Denise Rack Louw Lifestyle
The Design Museum, which opened on September 23 at the Foundry in Greenpoint, Cape Town, allows aficionados of 20th- century design to view some world-class “greats” from the dazzling repertoire of the modernist movement.
On show are the kind of pieces that have graced acclaimed exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, as well as the Design Museum in London. Though much smaller than those illustrious establishments, the Design Museum has a permanent collection of about 70 pieces of furniture by celebrated modern and contemporary international designers like Alvar Aalto, Charles Eames and Philippe Starck.
But director Jackie Cleobury says the museum aims “to promote local and international modern design from alldisciplines – interior, industrial, architectural, graphic, and textile, as well as clothing, jewellery, etcetera”.
And it is not intended for the cognoscenti only. An educational arm of the enterprise will include walkabouts, lectures and slideshows; and a resource centre will eventually be set up for the benefit of students and professionals.
The impetus towards modernism accelerated after World War I, and was increasingly felt in the decades which followed. Michael Horsham writes in 20s and 30s Style that “if any one trend could be said to characterise the 1920s and 1930s, it must be the way in which innovation was constantly and rapidly transmuted into chic”. At the Design Museum, this chic is epitomised in the stylishly elegant and almost sculpted lines of a black chaise longue by Le Corbusier.
Among the other pieces in the collection is Marcel Breuer’s Wassily tubular steel chair of 1925. Breuer, who pioneered the use of tubular steel in furniture, was associated with Bauhaus, and Bauhaus’s role in propagating a modernist design aesthetic has become legendary. Also influential in the development of modernism as a whole was the Dutch De Stijl group. The De Stijl influence is exemplified in the famous Red/Blue chair by Gerrit Rietveld, whose geometric forms in furniture are so striking.
And among the Scandinavian modern pieces in the museum’s collection is Danish architect Arne Jacobsen’s 1958 Egg chair.
The Design Museum’s permanent collection will be on view several times a year; but temporary exhibitions will add a dynamic element. An exhibition of South African design, curated by the Design Institute of the South African Bureau of Standards, is planned for next year.
An exhibition of comic-strip graphics is currently on show. The works include 11 images by French comic-strip creators depicting individual visions of the year 2000. Also featured are graphic works by South African comic-strip artists. Needless to say, Madam and Eve is represented – rocketing into the new millennium, of course!
One of the challenges which faces Cleobury is deciding which items from permanent collection should be displayed to complement the temporary exhibitions. Among the furniture on show with the comic-strips is the Marshmallow sofa by American designer George Nelson.
“Comic art and the rise of 2-D graphic design had direct influence on pop art,” Cleobury points out. And the vari-coloured Marshmallow (1956) “epitomises the pop art movement”.
Another fascinating and relevant item is Michele de Lucchi’s 1983 First chair, which Cleobury describes as having “an almost toy-like quality reminiscent of the pop era”. It reflects the Italian Memphis group’s penchant for playfully “poking fun at serious design”.