INNENKREIS

At the gallery Innenkreis, founded in 2026 by Zeynep Rekkali Jensen, two exhibitions were shown in parallel: the textile presentation »You can’t see it from there« by Trine Tronhjem and Liv Marie Rømer, and the group exhibition »Vanitas in Use I«. While Tronhjem and Rømer work at the intersection of surface, atmosphere, and space—understanding textiles not as a mere covering, but as a spatial medium—»Vanitas in Use I« expanded the art-historical concept of vanitas to include the perspective of functional objects and lived-in spaces. Featuring works by Indio Möglich, Lasse Sylvest Lilleoer, Et Arrangement, Maral Taşkırıcı, Clara Schweers, and Thomas Woltmann, complemented by historical designs, the exhibition asked how ideas of time, memory, transience, and use live on in things that are made, touched, and used.

Ukurant

Ukurant—an exhibition platform and creative community for young, experimental design positions founded by Kamma Rosa Schytte, Kasper Kyster, Josefine Krabbe, and Lærke Ryom—grew out of the question of how to position yourself in the industry after studying design. In this spirit, during 3daysofdesign, Ukurant’s contribution »Ukurant Makes Room« showcased fresh perspectives from 26 emerging talents from the design and creative scene. The exhibition presented experimental approaches to craft, material, and tradition, and put processes, test setups, and the craftsmanship behind the works at the center—very much in line with a material-matters mindset that pays as much attention to how an object comes into being as to its finished form.

FRAMA

FRAMA—founded in Copenhagen in 2011 by Niels Strøyer Christophersen—is known for a pared-back aesthetic, natural materials, and uncompromising quality. The newly presented Sectional Sofa translates this design language into a softer, more generous form of seating comfort, showing how the brand brings material, form, and everyday living together.

Royal Copenhagen x Griegst

With »Triton: A Masterpiece Resurfaces«, Royal Copenhagen celebrated the return of the legendary Triton collection by artist and goldsmith Arje Griegst—50 years after its first presentation at the flagship store at Amagertorv 6, where it was now on view again. Together with the Griegst family and based on the Griegst archives, the shell-like porcelain collection was reissued in three new glazes—Sand, Ocean, and Celadon. Curated by Noam Griegst and Dan Thawley, the exhibition made the creation process visible: from shells, tools, models, and historical molds to finished porcelain and unglazed bisque from the Royal Copenhagen workshop, complemented by a soundscape and scent composition.

STELLAR WORKS

Founded by Yuichiro Hori, the design brand Stellar Works is known for furniture and interiors shaped by Asian sensibility, international design, and hospitality culture, as well as collaborations with studios such as Neri&Hu, Yabu Pushelberg, David Rockwell, and Space Copenhagen. Together with the latter, Stellar Works developed the THOUGHT / FUL installation for 3daysofdesign at Odd Fellow Palace, an 18th-century Rococo palace in the heart of Copenhagen. As part of FRAMING, a curated group exhibition of international design brands, the presentation understood hospitality as a spatial rhythm of calm, encounter, and interaction.

»Objects of Desire«

Curated by Birgitte Due Madsen, Objects of Desire at Thorvaldsen’s Museum brought together international designers and makers working outside of mass production. Featuring contributions from, among others, August Wille, Birgitte Due Madsen, Boris Berlin, Bureau Parso, Corkinho, Corpus Studio, Edoardo Lietti, Eric Landon, Francesca Torzo, Germans Ermičs, Kevin Hviid, Kim Richardt, Maison Arpelli, Rahee Yoon, Rasmus Fenhann, Sausset Leou, Seamus Kowarzik, Sofie Østerby, Uncommon Ancestor, VAVA OBJECTS, and Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt, the exhibition put material awareness, longevity, and craftsmanship precision center stage.

TYPE-XIII Atelier Oï project

A–POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE, the experimental line of the Japanese fashion house that takes Issey Miyake’s concept of »A Piece of Cloth« further in an interdisciplinary way, presented new lights from the »O« Series from the TYPE-XIII Atelier Oï project together with the Swiss design studio atelier oï. The project combines »a piece of cloth« and »a piece of wire« into flexible light objects with interchangeable pleated fabric shades, translating textile research into a poetic form of light, structure, and atmosphere.

Project Materia x Mater

Initiated by TABLEAU and Edition Solenne, Project Materia x Mater sees material as the starting point for artistic and design processes. For the 2026 edition, the format partnered with the Danish design brand Mater and put Matek in the spotlight — a circular composite material developed by Mater from discarded resources such as coffee husks, sawdust, and recycled plastic. Nine international artists and designers translated the material into sculptures, furniture, and collectible design, showing how differently a shared material framework can be interpreted.

DEORON

DEORON, founded in 2021, is an independent curatorial platform at the intersection of design, research, and lifestyle culture. Originally conceived as a digital project and webshop to make design feel slower, more conscious, and more accessible, DEORON has since expanded into physical space as well. At 3daysofdesign, the platform brought together more than 30 designers, brands, and independent studios on Paper Island, presenting collectible and industrial design, furniture, lighting, homeware, technology, and objects in dialogue with sound — including a sculptural sound system, listening sessions, and live performances. The result was less a classic product showcase than a space for exchange, encounters, and new connections between design, music, and people.

Since its opening in 2001, the Leopold Museum has played a pivotal role in bringing the forward-looking, experimental spirit of Vienna’s turn of the century to life—not as a singular, archived moment consigned to the past, but as an enduring cultural point of reference. Founded by the Austrian art collector, ophthalmologist, and patron Rudolf Leopold (1925–2010), the museum remains consistently devoted to the art and culture of around 1900. With its extensive collection—including major works by Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Oskar Kokoschka—it has established itself as one of the leading institutions dedicated to the presentation of Viennese Modernism.

By continually reimagining its permanent exhibition, »Vienna 1900—Birth of Modernism,« the museum repeatedly succeeds in framing the aesthetic, social, and design impulses of the era within a contemporary context, offering ever-new perspectives. On display are masterpieces from the Leopold Museum’s collection alongside significant national and international long-term loans, through which the radical energy of the past resonates and the emergence of modernity around 1900 appears remarkably relevant today.

Armchair for the Purkersdorf Sanatorium by Koloman Moser;
Executed by: Prag-Rudniker, workshop: Jakob Soulek (carpenter), 1903

How this formative turning point found expression is explored in the exhibition catalogue, which characterizes the heterogeneous milieu of the Danube metropolis as a »central engine of a turbulent movement of renewal«—one that created fertile ground for an extraordinary concentration of cultural achievement. Names such as Klimt, Freud, and Loos have long stood, requiring little explanation, as synonymous with groundbreaking innovations across a wide spectrum of modern disciplines. Vienna’s multilayered identity, shaped by movements such as the Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, continues to inform contemporary debates on craftsmanship, materiality, and the role of art in society.

The world-famous group portrait of the artists participating in the 14th Exhibition of the Vienna Secession, including Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann and Carl Moll, photographed by Moriz Nähr, 1902

»Ver Sacrum. Theseus and Minotaur.« — poster by Gustav Klimt for the 1st Art Exhibition of the Association of Austrian Artists, Secession. Condition before censorship, 1898

The applied arts played a central role in realizing the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk—a term denoting the aspiration to infuse all areas of life with art, which in the age of social media might most closely correspond to the overused word »curate«. The distinction, however, lies in the ambition to create an aesthetically and conceptually self-contained whole, one that transcends dull replicability and fleeting immediacy—the logic of the »copy-and-paste-taste«.

In this context, the attentive and discerning eye will have noticed that the »Hoffmann Chair«—a label commonly applied regardless of the specific model—has, in many a carefully curated feed, been reduced to a conspicuously deployed prop, intended to signal stylistic confidence, mask mediocrity, and assert distinction »from the rest«. Yet it is worth noting, positively, that furniture from the turn of the century continues to strike a chord today, capable of evoking the atmosphere of that vibrant era—which is precisely where the exhibition’s true strength resides.

»Vienna 1900—Birth of Modernism« lays bare the foundations from which many of today’s trends and debates first emerged. Rather than concentrating on singular iconic figures, the presentation opens up a perspective on the complexity of an era in transition, whose energy continues to resonate to this day.

In keeping with this understanding of modernity as an enduring impulse that extends beyond Vienna, the Leopold Museum is also presenting a comprehensive retrospective, »GUSTAVE COURBET—Realist and Rebel« (19.02.2026—21.06.2026). With Courbet, the focus shifts to an artist who—much like the protagonists of Vienna’s turn of the century—challenged conventions and insisted upon artistic autonomy. The exhibition thus consistently aligns with the museum’s programmatic aim of revealing moments of upheaval in art history as living, ongoing impulses. [Ed.]

Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism
560 pages 23.5 x 28 cm
1000 illustrations
leopoldmuseum.org

Lucie Rie (1902–1995) is considered one of the most influential ceramic artists of the 20th century. Yet her work continues to defy simple categorization. She cared neither for artistic labels nor for theoretical explanations—her focus was always on the act of making, on direct engagement with the material. Her vessels, created over decades between Vienna and London, possess a quiet austerity that deliberately eludes conventional classifications. To truly engage with her work means paying attention to what is not immediately visible.

When asked whether she saw herself more as an artist or a craftswoman, Lucie Rie usually responded curtly: »I am a potter.« A sentence that unequivocally shows that the ceramist, born in Vienna in 1902, preferred not to dwell on such classifications—and their hierarchical implications. Nor did she want to philosophize at length and expansively about her work, as author and ceramist Edmund de Waal reports. She once answered an inquiry about a contribution to a book as follows: »I do not want to be in your book. I like to make pots—but I do not like to talk about them. I would answer your questions today, but they would be wrong tomorrow.« This statement, which de Waal classifies as a typically Viennese method »of getting to the point,« contains two insights about Lucie Rie.

On the one hand, everything in the influential ceramist’s life truly revolved around making; on the other hand, this more-than-direct answer also encapsulates Rie’s view that every new piece of ceramic is a new beginning. »To make pots is an adventure to me, every new work is a new beginning,« is one of Lucie Rie’s most frequently quoted sentences. Vienna was the starting point of her journey, consisting of countless small adventures. Lucie Rie, then still Luzie Gomperz, was born in 1902 in the Austrian capital and grew up in a middle-class Jewish home. Her childhood and youth were significantly shaped by her uncle Sándor Wolf, a respected Burgenland businessman with a large collection of ancient art treasures from various cultures. The fact that Roman pottery was among them significantly influenced Lucie Rie. »There were these fantastic Roman bowls that were floating. I always tried to copy those floating bowls,« she recalled many years later about her first encounters with her uncle’s ancient ceramic collection.

FROM VIENNA TO LONDON

Her artistic talent became apparent very early on, and on the advice of her private drawing teacher, she attended the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, where prominent artists such as Oskar Kokoschka and Josef Hoffmann taught. However, Lucie Rie was particularly drawn to Michael Powolny’s ceramics class. Yet, it was not he, but the architect and co-founder of the Wiener Werkstätte, Josef Hoffmann, who considered her first self-made vessel so good that he exhibited it in Brussels’ Palais Stoclet. As Tony Birks notes in his comprehensive biography Fired Earth, »Lucie’s work at the potter’s wheel was characterized by a rational approach and determination. She had internalized the design concept of the early Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, originally derived from architecture, according to which all everyday objects, from wallpaper patterns to chairs and greeting cards, had to fit into the overall architectural framework and form a harmonious whole. Her vessel shapes—cylinders and bowls—looked deceptively simple.« During and after her studies, Lucie Rie began experimenting with various chemicals and glazes, and she also delved deeply into the study of the raw materials used. This led, among other things, to the first »volcanic« glaze, which would later become characteristic of many of her works.

»Unlike her contemporaries, who were mostly making decorative and figurative ceramics, Rie was interested in the material and physical properties of clay and glazes. This can be linked to the modernist interest in truth to materials. She experimented with layering slips and glazes to achieve interesting surface effects,« describes curator Eliza Spindel of the initial phase of her work. In 1938, after Austria’s annexation by the Nazi state, Lucie Rie and her husband emigrated to London. In 1939, in Albion Mews, a then heavily neglected district of London, she discovered a garage with living space above it. The garage was converted into a pottery workshop and remained the focal point of her creative work until her death. To stay financially afloat during and after World War II, Rie primarily produced ceramic buttons and jewelry for fashion houses at that time. »Arriving in London in 1938, Rie found that her work was out of step with prevailing trends in British studio pottery,« says Eliza Spindel in an interview with the magazine STIRworld. She initially adopted the style of her colleague Bernard Leach, who was a few years her senior and a central figure in the British pottery world at the time. »First I tried to follow Bernard Leach’s rules—I made heavier pots and heavier shapes,« Rie describes the influence of her contemporary in a conversation with wildlife filmmaker and self-proclaimed Lucie Rie fan David Attenborough. Gradually, however, she moved away from his style and found her own, which, as Leach himself once noted, was characterized, among other things, by radical independence: »An outstanding quality of Lucie’s work is the degree to which it is free from the direct influence of other potters, ancient and modern.« Sir David Attenborough puts it this way: »Before her time Leach and his followers sought their inspiration from medieval England and twelfth century China. Rie showed how this ancient craft could produce new shapes and new colours.«

MOVED BY BEAUTY

After the war, Rie rediscovered the elegance of her early works, strongly influenced by Modernism. From the late 1950s, she expanded her style with new forms and glazes, including more organic shapes and textured surfaces. Her later work features vibrant colors and metallic glazes that convey a sense of opulence. Retrospectives were dedicated to her in 1967 at the Arts Council Gallery on St. James’s Square, in 1981 at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, and subsequently at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. However, Lucie Rie never felt as comfortable in the spotlight as she did in her workshop in Albion Mews. The last major exhibition in which Rie participated as an active ceramist took place in August 1990 at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich. The day after the opening, the then 88-year-old suffered a severe stroke, which brought an abrupt end to her pottery career. After her subsequent hospital stay, when asked about her future, she responded with a counter-question: »Haven’t I made enough pots?« Lucie Rie died on April 1, 1995, in her apartment in Albion Mews. In 1999, a solo exhibition was dedicated to her at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.

The living and bedroom (1926–1928) designed for Lucie Rie by architect Ernst Plischke for her apartment at Wollzeile 28;
rebuilt at the Hofmobiliendepot, Möbel Museum Wien.

Rie’s pottery studio, which had barely changed over the decades, has been exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London since 2009. In 2023, a bowl with the deep-drawn footring typical of her work, which lends a special lightness to her pottery, fetched a record sum of £330,200 at an auction by Phillips Auctioneers. Numerous friendships were also central to her work, such as with the aforementioned Bernard Leach, but also with her long-time workshop colleague Hans Coper and with the architect Ernst Plischke, who designed her Vienna apartment in Wollzeile. Rie formed an unusual friendly relationship in old age with the Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake. Fascinated by her works, he organized an exhibition titled »Issey Miyake meets Lucie Rie« in 1989 at the Sogetsu Gallery in Tokyo. »I am often asked to speak of instances where I have been moved by beauty. Lucie Rie and her work represent some which most often come to mind,« reads a statement by Miyake about Lucie Rie.

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT

Lucie Rie’s successes can also be attributed to her unique technique, unusual for her time. In his biography, Tony Birks describes how colleagues who watched her potting always noted with interest that she used a kidney-shaped piece of metal, a simple tool curved like a comma, in her case made of copper, which replaced fingers in creating smooth surfaces on the inside or outside of a bowl. Furthermore, many of her thin-necked vessels were assembled from two parts. With the exception of her Bernard Leach period, she also meticulously ensured that the upper and lower parts of a ceramic piece were equally cleanly crafted. »Indeed, the bases of numerous works with sgraffito decoration, and also the later so-called knitted vessels, bear very finely incised, sometimes even painted-on patterns after turning, so that viewing her works from that period is akin to a revelation, like the sight of a sea urchin or the delicate drawing of an insect’s body under a magnifying glass,« writes Birks. For the sgraffito or inlay technique, Lucie used a sharp needle as a scoring tool. Radial, parallel lines arranged at an angle to the clay body and fine cross-hatching were typical of her works from the 1950s. Later, she combined cross-hatched sgraffito patterns with heavy glazes.

This resulted in the so-called »knitted« vessels. In the foreword to his biography, Tony Birks writes that Lucie Rie’s simple, yet immensely subtle and complex vessels owe their high degree of perfection not to a reduction to an ever clearer form, but equally to their robustness and fragility, a combination of opposites such as economy and abundance, light and shadow. »But it is probably above all the close proximity of perfection and imperfection, the inimitable Lucie Rie’s tremor, that captivates the viewer.« As a person, she embodied the same mixture of opposites, according to Birks. »Her delicate appearance and apparent fragility might sometimes have disguised the fact that she possessed an iron will and was capable of hard work.« The fact that Lucie Rie was not one of those people who constantly revolved around themselves should also be mentioned here. As cliché as it may sound: she always remained firmly grounded. With one exception: In a video showing David Attenborough’s visit to her studio, there is a scene where Lucie Rie dives so deep into her kiln that she loses her footing. Shortly before, in a brief exchange between the naturalist and the artist, the discussion was whether opening the kiln after firing would be akin to a revelation. Laughing, Rie replies: »Not a revelation, a surprise.«

ARTICLE FIRST PUBLISHED IN CHAPTER №XII »SIMPLICITY« — SUMMER 2025

The aesthetic of Isamu Noguchi’s work stands as a remarkable example of timeless artistic expression, with his Japanese-American heritage forming a central part of his oeuvre. Noguchi can be seen as a modernist between two worlds—shaped by cultural heritage yet driven by the search for his own personal and artistic identity. His universal aspirations extended beyond art itself, and the power and influence of his work continue to resonate to this day.

A UNIVERSAL ARTIST

Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988), one of the most influential artists and designers of the 20th century, coined the phrase »There is no such thing as time«. In his artistic work, he repeatedly grappled with the question of the timeless form. In addition to sculptures, gardens, furniture, ceramics, he even created architecture and stage designs, using a wide range of materials such as stainless steel, marble, cast iron, wood, bronze, basalt, granite, and water. His works have been shown at documenta in Kassel, at the Venice Art Biennale, and in major museums around the world. As a global citizen, Noguchi traveled throughout his life and was inspired by the purity of Italian marble and contemporary art, as well as by Chinese ink painting and the purist ceramics and traditional gardens of Japan. In his avant-garde work, whether as an artist, designer, stage designer, landscape architect, or sculptor, he combined impressions from East and West, processing the themes of his life.

Sunflower (Himawari), 1952, Shigaraki stone-ware, Sogetsu Foundation, 66 x 35 x 19 cm

BETWEEN NEW YORK AND JAPAN

But how can we imagine Isamu Noguchi as a person? He is often described as having felt lonely, with a persistent sense of not belonging anywhere—a feeling rooted in his childhood. Noguchi’s parents, who both began their careers as writers, were never married. His mother, Léonie Gilmour—an American of Irish descent—was working in New York City as a young writer and editor when she met the Japanese poet Yonejirō Noguchi. Yet only a few months before Isamu was born in Los Angeles on November 17, 1904, his father returned to Japan alone—marking a first rupture, a first abandonment.

The Kite, 1959, Anodized aluminum, 158.1 x 44.8 x 14 cm; The Mirror, 1958, Anodized aluminum, 161.1 x 72.2 x 9.5 cm; Man Walking, 1959, Anodized aluminum, 220.7 x 95.9 x 87 cm

When Noguchi was two years old, his mother moved with him to Japan, but he rarely saw his father. »All I can remember in my early childhood is being a child living with his mother,« Noguchi is said to have remarked. Since his mother worked as an English teacher, the young Noguchi spent much of his time alone, which taught him independence. Another rupture followed when his mother sent him back to the United States alone in the summer of 1918—at only 13 years old—to attend high school in Rolling Prairie and later in La Porte, Indiana. He did not see his mother again for five years. One description of his character aptly notes that this circumstance »added another layer to his increasingly complex identity.« Noguchi resented his mother for sending him to America against his will, and later commented on a visit from her: »My extreme affection never returned, and now, the more maternal she became, the more annoyed I became with her.«

Léonie Gilmour, Mother, c.1932, Terra-cotta, 20.6 x 18.1 x 19.1 cm, Private Collection

ENCOUNTER WITH TIMELESSNESS

Nevertheless, the young Noguchi, who had begun studying medicine in New York City after graduating from high school, followed his mother’s advice and took evening classes in sculpture at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School. Had she already recognized her son’s great talent at that time? After only three months at the evening school, Noguchi presented his first exhibition and from then on earned his living by creating portrait busts. One of his first impressive academic works, Undine, a female plaster sculpture, was created in 1926. However, because academic work no longer satisfied him after a short time, Noguchi sought new inspiration and became enthusiastic about modern and contemporary art. In particular, the works of the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, which he had seen at a New York exhibition in 1926, impressed Noguchi so deeply that they fundamentally changed his artistic direction. He was said to have been spellbound by Brâncuși’s vision and work. With his minimalist sculptures, which he refined again and again in pursuit of the essence of things, Brâncuși strove to create something both modern and archaic—ultimately, something timeless.

Man (Otoko), 1952, Bizen stoneware, 55.6 x 16.5 x 15.2 cm, The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York

THE ESSENCE OF NATURE

Fascinated by this idea, Noguchi seized the opportunity in 1927 to travel to Paris on a Guggenheim scholarship. There he worked for five months in Brâncuși’s studio as an assistant and was inspired by the simplicity of his designs. »What Brâncuși does with a bird or the Japanese with a garden is to take the essence of nature and distill it. Just like a poet does. And that’s what interests me. To get to the heart of the most important forms in a poetic translation,« said Noguchi. Inspired by Brâncuși’s forms and philosophy, Noguchi turned to modernism and abstraction, and from then on imbued his own works with lyrical and emotional expressiveness, an aura of mystery. In works such as Man (1952) or in the exhibition of his marble sculptures at the Stable Gallery in New York in 1959—considered a tribute to Brâncuși—the influence of his mentor is especially evident. Again and again, Noguchi’s origins played a role in his life; as someone who was half American and half Japanese, he often faced prejudice. Thus, influences from both East and West, along with questions of identity and belonging, came to shape his art.

For Martha Graham’s Hérodiade, 1944, Plywood, paint, 246.7 x 90.8 x 69.2 cm, The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York, gift of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, 2002

CARVED IN STONE

After extensive travels through Asia, Mexico, and Europe, Noguchi returned to New York City in the early 1930s. In his Greenwich Village studio, he devoted himself to a wide range of design projects alongside his portrait sculptures—designing landscapes, playgrounds, and large-scale stone works, while also exploring new materials and methods. His art reflects the sensibilities of an era shaped by the upheavals of World War II. During this time, he created striking sculptures inspired by archaic Greek figures, which were presented in the 1946 exhibition Fourteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Of these sculptures Noguchi said that they defy gravity, just as they defy time and even life itself, which could be lost at any moment. Time—and the attempt to transcend it through the essence of form—remained a recurring motif throughout his work.

Fourteen Americans, Museum of Modern Art, September 10 — December 8, 1946

ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS

Even though Isamu Noguchi is often regarded as a »designer« today, his self-image was fundamentally different: »I decided to just be an artist,« he once said of himself. In his practice, Noguchi consistently collaborated with artists from a wide range of disciplines. For example, beginning in 1935 he created stage designs for Martha Graham, worked with her throughout his life, and drew lasting inspiration from their collaboration.

Center Elevation for Martha Graham’s Seraphic Dialogue, 1955, Brass rods, steel cable, 671.8 x 518.1 cm

Gate of Hippolytus for Martha Graham’s Phaedra, 1962, Paint, canvas, wood, metal, 307.3 x 68.6 x 38.1 cm

Through his stage work, Noguchi realized that he wanted to create sculptures for space itself, and from then on he also devoted himself to furniture design—most notably his famous Coffee Table of 1944. In the 1950s he created the first Akari lamps, crafted from mulberry paper and bamboo. Even though many of his objects were later produced in large numbers, he still considered them works of art. Noguchi drew no distinction between his artistic practice and commercial design—if the opportunity arose to bring a design into mass production, he embraced it. In 1937, for example, he designed an intercom for the Zenith Radio Corporation, and both his Coffee Table and his Akari light sculptures are still in production today.

Originally manufactured for the American furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, the Coffee Table from 1944 is still produced today.

Akari Lamps, Chuo Koron Gallery, August 2 – 7, 1954

HIS UNDERSTANDING OF TIME

Although Isamu Noguchi was not opposed to mass production, he often found its limits. In an interview, he summed up this problem while also offering an insight into his understanding of time: »If you want to live and work in an industrialized world, you have to use industrial materials and tools. However, I was not entirely satisfied with this, because I felt that the limitations of such tools force you to be part of the industry instead of being free. And I felt that the more old-fashioned way of doing things, for example with stone and with your own hands, leaves a way to freedom. And so I went back to the stone. I also worked with wood for a while, but I switched back and forth. Sometimes I feel like I’m part of today’s world, but sometimes I feel like I might belong to history or prehistory. Or that there is no such thing as time. But if you are trapped in time, in the immediate present, then the selection is very limited. You can only really do certain things right that belong to that time. But if you want to break out of this time-boundness, then the whole world you see—not just the industrialized world—is the place where you belong.«

Energy Void, 1972–73, Swedish granite, 361.6 x 31.1 x 112.4 cm

WHAT REMAINS

Noguchi’s legacy is immense, due in part to the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum (today known as The Noguchi Museum) in Queens, New York, which he himself initiated and opened in 1985. He designed the museum in a 1920s industrial building located directly across from his studio. Alongside photographs, drawings, and models, visitors can experience his sculptures in a serene garden setting. Noguchi also stipulated that his studio in Mure, Japan, be preserved to inspire future artists and scholars — a wish realized with the opening of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum Japan in 1999. For him, both his work and his museums were to be understood as a crossroads where East and West meet. Isamu Noguchi passed away on December 30, 1988, in New York. Through his diverse artistic practice, he succeeded in uniting Western and Eastern cultures — creating objects that transcend their time. He may have had this in mind when he remarked: »A museum is an archive, a depot against time. It has a touch of eternity.«

FIRST PUBLISHED IN CHAPTER №V »TIME AND SPACE« — Winter 2021

»Diego’s importance to his older brother Alberto is just beginning to be widely recognized«, wrote the New York Times  in 1985 about the then 82-year-old artist Diego Giacometti, who had spent decades in the shadow of his famous brother. It took even longer for Diego Giacometti’s own artistic work—after more than three decades of supporting Alberto’s practice—to gain the recognition it deserved as an independent oeuvre.

But first, let’s rewind to the beginning: Alberto and Diego Giacometti were born in Switzerland in 1901 and 1902. The two brothers grew up alongside two other siblings in a family shaped by the artistic pursuits of their father, the painter Giovanni Giacometti. Diego initially devoted himself to drawing and experimented with etching, later completed a commercial apprenticeship, and finally followed his older brother—who was studying sculpture with Antoine Bourdelle in Paris—to the French capital. When Alberto received commissions to design and produce furnishings, the skilled craftsman Diego grew increasingly interested in his brother’s work, supporting him with plaster casts, scaffolding production, and sculpting activities.

During the Second World War, Diego Giacometti attended courses at the Scandinavian Academy of Art  and created his first sculptures—including several extraordinary animal figures. From 1950 onwards, he focused primarily on designing furniture and artistic everyday objects. »The brothers were very different. Alberto was supremely self-confident, highly cultivated and insatiably curious. Diego was more instinctive, more physical and sometimes impenetrably self-effacing,« describes Michael Brenson in the New York Times, highlighting their differences. What united them, however, was their exceptional sense of scale and form, as well as a deep passion for artistic work and craftsmanship.

After the death of his brother in 1966, Diego Giacometti increasingly realized his own artistic visions, whereby his main focus was on designing artistic, often filigree furniture. He designed salon tables, armchairs and consoles made of glass and bronze. In addition, he created numerous pieces such as the »table in the shape of a skeleton«. Giacometti designed several pieces of furniture for the world-famous Kronenhalle  bar in Zurich and the entire interior of the »Café Diego« in Saint-Paul-de-Vence for the Fondation Maeght. His last major commission attracted international attention and made him known to a wider public: Diego Giacometti designed the entire interior of the Musée Picasso in Paris, which opened in September 1985—from the furniture to the banisters and door fittings to the ceiling lights. With their filigree structure, the latter are reminiscent of large birdcages and were made of plaster-coated iron. However, the artist did not live to see the ceremonial opening of the museum: Diego Giacometti died in Paris in July 1985. As he gave away many of his works or sold them privately, his entire oeuvre is still not fully documented.

The Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur is presenting a large-scale exhibition dedicated to the artist, on view until November 9, 2025. For the first time, Giacometti’s furniture is shown in an art context rather than a design context. The exhibition was created in collaboration with the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, where Diego Giacometti’s estate is held. [SW]

We can’t do anything without things, things make us. That is the condition of life. Objects shape our lives and our identity on the most diverse levels and in many ways that are often difficult to grasp. The interaction between creatives and objects is and remains particularly interesting. What follows are reflections on the »thing« as a central motif and the people who create it and work with it, whether in the fields of architecture, design or art.

Somehow, a thing is always something individual and usable. Unlike the well-known formulation in relation to Genesis, which speaks of the »creation of all things« and thus refers to the beginning of the world, we do not also understand the thing as a living being such as a tree and an animal or as a component of the environment such as a mountain and a road. For us, a thing is ultimately always a separate entity which, if it is human-made, also has a function and becomes an object within our formation of reality. Consequently, »the thing« always refers to us as humans, because if we do not perceive something in this way, then there is no thing. A stone is just lying around. But if it is used to hold a door open, then it suddenly becomes relevant: »That thing there.« Exciting, isn’t it?
Such insights are ancient. Philosophy developed realism for debates about things and concepts, and the scholastic Middle Ages, for example, discussed the question of whether a table only becomes a table because it has this designation. What would it be otherwise? In any case, all of this makes it clear that things are part of our lives, that we make or define them, use them and also understand them as having value. However, the symbolic quality is particularly appealing: no queen without a crown, no judge without a robe. No chancellor without a bottle of beer, one could add—let’s remember Gerhard Schröder’s famous saying. As clichéd as it sounds, it has a factual meaning. In fact, these symbolic objects were introduced to signal power or competence, but also to make it easier for us to accept abstract qualifications: »Whoever wears the hat is in charge.«

Villa Savoye in Poissy, 1887-1965

When the Swiss architect and co-founder of classical modernism Le Corbusier (1887-1965) was ready to have his famous Villa Savoye in Poissy documented with the black and white photographs that were common at the time after its completion and he looked through the prints he had just made, he noticed a small deficit. He immediately asked his photographer Marius Gravot to place a few things in the foreground of a shot of the famous sun terrace on the roof of the villa. Apparently, the other images, taken in an objective, modern style, had become too impersonal. In these, the house appeared basically deserted and sterile, which made its architectural conception clear and legible, but in no way corresponded to the reality of its use. And what did Marius Gravot place in his picture? Just the insignia of the architect: Glasses, hat, cigarettes. As if Le Corbusier had just stood behind us on the roof parapet for a moment and was about to return to his personal paraphernalia. A clever trick that plays with the presence of what is not shown, without jeopardizing the documentary task of architectural photography with a distracting person in the picture. As viewers, we decide what we concentrate on—and thus ultimately what the message of the picture is. A second layer of content is created solely through these four objects.

Philippe Starck, born in Paris in 1949, is a fan of old styles, especially the French royal court in the Baroque period. Reflections of Louis-seize, or Rococo, can be found time and again in his work. However, to make it less obvious that this star designer, who can also appear unconventional with a motorcycle, tracksuit jacket or costume, loves the »old-fashioned«, he developed a camouflage solution for a Kartell series chair in 2002: he made it transparent and called it Louis Ghost. It is now up to those who buy it to consciously sit on a piece of stylish furniture, or to overlook its formally expressed »meta-level« and just use it as a simple plastic chair—chacun à son goût. For Starck, design also involves play, and this creates a special kind of communication. It would be tempting to assume that the Frenchman was familiar with the »Ten Theses for Good Design« by his German colleague Dieter Rams. The well-behaved Rams with his neat designs—for Braun or FSB, for example—calls for: »Good design makes a product understandable.« And that’s what appeals to Starck. He doesn’t want you to be able to grasp something completely and immediately »see through it«—although this is indeed the case with a Louis Ghost, visually speaking. However, the versatility of a thing expands its presence.

Philippe Starck for Kartell: »Louis Ghost«, 2002

A third aspect: anyone who approaches things exclusively with a functional reservation—and understands every product of our meritocracy in the same way as Loriot’s famous utility user—overlooks what Greek-born Katerina Kamprani has been thinking through for herself and us for some time. While studying industrial design, she discovered the dysfunctionality that is as much a part of the object as its usability. The utensil, whose name derives from usable, is not bound to the fact that it can be put to good use—the stone mentioned above can also lie in the way instead of holding the door open. Kamprani describes her strategy as follows: »I love surrealism and absurdism. For me, it’s a different way of thinking that is much less strict than logic: it’s not about right or wrong, so the possibilities are limitless.« But your goal always remains a positive one: »I laughed out loud at my own creation! This gave me the idea to actually design objects for a bad user experience, objects that are intentionally uncomfortable.« What a nice way to drive our society to the edge of sanity.

»The Uncomfortable Broom«, Katerina Kamprani, 2017

However, objects are not only characterized by their form and use—they are sometimes also carriers of messages or signifiers for a context of meaning. The visual arts and scenography in particular work with this. Both belong to the professional field of Aleksandar Denić (b. 1963), a Serbian artist working in Germany. As a participant in the 2024 Biennale, he opted for an installation consisting of three objects that become the protagonists of a narrative. How this story is then interpreted when visiting the Serbian Pavilion at the »Exposition Coloniale« depends on individual interpretation and creativity. However, there are unmistakable signals associated with the built objects: The telephone booth painted in the Ukrainian national colors rings from time to time, but without conveying a conversation. The two old oil barrels—positioned flanking it—display two brand identities, namely that of the US oil company Texaco and that of the Russian company Rosneft. We are therefore not so much standing in front of three somewhat old relics, but in a sense in front of a »monument«. Description boards or guided tours are not really necessary: We understand the underlying meaning of things.

»Exposition Coloniale«, installation by Aleksandar Denić for the Serbian Pavilion, Biennale, 2024

»Exposition Coloniale«, installation by Aleksandar Denić for the Serbian Pavilion, Biennale, 2024

Incidentally, there is a genre of art that consists solely of pictures of things that have been set aside: the still life. Of course, they are artfully composed. Kevin Best, the Australian photo artist, is undoubtedly a fan. From a distance, one could immediately place his works in the 17th century Netherlands without hesitation—as long as one thinks of the classic motifs, including the mighty frames around them. However, while a dense approach to historical works disillusions the viewer to the extent that the contours then become coarser, irritatingly impasto, and ultimately no longer dissolve recognizably into a surface of color, this does not happen with Best. Best is a meticulously staged photographer. And so the objects in his still lifes lose neither brilliance nor sharpness, regardless of the distance. We see exactly what has been photographed, as if it were actually in front of us – the cup, the lemon, the carpet. But what about the meanings and stories that are known to have been incorporated into the image at the time? They are still there: »I often weave complex narratives into my work, so I usually start with a single object and add others to develop a story until it is complete«, he reveals about his approach.
Understandable, because we live in the 21st century and read a picture in our own contemporary way. But for us too, the things shown become carriers of a narrative. Michel Foucault already mentioned in his Order of Things that signs »can be based on agreement«. While people in the 17th century loved to recognize representatives in them—for philosophical aspects of life such as transience or the vice of gluttony—we are enthusiastic about the quality of the reproduction or the aesthetic experience. Even if it’s just a glass or a peeled tropical fruit.

However, there is indeed a special quality to one thing or another—it becomes a fetish. This is well described in Tom Wolfe’s (1930—2018) wonderfully ironic book From Bauhaus to our House, which deals with the inescapable influence of modernist design and the Bauhaus aesthetic on the cultural scene in the USA in the 1950s—from Walter Gropius’ architecture to Mies van der Rohe and his furniture designs. »The home of every young architect and the pad of every architecture student«, Wolfe reports, »was this box and this shrine. And in this shrine was always the same icon … the Barcelona chair. … When you saw this sacred object on the sisal rug, you knew you were in a household where a newly fledged architect and his wife had sacrificed everything to place the symbol of the divine mission in their home. Five hundred and fifty dollars!«
Sometimes things get enormously complicated. Especially when they symbolize or communicate something, i.e. have an indirect effect. Let’s take another example: once upon a time, there was an insignificant satellite dish on the flat roof of a store in south-east London. In August 2024, the now world-famous but anonymous street artist Banksy decided to spray paint a black, howling wolf on this very light gray dish. This was immediately publicized in one of his posts and, as always, the art-loving public immediately went into raptures over the cleverly packaged message in Banksy’s graphic. The banal bowl had apparently become an art object—instantaneously. But just one hour after it was seen by the public, a masked man climbed a ladder onto the roof in broad daylight, dismantled it and stole it. But what was it that the petty criminal group simply carried away across the shopping street despite protests from passers-by? A thing, an antenna in any case, at best a satellite dish spray-painted against its usability. Incidentally, it can be assumed that the spray-painting artist had already worked in a mask and damaged something that did not belong to him. So is it just damage to property and removal of garbage? Or is it qualified art theft, or perhaps even a happening? The art world is puzzling over whether it should be outraged. Some say: absolutely!

The series of characteristics of things listed here would also include the fact that they sometimes become personal companions and we can no longer do without a special object, or that they literally represent us as an individual, as a person. What the smartphone has certainly become for many over the last decade has been the coffee and cigarette relaxation set for more than a hundred years. Whether you’re working on a building site or at the operating table, for quite a few people it’s part of their lifestyle. This also applies to the New York-based filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (born 1953). The then fifty-year-old even felt so connected to these two things in his everyday life that he made an episodic film in 2003, which deals with this constellation, including the associated cups, ashtrays and tables, in small stories—always with his typical looseness and subtle humor. And one thing becomes very clear while watching: coffee and cigarettes are things that involve a lot of time, a lot of enjoyment and a lot of discourse—»Coffee, is that cool? … Yeah yeah, OK … Coffee? … Yeah. … OK man.«—even if the latter doesn’t always have to be the smartest at the coffee table with Iggy Pop and Tom Waits. Whatever!
Jim Jarmusch is very aware of the importance of things in our world, and also of the fact that we use them to enhance or stylize our personal appearance. For example, he is usually photographed wearing dark sunglasses, which, in combination with his wild, silver-grey hairstyle, is undoubtedly part of his self-presentation. However—and this may be the last wise insight of this text on the condition of life—sometimes there is also a protective function in the thing: especially with those dark glasses in front of the eyes. Bob Dylan wrote in his 2004 autobiography Chronicles that he often had to arm himself against intrusive curiosity in his songs, which were sometimes simply inspired and created without much thought. Besides, he can’t explain everything in his music. His first thing to reach for is something that has often saved the lives of Jim Jarmusch and many others: »Sometimes you just have to bite your upper lip and put sunglasses on.«

FIRST PUBLISHED IN CHAPTER №XI »TASTEMAKERS« — WINTER 2024/25

Just-rightness, the noun of the term just-right, is by no means an established, even canonical term – if it exists at all in the field of design science. It appears here and there in texts on the subject of design and in most cases indicates a qualitative value, an adjustment. Just-rightness therefore currently leaves a lot of room for interpretation. One interpretation of the term that crops up from time to time is exciting because it touches on a fundamental question of design in general. It is about dimensional accuracy, about the self-image of design in its position between technology and marketing.

»Good design is as little design as possible«, formulated Dieter Rams––God-Father of late modernism––and thus makes use of a linguistic trick. The point of the sentence results from the different content of the term design in German and English. A translation of the thesis into English therefore also harbors the risk of misinterpretation. Perhaps the more comprehensible, admittedly even more »denglish« formulation »Good design is as little styling as possible« would be the more consistent formulation of the claim, but the linguistic sophistication of the thesis would be lost and it should therefore be rejected from an aesthetic point of view alone.

Oru Kayak — Model Coast XT

But maybe it’s not as simple as that: Ditch the styling and you’ll be well on your way. Times have changed. Design acts as a protagonist in almost universally overcrowded markets and is thus an elementary part of the toolbox for displacing competing products. Today, in a world of too much, there is also too much design. The situation is comparable to that of the press, which also feels increasingly exposed to competition for attention. Attention economy is the new magic word and creates a new, important basic rule: overcome the threshold of perception in order to expose the competition. Press professionals like to describe this process with the phrase »a content steep edge«, which means nothing other than making a mountain out of literally every molehill, increasing the level of excitement and thus attention in order to provoke the click reflex in inclined online consumers of the news site. After all, only clicks are counted and, by converting them into advertising value, put money in the coffers. What the media creator’s click figures are to the retailer’s sales figures. And there are various ways to achieve this––several of them are through design.

Oru Kayak — Inlet model

In the German-speaking world in particular, the term design is narrowly defined because it is always associated with an artistic-creative achievement; as such, it is completely unprotected and can be freely used and misused by anyone. Interested customers should actually know that the use of the word design as a marketing prefix should always give rise to suspicion. Designer glasses, designer lamps, designer furniture or designer kitchens may be reliably priced above average, but they are not necessarily the better products in terms of most of their features. Design often becomes an additive here, an application that can be scaled at will. The customer falls for it a few times, pays the price and learns his lesson.

Oru Kayak — Model Haven Tandem

In diametric contrast to this common perception of design is its self-image in the academic world. In the mission statements of the relevant educational institutions for the training of this profession, nothing less than saving the world appears as a minimum requirement. In any case, the graduates of at least this particular institution always create the solution in their later professional lives and definitely never the problem. The formulated principles often and quite naturally include a paternalistic claim to education, which is often presented to the interested parties as a reassuring tautology of design and working for the good. Of course, it is very practical for one’s own karma alone to pursue a profession that automatically makes any further strenuous analysis of the complex consequences of one’s own actions superfluous. Certainly, one or two sectors such as fashion design or automotive design are somewhat under suspicion here, but the generous use of well-written adjectives such as sustainable at least straightens this out lyrically. Here, too, there is a steep edge, because a high number of applicants ensures quality and resources and, last but not least, the raison d’être. Greenwashing here and there––chercher du marketing!

The legal defencelessness of the concept of design allows it to be bent beyond recognition at its edges. From an ideologized promise of salvation to a pure marketing instrument. This would be less alarming if these extremes did not have a disproportionately large effect on the image of design in their respective areas of perception. And here it is appropriate to bring the concept of just-rightness into play. It is about nothing less than the substance of design, which is always formed in interaction, always dependent on successful cooperation with technology and––if it is a product––with marketing. Dieter Rams’ dictum can also be read as a challenge to design to be as cooperative and minimally invasive as possible in this interaction. The danger of making oneself superfluous as a designer through this demand for reduction seems to have been averted today. Over the decades, design has constantly increased its depth of intervention in these work objects and processes, is increasingly asserting its competence as early as the conception phase, is even in demand as a model for methodology in the solution of complex tasks and is increasingly becoming a hinge at the point where all forces come together. In this position, with a sense of proportion, it can make a significant contribution to ensuring that the things of our everyday lives are neither overloaded with meaning nor with decoration and that we focus on the essentials. What great things are created in this self-image that only reveal their value at second glance, but can last a long time––both technically and ideally. These are the objects that people like to have repaired or buy a second time after losing them––favorite things. They have to work, not be overly fashionable, repairable, adaptable, should not lose (or even gain) in aesthetics through wear and tear and draw their positive image and ultimately the reputation from all these characteristics, which ensures that you feel well-dressed with them, literally or figuratively.

Audi A6, C5 series (1997-2005)

The design of the Audi A6 of the C5 model series (1997 – 2005) by the outstanding German automotive designer Claus Potthoff is one of the cars in recent history that can be measured by such standards––by no means the rule in the eclectic world of automotive design. As such, it is one of those designs that is highly likely to deteriorate as a result of any subsequent intervention. Nothing on the A6 is too much, everything is in its place, proportions and volume are perfect. The original model did not even need the tailpipes of the exhaust system, which are often image-defining in this market segment. All around, inside and out, the design is based on the horizontal, all lines are two-degree (geometrically defined by just three points) and the details are also geometrically derived. There is no icing. It is actually a design with an unlimited shelf life––were it not for the logic of the market and the constant pressure to change––to explicitly avoid the term »Innovation«.

The Japanese company Ryōhin Keikaku is trying to elevate just-rightness to a general, conceptual approach with the products of its MUJI brand. MUJI is the abbreviation of the term mujirushi ryōhin and means something like unbranded quality goods and elevates reduction to the dictum of design. It is hardly surprising that this idea should arise in Japan in particular, as restraint and moderation are deeply rooted in the social norms of Japanese society and are reflected in the principles of life that the majority aspire to, such as ikigai––literally translated, »iki« stands for »life« and »gai« for »value«. Furthermore, space––especially in the country’s large urban centers––is a precious commodity and extensive use is largely impossible because it is extremely expensive.

MUJI, electric kettle MJ-EK5A

As if they were conceived for the MUJI product range, the Californian company Oru Kayak takes just-rightness to the extreme with its products. The Oru designers redefine the outdated term »folding boat« to an unprecedented level. With boats made of translucent polypropylene flat material that are remarkably robust, comfortable, light, quick to assemble and disassemble, can actually be folded to the size of a sports bag for transportation and can be easily transported on the luggage rack of an average bicycle––or even tucked under your arm on the subway. Aesthetically, they can keep up with many a conservative rival product and the combination of transparent lightness and precise origami folding technique gives them an additional wow effect. And all of this is undoubtedly just-right, because there is definitely nothing left out of this product.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, a person in Europe owns around 10,000 things, in the USA three times as many. In 2010, the Japanese Marie Kondō published an internationally acclaimed guide on the subject of »tidying up«, in which she also ascribes a spiritual dimension to the evaluation of objects necessary for sorting them out. From a sober point of view, it is precisely this just-rightness that one grants the object or parts with it. Does this necessarily have to do with design? No, because the individual meaning of an object has different dimensions. Can it have something to do with design? Absolutely. This just-rightness––if you want to stick with the term––is something fundamentally individual, the result of a negotiation between product and user, which can turn out differently and can also take a long time. A product––be it a T-shirt or a car––can actually achieve great environmental friendliness in the course of its history of use simply because this history takes a long time. In other words, the product is not disposed of and replaced by a new one, but rather maintained and repaired and thus becomes an integral and indispensable part of this very life – regardless of whether it was intended by its creators to save the world.

Modern smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5, also celebrate the disappearance of things: they are no longer just phones, but mobile computers, photo and video cameras, games consoles, navigation devices, wallets, calculators and torches and countless other things – an astonishing efficiency in terms of space and resource requirements.

And in this sense, even our omnipresent smartphones consistently take further steps on the path to reduction. Quite independently of their mostly interchangeable physical appearance, they celebrate the disappearance of things. They are a telephone, computer, photo and video camera, calculator and torch, measuring tape, compass, key, radio, loudspeaker, games console, navigation device, book, clock, calendar, diary and much more all in one. Although they usually can’t do all this as well and rarely better than the dedicated specialists, are always an ergonomic compromise and rarely the choice of professionals, they are catching up surprisingly quickly. Software is easier to modify than hardware. If you dispose of all these items simulated by the smartphone or don’t buy them in the first place, you will achieve astonishing efficiency in terms of space and resource requirements. It’s worth taking a look at which ones are just right. Could the rest possibly go?

Article FIRST PUBLISHED IN CHAPTER №X »STATE OF THE ART« – SUMMER 2023/24

It would actually be much more exciting to deal with what happens than with what is. Because that is immediately recognizable, static, defined. In contrast, our world and things are constantly moving and changing. Ancient Greece called this »metamorphosis« – and that’s what we’re talking about here.

»Lost in Translation«––who hasn’t seen the classic film starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, in which two people who don’t know each other meet by chance in Tokyo, a Japanese megacity that is unfathomable and untranslatable for them, which is presumably why they have sought it out. However, the intense feeling of being lost gives their encounter a common level on which they meet, talk and live as if in an intermediate world––for a few days. Watching the film, you enjoy entering this floating state with the two of them––light, open, liberated. You wish you had the courage or the sovereignty to be in-between, as the foreign metropolis allows the main characters in the film to do. Perhaps because it is something subconsciously important to our existence that we repeatedly suppress out of reason or convenience: an interim state of mind that applies to all people in the most diverse life situations and is typical of processes, evolutions and formations. It is the moment of change––sometimes short-lived, sometimes with a noticeable duration––that is expressed quite well in the concept of hovering. The Swiss artist couple Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger achieved a congenial visualization of such a process with their touching »Giardino calante« installation at the 2003 Venice Biennale: in the nave of the church of San Staë, people move under a three-dimensional sphere of flowers and delicate natural elements that seem to fall down from the vault without reaching you directly. The beauty and vitality of what was otherwise painted on the ceiling as floral decoration in the Baroque period and stands for creation becomes physical and moving. This brings us closer to the miracle of the speaking church interior; we find ourselves, as it were, in the process of creation, from the ideal budding to the fullness of nature.

Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, »Giardino calante« (installation), Church of San Staë, Biennale 2003, Venice

While the flanking states––i.e. the initial situation on the one hand and the new on the other––are tangible for us, as they can be clearly defined and also clearly perceived due to their stability, the in-between is a phenomenon whose nature and form is too fluid to »have a handle on«. Time and again, people are forced to accept this period of transformation, whereby they are confronted with it in the most diverse dimensions of life. Sometimes dreams revolve around those motifs of tense pauses, as we are dealing here with the most intense moments of our experience of the world––perhaps Paul Virilio’s famous formula of »frenzied standstill« fits quite well here? Ultimately, however, nature is behind all movement––from the cosmic to our planet. On the constantly rotating earth, vitality and life are defined by the movement and transformation of states: emergence, growth and decline. Symbols of this are the bud or the larva that develops into a butterfly––and this without being able to see the beautiful final stage of the original form, even if it is already within it. Reflections of this omnipresent metamorphosis, as this phenomenon of shape-shifting was called in ancient Greece, can be found in the culture that humans developed as a living being typical of their species from the earliest epochs of history.

Marina Abramović, »The Artist is Present«, MoMA New York, 2010

So it’s no wonder that, alongside philosophy, art is also interested in those slow-motion tipping points, those short periods of time in which one situation leads to the next. Impressive examples are easy to find: For his Florentine sculpture from the story of David, Michelangelo chooses exactly the minute in which the boy develops the courage to hurl the stone he is weighing in his hand at the giant Goliath; Marina Abramović’s performances lead those present into an uncomfortable situation, forcing them to constantly resist the pressure to avoid the exhausting or upsetting confrontation with the art action––only those who can stand the artist sitting in front of them in silence for hours, for example, will ultimately take part. The South African William Kentridge could also be mentioned with his animated films, mostly drawn in charcoal. When you see them, you can’t take your eyes off them, because unlike conventional films with separate individual images, you experience the process of change and the traces of what has gone before always remain at least briefly present in the current film still. »In this way, each sequence carries the story of its development within it. What the technology itself brings with it is a sense of time«, according to the artist. The cases listed demonstrate the intention of art to really and tangibly bring the recipients into its sphere––by subversively placing them in a precarious situation. A routine or emotionally protective perception is not possible in this way. Instead, one must surrender oneself to the experience of this ambivalent situation.

William Kentridge, »Monument« (Stills), 1990

But why is this so fascinating? Human beings actually strive for order, which in a practical and cognitive sense would only give life a before and after. Immediately before the introduction of change and also in between, there is ambivalence, hesitation and dithering about changing a safe situation, the fear of an uncertain outcome––and that is unpleasant at first. That’s why we analyze and plan wherever possible so that everything runs smoothly and the results don’t come as a surprise or create unforeseeable problems. However, transitions are fundamentally unavoidable in an organic, metabolic system in which we live. The nature of the matter always includes its ability to change, even the certain change of what we are currently experiencing. And humanity has always reacted to this: In archaic societies, for example, initiation and sanctification rituals arose in which a specific period of time, a symbolic act and special objects performatively accompany the transition into a new quality, such as the admission of young men into the circle of adults. The ancient Egyptian cult of the sun god Ra worked with the barque as a real embodiment of his journey across the sky and through the underworld. People celebrated this in processions in which a Nile barge charged with a mystical aura was moved from the water to the holy place. Christian theology also had to grapple with the zone between secular reality and the sacred sphere. It developed the concept of limbo––a non-real waiting room for the souls for the temporally unmeasurable but unimaginable intermediate state until redemption.

Norman Foster, Reichstag Dome Berlin, 1999

In factual life on earth, on the other hand, which is constantly and often inexplicably changing, cultic and individual rituals give people more time and sensory influences to empathize and understand––which is why sacred places such as altars or graves have been circled since time immemorial. Turning around something makes you think, see more sides, experience a small effect of the endless in the circular movement, which is typical of the permanent mobility of the cosmos. In this respect, it is not only children who love walking around in circles, adults also enjoy the formal constraint of a circular path, especially when, as with a spiral, the perspective changes subtly with every step. Norman Foster’s architectural concept, who was commissioned to redesign the dome above the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995, also operates with a complex implementation of this motif. Visitors not only walk upwards in a spiral movement along the edge of the transparent roof structure, where they can look out over the country, which is governed from within the building. They can also look down into the plenary chamber and watch their deputies making their case and taking decisions. The discursive process of the legislature is reflected in the movement of the citizens in the iconically towering dome and thus becomes conscious in the performative movement of all.

Refik Anadol Studio for Bvlgari, Milan: »Serpenti Metamorphosis« (installation), 2021

The project »Serpenti Metamorphosis« by media artist Refik Anadol does not use architecture, but visual effects to address the motif discussed here. The large spatial installation, realized in Milan in 2021, creates wall-filling, constantly reconfiguring surfaces that are composed of 200 million varying images of nature in 3D and are connected to animal protagonists––snakes. These are generated by an immersive computer program: »… as poetic imagery mimicking natural transformations and snakes that seemed to slither and change throughout the installation«. Anadol has a concrete goal: »I welcome the machine as a collaborator, it allows me to make the invisible visible. Metamorphosis is really the perfect symbol to represent overarching ideas of evolution, growth, and precision in the world that surrounds us.« The use of AI also makes it possible, depending on the situation, to emit a fragrance that makes the experience synaesthetic. The phenomenon of permanent change in nature is transformed into an equally volatile visualization, which in turn has an emotional effect and changes through the reactive actions of the audience within it.

Rei Naito, »Matrix«, permanent installation Teshima Art Museum, 2010

While Anadol’s media installation is in principle an artificial setting, in another artistic work nature actually appears as an active player and can thus be experienced in its metabolic movement. The Japanese artist Rei Naito worked on the floor of a specially constructed grotto-like concrete architecture––the Teshima Art Museum––using a special surface shape and punctured holes so that the natural spring water in the area forces its way up onto the artificial surface in small drops, which then move freely: »Following the inclination of the floor they seem to race, overtaking each other and occasionally colliding and combining in larger puddles. Dancing in unexpected patterns, they finally gather and are drained through other holes. This splendid movement makes the water look lively, and not only a source of life but alive itself.« Unlike when looking at a stream or lake, the water is not perceived as an element of the landscape, but as a visible and tangible indicator of the vital force of nature, of pushing and becoming––experiencing the process of life, the seemingly eternal cycle of the creation and decay of natural forms in the forming and draining of these small ponds. »Is there anything more moving than this moment of transformation?«, the artist asks rhetorically.

The young Berlin CGI studio PALAM is also exploring this fascinating phenomenon, skillfully bringing it into the reality-based sphere of the product world alongside artistic aspects. Their immersive installation »Metamorphosis« (from page 80), which took nine months to create, gains its appeal not only through a strong aesthetic characterized by intense orange tones, but also through the visionary power of computer-generated imagery. The magical presence of the automotive object is created in a technoid setting, on an active »stage«, which is geared towards both production and presentation and plays on this with its robotic moves: »The stage becomes a canvas where the fluidity of life is explored, offering an intellectual and sensory journey that captures the essence of transformative beauty.« In terms of product design, it is therefore not about a design as the form generated from a material through a transformation process, regardless of whether this is created in a controlled manner as in an assembly, printing or casting process. Ultimately, this thematizes nothing other than the end product. The virulence of the process, i.e. the transformation process itself, and the fact that this metamorphosis is part of the concept and remains present in the form, is much more interesting than the path and period of production.

After all this, what is the conclusion of these considerations, what is the latent and explicit message of these impressive projects and works of art? At any rate, it is based on the insight that the impression that something is standing still is often based on imagination or misinterpretation––although at the same time it is also a cognitive strategy of our brain, which knows that we need a certain order and structure in our analysis of the environment in order to be able to perceive something in peace. This is perfectly fine as long as we have such talented creatives around us, who––like Rei Naito or Anadol––are able to combine the visual, emotional and ultimately also intellectual floating of changing states into wonderful and enlightening spaces of experience.

ARTICLE FIRST PUBLISHED IN CHAPTER №X »STATE OF THE ART« — SUMMER 2023/24

»In the past winter, I thought my 10-year-old daughter how to identify Mars in the night sky«, writes Margaret Weitekamp, Chair of the Department of Space History at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in her foreword to »Mars. Photographs from the NASA Archives«. With this first sentence, she locates the source of human longing, curiosity, imagination and the spirit of exploration.

The identity of the planet Mars is multifaceted and ranges from a distant enigma to a tangible territory, characterized by many tangible and intangible stories in between. Depending on the perspective and imagination with which one looks at the so-called »Red Planet«, it radiates something different back. Based on this knowledge and with no claim to completeness at the present time, the planet is viewed through the lenses of planetary research, historical research, science, technology and even poetry.

As the subject of numerous Si-Fi novels and films, Mars inspires boundless utopian and dystopian fantasies like no other. (Almost) nothing changed in this respect after science dispelled more and more, sometimes curious, ideas about the Martian landscape and replaced them with concrete evidence in the form of photographic images.

The 340-page book brings together the earliest close-up images of Mars, taken in 1964 by the Mariner 4 spacecraft—the first ever images of another planet—and hundreds of cutting-edge photos from NASA’s extensive archives. And as impressive as the sharpness of NASA’s images may be, you can’t help but instinctively want to shake off the inherent abstraction of the photographs with a conscious blink. This is not only due to the inscribed emotional image of Mars, but also to the challenge—and to a certain extent the unwillingness—to put something so incomprehensible into perspective. The transfigured romantic idea of an untouched place that holds all possibilities and makes it possible to feel small and big at the same time is similar to the human idea of heaven and hell, although no one has yet been able to identify these fantastic places with a mere point of the finger.

Over six decades of pioneering research missions, NASA has gradually unraveled the mysteries of the red planet, revealing a world not so dissimilar to our own, probably once inhabited and with potential habitability in hopeful view. NASA aerial images from later orbiter missions show fascinating ancient river beds, polar ice caps, dust winds, huge canyons and towering volcanoes in an infinitely varied landscape. Over the past 25 years, NASA rovers have served as technical extensions of mankind —, drilling holes, searching for traces of water and leaving us to ponder the mountain ranges and fantastic sunsets with their images.

With »Mars. Photographs from the NASA Archives«, Taschen is publishing a beyond fascinating book that offers different approaches and perspectives on Mars. But whatever the intention of looking up into the sky, one thing is certain: what makes people look up at all is the universal longing for an undefined sense of freedom and the idealized idea of what it would be like to overcome the boundaries of the known and of oneself. [DM]

Mars. Photographs from the NASA Archives
Hardcover with fold-out pages, 30.0 x 30.0 cm, 340 pages
taschen.com

For three decades now, the museum in progress has made it its mission to make contemporary art more democratic and thus accessible to as broad a public as possible. Through its integrative, low-threshold activities at the highest artistic and operational level, the non-profit art initiative transforms media and public spaces into flexible support structures for its projects away from the metaphorically thick walls of traditional cultural institutions.

»The cause of the museum in progress projects lies in the future (loosely based on Beuys)!«, writes Kaspar Mühlemann Hartl in his introductory text to the anthology »museum in progress. Kunst in öffentlichen und medialen Räumen – DURCH EIN ENDE REIN & DURCH DAS ANDERE DURCH [ & DANN NOCH EINMAL ]«, which provides an overview of the works of the museum in progress art initiative to date. The reference to the initially paradoxical-sounding assertion by the great German artist Joseph Beuys »The cause lies in the future« refers to art’s ability to grasp social trends at an early stage and can plausibly be applied to the founding idea behind the museum in progress. After all, if contemporary art is the mediator of something future, its creation, distribution and consumption away from the classic cultural infrastructure also seems logical. Founded by Kathrin Messner and Josef Ortner in Vienna, the art initiative with the programmatic name museum in progress has been operating beyond traditional forms of presentation for contemporary art since 1990 and uses open spaces as temporary spaces for art interventions, for example on billboards, building facades, in concert halls, on television or even on board airplanes.

Martha Jungwirth, »The Trojan Horse«, 2019, »Iron Curtain«, museum in progress, Vienna State Opera, 2019/2020

Media-specific, context-dependent and temporary – the practice of museum in progress plays above all with the idea that space for art begins in the mind. »From museum in progress I had learned that museums are first and foremost software and not hardware, and this idea is more contemporary and effective than ever today«, Massimiliano Gioni, currently artistic director of the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi in Milan and the New Museum in New York, sums it up and continues: »It is extremely interesting that my encounter with museum in progress coincided with the opening year of the Museo Guggenheim in Bilbao. The Guggenheim in Bilbao may be better known today, but for me museum in progress will always point the way to the future.« The culturally significant position of the progressive art initiative was recognized early on by leading museums such as the MoMA in New York or the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, which already included its works in their collections at the turn of the millennium. Max Hollein, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, describes the project as »… a highly influential, elusive but all the more effective institution since its foundation, always ahead of its time«.
The museum in progress provides a possible answer to the ever-present discourse on the future of museums and classic exhibition spaces in areas such as newspaper art and multiples in magazines. According to the initiative, there is no other institution in the world that has realized groups of works comparable in scope, diversity and quality and furthermore: »It should be emphasized that the diverse works of the international artists were conceived specifically for the media space and do not represent reproductions of artworks, but function as multiples, as independent works in the medium’s circulation. Consequently, the individual newspaper or magazine is an original and collector’s item.«

Anselm Kiefer, »Solaris (for Stanislaw Lem)«, 2023, » Eiserner Vorhang«, museum in progress, Vienna State Opera, 2023/2024

The museum in progress also demonstrates great (socio-political) sensitivity to current events with its exhibition series »Eiserner Vorhang«. Since 1998, this project has transformed the iron curtain of the Vienna State Opera – actually a structural fire protection device designed to protect the stage from spreading to adjacent parts of the building and the auditorium in the event of a fire – into an exhibition space for contemporary art.
The concept of the exhibition series was preceded by the debate surrounding the original iron curtain by the artist Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger. »At the heart of the controversy was an overarching topic that was only discussed in passing in public: the involvement of Austrian artists during the Nazi era and how post-war society dealt with this legacy«, the initiative’s website explains. This means Eisenmenger’s extensive role in the National Socialist regime – he painted propaganda pictures with swastikas and was awarded an honorary professorship by Hitler – the opacity of the awarding of commissions at the time and the bumpy decision-making process by a largely unqualified jury for this purpose. In fact, the controversial curtain hung prominently and largely unquestioned from 1955 to 1995, until opera director Ioan Holender publicly called for Eisenmenger’s work to be removed as a symbolic gesture. As a result, the art initiative museum in progress developed a proposal that prevailed and is still being realized today: Since then, a new work has been designed each year, which can be seen for one season, most recently by Anselm Kiefer with his work »Solaris (for Stanislaw Lem)«. Past artists have included John Baldessari, David Hockney, Cy Twombly, Kara Walker, Franz West, Rosemarie Trockel, Jeff Koons, Tauba Auerbach and Maria Lassnig – names as larger than life as the 176 square meter curtain itself. The applied large-scale images are produced and installed using an innovative process. They are produced on a PVC net, which is fixed to the iron curtain using magnets. This technique means that Eisenmenger’s original iron curtain, which is a listed building in Vienna, remains untouched. Due to the requirements of the Monuments Office, it can be seen for three months at a time during the summer months.

Cao Fei, » The New Angel«, 2022, »Eiserner Vorhang«, museum in progress, Vienna State Opera, 2022/2023

It goes without saying that an equally high-caliber, independent, international jury is responsible for selecting the artists, which – alongside Daniel Birnbaum and Bice Curiger – is also headed by the influential curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Long before he became a superstar of the art scene, Obrist curated many projects as a congenial partner of the then still young art initiative – in which he found ideal conditions to realize extraordinary projects – and has remained with it in an advisory capacity to this day. He describes Josef Ortner, with whom he was on friendly terms until his death in 2009, as a »pioneer among the museum founders of the 20th century. His approach was to go beyond the institution as we knew it and to devise new rituals for spaces in which we encounter art.« In his statement on the museum in progress, he also mentions the Internet as an early form of presentation of art of initiative: “The transmediality of the Internet already contains the idea behind an »immaterial« museum, offering more democratic access to art content beyond rigid media boundaries. With the founding of the digital museum in progress – a virtual exhibition space for contemporary digital art – the art initiative aims to keep pace with its progressive aspirations for itself and describes the project, which is still at a very early stage, as a »experience space for new forms of art« and also »platform for artists working with the latest technologies and digital media«. A current example of the museum in progress ‘s cross-media art presentation is the project »raising flags«, which has been realized since 2023 at various locations, in virtual exhibition spaces and in the media spaces of newspapers and magazines, and for which 35 international artists designed flags, including illustrious names such as Thomas Bayrle, Wade Guyton, Martha Jungwirth, Laure Prouvost, Christian Robert-Tissot and Erwin Wurm.

»raising flags«, museum in progress, Ladakh, 2024

Divided into two project phases, the first part, entitled »National Flags of Ideas«, deals with questions of social coexistence in challenging times, while the second part – »The essence of wind and the wind of change« – deals, as the title suggests, with movement in the wind and the wind of change in the figurative sense – to be shown at numerous locations, including Vienna and Ladakh (India) as part of the sā festival (June 2024) and soon at the festival sommer.frische.kunst festival in Bad Gastein (July 2024). The curators Kaspar Mühlemann Hartl and Alois Herrmann are calling for this to be continued: »Institutions, companies, but also private individuals who have the means to display a flag in a publicly visible manner are invited to participate in the project.« Certainly not a coincidental invitation, considering that the museum in progress was understood by its founding members Kathrin Messner and Josef Ortner as a social sculpture (loosely based on Beuys!), whose understanding results from the »expanded concept of art«, which does not limit art to a completed work, but includes the creative thinking and action of the individual, also in its collectivity. A consideration that the unconventional museum has always included in its work.

Author Andreas Marks, an internationally recognized expert on Japanese art, in particular on ukiyo-e prints, writes in the introduction that, in spite of the best estimates, no one has actually made a serious attempt to count Hokusai’s surviving works. Not only the artist’s extraordinary productivity, but also the major problem of attribution, among other things, represented major hurdles. While researching this colossal collection, he himself tried to exclude paintings, prints and drawings with dubious signatures or seals, as well as works that could have been executed by his students in the master’s style. »With these rules in mind, and with the requirement to count multi-page prints as one work, as well as counting every single book illustration I could find, I managed to document almost 7,200 works that can be attributed to Hokusai with certainty. A selection of almost 800 of these works is presented in this book«, summarizes Marks and releases the reader into Hokusai’s world—to whose tangibility and understanding he provides a guide in the form of a fascinatingly detailed monograph on 722 pages.

Structured into life and creative phases, the book guides the reader through the life and work of the great Japanese artist. Hokusai (1760-1849) was a Japanese painter and woodcut artist of the Edo period (1603-1868), who became known above all for his iconic series »36 views of Mount Fuji«. His best-known work from this series, »The Great Wave of Kanagawa«, shows a huge wave in front of Mount Fuji—In March 2023, a print of his world-famous woodblock print was auctioned for 2.76 million US dollars. As a master of ukiyo-e printmaking, he had a profound influence on both Japanese and Western art, particularly in the Impressionism movement.

Compiled in clearly defined sections, the art book is a trusted guide through Hokusai’s life and work, whereby the depth and quality of the content is actually more reminiscent of a scholarly volume of works, were it not for the focus on large-format, color reproductions, which facilitates accessibility to such a demanding (life) work. Under the chapter names »The beginnings of an artist’s career (1779-1794)«, »The world of private poetry (1795-1798)«, »The return to commercial publications (1798-1813)«, »An exceptional book illustrator (1814-1819)«, »The creation of a legacy (1820« and »The last years (1834-1849)« one is drawn into the unsurpassed variety of themes and techniques: Landscapes like the Kirifuri Waterfall next to large-format maps of the country roads Tōkaidō and Kisokaidō or from the peninsula Bōsō; double-page illustrations from illustrated books, including sensual, imaginative eroticism (shunga) and drawing instructions such as the fifteen-volume Hokusai manga; and finally depictions of animals such as woodcut series on the theme of birds and flowers or late scroll paintings on silk of ducks in flowing water or a floating tiger in the snow.

»The (almost) complete HOKUSAI« is an unprecedented work between aesthetic-visual pleasure and academic-scientific scope, which is unparalleled even in the impressive collection of the Cologne art book publisher. It transcends the boundaries of a conventional art book, representing both a collection of historical material and a tribute to the passion for art. It is a volume with which TASCHEN makes a confident commitment to the highest possible quality in the art book market. [DM]

Hokusai
Hardcover, with ribbon marker, 29 x 39.5 cm, 6.18 kg, 722 pages
taschen.com

What is the connection between a car and the visual arts? A motorized car is auto-mobile and autonomous; it was built to be on the road. The same applies to art: it stems from an inner movement, stands on its own and is constantly seeking new paths. Interesting things have emerged from both encounters.

The beginning. You learn it in creative writing. Presumably. It is recommended to start a speech or an article––preferably with rhetorical finesse––with a joke or at least a bon mot. Here, however, everything starts with an obituary. It just has to be, since he was so important: a brief remembrance of Marcello Gandini, the great Italian designer who left us forever a few months ago. His legacy is motorized and enchanting. Not only car enthusiasts feel that certain something when they stand in front of a Lancia Stratos, a Lamborghini Miura, but above all the Lamborghini Countach, which proves that automotive design of this kind is undoubtedly one of the points of contact with fine art and its sculptural bodies. Leaving aside the pleasure of sitting in these vehicles and being able to drive them, smelling their scent and enjoying their sound, it is their pure form and materiality alone that are so powerful that we are touched aesthetically and sensually. This is why cultural society has long paid homage to the mobile, which the Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti brought into the museum in 1909 with the statement that a car roaring is »more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace«. At first, it was mainly photography and advertising graphics that took an artistic approach to the then very young technology. Then, in 1951, a museum, the famous MoMA in New York, decided to exhibit eight vehicles of equal value – curated by architect Philip Johnson. When the same institution finally added the first automobile to its collection of art and design 21 years later––an Italian Cisitalia 202 GT––it was finally established as a cultural asset. This is interesting, because Battista »Pinin« Farina, who had created the car in 1946, was not an artist but a designer. Nevertheless, those responsible at the MoMA did not question its inclusion in the fine arts at the time––apparently because the object-related aesthetic quality in form and material created an appropriate effect. Thanks to the simple clarity of its design, the immensely appealing big thing oscillates between toy character and living being thanks to its softly shaped body, the many sympathetic curves and the puppy-like front. This immediately perceived attraction, or rather beauty, caused the red sports car, which was ultimately created as a utility object, to tip into a new dimension: from object status to work of art.

Cisitalia 202 GT (1946), Pininfarina Design Studio, Cambiano, Turin

In this context, it is worth noting that while works of art have existed for tens of thousands of years, the examination of the automobile in art is very recent. However, the first reflections on the then unusually fast-moving and thoroughly technoid vehicle emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, and many an artist such as Pablo Picasso (Facel Vega), the writer Erich Maria Remarque (Bugatti), the musician John Lennon (Rolls-Royce) or the artist Joseph Beuys (Bentley) moved the vehicle, which soon became part of their private living space, with great awareness and pleasure. The 1960s and 70s marked an early high point, when the artistic approach to the automobile also expanded into a contemporary freedom of interaction––through depiction in paintings and photography, in which movement, technology and form are reflected. And today? Seventy years after that boom period, the situation is quite disparate. It seems as if everyone involved in the automotive world is subject to a fundamental uncertainty––the manufacturing companies and associations, the politicians with their different orientations and the extremely heterogeneous clientele in terms of demands and preferences. It is an interplay characterized by the insight into environmental pollution and consumer constraints, but also by the enthusiasm for innovative technologies and materials as well as the will to reform transport intelligently. Not for a long time has there been so many new concepts, technologies and designs to present, learn about, discuss and weigh up. In this respect, it is also up to the art scene to react to this.

But how does art do that? Imagine being an artist yourself, and it wouldn’t be a matter of designing a car, i.e. initiating a complex process and shaping technology, safety, economy and brand language into an overall design. Nor would it be a matter of buying one and getting by with hobbies, everyday pragmatism and a credit line. Rather, there would be absolute freedom of making. On the one hand, you would be standing in a frighteningly empty space, thrown back on your own head, on your own ideas and abilities, and on the other hand, you would be surrounded by countless real vehicles and types that you could deal with, their images, their history and stories, the implications and philosophical aspects of automobile culture. Oh holy Christophorus! If necessary, we could also ask Apollo with his chariot of the sun for inspiration, who, after all, would also be responsible as the god of fine arts. So what to do? What strategies are recommended for an artistic approach to the subject? Well, you could stylize the car and present it in its specific capacity as a design icon, as can be found in museums or in object photography very early on, but also in the hyper-realistic oil paintings of Don Eddy in the 1970s. Art generates a »image of the car«, which is not far removed from myth or fetish. And advertising is only too happy to pick up on this appeal when it comes to marketing this important industrial product: »Unique like a work of art« or »The most beautiful form of technology«, as VW and Alfa Romeo deliberately alluded to in their advertising.

Fabian Oefner, »Disintegrating X – Lamborghini Miura SV (1972)«, 2018

The intellectual, rational path is also conceivable: analysis. Fabian Oefner’s oeuvre is a very impressive example. The Swiss artist, who lives in the USA, developed a very unconventional approach to the automobile through meticulous visual dismantling. For example, he accompanied an Italian restoration team as they carefully dismantled one of the rare cars for maintenance and photographed more than a thousand components of the car’s original technology in individual shots in their workshop. These are then used to create digitally generated compositional views of a vehicle based on the principle of exploded views. Oefner’s aim is to use this analysis to visualize the complex functional structure of such an object and to amaze us with the paradoxical coincidence of design and disintegration, as he calls it: »I want to explore what surrounds us like this and arouse people’s curiosity.« Of course, we are aware that up to 10,000 individual parts normally come together to form a multifunctional module under the bodywork of a standard motor vehicle, behind the dashboard or in the upholstered seats. However, we always forget this. In view of these images, we have to realize for better or worse that the beauty of a Cisitalia 202 GT, as shown in the MoMA, or the silver Lamborghini Miura SV  by Fabian Oefner is de facto not as materially homogeneous as the massive marble sculpture of the Nike of Samothrace in the Louvre. An automobile is a magical work of technology and skill. No wonder the French philosopher and Citroën DS enthusiast Roland Barthes once wrote: »I believe that the automobile today is the fairly exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals. In other words: a great epochal creation designed with passion by unknown artists …« So there we have it again, art. So the automobile itself can be seen as an object of art. However, with its smooth sheet metal, which virtually invites surface design, it can also be a canvas or a picture support. The Paris-based designer Sonia Delaunay, for example, presented her avant-garde fashion in 1925 in a stylistically adapted Citroën, painted in a check design. Pablo Picasso also painted a car in 1958, more precisely the left flank of a car of the same brand, a blue Citroën DS 19. A journalist had visited him in exile in France with this car, and the artist, who was obviously very pleased about this, even signed his secretly painted motif. The most famous series of artistically designed bodies or creatively interpreted vehicles was initiated by the BMW brand in 1975: the BMW Art Car. Up to the current project by Julie Mehretu, which is presented in the cover story of this Chapter №X, titled »STATE OF THE ART«, 20 examples have been created to date on the basis of various BMW models––designed by Calder, Lichtenstein, Warhol or Koons. This strategy of artistic creation could be described as a reaction, as a specific view of an everyday object that is very central to people, whereby it naturally changes significantly and is viewed and treated completely differently after processing.

Asta Gröting, »Goethe’s traveling carriage, Adenauer’s Mercedes and my Smart«, 2012

A fourth approach to art attempts to explore and elaborate on the profound, on hidden qualities. The effect is often a poetic quality that suddenly turns the previously banal into the extraordinary. Such ambiguity is well exemplified in a work by Asta Gröting, whose title actually describes it completely: »Goethe’s traveling carriage, Adenauer’s Mercedes and my Smart«. The artist, who works in Berlin, installed three sub-views of this strange compilation of vehicles, each of which has an inherent importance: the genius writer’s carriage for the world, the Federal Chancellor’s limousine for post-war Germany and finally the knobbly little car for herself. However, you don’t see what is obvious, but what is normally hidden, i.e. the chassis, dampers, etc.––and you are supposed to think for yourself, pondering about mobility itself, about technical diligence, travel, history and the German people. The basis are scans of the originals, the end product is a soft form or thin layer of polyurethane that lies succinctly on the gallery floor.

Erwin Wurm, »UFO«, 2006

Another creative impetus used by art is the strategy of alienation, with which it creates uncertainty in the perception of familiar things and thus hopes to raise awareness. While excessive irritation can sometimes cause aversion, playing with change in a light-hearted way can be quite fun. This is why works such as those by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm, which make use of a humorous deformation that retains a socially critical tenor but is more likely to make you smile. Think of his delivery van, whose rear end bends up against the wall of a house, or the fat cars that have been created since the 2000s. Wurm transforms an existing car with styrofoam, fiberglass and polyurethane so that it is almost crushed by its bulges––an obese body that is more than a reflection of the affluent society. Or he lets it float like a cloud-like blue disc, like a dream vision or a UFO, with the original greenhouse of a Porsche 924 inside. The audience recognizes that it was originally a normal car, but cannot escape the deformation of form and meaning. With a similarly playful irreverence, the Scotsman Chris Labrooy quoted the iconic Palm Springs motifs of mid-century modernist painting, as we know them from David Hockney. However, in his digital painting series »Palm Springs Porsche 911«, Labrooy cheekily replaced the shimmering water of a pool with twelve equally blue Carrera RSs, which bob close together and visually simulate the waves with their typical roofline. A contemporary further development of pop art painting, which even back then liked to devote itself to the car, only the VW Beetle, and not its sporty descendant.

Chris Labrooy, Series »Palm Springs Porsche 911« (Twelve Porsche 911 Carrera RS in a pool), n.d.

The next path that art could take would be that of questioning. By transposing the automobile from its usual position and form into a completely absurd one, viewers experience an irritating sense of uncertainty. Conrad Shawcross does this very skillfully by hanging a Lotus at an angle and upside down. The appearance and functionality, indeed the entire type of vehicle, are thus counteracted: from a desirable sports car, it becomes a huge, useless and helpless thing.

The last of the tactics presented here goes even further––provocation. It is particularly popular with artists who love dramatic and powerful actions. In addition, the public reacts most intensely to this, which is easy to do with the automobile as a workpiece, because in our product world it is not only one of the most expensive, but often also one of the most personally cherished possessions.

Conrad Shawcross, »Golden Lotus (Inverted)«, 2019; installation view Saatchi Gallery, London

It is understandable that a video intervention by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist, in which she smashed the windows of parked cars in Zurich city center with a steel flower while prancing past, was not viewed without emotion. The sculptures by French artist César Baldaccini had a comparably echoey effect. In the context of Nouveau Réalisme, in 1960 he began to press car bodies into so-called Compressions dirigées, so that the public was suddenly not standing in front of a conventional sculpture, but in front of a metal cube that was nothing other than the result of a scrap metal pressing and contained a complete car. The contemporaneous works of the US American John Chamberlain, who assembled individual dented and rusted metal parts of defunct road cruisers into highly decorative sculptures, also became well known. The art world had to react to this provocation––a creative tactic that eventually weakened in its authentic, formal-aesthetic and socio-critical effect, so that conceptual successors such as Kevin Beasley can no longer do justice to it. You always have to be careful that it doesn’t become too banal, as was the case in 2011 when the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media mounted its exhibition »Car Culture« with numerous deformed vehicles, Beetles placed on top of each other in balls, a Mercedes rolled over by a tank or an SL filled to the brim with oil. HA Schult, who is not exactly sure of his style, was also involved with a car wreck installation »Crying Cars«.

Dirk Skreber, »untitled (Crash 1)«, 2009

What is important is the intense effect due to a new type of work statement that occurs in this thematic field related to the automobile: the decay of the glamorous product, the brutality of deformation or the dangerousness of fast movement. Dirk Skreber achieves this with skill. His everyday vehicles wrapped around steel poles are shocking, as it is impossible to escape the force of the assumed accident and the inevitable lethality of mobility associated with it. Interestingly, this effect of disturbance is mixed with a sense of cruel sculptural beauty. The best way to reassure oneself about a possible good outcome is with Marshall McLuhan’s ambivalent analysis of the times from 1964: »Behind the wheel, we transform ourselves into superhumans.« Nevertheless: the automobile in question … is dead.

The end. And so this text ends as it began––not with a joke, but once again with a memento mori. A remembrance of the many beautiful automotive companions of mankind that have lost their lives through fate––be it an accident, a burst piston, a natural disaster or simply shameful neglect and the associated nasty rust. After all––here, in the protected environment of art, we can be sure of the safety and care of our favorites.

»It fascinates me to see how modern technology expands my art and makes it accessible to a completely new audience,« says Esther Mahlangu, who is considered one of South Africa’s most important artists. She received international acclaim for her Ndebele paintings, which she removed from the traditional context of (house) wall painting and transferred for the first time to canvases, carpets or everyday objects—including the 12th BMW Art Car created in 1991.

The BMW i5 Flow NOSTOKANA has now been created as a contemporary homage to this and certainly also as a deliberate reference to the current collaboration with the New York artist with African roots, Julie Mehretu, who is designing the 20th BMW Art Car. As part of the renowned Frieze Los Angeles art fair, the BMW Group has now presented a new interpretation of the vehicle using an innovative fusion of art and innovation.

The BMW i5 Flow NOSTOKANA, which takes its name from Esther Mahlangu’s first son, features electrically animated film segments that combine the changing color technology developed by BMW with the artist’s characteristic visual language. The latest development stage of the color change technology for vehicle surfaces developed in cooperation with E Ink is thus impressively presented—the versatility of these electrophoretic color changes turns the all-electric sedan into a dynamic work of art.

The animatable film segments extend in two strips each over the roof, hood and rear as well as over the sides of the vehicle. Similar to an e-book reader, there are several million microcapsules in each E-ink film. The color particles contained in them are changed in their structure and arrangement by electrical voltage. The BMW i5 Flow NOSTOKANA is equipped with 1349 foil segments, each of which can be controlled individually, in order to display the complex ornamentation in true detail. Thanks to the innovative flow technology, the 88-year-old artist’s characteristic colors and geometric patterns can be depicted in ever-changing compositions.

The animations are accompanied by an equally extraordinary sound by Renzo Vitale, Creative Director Sound at the BMW Group. To unite the sound worlds of the BMW brand and the South African Ndebele culture, he used sound sequences of Esther Mahlangu’s voice and the sound of the feathers she used for drawing. They are combined with the sounds produced by colored pencils in the BMW design studio and the acoustic signal that can be heard as feedback when operating the touch display in the BMW i5. The result is a sound mixture that is gently intoned at the beginning of each color change and becomes more and more intense as the animation progresses.

»The BMW i5 Flow NOSTOKANA is a tribute to the history of the BMW brand and continues the story of our global cultural commitment in a special way. It combines art and design through progressive technology. Here, technology itself becomes art,« summarizes Adrian van Hooydonk, Head of Design BMW Group. [Red.]