MACHINES FOR LIVING WITH

The Ettore Sottsass retrospective at the Met Breuer is subtitled Design Radical, and “radical” is correct for both its ideological and scientific connotations. Sottsass was a singular spirit who, like an atomic free radical, moved independently and reacted strongly with all the forces he encountered. Born in 1917 and trained in Viennese-inflected modernism by his architect father, he borrowed tenets and freedoms from every cultural movement afoot in postwar Europe: Bauhaus, Pop, Zen, Minimalism, Neo-Classicism. While his designs are typically filed under Postmodernism, they’re more personally-felt and eclectic than those of academic practitioners like Michael Graves and Robert Stern, whose references are mostly Classical. In addition, Sottsass worked in a far broader range of media. There are at the museum, in addition to Sottsass’ architectural drawings, glassware, jewelry, tableware, furniture, lighting, plastic laminate patterns, and textiles.

Sottsass remains best-known for his product design, in particular the portable red plastic typewriter he concocted for Olivetti in 1969. But it’s probably better to think of him as an interior designer. Not because he cared about finishing rooms, but because his sphere of influence is primarily the interior. His strongest works are large-scale furnishings (desks, armoires, etageres, totems) that possess dubious practical value and exceptional sculptural charisma. They overturn, effortlessly, the modern dictum that form follows function, suggesting instead that form intends to delight. Rendered with theatrical proportions and unorthodox materials in noisy juxtaposition to one another, these constructions have a playful mechanistic energy, like friendly robots. A standing cabinet with a glowing yellow stained maple finish has shiny, gold, cupcake-sized pulls. A wall divider with long canted shelves, its arms akimbo, is finished in a crayon-box assortment of lacquers. Each piece is strong enough to anchor an otherwise simply furnished loft or bedroom or conference room, charging the entire space. However eccentric, Sottsass’ designs are fit for living.

Ettore Sottsass, Tartar Table, 1985. Reconstituted wood veneer, plastic laminate (HPL print laminate), lacquer, plywood. Photo courtesy The Met.

September 05, 2017 by Nalina Moses

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

The old Whitney Museum uptown has, finally, been refinished, rechristened and reopened as the Met Breuer. The inaugural exhibition, Unfinished: Thoughts Made Visible, collects Western artworks from the sixteenth century through the present that either were left unfinished or that embody an unfinished aesthetic. This second category is highly dubious, and leaves the show open to paintings that are entirely finished, but that include bits of exposed canvas, patches of freewheeling brushstroke, or blank backgrounds. There are major works by Titian, Velazquez, El Greco, Goya, and Picasso here, and almost all of the Impressionists, particularly Monet and Cezanne. At the heart of the show, in a small interior gallery on the third floor, there are five majestic Turners, each not much larger than a tea tray, that render Atlantic views in a miasma of paint. These canvases are awesomely complete. They scream with life, and blow apart the weak thesis of this show.

And then there is the museum itself, which has been lightly refurbished by Beyer Blinder and Belle, with its original brutalist sensibility left intact. The thick coats of varnish have been scraped off the granite floor, the concrete ceiling coffers have been cleaned, and the partitions have been painted a flat dove grey. The effect, when walking through at midday, is like wandering through a huge, luminous shell. The refinishing highlights details of the architecture I had never noticed before: the rhyme of the square ceiling coffers with the floor tiles, the explosion in volume as one passes from the second floor to the high-ceilinged third floor, the pinched street views through the slanted cyclops windows, and the jagged, ignaceous-like concrete of the bearing walls. This building is a gentle giant. It’s raw sensuality and restrained proportions demonstrate, more so than any painting in the show, that the most thoughtful, accomplished work can feel, in the end, unfinished.

April 14, 2016 by Nalina Moses