The Postmodern Martha Stewart

The Russian Constructivists, driven by the desire to serve the new communist society, famously renounced “art for art’s sake.” They abandoned traditional highbrow painting and sculpture (“useless things”) to devote their energies to engineering, photography, and industrial and graphic design. They created books, posters, kiosks, housewares, textiles, energy-efficient objects such as stoves, and architectural projects for the good of the common man. Yet many of those utilitarian objects were so well-designed that they rose to the level of art.Andrea Zittel (b. 1965), like many of the Russian Constructivists, trained as a painter and sculptor and has since turned her attentions to industrial design. Yet her aims are those of a postmodern artistic capitalist, not a socialist modern artist. Operating under the corporation A-Z Administrative Services (which has its own headquarters and logo), Ms. Zittel rebels against traditional “art,” society, and our wasteful and throwaway lifestyle in the name of custom-made utilitarian “design.”Yet she also rebels against brandname corporate “design” in the name of an ironic, personal commentary. She creates what looks like “form-follows-function” objects made for the many; but her “designs” (which are often not as functional as they first look) are marketed as exclusive and expensive postmodern “art.” Offered to buyers by artist-invitation only, or in limited editions at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, they are available only to a privileged few. Ms. Zittel’s designs/artworks are being showcased in two concurrent exhibitions.“Critical Space,” a mid-career survey of more than 75 objects from the last 15 years (including uniforms, textiles, furniture, housewares, freeze-dried food, drawings, small portable dwellings, or “habitats,” and incubators for the design and hatching of chickens) is at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Chelsea. The show is co-curated by Trevor Smith and Paola Morsiani. “Small Liberties,” a grouping of 11 personalized “A-Z Wagon Stations” (small customized, portable living structures from 2003-05) and a projected audiovisual work, “Small Liberties” (2006), opens today at the Whitney Museum at Altria, and is organized by Shamim Momin.At first glance, Ms. Zittel’s work appears to be in the tradition of other Modernist masters. (Artists such as Anni Albers and Charles and Ray Eames are sometimes invoked.) In fact, Ms. Zittel’s spare, geometrical “A-Z Carpet Furniture” (1992-93), which (very much like traditional Japanese design) relegates eating, living, and sleeping to the floor, resembles designs by the Russian Constructivists. Likewise, the white, curving, iceberg forms of her “A-Z Deserted Island” (1997), a series of stationary, fiberglass, one-person flotation devices, recall the biomorphic forms of an Arp sculpture.The curving forms found in her stepped, mesa-like series of birch plywood desks, “A-Z Raugh Desk” (2001), and in her dark gray, foam rubber “A-Z Raugh [pronounced “raw”] Furniture” rock formations (1998) are reminiscent of those in the work of architect and designer Alvar Aalto. And the rectangles and circles that comprise her “A-Z Cellar Compartment Units” (2001), stainless steel-edged, birch plywood, and glass boxes that stack and interconnect to make living quarters, resemble the rectilinear forms found in the work of architects Gerrit Rietveld and Frank Lloyd Wright.The difference between Ms. Zittel and those earlier masters, though, is that she lacks their command of rhythm, form, and unity. Some of Ms. Zittel’s portable plywood “Homestead Units,” which unfold like huge, manycompartmented steamer trunks, will boggle the mind of the most fastidious space-saver among us. Utilizing the grid for many of her designs, Ms. Zittel seems to have struck on a surefire thing. Yet she possesses no real sense of how to use the grid for more than an armature on which to hang things.In Ms. Zittel’s designs there is very little of the organic, dynamic flow from form to form, the urgency of movement and of life that you experience in Mondrian’s geometries, in traditional Japanese architecture, or in that of Wright. The grid, like the birch plywood, stainless steel, and the biomorphic curve, is not completely natural and integral in Ms. Zittel’s hands. The rectangle has been employed, not embraced. Materials and styles feel appropriated.All in all, one gets the lingering feeling that Ms. Zittel believes that all the miraculous qualities with which other artists imbued those forms and materials – the purity, clarity, and utopian grace; the metaphoric implications of the curve; the Bauhaus belief in art as industry – merely came along as part of the inherited Modernist package. Ms. Zittel’s designs are inventive, surprising, and broadreaching, but at times it seems she is more concerned with commenting on design than with making it. It’s as if, through an unwillingness to embrace where she came from, she wants to cancel out the distinctions between kitsch and Modernism.The New Museum’s three sleek, customized “A-Z Escape Vehicles” (1996) and the Whitney’s 11 “A-Z Wagon Stations” (a cross between a Conestoga wagon and a space ship) are each as individual as their owners, and they can be engaging to look at. Customized at the Joshua Tree site (a desert community in California), the futuristic “Wagon Stations” are outfitted with everything from scrap lumber to rusted metal; from books to melted wax to handmade sculpted blankets and murals.Andrea Rosen’s “Escape Vehicle” is fitted inside like a 1970s custom van; Ms. Zittel’s is made into a cave; Robert Shiffer’s is a saltwater swimming pool. Yet the artist’s “Habitats” can seem to have more to do with the Sci-Fi channel, retro camper design, and the Jetsons than with form following function.When Ms. Zittel shines is as a clothing designer. Her “A-Z Uniforms” (1995-2001), many of which are on view in Chelsea – and each of which was designed to be worn every day for an entire season – can be beautiful and functional. Some look like military uniforms, Amish dresses, or a layering of crocheted mistakes that organically and surprisingly jelled with the last stitch.Ms. Zittel, a postmodern William Morris-Martha Stewart, wants to have it both ways. Her zany products, if they can be called that, are often too tongue in cheek to be taken seriously, too expensive to be utilitarian, and too derivative to be given much more aesthetic merit than some of the inexpensive wares found at Ikea. But she is also a bit of an appealing nutcase, who has turned the personal quirks and obsessions of her unusual personality into a career of making unusual things.This alone gives these two exhibitions, which together unfold like the many compartments of a life, their punch and power – the same qualities that make Ms. Zittel an artist continually interesting to watch.New Museum of Contemporary Art/ Chelsea until May 27 (556 W. 22nd Street at Eleventh Avenue, 212-219-1222).Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria until June 18 (120 Park Avenue at 42nd Street, 917-663-2453).

The Postmodern Martha Stewart

The Postmodern Martha Stewart

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