Design’s Latest Details

The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum counts more than 250,000 works of design and decorative arts objects in its collection, and is arguably the most important museum of its type in this country. The sheer number and range of works attests to an active acquisitions program, and demonstrates the museum’s desire to flesh out the historical continuum of design in order to better understand the importance of these objects within the broader history of art. “LookingForward/LookingBack” presents a well edited selection of the Cooper-Hewitt’s acquisition highlights from the past three years, showcasing the museum’s new curatorial goal to pay as much attention to contemporary developments as to the preservation of historical ones.Displayed roughly chronologically, between 1905 and 2007, the objects represent a mini-survey of the aesthetic developments that took place in the 20th century, while more contemporary items point to potential directions for design at the dawn of the 20th century. They also draw attention to the museum’s four main curatorial departments — Product Design & Decorative Arts; Textiles; Wallcoverings; and Drawings, Prints, & Graphic Design — which together evidence the Cooper-Hewitt’s deep understanding of how product design permeates many artistic arenas.As an exhibition, “Looking Forward/Looking Back” is a somewhat loose-knit group of objects, mainly because “recent acquisitions” is not the most binding conceptual glue, and because most of the designers are not, unfortunately, household names. But viewed piece-by-piece, this exhibition does offer many engaging examples of innovative design concepts at work. More importantly, it provides a glimpse into the Cooper-Hewitt’s smart curatorial eye.Antonio Volpe’s rocking chair, the “Egg Chair” (c. 1905), is the earliest piece on display, and embodies the aesthetic shifts that took place in furniture design at the dawn of the 20th century. Picking up the lead of Thonet’s dynamic bentwood designs, the Egg Chair’s bent beech and caning construction reflect the trend for more straightforward, geometrically inspired constructions, as influenced by artists such as Josef Hoffman. The two ovals used to form both the arms and the rockers are elegantly drawn in space, heralding a newfound interest in the formal, abstract qualities of design, while spherical and semifloral embellishments are clear throwbacks to late-period Biedermeier.Other furniture designs include Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel chair, “B5” (1926-27), and René Herbst’s chair, “Sandows No. 5” (1929), two streamlined examples from the functionalist movement. Representing the more contemporary end of the spectrum is Philippe Starck’s powder blue “W.W. Stool” (1990), which resembles part of an alien’s endoskeleton, and Gaetano Pesce’s multicolored poured resin chair, “Nobody’s Perfect” (2001).The brass, lacquer, and nickel vase (c. 1930) by Swiss-born Jean Dunand represents acquisitions in the decorative arts. This vase is a prime example of the French Art Deco artists’ penchant for combining a lush, highly tactile experience within reserved, Eastern-inspired forms. An abstract, almost aboriginal patterning of red lines and black hash marks abut burnished slate-colored wedge forms, creating a slow rotational movement around the vase’s spherical body. Also on view is Anzolo Fuga’s hand blown glass vase (c. 1960), manufactured by the esteemed Italian company Arte Vetraria Muranese. Its slightly free-form body is composed of a patchwork of colorful glass sections, highlighting the technical ingenuity of both Fuga’s design and Venice’s glass blowers. It is also an example of the whimsy and explosion of color favored by the artists of this period.Examples of the museum’s recent textile acquisitions include a woven cotton furnishing fabric (1934) produced in the Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing area of France; Barbara Brown’s optically challenging black-and-white textile sample produced by Heal Fabrics in 1969; Sheila Hicks’s six woven miniatures; and June Swindell’s ethereal “Textile: Horsehair” (2006) window treatment. Hicks’s miniatures — all created on a travel loom and dating from between 1957 and 2005 — are especially satisfying because they function like intimate woven sketches hashing out the ideas that inform her ambitious largescale projects.Ludwig Hohlwein’s bold Art Nouveau-influenced lithograph poster “Herrsching Keramische Werkstätten” (1910), and Michael Bierut’s “Light/Years: Poster for the Architectural League’s Beaux Arts Ball” (1999) — a typographer’s dream comprising semitransparent words superimposed on one another to create a glowing, hybrid text — represent examples of graphic design. “Engelberg, Trübsee/Switzerland” (1936), a lithograph poster by renowned graphic designer Herbert Matter, is also on display. It is a triumph of the photomontage technique in advertising design, employing a minimal amount of information to invoke both narrative about the product and a satisfying formal composition.The Cooper-Hewitt’s commitment to design in all its forms is especially evident in its willingness to consider often-overlooked wall coverings as worthwhile design objects. Works on view range from the well-known, including Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann’s airy Deco wallpaper design (1918–23), to a selection of anonymously designed, Deco-inspired, mid-market commercial wallpapers from the 1930s. Jaime Salm’s “V2” sidewall tiles (2004) are forward-thinking wall coverings, incorporating eco-friendly processes with a strikingly threedimensional, deceptively minimalist aesthetic. The tiles are made from 100% pre- and post-consumer recycled waste, and their modular design facilitates a variety of configurations.With an exhibition like “Looking Forward/Looking Back,” the Cooper-Hewitt continues to promote the notion that design objects are more than either mere decoration or handsome furnishings, but are stand-alone, beautiful works of art capable of expressing the energy and ideas of a particular era.Until October 14 (2 E. 91st St. at Fifth Avenue, 212-849-8400).

Design’s Latest Details

Design’s Latest Details

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