There are several things I love about Fashioning the Object, currently on view at the Art Institute: first of all, it is about as far as you can get from the kind of poky “fashion” exhibit you would see at the Chicago History Museum or even at the [substantially more sophisticated]  Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Second - and maybe more signifcantly - the clothes on exhibit are almost all resolutely un-wearable.
 
If you are a fan of Project Runway, you know that there is a surfeit of talk about wear-ability. The contestants are admonished about producing stuff that is costume-y. Well, this is definitely not Project Runway. Fashion writers are quick to caution that the kind of clothing you see on runways at the couture fashion shows in Paris, New York and Milan are all about concept, and not, typically, “real” clothing. This show is definitely not a Paris runway show, either. Even though it uses the word “fashion” in its title, it is not about fashion in the sense of trend or fashionability; it’s an exhibition purportedly about clothes, but it’s not even, strictly, about Design. It’s really about Art: if you like the definition of design as creative problem solving, the material on display here is not a solution to a problem — even the problem “what should I wear?”  It’s more of a philosophical, intellectual rumination on ideas that really have little to do with clothes. 
 
The show is really three different exhibits. Only the Sandra Borklund presentation feels even remotely like a conventional “fashion” exhibit, with the sculptural, geometric garments displayed on headless mannequins arranged at regular intervals in a gallery space. But the objects themselves are just that — beautifully crafted objects in a gallery — and it is really hard to think of them as actual garments.

The section spotlighting the work of the British duo that works as Boudicca feels more like a nightclub than a museum, and it’s much more about video than it is about clothing design.

And even though Zoe Ryan [who curated the show] wore one of their pieces to the opening,

you really couldn’t imagine anyone wearing much of what they produce. That said, they showed one exquisitely “wearable” piece: a tailored cashmere overcoat that you could easily expect to see in the window at Barneys: it is almost anomalous in these  aggressively avant surroundings.
 

 

Finally, the section devoted to the work of Bless makes you work really hard to even find the clothes — it’s really more an exercise in environmental design.  

 
All of this exemplifies the direction of the museum’s design programming under Zoe Ryan, and illuminates the unusual position of an architecture/design department in an encyclopedic art museum setting. Art museums are, by their nature, about history. But unlike the fine arts, design and architecture are functional pursuits that, while they certainly have their historical elements, are really more about the present and the future — innovation, progress and novelty.
 
I think this forward-looking approach has caused Ryan some degree of difficulty in moving ahead. Despite the modernity of the Modern Wing building, the Art Institute remains a reasonably conservative institution, and while there’s substantial support for the contemporary, a lot of the Powers That Be feel that History trumps all.
 
It’s not too surprising, then, that there was a fair amount of grumbling among the Old Guard of the Architecture & Design Society at the opening of the show, although I’m wondering what the grumblers had expected. There are still a lot of people in Chicago who think that the Architecture and Design department should be concentrating on the city’s Great Legacy of architecture and design. No one is denying this, exactly, but to make the museum into the world class institution everybody seems to want it to be, they’ve got to expand their notions of what the mission is.

 Maybe — with Ryan’s ongoing efforts — they’ll get it eventually.  
 

Another Wright auction means another dazzling display of design objects. Although we may have seen a lot of it before, it never gets old.

The showroom at the pre-sale  preview seemed more crowded than it had in the last few iterations.

And indeed, this sale had 433 lots — about 15 percent more than in December’s “Important Design” sale, with 378.

The merchandise was, as is typical, pretty fabulous: the usual representation of Nakashima, George Nelson, Eames and Jeanneret items

[how can there still be — sale after sale — that many pieces from the High Court at Chandigarhh? Yet Wright’s intrepid staff keeps on finding them.]

Stuff I liked particularly:

a collection of Fornasetti boxes

a couple of Ruth Duckworth items

plus of course objects from designers I’d never heard of :

like Pedro Friedenberg [this kooky anthropomorphic table that reminds me of John Dickinson sold for $18,750, within its estimated range]

and Stilnovo — actually a manufacturer, which made this incredible wall mounted light fixture

[shown here with a Paul Frankl bench (estimated at 3-5K, it went for $9,375) and Wright’s Clare Warner (priceless)] that was estimated at 7-9K but sold for $15,000

 As in the last sale, a major Gio Ponti piece — a breakfront that I liked enough to photograph — went unsold

but some other Ponti pieces sold for way over their high estimates.

 The one big question mark about this sale were the roughly 40 or so lots that Jordan Mozer had designed for a single Glencoe residence. I am an unabashed admirer of Mozer’s work, I think he’s under-appreciated in his hometown for his interiors because most of his projects are far away from Chicago. His objects — furniture and lighting, mostly — are splendid displays of creativity, even if they’re a little quirky for your particular environment [which they would be for mine].  And while I think many observers may share my awareness of his special talent, he’s a largely unproven commodity in the auction arena. Also, I wondered whether there was a market for all of it at once.

Well, my bad, as the kids like to say. Although a couple of the lots went unsold, most of them went for way above the high estimates. If this experience is any indication, collectors are really interested in objects by living designers, and it all bodes pretty well for the contemporary design market.

My favorite item was the zigzag bench, estimated 3-5K, sold for $5,938.

The Horta/van de Velde-inspired four-poster bed frame, estimated at 5-7K, is spectacular — the kind of piece that, when you put it in the room, it becomes the room. So I wasn’t sure it would find a buyer.

Wrong again: it brought $13,750. 

The “Potato Chip” chair [estimated 1-1.5K] went for $5,625;

the matching “Pouf” footstool [estimated 1-1.5K] went for $8,125.  

 The overall take — approximately $2.5 million — was slightly less than at last March’s Modern sale, which brought in about $3.1 million. But still pretty impressive overall.

[visualculturist has been on sort of an un-planned hiatus, because its primary contributor has a different — and substantially more time-consuming - day job. but as he adjusts to the new rhythm, he promises to pick up the pace.

The new gig is shouting distance from the Schlesinger & Mayer/ Carson Pirie Scott/ soon-to-be Target store, site of the Sullivan galleries, where SAIC BFA candidates are holding their annual show.  So I popped over to have a look.]

 It’s been a while since I’ve read or heard anyone discussing the baby Art Star phenomenon — i.e. where an artist is plucked directly from a booth at a graduation exhibition and catapulted into [relative] fame and fortune. But it’s still early in the season for the shows, so we’ve still got time.

My guess, though, is that one isn’t going to emerge from the show of work by BFA candidates at the School of the Art Institute that’s up at Sullivan Galleries until next month. Which is not to say there aren’t some pieces that I liked. I’m not sure how the curators allocate space to the artists, but — at least the way I navigated the show, in more or less a counterclockwise fashion — it wasn’t until I got very close to the end that I saw anything which really seemed to suggest a lot of talent.

 That is, at least until I found myself at the far northeast corner of the gallery space, where I was confronted with this arresting self portrait by Reisha Perlmutter.

I like the extreme close-up framing of the image and the sophistication of the brushwork. [While I really liked the landscapes on her website, I was a little disappointed with the other portraits she showed there because they just seemed more conventional.

 Taylor Telyan identifies herself as a textile designer but the richly textured, lavishly detailed felt piece she’s showing here is definitely my idea of “fine art.”

I similarly like Lorraine Barger’s subtle and sensuous wool and indigo piece.

The cleverest thing I saw was Alexis Rodefer’s “Collected Research on Differentiating Monthly Housing Expenditures in Chicago:State and Madison” The artist has drawn watercolor renderings of several dozen Chicago houses, keyed to various locations on a city map, on each of which is indicated its monthly cost of occupancy. 

The concept was interesting, and the execution was admirable — I’m a sucker for mostly anything involving maps, the little watercolors themselves are quite lovely.

and the whole piece is a great installation [although I’m not sure it qualifies as “installation” art].

(I can’t help but think that I’ve seen this idea before — at another SAIC graduate show — but I can’t substantiate.)

Finally, no matter what you think of the work in the show, it’s worth a trip to the 7th floor to look at the Sullivanian terra cotta framing the window reveals.

They are items of great beauty, and it’s great to see them this close, even if they’re not in pristine condition.

Although I am a committed urban bicyclist and advocate for public transit, I loved going to the auto show as a kid. I got a big thrill from all the concept cars — particularly the wild paint jobs you’d never see out on the street. That’s what I thought about when I saw this Lexus parked on Paulina Ave near Wellington.

I’m not sure who would drive it, but I’m guessing it’s either a nouvelle Pimpmobile or Barbie’s Dream Car.

I particularly like the logo.

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: art is all about interpretation. Who can say with certainty what the “meaning” of any particular piece of art is? If you like  a work of art, does it matter whether you are liking what the artist intended? Can you like a work of art for the “wrong” reason?

The issue is complicated enough when the art under discussion is an image; it’s compounded when the artwork is typographic. When the “meaning” is literally spelled out for you, it changes the interpretation process. I’m not referring to the wall cards that accompany a lot of museum shows [that’s another issue entirely]; I mean art like the typographic-based works assembled in Write Now, on exhibit at the Cultural Center, which are primarily composed of letters and text.

The show makes me think about the phrase people use to distill the essence of Marshall McLuhan — that the medium is the message — because by using typography as the jumping off point, you could definitely argue that a lot of what’s here is really “design,” although I’m more comfortable looking at it as “art.” Some of this may be due to my inherent affection for typography, so I’m a little biased. Still, by any standards, there’s a lot of excellent stuff to see there.

Many of the artists in the show are Chicago-based, and most of them do this kind of work. The only artist in the show with an international reputation is Jaume Plensa, whose work often incorporates letters; here, his piece — two letter-enhanced heads arrayed face-to-face — seems to incorporate themes in his more famous Crown Fountain across the street.

Not to diss Sr. Plensa, but the local talent contributed work that did a lot more for me.

Jason Pickleman more or less epitomizes the distinction — or lack thereof - between art and design. While he has made his reputation as a communications designer, he has become a fine artist of considerable accomplishment. His installation here mixes up lettered pieces in which the text reflects a specific message with others where they’re pure abstraction.

As far as I can tell, neither Karen Jackson nor Christine Tarkowski seem to have been trained in graphic design, yet each has appropriated traditional advertising/ poster designs and “retro” typography to create work with many layers of meaning.

Tarkowski has incorporated themes of religion — specifically her own atheism — into an intriguing series. Her technique — a screen printing process that channels the look of advertising placards in the Old West.

Karen Jackson also uses conventions of late 19th century advertising, where the form is graceful — you might even call it flowery — but the content is generally dark and ominous, which makes for a really provocative juxtaposition.

I also like Jason Messinger’s ceramic tiles, where the letterforms seem like abstractions, but where the titles of the works suggest deeper meaning.

Although a lot of observers scoff at visual one-liners, I’m sort of a sucker for them. Thus, I am a big fan of Matthew Hoffman’s  “It feels like there is something between us.”

I am most familiar with Michael Dinges as an illustrator, but clearly he is so much more. Like Jason Pickleman, he contributed one of the finest pieces in the Brown Line Arts In Transit Program at the Fullerton station.

For this show, he channels an affection for handmade typography and decorative embellishment into “Captain’s Chair,” a plastic lawn chair decorated in the manner of 19th century scrimshaw. I’ve got to wonder about its broad pronouncement  that it was “Made In France” [as a fine 19th century captain’s chair might have been] and “Found in USA” when you’ve got to assume this particular piece was almost certainly made in China. 

I cannot resist pointing out the piece by Tom Torluemke [whose work knocked me out when I saw it at the fall 2011 MDW fair], which I don’t understand conceptually [the title — “Dedicated To Amber: a moment in time that changed the rhyme” — doesn’t offer much of a clue] but which speaks to me graphically. Is it about atonement? Or do you read it as “at one” [which I think of as a crossword answer — “unified” or “in agreement”?

Maps and plans usually incorporate letters and words; here Dylan Allread gives us his take on the Chicago transit map

while Ian Walker’s stylized maps  provide  a window into the racial history of Chicago.

The piece that had the greatest graphic impact for me — Jo Hormuth’s “Better Grammer” — also seemed the most impenetrable.

Nothing about it suggested letters or words. Nathan Mason, the show’s curator, explained in an email:

“Jo Hormuth’s piece is close to being a literal translation of a poem with floral subject matter into an abstract composition.  The poem has been translated into color blocks.  The installation mimics that of the words on the page.  The ‘images’ seen on the wall are enlarged close up details of flowers - they are the color of a flower.  The artist took the text as the departure point and transformed the poem itself into an abstract composition with no remnant of the letterforms.”

Which all goes back to interpretation. I get it now, of course, but I don’t think I ever could have figured it out on my own.

This pic appeared on the Facebook page of George Takei [one of my “friends” posted it on her wall, so I am supposing it is the guy from Star Trek]. As far as I can tell, no attribution to the image. But I love the picture, because I’m actually old enough to remember when Binney & Smith changed  “flesh” to “peach.” 

I am always interested in how museums categorize objects they display. Paintings and sculpture and photographs are pretty easy, although you certainly can make a case for sculptures that are really about painting [think Robert Arneson or Viola Frey] and paintings that are sculpture [Red Grooms,  Ellsworth Kelly].

Utilitarian objects are a different story. Consider the pieces displayed in the four recently installed cases near the light court of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Rice Wing,

which contain a lot of virtuous objects. Among those I liked the best: a coffee pot designed by the recently departed Eva Zeisel,

as well as a group of pieces by Russel Wright,

a fantastic clock designed by Paul Frankl,

a great vase that I thought was a piece of Lalique but was designed by Reuben Haley,

and a footed bowl by Gertrud and Otto Natzler

for which, if you’ve seen my collection of studio pottery bowls, you’ll understand my love.

When I started thinking about the groupings in the cases, I wondered how the museum would classify them: are they “Decorative Arts?” Or are they “Design”?  It’s always an interesting debate, and you can’t always make a bright-line distinction between the two — especially at an institution like AIC, which has made a pretty big deal about perception of the Architecture and Design department on the same level as the other curatorial areas.

Turns out the museum classifies these objects as neither — they’re under the more general heading of “American art.” I’m guessing that, because AIC’s decorative arts department is technically “European Decorative Arts,” and all the items displayed here are American.

I like their categorization as  “art”  because, well, I  think many designed objects are works of art — even production pieces like most of what’s displayed here. As a practical matter, I guess most people just think anything in an encyclopedic art museum like AIC is “art,” so the distinction is something not a lot of people think about. 

But if you do care about such niceties, while classifying them as “art” might seem elitist and exclusionary, I think it’s actually populist and democratic,  because it validates as “art” the objects in many “ordinary” collections. You are much more likely to acquire  a Zeisel coffeepot or a Wright celery plate for your personal use than you would be, say, ceramic pieces by Robert Arneson or Viola Frey. So even though you might use the objects on a semi-regular basis, thinking you are that much closer to “art” is an affirmation. And if you are someone who appreciates them as “design,” it’s a bonus. 

If the knives were arranged in ROYGBIV fashion, I would submit this to Things Organized Neatly.

Even so, it’s certainly eye catching. Great gift idea for $9.99, although I wonder if the color on the blades will wear off eventually.

The January 2001, Metropolis featured profiles of nine designers who were still working at the age of 90 and beyond. Most prominent among them was Philip Johnson [95 at the time, he died in 2005], but also Julius Shulman, Morris Lapidus, Al Hirschfeld, Viktor Schreckengost, Pauline Trigere, and Eva Zeisel, who died last week at 105 — the last survivor of the group lionized at the time.

I interviewed Zeisel for a story in April 2005, when she was 98 [or thereabouts], pegged to her appearance at a sale of modernist design where she was honored by the Art Institute’s Architecture & Design society. [My FB friend Karen Mozer posted this picture that Richard Cahan took of herself, husband Jordan, and Zeisel around the time  she was in town for the event.]

I cannot say my phoner with Zeisel was a great interview: I am probably not unlike most writers, with a history of “challenging” telephone interviews with people for whom English is a second language; adding that to the fact that even an extremely high-functioning 98 year old has difficulty speaking on the phone [as I recall, her daughter was on an extension, and had to repeat everything she said], it was tough to extract a lot of scintillating quotes.

Despite this, it was a good story — not because I’m such a crack reporter, but because her story was just so fantastic. She literally lived history. Born into a prominent intellectual family in Budapest, she experienced many of the political and social upheavals of the 20s, 30s and 40s firsthand; her arrival in America and productivity as a designer there was emblematic of an important  emigration pattern in the history of art and design.

The thing about Zeisel is the ubiquity of her designs. I’ve always thought we had her Hallcraft Fantasy dinnerware in the house when I was a kid,

although my sister says we actually had a similarly designed knockoff [another of those instances in which a sibling completely deflates a childhood memory], but I am sure we had a set of “lo-ball” Prestige drinking glasses.

And I think almost everyone who got married from the 1970s on probably received a piece of Nambe metalware she designed.

Longevity aside, the familiarity of her designs pretty much ensures her immortality.

I am posting this way too late for anyone to see either of the shows that Janeil Engelstad assembled and mounted at the threewalls gallery space and the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College during November. But due to the magic of digital media, you can still experience some of the content in cyberspace.

Engelstad built both shows on material she had developed for her website, Voices from the Center, which is a repository of oral histories she gathered while on Fulbright-supported stints in Bratislava, from Slovakians, Czechs and Hungarians  — many of them architects and designers — about societal changes they associated with the fall of the Iron Curtain. Engelstad used quotes from some of the subjects in her part of the threewalls installation, which gave you a sense of the range of experiences, but you really should go to the website to see the fine photographic portraits she shot of the interviewees.

Engelstad asked a few young artists from the region to create works that responded to the materials on her website. While Magda Stanova, Miklos Suranyi and Matej Vakula created work specifically for this show, I was much more impressed with the Garage Project, which Tehnica Schweiz’ had already developed, and Engelstad arranged to include here. Schweiz had originally wanted to document how residents used the ubiquitous Soviet-built garage blocks in cities like Budapest, and exposed a rich culture all but unknown in the west. Next, Schweiz and collaborators began to stage tableaux that imagined what they would find if they could look behind any of the identical overhead doors, morphing it into a much more conceptual project. In the installation at threewalls, images from the project were projected at lifesize scale in a room whose dimensions were almost the same as one of the garages.

But the real reason to go to the show at threewalls was to see Oto Hudec’s installation, which riffed on a series of family photographs that documented trips his grandparents took during the 1960s and 70s in the former Yugoslavia in their much prized Skoda 1001. His fine watercolor drawings re-create images from the series of photographs and others in the family album.

The absolute center of the whole threewalls show, though, was Hudec’s full-scale balsa wood model of the Skoda. In a statement accompanying the artwork, he says the photographs were so familiar to him that he almost feels as if the trips were part of his own memory, even though they happened long before he was born. So the presence of the car, in three dimensions, makes a real statement about the centrality of the vehicle to  Hudec’s family history. It’s also just a great object — a remarkable undertaking technically, and completely handmade. 

I had one major problem with the presentation of the show at threewalls: although each artist’s name was placed somewhere in the vicinity of their work, there was no other explanatory information mounted. Although the gallery offered a binder at the front desk which  contained written descriptions of each installation, these were not posted near the actual pieces. So unless you already knew the story behind Schweiz’s Garage Project, you really had no idea what the projected images were. At least Oto Hudec provided explanatory material in his own wall cards that really put his installation in context.

I was told that it’s simply threewalls normal practice not to post “didactic” materials — I guess it’s in the spirit of letting the work speak for itself. If so, I think it’s kind of pig-headed and overly rigid. While you might argue that really good art should stand on its own without an accompanying explanation, in cases like this, it couldn’t hurt. I think The Powers That Be at threewalls might ease up just a little.