMo though, Mo?
Date: 2008-01-03 07:44 pm (UTC)But notice the word "revival" in the description of Memphis. When you revive Modernism, that's called Post-Modernism.
Re: Was he PoMo though, Mo?
Date: 2008-01-03 07:51 pm (UTC)"In the US, it was also the heyday of postmodern architecture and design. Philip Johnson, Michael Graves, Robert Stern, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown were strutting the architectural catwalk with slapstick-style buildings that were a big and blowsy two-fingers up to the stern values of the Bauhaus and what Johnson had labelled the International Style when he was modernism's most ardent American advocate in the early 1930s.
"Sottsass called Memphis design the New International Style and plunged the sophisticated and influential Milan design world into a labyrinth of visual irony, puns and provocations. In effect, he was injecting a dose of postmodernism into mainstream European design."
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 08:06 pm (UTC)"And the PoMo idea that "there is no objective truth, but paradoxically that is the ultimate truth" isn't subjective?"
No because it encompasses the everything and the nothing via complex paradox.
" It's also, obviously, highly problematical"
Its not. Here's an example:
Modernist: This is new, progressive and better!
Post-modernist: Says who?
Modernist: Me and a whole group of other great intellectuals.
Post-modernist: Who gave you that authority?
Modernist: uh... well, the majority of society did after we convinced them. We're obviously right if everyone else thinks so.
Post-modernist: Didnt everyone use to believe the world was flat?
There in lies the essence of post-modernist philosophy -- we are forever bound by the subjectivity of our reality.
" I'd rather not attach terms like "subjective" and "objective" to cultural eras."
I already said I wasnt talking about the eras, I was refering to the philosophies.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 08:13 pm (UTC)Re: Was he PoMo though, Mo?
Date: 2008-01-03 08:30 pm (UTC)Re: Was he PoMo though, Mo?
Date: 2008-01-03 08:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 08:43 pm (UTC)I remember seeing that show at LACMA in 2006. Very good it was too. i recall being amazed that he was still active and still vital. The eccentricity is what shone through in the show. Someone who didn't stop asking questions about form and function.
Incidentally, I subscribe to ID magazine but find it a little dull at times, I hope they enlist your services to liven it up. it is missing articles outside of the applied-design world. maybe you can fill that gap along the lines of your Design Observer/AIGA work.
Richard
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 08:57 pm (UTC)Quote: "While we're still in the era of Postmodernism, for better or worse, the new is the old. The truly, truly, really next thing would be to break out of these revival cycles altogether."
This is a clear misunderstanding of the non-linear nature of post-modernist philosophy! "Post-modernist" means "we are now going to deny linear cultural progression infavor of a more fluid understanding of the development of culture."
Modernism say "New & better onto new & better onto new & better"
Post modernism says "what is the essence of new and better? Does it even exist? Yes and no."
By saying that we're "stuck in the recycling influence of post modernism" you clearly dont understand the fluid nature of post modernism!
2) as I said above: "This is a clear misunderstanding of the non-linear nature of post-modernist philosophy! "Post-modernist" means "we are now going to deny linear cultural progression infavor of a more fluid understanding of the development of culture."
Zen buddhism is "post modern" but its classical! Or Cubism as you claim can be post-modern but it's modern! thats the thing about post-modernism; its not linear! You're getting to wrapped up in the name when its the ideas that matter!
3) You yourself admit that "the hand drawing the hand drawing that's drawing the hand" is an excellent description of cultural development. Yet you sit there and say that "recycle cycles" are holding us back! Make up your mind!
Re: Was he PoMo though, Mo?
Date: 2008-01-03 09:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 09:11 pm (UTC)I'm not anti-PoMo, just as Post-Modernists like Sottsass and Venturi weren't necessarily anti-Modern. They'd been through the whole cycle and had simply got bored. Think of how Venturi's attitude to decoration is, finally, a liberating refutation of Adolf Loos' "Ornament as Crime", 60 years later. Well, now we've had 60 years of PoMo it's really high time to debunk its tics and gestures in the same way. Because -- much as I love it -- this is a movement that eats its own children and swallows its own tail.
If you need a picture of it doing that, here's someone in The Guardian talking, the other day (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2234173,00.html), about why rock music seems to move in ever-shrinking circles:
"I don't know that there's anywhere left for rock music to go. Rebellion? Anarchy? Gratuitous offensiveness? Transgender? Glam? Sexism? Violence? Political? Apolitical? Racist? Fast? Slow? Loud? Quiet? Atonal? Arhythmic? Polyrhythmic? Distorted? Synthesised? Clean? Electric? Acoustic? Guitar-based? Not guitar-based? Insurrectionary? Seditious? Keep the list going as long as you like. It's all been done. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I ain't betting that way."
Now, the answer here is clear: a great big paradigm shift is needed. What's required is not linear -- not a line called "progress" -- but a jump to a different way of understanding what culture is, what it does, who makes it, and how we use it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 09:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 09:35 pm (UTC)In his tomb are paintings of Japanese women, so in the afterlife they are there to serve his every need. I'm sure there will be many anons in the afterlife as well, sorry Momus!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 10:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 10:09 pm (UTC)(Also where is Whimsy's smiley guy with the scarf image? I miss it!)
Victorian PoMo in Highgate Cemetery
Date: 2008-01-03 10:11 pm (UTC)Re: Victorian PoMo in Highgate Cemetery
Date: 2008-01-03 10:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 10:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 10:21 pm (UTC)(oh shit, i brought up the c word!)
Is post-modernism a movement?
Date: 2008-01-03 11:25 pm (UTC)Linear/ non-linear - I've never understood this distinction. Take Jake Chapman's novel "Meatphysics". Any first year HND meeja studies student will say it's "non-linear". But it isn't, and it knows it isn't. It's as linear as this: __________________________________________ (Apologies to any Meeja Studies student who thought the same thing and Googled this text years later. I didn't mean all of you.)
I think the interesting bit of the problematic under discussion is what constitutes a so-called era. Modernism had its time, its context, its milieu and its technologies (Modernist era was still largely a print era, and for once a Wikipedia link is unarguable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Blast2.jpg )
Moving on: post-Modernism is not a set of prescribed values, or even a set of received values, just a set of easily printed labels (post-Modern era has/ had its time, not much context from this temporal distance, no definable milieu, and a proliferation of technologies which spped up as it waters itself down): http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html
______________________
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-03 11:59 pm (UTC)Re: Is post-modernism a movement?
Date: 2008-01-04 12:49 am (UTC)I think PoMo has a lot of context. It's the cultural descriptor for the age of globalization, shipping, shopping, food courts and shopping malls, commercial encounters with "the other", plastic authenticity, total cultural recall, archive fever, top ten lists, retro-necro and meta-meta, indiscriminate irony, masturbatory play, the end of ideology and the endlessness of labyrinths and the ouroboros (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros).
Re: Is post-modernism a movement?
Date: 2008-01-04 01:41 am (UTC)"Meta" is a refuge, and a crap one. It's an undergraduate tag, an undergraduate "meta" tag. Wasn't 1840-1900 just as "meta" as 1990-2040? Well, no - how could that be possible? Err, me no know.
"Meta" and "meta-meta" are meaningless: ancient Greek for "awesome" and "awesomely awesome".
Authenticity IS plastic, if by plastic you mean either "inauthentic" or formed by outside forces.
"Total cultural recall" - sounds like a NatSoc/Stalin/Nadsat/O'Brien quote and nothing to do with this era.
"The end of ideology" = ouroboros or the Escher hands, hopefully. Marxism religion. Pop will eat itself
"I would like the visitors to leave crying,"
Date: 2008-01-04 03:13 am (UTC)Re: Is post-modernism a movement?
Date: 2008-01-04 06:45 am (UTC)"Total cultural recall" - sounds like a NatSoc/Stalin/Nadsat/O'Brien quote and nothing to do with this era.
If you actually read 1984 you'll know that the novel is about permanent cultural revision, not recall -- Winston Smith's job is to alter, endlessly, the Times archives. Total cultural recall is much more a reference to things like the way CD (and now YouTube) make available, simultaneously and in the present, all recorded sound / television. This adds to the "meta" phenomenon: when all the flotsam and jetsam of the past is available and competing with the material being produced now, our current production tends to be a series of references to, and reworkings of, past product. Look at contemporary pop and tell me that isn't the case. We have forgotten how to forget, and that's a serious problem.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 10:45 am (UTC)What of ZTT Records, though? They seem to be very deliberately postmodern, appropriating major social/philosophical texts for album covers, sampling, visually co-opting both the aesthetic classical and modern, etc.
That said, it's sad to see Sottsass go. It's interesting how two major players in postmodernism were already elder statesmen in their respective fields(the other being Philip Johnson).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 10:46 am (UTC)Re: Is post-modernism a movement?
Date: 2008-01-04 11:08 pm (UTC)Err, that's kinda supercilious. I mean 'total cultural recall' as in that's what their name would be for 'total cultural revision'. Just like Ministry of Truth is the opposite of what it calls itself.
Apologies for my misunderstanding of 'meta' - I must've thought it said 'mega' - but surely any study of canonicity and or intertextuality will turn up 'meta' at every stage. Tristram Shandy (which I confess I haven't read, but do own and have looked at occasionally - surely that's, if not meta-meta then at least mega-meta, in particular the closing of chapter 7 - "Alas, poor YORICK" then a blacked - out page, signifying, among other things, death.)
I think where 1984 falls down is that despite its greatness in terms of the world it creates, it is a bit of a comic book, relying on not enough on the what would be the fucked up language of a fucked up world. If I want a vision of the future, I'll read Riddley Walker.
Re: Is post-modernism a movement?
Date: 2008-01-04 11:38 pm (UTC)Agree with you about 1984 -- its arch-rival Brave New World (with its drugs and gen-tech) turned out to be much more accurate in its predictions. And yes, Riddley Walker is great.