Stuck Inside the Design Museum with the Memphis Blues Again

Review: Ettore Sotsass - Work In Progress, Design Museum, London.

The publicity photo for this exhibition of the work of Italian designer Ettore Sottsass shows him wearing a pair of enormous circular sun glasses, sporting long hair and an impressive moustache, cigarette smoke billowing around him. Such iconic ‘60’s grooviness is in shortly supply in the exhibition itself, which is disappointingly sober.

Titled Work in Progress - presumably to confound any assumption that this retrospective marks the end of his career – the exhibition nonetheless covers Sottsass’ work to date. It is loosely divided into decade based periods starting with the early industrial looking pieces of the 1950’s, moving through the landmark ‘60’s designs for Olivetti, the ‘70’s and ‘80’s Memphis years and ends with the current work by Sotssass Associati.

Sottsass has undoubtedly been a hugely influential designer. This can be seen most clearly in two phases of his career; the 1960’s period when he incorporated pop art influences into the industrial designs he did for Olivetti (most famously in the iconic bright red Velentine typewriter) and the 1980’s when he was instrumental in setting up the Memphis design group. Whilst the Olivetti work sits pretty comfortably within the history of design, the latter has proved more problematic, and, for me at least, more interesting. Memphis’ designs were a fairly bracing combination of kitsch patterns (leopard print, fake wood grain), tasteless colours (gold, silver and primary shades) and everyday materials (formica) combined with exotic neo-primitive forms (ziggaruts, totem poles). The resulting objects, part abstract and part figurative, were very strange indeed. Apart from having a fairly cavalier relationship to function, they combined high design with deliberate bad taste. Memphis, like the post-modern architecture it mirrored, is now synonymous with the 1980’s, a skeleton in design’s closet.

Despite this I found the exhibition strangely underwhelming. There are relatively few pieces but the serpentine route created by the layout makes it seem cluttered and deny the larger objects - like Factotum (1979) - much room to breathe. There is very little visual context provided and no attempt to create an atmosphere sympathetic to Sottsass’s aesthetic. Some period advertising for the Valentine typewriter is exhibited including a poster showing a woman carrying one whilst running along an empty beach - presumably to a spot where someone’s conveniently left a few reams of A4 paper – but that’s about it.

Somewhere along the line, the exhibition seems to run out of steam. Perhaps it’s not helped by the fact that the recent work of Sottsass Associati seems pretty unremarkable. This is by far the driest section of the exhibition and consists of large scale boxes showcasing light fittings and furnishings. It looks like a trade stand at 100% design and even the curators seem to have given up the ghost by this point.

Sottsass’ career is, taken as a whole, incredibly impressive. Throughout its formidable length, he has managed to combine a sharp design sensibility with a sense of humour and a willingness to avoid the suffocating effects of too much good taste. The show however has no such qualities and represents a thin and largely colourless profile of a remarkable career.

Kylie - The Exhibition

I’ve always found the debate over high and low culture slightly stale and irrelevant. Contrived stand offs between Bob Dylan and Beethoven bore the pants off me. Besides, I’ve swallowed enough post structuralist critiques of elitist hierarchies of value to know that popular culture is a valid subject for intellectual reflection. Plus, Put Yourself In My Place is, like, one of my favourite songs ever. So the debate about whether the V&A should put on a show about Kylie Minogue struck me at first as a non-issue, pandering to the worst kind of lazy middlebrow snobbery. Then I went to the exhibition...

Kylie: The Exhibition consists of a display of stage outfits and costumes, ranging from the mechanic’s overalls she wore in Neighbours to the bizarre Dolce and Gabbana designs of her current Showgirl Homecoming tour. Alongside these are displayed Kylie’s record covers, tour artefacts, videos, a re-creation of her dressing room and a vending machine of Kylie endorsed mineral water.

Aside from a number of text panels, there’s little commentary or interpretation and the objects are displayed in a flatly literal manner. Such labelling as there is makes a pretty lame and unconvincing case for why Kylie Minogue’s costumes should be in the V&A in the first place. Words like ‘icon’ and ‘phenomenon’ are bandied about but these terms are now so lazily over deployed as to be almost meaningless and their use here seems particularly half-hearted and pointless. The costs and logistics of putting on Kylie’s tours are listed but not contrasted with anything that might make them make more interesting or compelling or anything other than blandly impressive. Her dressing room is re-created but not to make a point, just to fill up some space. The labelling for this reaches a zenith of banality. It is, we are told; “…very special, a home away from home”. Even better than this is the information that: “..road cases are the best way to transport her extensive wardrobe”. Gosh.

The exhibition has been bought in from Australia where it was originally shown at The Arts Centre, Melbourne. It comes across as shallow hagiography without even the spitefulness of heat!, or the inadvertent vileness of Hello. It is, rather, the authorised biography.
Like her latest persona, Kylie: The Exhibition has a camp “Darling! You look fabulous” quality. This is only heightened by the cod surrealism of her Showgirls tour and her recent entry into the tragic diva hall of fame by becoming officially A Survivor. But the show achieves Susan Sontag’s definition of campness as an attempt at seriousness that fails. It wants to be culturally relevant and daringly iconoclastic, but lacks the courage or savvy to know how. It is also shamelessly sycophantic and utterly without critical reflection.

This is not about pop culture’s place in the museum. The V&A is full of pop culture already after all, and has a distinguished history of putting on exhibitions about costume and design. I didn’t dislike this show because I thought it too lowbrow, or too commercial or too vulgar. I disliked it because it was dull and po-faced and vaguely moronic. There is a thoroughly bathetic moment at the end when as you leave, you find yourself inadvertently wandering into the Medieval rooms of the V&A. From Kylie’s gold hotpants to Trajan’s column in a few steps. It’s not a flattering comparison.

Just before leaving, there is one more tribute to Kylie: a wall on which you can stick little heart shaped personal tributes. Thus in a faintly sinister way, you’re not even allowed express anything but love for Kylie. Alongside sycophantic quotes from the likes of Manolo Blahnik, Peter Huntley of the V&A has given us the benefit of his insight: “Kylie’s fun to sing along to.” Thanks Peter.

All The Chickens On The Kingsland Road

Coming Soon!

Look out for: All The Chickens On The Kingsland Road - a photographic survey of take aways from Shoreditch to Stoke Newington.

Also coming up:

Kylie Minogue at the V&A, (opens on February 8th). Sadly, rather than catch Kylie's latest Showgirl comeback tour, I'm reviewing the exhibition instead.

I've Been Around The World. This is gonna be an untitled, un-captioned, photographic record of those forlorn, pompous, negligable, overblown bits of art that litter the world's public spaces.

Meanwhile, the recent death of the inventor of instant noodles has moved me to write in praise of that most maligned of snacks; the Pot Noodle. Read Modernism: A Potted History......