Mat Brinkman, Melt Banana and Lightning Bolt at Ft. Thunder, 1998In another life, I was a regular contributor to design magazines. But I grew less interested in that and more in simply writing and making books. So, interested in getting caught up with a field I once watched closely, I went to see
Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006 at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. In his
review here last month, Thomas de Monchaux focused on the fashion, architecture and industrial design on view, so I won't comment on those parts of the exhibition. But I do want to address the graphic design I saw.
Imagine my surprise to find that 2006 looks a lot like 2000!
I'll say it straight out: Design Life Now's selections in graphics and pop culture are conservative and long out-of-date. Now, with any survey show like this, one can argue about who should and should not be included
ad nauseam. This is a different issue — it's an overriding question of taste. Granted, taste, too, is a very particular thing. But here's the problem: the curators demonstrate absolutely no awareness of current trends in graphic visual culture.
For example, Chip Kidd is selected for his book covers. Now, I, like many others, love Chip's work, but as I'm sure he would agree, he should have been chosen in 2000 or long before, not now. COMA is, again, an excellent design company. But why now, why them? There's no particular explanation. Either way, I'm not sure either of the two represents Design Life Now. Where's
Omnivore or
Dexter Sinister? Both companies are doing exciting and successful new work. They should be in a show about design today.
Perhaps the most egregious breach was the inclusion of
Kidrobot. It's a fine store, but for me it comes up short by even the most basic design criteria. The dunny, their blank bunny character, is a graffiti tag gone wrong: uninteresting in form, scale, and execution. It is as generic as "street art" based work comes. Kidrobot, as evidenced by its recent
book, represents the worst of the "designer toy" explosion and, through its aggressive flooding of the field, will most likely be partly responsible for the market's imminent implosion. Their book lacks critical or historical context, and provides little more than toy pornography for collectors. There are numerous toy designers, such as
Friends With You, that are vastly more interesting, and more difficult. Perhaps they're not easy, local, or generic enough.
And then there was Planet Propaganda, expert purveyors of design kitsch. They displayed a couple of blatant Chris Ware rip-offs and posters devoid of thought or graphic flair. One wonders how a curator can get away with hanging generic posters, in the era of the
Providence, Rhode Island, poster boom that has given us seminal designers like
Mat Brinkman. This movement has been completely undocumented in the design press, despite it being the most important development in American poster design since the late 1960s. Why? Again, perhaps it's too difficult and unruly.
The less said about Joshua Davis's fake Matthew Ritchie computer-generated drawings the better, and
Rick Valicenti, like many designers before him, has fallen into the trap of making utterly bland "art" rather than interesting design. Nicholas Blechman, who I've written about in the past and admire tremendously, is, like Chip Kidd, acknowledged years too late for
Nozone, which was last published in 2005 and was at its most frequent many years before that. Why not
Kramers Ergot, a paradigm-shifting publication that represents what is happening in the now of 2006?
Speak Up, a cute but mostly silly design forum is also in there, but given the mediocre and confusing nature of the site design itself, it's hard to understand why. This choice, like those of Valicenti, Davis, Kidd, Blechman and COMA speak to the insularity of the graphic design world. There is, in magazines, conferences, blogs, an a unwillingness to look beyond the NYC-approved choices (well, these venues will look beyond to "vernacular" design, but only in programmatic, dull ways), and by NYC-approved I mean the world of the design conference circuit, the AIGA, Print Magazine, and other old-guard bastions of graphic conservatism. This is a kind of provincialism of taste that not only impedes the present but, to my mind, continues to restrict our vision of the past. When are we going to look beyond the normative historical narrative? Where is Charles White III in the narrative, or
Martin Sharp? 2000 A.D., or
Semina? Where is
Eye Yamatsuka or
Keiichi Tanaami? The job of these exhibitions should be to advance our notion of design, not restrict.
I wish the curators had stretched out, looked beyond their horizons and embraced other points of view, other publications, anything, really, but the safe choices they settled on. Where are the designers who offer alternatives to normative impulses? Where are the questioning, searching image makers? Is this really Design Life Now? It's not my design life.
Comments [50]
Just guessing that the aformentioned included-designers were chosen in part because their work
is not insular, compared to the Providence "poster-explosion" scene.
The fact that RISD is only now acknowledging the existence of the Providence scene is surprising
(and depressing) mostly because the scene was uprooted when Fort Thunder was torn down.
This occured (mostly) without intervention from the surrounding educational institutions.
Wundergound, Providence, 1995 to the Present at the RISD Museum just ended, but here is the slide show.
03.08.07
12:08
I agree with most of your crit, but you have to keep some perspective; graphic design criticism & writing remains an elusive obscurity (in media & NY art circles), especially when critics such as you feel oblidged to rely on more obscure subjects.
Speak Up may seem "cute", "silly" and "mediocre", but had it not been for them you certainly wouldn't be reading anything here.
That bit of criticism is simply untrue.
Sir, If I may be so bold as to give you a crit (I have crittered for Communication Arts) but since Peter Buchanan Smith has left the building your endeavors (Gansfeld comes to mind) have lost most of their shimmer.
03.08.07
12:16
The exhibition Wundergound, Providence, 1995 to the Present just ended. Here is the slide show.
03.08.07
03:59
Semina and the Oz magazines scans linked seem to date a few decades outside the range being looked at in this exhibition. Am I missing something, or is Felix just right about the obscurantism?
03.08.07
04:26
2. I seen next to nothing that is in Design Life Now so I may be missing the boat entirely, but the title seems to me to refer to something more mainstream than what Dan would like it to be. Isn't design life right now mostly about business? And isn't business mostly very conservative?
03.08.07
04:43
Which is why a show whose curatorial purpose is to showcase the most zeitgeist-astic designs comes off as completely soul crushing? (A consensus reached by EVERY designer I've spoken to that bothered to make the trip). I was literally embarrassed to be a designer when I saw the show.
especially when critics such as you feel oblidged to rely on more obscure subjects.
It's very hard not to appear elitist when the scope of most design writers' references seems to extend only to a list of 30 or so names. Is design writing's purpose to gain acceptance and recognition of design from the mainstream media? Really? I want deep and lateral thinking from my design criticism. If design writers want more respect, it would probably be a good idea to try to earn it from designers.
Sadly, I don't have any better idea of you what the ideal contemporary design (Design Now!) show would have been. The Providence thing was fabulous but is history now. Oz and Semina, as was noted above, both happened decades ago. Truly contemporary design is so so difficult to find it makes one sick of looking.
03.08.07
08:21
03.08.07
10:42
That's tough criticism! I wasn't aware of your past life as a contributor to design magazines. I only know you as a superb publisher of avant-garde books.
I should have spoken to you before planning the current issue of Artkrush, which focuses on the Design Triennial. While we write about several of the people that you find old hat, I agree that the curator's should have delved deeper.
All best,
Paul
03.08.07
11:12
The state of design right now should reflect the large-scale shift toward emerging media.
03.08.07
11:48
I appreciate Dan's many suggestions for designers we should be looking at. I saddens me, however, when design criticism is equated with casually dismissing other people's creative output. The work of Josh Davis, Rick Valicenti, Planet Propaganda, Kid Robot, and SpeakUp doesn't deserve such offhand slights. Instead, it deserves to be on view at the National Design Triennial.
03.09.07
08:18
03.09.07
10:25
At the risk of sounding like I'm tired of seeing this near-identical crit come up every time an [exhibition/review/conference] happens(though I kind of am): Is there actually an acceptable response here? What is it you want? It's clearly not just a matter of including your choices. That'll only get someone else's knickers in a twist, as already evidenced by the comments. It's not just you that's disappointed, but I'm not seeing much agreement on the sources.
For reasons I've never entirely understood or probably agree with, it's not appropriate to ask, "Well, where's your [exhibition/review/conference]?" And you open by stating that you've effectively withdrawn from contributing to the "circuit" you then damn for not recognizing or catering to your particular likes. That smells like a trap to me.
The most galling thing is that you—"you" being the meta-author of this meta-crit at any given time—usually then proceed to rattle off a list of people/studios/work that should have been represented, more often than not with little to no justification, as if engaged in a game of taste one-upsmanship, despite quite likely not being privy to the decision parameters, process, or initial list of work considered. (And Ellen, since you're "here:" Is such a list published anywhere? I seriously doubt it, but it'd be interesting.)
It's not that I object to the criticism. I haven't been to the show, and I'm sure it's likely valid in some spot(s). But this rant almost always seems to have an underlying, "It's obvious my suggestions are much better and if you don't know why, I'm not going to tell you," while simultaneously making offhand dismissal of the choices that were made.
[Disclosure: I built the Speak Up comment thingy. I received no compensation, though there is a plain text credit at bottom. Because Armin's a cheapskate.]
03.09.07
10:29
03.09.07
10:45
I haven't seen the design now show, but every time I see KidRobot, Joshua Davis, etc., in another magazine or show, it only serves as a reminder to me that I need to look somewhere else than said magazines and shows. It's just boring and has very little intellectual payoff. I like Rick Valicenti, though.
03.09.07
11:16
03.09.07
12:07
Anyone trying to explain the importance of design to the general public and this is true for journalists as well as curators inevitably reaches for familiar examples that are progressive enough to be interesting, but not so progressive as to seem esoteric. In short, being "difficult," which is what Dan is asking for, defeats the purpose.
Given its mission and broad audience, I'm not sure it's Cooper-Hewitt's role to blaze new trails, so I disagree with Dan there. However, he's right about one thing: we need more venues where truly progressive (or "difficult") design work can reach more people, even within the professional design community.
03.09.07
12:08
and let's not even get started on illustration or Gary Baseman!
Link
03.09.07
02:00
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02:09
03.09.07
02:33
fascinating read after interesting read!
03.09.07
03:09
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03.09.07
03:58
03.10.07
07:23
03.10.07
09:13
I guess it's realy all a matter of where you position yourself on the 'what's important' ladder. Not to totally break it down, but I've heard designers/artists in New York complain that Dan's guilty of some of the criticisms he's leveling here at the triennial. Just on a different scale. Like how he's publishing already established and kid-tested underground talent and NOT pursuing newer people or presenting a real unique vision.
Perspective. Just sayin'.
03.10.07
10:59
Visiting the Cooper-Hewitt, I felt a sense of pride--proud that work of this quality, scale, and lifespan* made it out into the world and now has an exhibit that honors their existence and effort behind them for several months in a National institution. (*Note that most inclusions are not nearly as "ephemeral" as an antiquated critic would make out design to be.)
This lack of surprise is due to the fact that 1) we talk about what will be there in great length before the show opens, 2) most inclusions are well-tread in the "insular" part of our dialogue, 3) this work spans 3 years.
I'm surprised that last point hasn't been reiterated time and again in this thread. I agree, Kid Robot and (gasp) Speak Up may not have redefined 2006, but in the preceding 36 months these and many other inclusions made an entry into the design world or crossed the line into popular culture. I can only imagine that the curatorial dilemma of what to select, cut, and include becomes increasingly challeging as the larger context for the exhibition changes over the course of 3 years. No one could predice that Kid Robot would dull-ify its retail stores and saturate most design press a few short months before the Triennial. That needn't negate that part the store and business has played in several slices of the design world.
03.10.07
11:13
As it's clear in the wide-ranging responses to this post, we are dealing with constrasting understandings of the nature and purpose of design. The curators of the Design Triennial seem to have focused on the field's societal impact; they are pursuing the intersection between the general culture and the practice of design. The work that Dan lauds is very insular: it's impact restricted to small subcultures, uber-hipsters, and design-cognocenti. Arguably, it helps propel the field forward by expanding the limits of acceptable practice. My guess is that there's room for both curatorial approaches; I would argue that the first one is more appropriate for a national design museum.
I think it makes sense for graphic designers to feel underwhelmed by the curator's choices in our own speciality. We live with it every day, read all the magazines articles, monographs, etc. We know this stuff. Looking at the catalogue (haven't had a chance to check out the actual show) what I'm most drawn to is the work outside of graphic design -- there are wonderful examples of landscape architecure, industrial design, fashion, hair dressing. Perhaps the practioners in those respective fields find the work shown old hat, but for me it feels fresh, exciting, and, ultimately, inspirational.
03.10.07
12:00
Although I have problems with the installation of this and most composite surveys, which do not have a cohesive body of work (the Whitney's is a case in point), I am grateful that we have the Cooper Hewitt as a showcase for design. Whatever its failings, the show introduces a wide variety of design endeavor - including graphics, toys, prescription drug packaging, etc. - to a broad public.
I've been to various emerging art shows, and there are times I don't quite get the rationales behind included works. While I don't disagree with Dan's picks for what's exciting today, I'd also like to see that work develop legs so that they will be viewed has being more than one-offs, and thus selected for the next Cooper Hewitt show. For now, frankly, I'm happy to pick through the various zines, magazines and books (some published by Dan) in which they appear, there's plenty of time for them to be encased in amber later.
03.10.07
12:38
1) First of all, wouldn't it be nice if a major museum devoted to design attempted to go beyond the popular and the tried-and-true? My argument wasn't that "this stuff is popular so it's not worthy." My argument was that it was popular and worthy like six years ago (and not just in the "design world") and should've been honored then. And more to the point, why is a Design Museum not part of the design world? It's odd to me that people keep writing about the museum as though it's some "other" thing. Nearly every other biennial or triennial in other fields is not about "setting things in amber" but rather showing the way forward. What this exhibition does is more or less show the graphic design trends of 2000-2001, with little beyond that. I find it odd to advocate a museum showing work that is "mainstream"--it reeks of lowest common denominator thinking. Since when are contemporary design surveys meant to be about popularity? What happened to showing work that pushes forward as well? Where is the way ahead? Obviously these shows shouldn't be just one thing or the other. My point is that it would be nice if they just looked a little beyond the horizon. Even musty ol' MoMA takes steps out and so does the Whitney. It's nice to push things forward. Maybe even educational? Who knows?
2) When commentators keep pointing out that design is a business, so what'd I expect, I get depressed. Design is a business, art is a business, film is a business, but so what? The Container Corporation was a cardboard box manufacturer. Somehow they managed to support some of the great design of the 20th century.
3) I would argue that artists like EYE and Brinkman have had a tremendous effect on our contemporary visual culture of the last few years and are, in fact, very well established. Just look at music videos, fashion, graphics for Nike and Converse, among others, and a host of other work. Arguments based on their "obscurity" (odd to me, since both arguably have audiences in the many tens of thousands through videos, record covers, t-shirts, etc.) sort of prove my point about those pesky horizons.
4) I think off-hand, impolite, post-first think later, dismissive writing has a place in criticism and is not used enough. Lester Bangs, Dave Hickey and others were and are masters of it. I'm not pretending to that throne, just saying the well-trod genre is quite useful. Most of the above doesn't really need further explanation.
5) As for the historical stuff in the latter part of my piece, I meant those as examples of the history left behind by a narrow vision of the present. And, as earlier in the piece, these are examples, not suggestions for substitutions. I'm not proxy-curating, but rather suggesting that there's a whole world left aside when we restrict ourselves to such a narrow set of works and ideas. The point is, if these shows and their magazine and institutional equivalents always aim low/middle, we not only lose out on a better present, but better, more expansive notions of history as well.
6) I'll take a pass on responding to the personal stuff, since it's all utterly inane and ill-informed (except the praise--har har).
03.10.07
02:30
03.10.07
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03.11.07
03:09
It seems the two poles are (as with other disciplines) accessibility versus discrimination, either presenting popular successes, which stand to communicate the importance of the artform to the greatest number of people, or presenting critical successes, which trade off popular appeal for a more accurate portrait of the cutting edge.
It seems to me, at least, that this should not be a binary choice. Can't the accessible introduce audiences to the edgy?
03.11.07
04:11
Dan, Thanks to Armin Vit and Su just put up your cutting edge graphic design posters on the Speak Up, design forum live feed and create your own "MyTriennial" at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.
03.11.07
07:50
SpeakUp was not the first blog on the internet.
The people who call themselves 'authors' at SpeakUp are not the first to critique design.
I think it's insulting to try and peg the four WRITERS who started Design Observer too simple to begin their own blog, and I think they would have started their own blog regardless of SpeakUp. Again, very silly.
Good Luck with that.
03.12.07
07:35
Good luck with what?
Armin deserves (and recieves) props for being the first to critique design online. Try to focus your attention on some of the more interesting points here on DO, rather than beating your chest to no purpose. Peace.
03.12.07
02:36
03.12.07
04:09
Steve Witt was actually the first. But since he died way too young in November of 2000 he doesn't get the credit he deserves. No disrespect for Armin intended. He's the same intelligent and passionate kind of guy that Steve was. And for awhile there, before the New York years, SpeakUp was jazzed up and hot with the same kind of dish that Steve used to serve.
03.12.07
08:11
No chest beating, no furrowed bullshit; a difference of opinion and fact.
As far as my purpose...
I happen to agree with some of what Dan says, and I think your comment "...it not been for them(SpeakUP) you certainly wouldn't be reading anything here (Design Observer). " is something that I disagree with. I also disagree with your evoking "not all that" attack on Dan. You're cutoff.
You probably have no clue how Communication Arts is run. And to be honest, however you feel about Communication Arts, after seeing Dan's posts I would have walked out more inspired if he had been involved.
03.13.07
03:10
03.13.07
09:38
A museum of any sort should be creating new, mutable definitions of success with every exhibition.
03.13.07
03:24
To me, these sort of "well he's a hipster" reactions are kinda paranoid and not terribly relevant--they say more about the poster's own insecurities than about the actual subject at hand.
03.14.07
03:40
I think the critique of the purpose and posssibility of the event is actually quite intersting and worth discussing. But to dismiss off-handedly Mr. Valicenti's work, the gang at Speakup, and others with that slacker hipster tone is short-sighted and leaves him reeking of the kid who wanted to be a rockstar, but now works in that local record store. Which is unfortunate because from what little I know, that is not what Mr. Nadel is.
03.14.07
04:03
The various complaints about "hipsters" and the like strike me as paranoid, and say far more about the posters own insecurities than the subject at hand. Just thought I'd actually try again.
03.14.07
06:56
I hope somehow we can discuss the substance of the post, and that perhaps Ellen Lupton and others involved in organizing the show can shed a little light on what they feel is its purpose and how they go about surveying the field.
And now, time for me to drop a name. check out Mr. Jeral Tidwell a Louisiana native, but now call our little burg of Louisville, Kentucky home (www.humantree.com). Mr. Nadel, I think you will enjoy. Much Love.
03.15.07
09:56
what is left out is as important as what is chosen, n'est ce pas? with a mandate as broad as "DESIGN LIFE NOW", the critical considerations of other designers are probably worth listening to, regardless of the nuances of their delivery.
03.17.07
03:53
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03.19.07
02:10
I consider myself corrected Michael.
03.19.07
08:17
03.20.07
10:16