Is It Design? Art? Or Just a Dutch Joke? - The Museum of Arts & Design has a Droog Retrospective going on right now through Jan. 14. Roberta Smith's review is not glowing, but if you are serious about design, this has to be seen anyway.
Our favorite piece, Tejo Remy's Chest of Drawers, is there and we had no idea that it was meant as a withering commentary. It criticizes the excess and the consumer mania that pervades the world and is also a protest against the increasing complexity of the design profession.
HORRIBLE!!!!JUNK!!!
criticizes the excess and the consumer mania that pervades the world and is also a protest against the increasing complexity of the design profession.
Makes sense to me. I'd add to that: the way we categorize and put people into little drawers: he's emo edgy, she's ghetto fabulous downtown, they're UES...
Here's another drawer for ya: I can't stand this dutch design shit. I don't own one piece of dutch designed anything and am proud of it.
Happy New Year!
The "horrible junk" reaction (which in itself holds a certain amount of irony considering the above stated artist's intent) reminds me of the Komar and Melamid project which surveyed people all over the world to determine the world's favorite painting which turned out to be a landscape about the size of a washing machine with little animals scampering about. The only people who favored something radically different i.e.abstract, were the Dutch.
I think there is good and bad in Dutch design just like any place else. So I don't see any reason to reject something just because it is Dutch.
If you're interested in seeing a display of random drawers stacked together that has a more touching message, namely about the lives of Katrina victims, check out Floodwall at the World Financial Center. http://www.floodwall.org/eblast/eblast.html
This reminds me of a similar piece that I just somehow like better -- John Cedarquist's "Ghost Boy" (click my name for details).
I first saw this piece 9 years ago and was so inspired I used it in a "modified" fixture application to display cabinet hardware and drawer pulls. Sales increased on average 18% after the installations.
You can call it junk....I call it art...and revenue!
I can't even comment on the first comment.
Wende: As usual, great taste. I became familiar with Cedarquist's work several years ago when I was still doing faux finishing, etc. Genius. And his name fits.
While I know nothing of Remy's work, and therefore don't have a real opinion, I will say that always, always, good/great art starts as a confrontation between the art and the viewer. But then you think about it, and learn, and maybe its good, maybe it doesn't speak to us, but it's rarely junk.
Oops. I guess I commented on the first comment.
i always liked this piece and as a manic consumer i still like it now that i know that it is a withering commentary.
"All progress occurs because people dare to be different. ~ Harry Millner
Regardless of whether Remy's chest of drawers appeals, you have to hand it to the dutch for daring to be different - and doing so with a sense of humour. love it.