Wicked!: Design on the Edge of Bad Taste 9783034610438

Citation preview

Wicked!

Wic ke d ! Design on the Edge of Bad Taste

Karen Bofinger [ED.] Birkhäuser basel

CONTENTS



 INTRODUCTION: Is That Allowed?

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W   atch out for t he Joke!

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 D esign bet ween Audac ity



  a nd Persiflage 

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W   hen Children Play Mean

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 How Things Help Put our

 M o rals to t he Test 22

 Invert ed!

 K i tsch and Evil 31

 T he B eaut y of Guns

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 T he B lood My t hos 

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 Re vulsion, Sex, and Fecal Humor

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 Co njuring t he Sexual Drive

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B   o dy Parts as Salvation

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B   e aut iful Forms Will Soon Be Lost

118 PICTURE CREDITS 

120 imprINT

Is T h a t A l l ow e d ?

This book is about blood, violence, weapons, sex and genitals, bowels, bodily fluids, and decay. In short, about beautiful things. Because isn’t that what design is all about? Consumer goods are supposed to trigger positive emotions and avoid anything that might cause physical or moral discomfort – ultimately the dominating impulse should be the desire to have the object.1 Typical product advertising aims to convey joy, love, luxury, and high esteem. However, what do you discover when browsing through the world of design? Weapons as lamp stands, skeletons as decorative painting, penises as bottle caps, dead piglets as piggy banks, radios shaped like breasts, bloody dishware, cut-off heads as handbags, and ripped-out tongues as seats. But if we were to take all of these objects at face value, as they are in reality, it would be rather disgusting, repulsive, and appalling: they are, in fact, wicked things. Of course, we first of all have to point out that the real wicked things are weapons that kill people, luxury products that waste resources, or consumer goods that are produced by children.2 Things alone cannot really be wicked, but people can do wicked things with them. Today, the term ethical design means that the above-mentioned factors have been weeded out and the designed objects are produced in a sustainable and socially aware manner. We stopped believing in the unity of the “true, the good, and the beautiful,” long ago. We also stopped believing that aesthetically valuable and quality-conscious design will make us better people, as Bauhaus or the Werkbund once proclaimed. But what about the reverse argument? What does having a world of things full of sexual and violent imagery say about us, our society, or our values? Political correctness has given way to trash, irony, and camp. In our safe, clean, democratic society, far away from any chance of being directly threatened

1 In this regard, see the exhibition “Design+Emotion” from 2008 at the Landesmuseum Karlsruhe , and Karen Bofinger, “Emotionally Yours,” in form – The Making of Design, 231, 2010, P. 32– 43. 2 T he exhibition entitled “Böse Dinge” at the Berliner Museum der Dinge [Berli n Museum of Things] in 2009 is an interesting reference here . The show traveled to the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur in 2011. 6

by such things, we can fully enjoy the disgusting elements, understand sexism as irony, and make fun of aggression and fears. The inviolability of life and the prohibition of violence are two of our society’s most revered values, and we even extend these to animals. Nonetheless, we buy a nice little knife holder for the kitchen that looks as if a person is being pierced by the blade. If you believed in voodoo, the implications of this household appliance would be horrible. A symbolic statement such as this does not mean the owner of the object wants to kill someone. But we like wicked things, we turn them into a symbolization of distinctive taste and humor. We react positively, which is exactly what these consumer items are intended to do: to make us laugh. But, is it permissible to laugh at objects such as these? Rainer Funke believes that it is, or at least this is the position he takes in his essay [ Page 18 ]. He believes that jokes bring our moral standards to light and allow them to be reexamined. The approaches of designers whose objects have been collected in this book are very diverse. Some want to goad while others are motivated more by pubescent humor – it is precisely the broad scope for joke products that openly plays with violence and disgust, you put a bar of soap shaped like a pile of shit in the bathroom and get a real kick out of your visitors’ confused faces. Games or toys that play with taboos can be the cause of much popular enthusiasm, as Claus Richter describes in his text [ Page 15 ] , despite – or

because! – they don’t have any pedagogical

value whatsoever. For others, anything tasteless, risqué, yes, even ugly triggers a thrill that touches upon a deep-lying emotional aspect of one’s personality. There is a poetics of the disgusting, an aesthetic of the ugly, a beauty of the horrible. Jessica Harrison’s porcelain figures may well emit a tender melancholic feeling,

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while blood and intestines spill out of their bodies; Polly van der Glas’ jewelry made from real teeth and hair may first seem awful, but on second glance, it also convincingly embodies an emotional aspect of transience – with both grace and gore. Some of the designers also want to be political and motivate people to think about certain issues. For instance, to denunciate sexism or the glorification of violence. Or at least that is the intention … but can it work? Design has an important, fundamental problem: it first and foremost defines itself through its appearance, its outer form – which is why it is generally suspected of being superficial. This results in a certain lack of certainty on the part of the recipients. Alexander Reh or Philippe Starck’s furniture made out of weapons, according to a “turn swords into plowshares” principle, may well intend to denounce the arms business, but don’t they in fact possibly encourage an aestheticization of the horrors of weapons that are popular decorations in the homes of war lords and criminals? 3 Our eyes do not perceive the fact that the designers of ­Dorothy, with the strange Christmas tree decorations shaped like hand grenades, also donate proceeds to a charity organization. On the contrary, our eyes only see that a weapon has been used to make an ornament. It is equally difficult to discern that proceeds made by the “Boob Scarf” designed by Lourdes ­Corugedo are donated to a breast cancer foundation. You first think, “how funny,” only in the next moment to be slightly embarrassed by a joke about drooping naked breasts, the likes of which you wouldn’t even want to see at the sauna. Whether joke or statement: these products are mixed in this book without classification or hierarchy. The illustrations section is structured according to theme and should invite the reader to browse. In the accompanying essays, we let

3 See page 10 ff.

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our associations run free and elicit connections to archeology, art, history, and culture – because there are, in fact, astounding formal conceptual parallels and examples from history. In my essay [ Page 22 ] , I examine the notion of kitsch and traditional craftsmanship, as well as the wicked inversion of the traditional. The manner in which we present the objects in this publication does not distinguish between joke products and those that have been designed by well-known designers, or between art works, unique pieces, or mass-produced products. Is that allowed? Or is it an unacceptable mix of high and low? “Shiva,” the penis vase designed in 1973 by Ettore Sottsass, and the penis cup in the gift shop both share the prevailing principle of the phallicsymbol guy joke. At best, these things are distinguished by the value of the material and the level of craftsmanship with which they are produced. But on the other hand, is it perhaps exactly this level of craftsmanship that distinguished the one from the other? Is it the sensitivity of implementation that draws the fine line between art, good design, and trashy trash? It’s just, the product itself does not reveal any underlying position. Volker Albus addresses precisely this issue in his essay about Memphis, a group of designers in the 1980s, who wanted to shake up the standard, accepted truths, but unfortunately found many incompetent followers who did not understand the philosophy but only the effect [ Page 10 ] . Sottsass experienced a similar fate to Bauhaus, whose architectural ideals unwillingly paved the way for the prefabricated high-rise. The discourse determines the meaning, but not the appearance. Placing the objects in this book adjacent to each other should thus not be understood as an attempt at superficial uniformity, but rather as hard-hitting food for thought: precisely where the limits lie, or whether there are any limits at all, is a matter of personal taste.

Author: Karen Bofinger Karen Bofinger was chief STAFF WRITER at “form – The Making of Design” from 2009 to 2010 . She is now a freelance journalist in Berlin.

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WaTc h O u T fO R T h e J O k e ! deSigN beTWeeN audaciTy aNd PeRSiflage

The eighties will never be recorded as a particularly gloomy or depressing era of design history. Quite the contrary. The emergence of groups such as Alchimia and Memphis was a crystal clear sign that we were headed somewhere colorful and humorous, bizarre and playful. And many viewers had the same impression as emilio Ambasz, design curator of MoMA in New York in the seventies. When he saw the Memphis collection at MoMA for the first time, he was immediately reminded of small children, how they absorb their surrounding world of objects in a completely unprejudiced manner, and how they are hardly aware, if at all, of the value or function of the objects that make up an adult household. This is what allowed a chair, continues Ambasz, to be “re-functionalized” into a locomotive or into a podium or a wild-looking sofa. The new design approach could not have been described more accurately. Because that was exactly what Sottsass and his boys wanted: to absolutely confuse or even erase the seemingly established constants of a functionally bound design culture, and test entirely different approaches. This principle questioned every level from the construction, to the configuration, symbolism, materiality, and the color – actually every aspect that ultimately defines a final form as a piece of furniture, as an object in our household. Unfortunately many people did not understand this radically unconventional approach. Most of the epigones reduced Memphis’s work to a three-dimensional translation of a

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her chair faBio noveMBre casaMania , 2008

Disneyesque onomatopoeia of blubb!, blob!, and biong!. In other words: they reduced it to its result and not its principle. This is still very much the case today. Moreover: the simple, joyful, blob-like and crinkled forms spilled over to even the most banal household articles, such as the shoe, nail, or toilet brushes, or entire automotive chassis. You love things that make you happy, entertain you, or that just look funny. Such as a brush in the form of a hedgehog, spaghetti spoons that have prongs modeled to look like punk rock hairdos, or a bottle opener that looks like a frog or some other large-mouthed creature of the animal kingdom. All of which can be found today among the inventory of serious specialty shops. Now are these original or even funny ideas? Perhaps original, absolutely not funny, but very clever – the latter at least as far as marketing strategy is concerned. They are not funny, because jokes like these, which are based solely on one principle, that of mistaken identity and estrangement, are never more than one-liners and, hence, quick passing fads. This might not be the end of the world for the small items mentioned here, which inhabit the shadows of our cupboards and drawers. However, it does get embarrassing when these joke-objects start occupying more space and are seen every day, meaning that the joke is repeated over, and over, and over again. This is precisely the case with Fabio Novembre’s “Her” chair. In 2008, the macho-wannabe designed a chair that resembled the famous “Panton Chair,” but Novembre made the back of his chair take the form of the back of a kneeling, and, of course, naked woman. He omitted the head and arms because he would probably have wondered why anyone would ever need these body parts anyway, if you only want to make use of the fleshy pillow part of a submissive, yielding young lady. But all

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jokes aside, this concoction is just a failure, nothing is right: the lady, or better said, what is left of her, is not only overly slender but is also kneeling in a position that would never support her. Her body is little more than a relief or negative, in other words, merely has the function of satisfying some voyeuristic urge. Fabio Novembre is not the first to attempt to pay homage to the female by means of transformation. The history of art and design history is full of very successful examples. Dalí comes to mind, or Mollino, Pesce, or Newson. And regarding the aspect of sexism, “Hatstand, Table, Chair,” Allen Jones’s sculptural group from 1969, is an equally controversial forerunner. However there is a crucial difference between these dominatrices-cum-furniture objects and Fabio Novembre’s chair figures. The ladies clad in short revealing aprons are deliberate symbols, which artist Jones used to reference, even if drastically, a very specific phenomenon of his times. Designer Novembre’s o ­ b­ject is really intended to have only one, and at that, defamatory, function, and nothing more. Actually mastering such fine differences between art and design should be the norm for a relatively successful protagonist of contemporary design. And you have to wonder what in the world got into Fabio Novembre to make him sink to the low­ est level of machismo. Maybe he just wanted to top other big designers, like Philippe Starck, whose “Gun Lamps” created quite a stir in 2005. Categorically speaking, these lamps are in fact a kind of readymade – a black lampshade is mounted onto an 18K gold-plated, vertically standing die-cast aluminum model of a classic weapon [Beretta, Kalashnikov AK47]. Starck used existing products to create something completely different. So far, so good. But what makes the form of a hand gun, a machine gun, or an assault rifle predestined to be a light stand – forgetting for

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a moment, that they are normally used in a horizontal, and not vertical, position? A spade, an axe, or a salami could have done the job just as well, and like the adapted arsenal of weapons, been designed to fit the hand. But even creating an object to fit the hand is completely useless for the utilitarian function, for the operation and function of a standing lamp. All three weapons were utilized as a structural component, and nothing more. However, let us be fair and allow the master himself to speak. “Light, functional, affordable and elegant, with over 100 million copies officially produced to date, the Kalashnikov is one of the industrial design success-stories of our age. The gold of the weapons represents the collision between money and war. Table Gun symbolizes the East, Bed Side Gun symbolizes ­Europe, Lounge Gun stands for the West. The black shade signifies death.” Excuse me? Gold, money, war, black … death …? My God! That is not only bad, it is a completely absurd bunch of crap. It should have been clear to Starck from the very beginning that, in this context, his true motive would never be viewed with a “critical” eye, but would in fact trigger the exact opposite reaction: a high-end fetishization of these weapon classics, while at the same time branding the field of design with a very clear, cynical note. There is even more: Starck actually makes himself an apostle of this distasteful abyss. Whether this was a calculated or naïve move, with this designed object created by the design star par excellence, Starck gives anyone identifying with this type of aesthetic heroization of weapons a legitimization that trivializes the seriousness of the issue. He gives it a type of flippant swipe of the hand, which can be used at any time as a defense. Because, anyone who might also criticize these lamps will incur the unanimous wrath of the slightly riled pundits shouting, “But they are by Starck!”

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Starck’s mistake begs the question of whether such delicate subjects as war /  weapons  /  death, or these referenceloaded, thematic props, should be used at all to design functional or decorative objects. There is an entire arsenal of similar products: oil lamps made from hand grenades, carpets in the form of a corpse sprawled on the floor, bed sheets printed with obituaries, or a penholder that presents the pen as a knife sticking into the chest of a small plastic figure. Even these summarized descriptions show what the designers of these products are really after: black humor, sometimes with a hint of social criticism. These “jokes” are wonderfully debatable. Nonetheless, one has to admit that these forms of entertainment are very likeable and ultimately boil down to a matter of taste – but, and this is an important point, they do not profess to convey a missionary message. [Which is what Starck with his luxury candelabras is trying to do.] In short: you can do just that. Naturally, this kind of black humor in product design is quickly superseded. It might even insult or hurt someone, but it is not dishonest.

Author: Volker Albus Volke r Albus is a professor of product design and dean at the Karlsruhe School of Design, GERMANY.

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WheN childReN Play meaN

The toy world is broad and wonderful. There are pedagogically sensible toys, beautiful highquality wooden toys, and not forgetting the vastness of the great outdoors, where children can let their fantasies run wild with mud, stones, and whatever else Mother Nature has to offer. And then, of course, there are the evil toys that parents want their children to keep well away from, but that also happen to exercise such an irresistible power over the innocent little lambs that they nevertheless end up in their playrooms, after many tears and temper tantrums. Thank goodness! I like these toys because they introduce a certain level of craziness and silliness into the world of young people and help to prepare them for the trials and tribulations of the modern world. One of the greatest masters of evil toys is the toy designer Marvin glass, who died in 1974. One of his earliest and most legendary inventions was “Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth” from 1949, which is still a favorite today. It’s a wind-up toy that’s fun because it can be made to hop energetically across the table with wild snapping jaws, frightening parents and big sisters in the process. It paved the way for toys that were wonderfully silly and even pedagogically highly dubious. In 1958, the toy manufacturer Kilgore put a new toy on the market called “Junior Dynamite Blaster.” The special fun aspect of this toy is its ability to theoretically blow up a corner of your parents’ house by means of compressed air. Styrofoam bricks and broken pieces of buildings came along with the kit. An adroit child of the 1950s, engaged happily in the anarchic act

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chaMBer of horrors guillotine aurora , 1979 re-edited By Polar lights By round 2 llc

of blowing up the playroom and neat garden on a weekly basis, is a rather refreshing notion. Disgust is also a big draw for playful children. Hence, Hasbro debuted in 1964 with a game called “Pie Face,” which allowed the player to throw a real or shaving-cream fake pie into the face of another player by means of a technically sophisticated catapult. What a wonderful mess it must have made, along with destroying kids’ sweaters with sticky pie substances. Not to forget Mattel’s ingenious invention from 1976: the legendary “Slime” was a green slimy mass that was sold in cute little plastic trashcans. I was a real “Slime addict” in my early childhood and loved to have the green slimy goo run through my tender little fingers and, of course, onto all of the expensive sofas and new articles of clothing. It also always seemed to find its way into freshly washed hair. The 1970s was a great era for evil toys. Milton Bradley celebrated much success with an assembly kit for shrunken heads [“Vincent Price Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture Set”] that allowed adolescents to produce small shrunken heads from dried apples using a kit consisting of hair, plastic eyes, and other lovely disgusting pieces of face. In 1979 with “I Vant to Bite Your Finger,” Hasbro and Ideal Toys brought out a game during which you were bitten on the finger [with fake blood drops to boot] by a small plastic vampire; and the manufacturer Aurora shocked the world with an extremely tasteless, plastic assembly kit called “Chamber of Horrors Guillotine.” It was a detailed model of a guillotine and included terrible convictions that condemned the player to have his or her head “cut off” by means of meticulous handicraft work with a small device. But there were even more fantastic, silly and evil toys produced during the last couple of decades. Mattel’s short-lived

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“Mad   Scientist” series from 1987 allowed young scientists to remove the skin from the faces of innocent monsters or enjoy slowly dissolving the poor souls in a fake bath of hydrochloric acid. Hasbro’s “Operation Brain Surgery” [2002] was also a wonderful opportunity to practice on an open brain – of course, all in the name of science! Good, silly toys, and this brings me to the end of my song of praise, are also always anarchistic toys. They shock wellintentioned minders and love to break taboos. There is no end to the possibilities! But I would like to end my essay with a toy that is unfortunately no longer available. It is called “Kaba Kick,” which Takara Tomy put on the market in Japan in 1992. “Kaba Kick” was absolutely the cutest looking translation of “Russian Roulette,” the game of chance often described in literature. But instead of a real revolver loaded with deadly bullets, the venturous player could put a pistol-shaped hippopotamus to his or her temple, which, if lucky, would then attack the player’s head with two, small, kicking hippopotamus feet. I now know what I want for Christmas, and if I don’t get it, I will throw myself on the floor and bawl. That always works.

Author: Claus Richter Claus Richter is an artist and author living in Frankfurt, Germany.

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hOW ThiNgS helP PuT OuR mORalS TO The TeST

When I was a schoolboy, jokes about homosexuals were popular and in great demand. There was a real competition going on about who had the meanest, most sexist, most racist, nastiest jokes, because that is what made the gang laugh the most. For some young people, the path to sexual identity was paved with hardship or distress. The underlying homophobia found a generally accepted form of expression through jokes, and seemed even more repressive than before. Yet, on the other hand, the jokes also allowed a previously concealed, complex moral issue to be addressed. There started to be serious discussions, which made some people realize for the first time that perfectly respectful and worthy love could exist between two people of the same sex. Others, admittedly, used the jokes to confirm their homophobia. “Wicked Things”4 work in the same way as jokes: they can bring moral standards very pointedly to light and provoke evaluations. It is precisely highly individual, morally loaded consumer goods that make us act in a way that is typical for our behavior as consumers: Our search for identity and positioning within a social milieu is drawn out from puberty to old age. As consumers, we are driven by a permanent desire to fulfill our own, very unique ideals with the very unique consumer goods that go along with them. The decision to make a purchase actually seems more like a formative life-style decision in which we enter a dialog with ourselves. The pressure of individualization increases in relation with the classic negation of egotism. There is an alternative moral standard that is taking hold alongside the typical middle-class moral standard, namely that of amorality. “You should love someone else!” has now been replaced

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What are “Wicked things”? an exhiBition of the saMe naMe held at the Mu -

seuM der dinge [the MuseuM of things] / WerkBundarchiv Berlin in 2009 categorized the things as folloWs: ProMoting violence , toys that are harMful to yo u t h , c h i l d l a B o r , Wast e o f n at u r a l r es o u r c es, e n v i r o n M e n ta l Pollution, cadaver fashion [e .g. aniMal troPhies] , criMes against Protected sPecies [things Made froM Materials froM Protected aniMals], as Well as ≥ 18

angie leMon squeezer knetMan inkognito gMBh, 2006

with “You may, no, you must love yourself!” Consumer goods are supposed to offer both: they are supposed to symbolize the experience of one triumphing over another, and, at the same time, manage its integration into a milieu. Brand names and slogans such as “Égoïste” and “cheap is good!” mean “you can be egoistic!” or “yes you absolutely can, you also have to be bad or play with bad things!” The antisocial reassessment is turning into a social bond. The revolt against the moral standard that prescribes avoiding a standardized self-image has now become a standard in itself, and is no less demeaning to the soul. The more brutal the outside of Sport Utility Vehicles [SUVs] looks, the more they are loved by many of those who cannot afford them. On the one hand, the have-nots might feel as though they have even less, but, on the other hand, the SUV suggests how it feels to be wealthy and powerful, and, ultimately, makes this status feel more attainable. There is a strong power of attraction for the middle class inherent here which cannot be underestimated, namely, the sensation that designed products can improve one’s standard of living. The desire to possess, or the possessing and use of spe­cial consumer articles is also a way of expressing a certain life style, attitude, and world philosophy. In this context, a wide variety of objects and games have emerged in which the level of adherence to given norms can be adjusted. Things, for example, that the self-realization milieu5 may consider to be evidence of a typical, parochial lack of taste [such as garden gnomes or cuckoo clocks] can become signs of being cool or self-confident if displayed within the correct ironic context: we can afford to be near the ugly and evil, we are freed from our obligation to reject kitsch. Sentimentality can be dispensed in measured doses. In today’s day and age, we are amused by gory, violence-glorifying,

s e x i s m , r ac i s m , a n d e x ag g e r at e d e xc lu s i v i t y [ s e e : Im k e Vo l k e r s, B ö s e D i n g e . E i n e E n z y k lo pä d i e d es U n g es c h m ac k s [ E v i l things. An encyclopedia of tastelessness]. Text for the exhibition, p. 27f.] 5 See: Gerhard Schulze , Die Erlebnisgesellschaft [The experience society], Frankfurt / Main 1992.

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trouble-making design that helps us to test and cross the borders of political correctness. However, these evil things also offer a possibility of displaying a certain behavior that would not be possible otherwise. For instance, just to have the chance to squeeze a lemon using a citrus juicer shaped like the head of the Federal Chancellor can have a number of symbolic meanings:  

 I ignore the power of the Federal Chancellor. I do not accept Angela Merkel as one to be admired.

 

 I do not respect the dignity of Angela Merkel and want to hurt her indirectly.

 

  I do not believe Angela Merkel is capable of political achieve­ments. I think she is a loser.

 

 I symbolically avenge her policies that have negatively affected me or that I believe to be wrong.

 

 I am funny and want to be recognized as such. My sense of humor reveals my intelligence or another personal strength.

 

 I belong to a community of funny, intelligent people. In this way, it is possible to make a statement to one-

self and to others by means of a simple juicer, and, with that, refer to a moral, political, or social position. The thing can thus become a vehicle for individual conviction, precisely because it implies a certain level of malice and brutality. Of course there are also some worrisome tendencies. Making fun of every virtue would ultimately lead to sarcasm and mutual complacency. But what can you do? Or better said: forbidding the swastika did not hamper the re-emergence of neoNazi ideology; at most it might be able to hamper its visual distribution. Reducing the amount of “wicked things,” kitsch, and trash will not make the world a better place. Moreover, it is absolutely futile as a designer or an intellectual to attempt to selfrighteously educate the public by means of creative standards.

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The twentieth century is full of such unsuccessful attempts. The German Werkbund, Neues Wohnen, Bauhaus, Functionalism, the design directives of the German Democratic Republic, “Gute Form” [good design], and so on: they might not have failed as design innovations, but they did as a program intended to improve mankind and its moral standards. What can we do? Only one thing: talk about it! We need a developed, mature public discourse on design, a discourse on how people in their different milieus interpret things, how they use everyday objects in order to verify their own moral standards to themselves and others, or question them, how they use things to communicate and form alliances with other people, or finally, to create, strengthen, or regenerate social identity.

Author: Rainer Funke Rainer Funke is Professor of Design Theory and Philosophy at the Faculty of Design of the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, GERMANY.

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iNveRTed! kiTSch aNd evil

Sentimentality, gentle longing, and the sweet pain of love: everything is rosy in the far reaches of classic kitsch. So rosy, that a new generation of artists and designers has shot right through the middle of this powder puff cloud, spilling a bit of blood here, smuggling a couple of weapons there. British artist Jessica Harrison breaks the heads off dainty Royal Doulton porcelain figures, pulls the skin from their faces, or rips the intestines out of their bodies. Dutch designer Judith Montens puts car accidents on decorative plates, and even includes golden oil spills; german artist Stefan Strumbel makes cuckoo clocks from bones, weapons, and dead animals, mostly in neon colors. All three make use of well-known topoi – the cuckoo clock, the decorative plate, the knickknack sculptures – they all symbolize a conflict-free world that is rich in sentimentalism, the living room furnished with armchairs with lace doilies, or the Heimatfilm [a german invention: a sentimental film based in a particular region], and the yearning for a love boat or ship of dreams. The American art critic Clement greenberg defined kitsch in the 1930s as the “epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times.” 6 But in the above examples, the horribleness of reality is drawn into the world of kitsch, the idyll gives way to the inferno, and everything is turned inside out. The once clearly defined borders between design, art, and kitsch were crossed long ago, but it is still a confusing love triangle nevertheless: the word kitsch used to denote the absolute opposite of art. And similar to art it has no true function, yet was considered inferior, only suited to infantile characters and limited to the sentimental and decorative. Simple, inexpensive reproducibility is typical of kitsch – but, in turn, mass production

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c l e M e n t g r e e n B e r g , “ava n t- g a r d e a n d k i ts c h”, Pa rt i sa n r e v i e W 6 : 5 [19 3 9 ]

3 4 – 4 9 : “ k i ts c h i s M e c h a n i ca l a n d o P e r at e s By fo r M u l a s. k i ts c h i s v i ca r i o u s e x P e r i e n c e a n d fa k e d s e n s at i o n s. k i ts c h c h a n g e s ac c o r d i n g to st y l e , B u t reMains alWays the saMe . kitsch is the ePitoMe of all that is sPurious in the life of our tiMes. kitsch Pretends to deMand nothing of its custoMers excePt their Money – not even their tiMe .” 22

five star crockery Judith Montens, 2009

is also typical of design objects that are, in turn again, characterized by their practical functionality. The protagonists of what is called new design art, however, work increasingly within the framework of editions or limited editions and, hence, raise the status of their functional objects to that of art editions; while, at the same time, artists like Strumbel work on everyday functional objects. Kitsch is ironically quoted and referenced everywhere today: on the one hand by artists from Pop Art to such personalities as Pierre et Gilles or Jeff Koons. On the other hand, the iron­ ic attitude in our day-to-day life is an effective way of dealing with the traditional. We cannot disavow that which has shaped us culturally – but it should keep its distance. From the late nineties onward, deer antlers started appearing in hip German living rooms; plastic bobblehead dachshunds and M ­ adonna figures were situated nicely and were a sign of a unique and confident sense of style. Heimat and devotional kitsch took on a meta-­level. The context and evaluation criteria have changed, yet these are the only things that actually define whether an object is tasteless or a valid statement. Kitsch is now a social category rather than an aesthetic one. The evil reinterpretations and new definitions take the irony toward kitsch to a new high: because not only is kitsch being treated with irony, but also horror. Breaking with the traditional form, admittedly, is supposed to enhance the effect. The exciting tension that exists between beautiful and horrible brings the objects to an emotionally charged, intermediate level: but how are we supposed to react to them? One could understand it as a subversive strategy of art criticism about social grievances, as pure cynicism, or as provocation. While Stefan ­Strumbel wants to question our Heimat stereotypes, Judith Montens deals with

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the Wunderkammer of the Baroque, with the fascination of the useless activity of collecting. And if the Dutch designers at ­Studio Job with their “Industry” series produce the most beautiful inlaid cabinets, adorned with gas masks and nuclear reactors instead of floral motifs, then these refer to the destruction of our environment through industrialization, but at the same time, they are also an example of high-quality, traditional, and ornamental craftwork in tulip tree and maple, which – even if in a satirical and dark way – are simply stunning.

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The game of old and familiar, of reinterpreting, exchanging, and inverting brings with it a danger that any possible, immanent criticism will be simply lulled. Because, in our thoroughly ironic world of keeping a distant attitude, no one really wants to see these horrible things with a critical eye, let alone find them jolting. Who is supposed to know who meant what, when and how? The garden dwarf industry is proof that the cy­ cle is complete. The pointed-red-cap wearers are the epitome of German kitsch, however, the producers have long adapted to the ironic gruffness so common in today’s day and age: now, dwarfs are available that give you the middle finger, have a knife stuck in their backs, or pull a mooney. They are also all standing in the community gardens. Walther Killy ranted on about kitsch at the beginning of the 1960s, saying that it had no other purpose than charm and sentiment.7 Even kitsch that has been reinterpreted as evil is still kitsch in the end – only the world’s sentiment has changed. Not emotionalism, but provocation. Not perfect world, but horror. Our strongest emotions are the most negative: fear, disgust, anger. But even a macabre decorative plate can only be hung on a wall. Knickknacks never did much to change the world.

Author: Karen Bofinger 7  Walther Killy, Deutscher Kitsch. Ein Versuch mit Beispielen [German kitsch. An essay with examples]. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 8th edition, Göt tingen 1978.

K N ICKK N ACK S N EA R T HE N UCKLE

In the 1950s, author Hermann Broch said that kitsch was a manifestation of the radically wicked. He argued from the perspective that aesthetics and moral standards should be considered as one and the same, and was reflecting on the knickknacks that were common at that time. But meanwhile kitsch has appropriated the wicked, either as a funny element in a private garden or as an artistic position: Jessica Harrison dissects traditional porcelain figures to investigate the relationship between our bodies and things.

Rosamund Jessica Harrison, 2010 Unique piece

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Mooning Garden Gnome 100% Zwergen-Power Beginning of the 1980 s

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H O ME S W EE T H O ME

Critical aesthetics: Stefan Strumbel’s Pop Art cuckoo clocks take a critical look at the bourgeois cliché of Southern Germany, while Studio Job mixes peaceful nature imagery such as dragonflies and butterflies with gas masks, nuclear reactors, and tanks, creating a contempo­ rary memento mori. However, the designers remain true to the sophisticated, traditional craftsmanship techniques of woodcarving and marquetry.

Edition Clock 6 Stefan Strumbel Circleculture Gallery, 2010 Unique piece

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Cabinet, Industry Studio Job, 2008 Collection Mit terrand + Cramer, Geneva Marquetry of black dyed tulip tree , white dyed bird’s eye maple , polished PU finish; 120 × 170 × 50 cm

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T h e B e a u t y o f G u ns

According to the Small Arms Survey 2010, gun wounds are the cause of at least 740,000 deaths per year. But who wants to know the real number? Its message is clear enough: weapons are bad. Or, are they? Weapon enthusiasts would refute this claim, and their numbers are substantial. They declare how “guns don’t kill, people do,” or “I hate war, but I love weapons,” and praise a weapon’s beauty and precision, its ingenious engineered design. Weapon enthusiasts communicate in short hand: MP5 or M12? AK47 or M4A1? H&K or Colt? One of these abbreviations has even made its way into colloquial speech: 08/15 is a machine gun that was used in action for the first time extensively in World War One by German soldiers. Weapons are a part of our day-to-day existence. There are dozens of groups on Facebook with names such as “I love guns.” Their members exchange photographs of special editions engraved in gold and Kalashnikovs resting on bed sheets printed with flowers. They are also most likely the people who buy the buttons and T-shirts boasting Milton Glaser’s famous “I love New York” logo changed to read, “I love guns.” In the United States, the right to bear arms is still an impervious law. In 2009 in Switzerland, a law was approved to make it illegal to even bear real-looking guns. 8

 8 The word 08/15 lives on as an idiom in colloquial German to denote something totally ordinary and lacking in originality or specialness.

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MI N D - BL O W I N G G R E N ADE S

Slang is not always the most sensitive form of verbal expression: you can overdo something “to death,” or think of something as “mind blowing.” These terms have completely detached themselves from their original meanings. The perfume called “Flowerbomb” clearly does not intend to blow anyone’s head off, but rather to evoke a flowery, fireworks explosion. The moral ambitions of “Xmas Declarations” are somewhat loftier and the relationship is more direct: in the midst of the joyous Christmas spirit, these decorations are supposed to remind everyone of the victims of war. A portion of the proceeds is donated to charity.

Xmas Declarations Dorot hy Suck UK , 2009

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Flowerbomb Vi ktor & Rolf L’Oréal , 2005

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H O T S EA T

“Weapons are the new icons,” declared Philippe Starck. “Light, functional, affordable and elegant, with over 100 million copies officially produced to date, the Kalashnikov is one of the industrial design successstories of our age.” And that it sounded more like praise than criticism of weapons, that the gold was glorifying rather than symbolizing deadly greed, well, only the others thought that. And is the chair designed by Texanborn Alexander Reh, made from empty bullet casings, merely a continuation of the “swords to plowshares” concept, in other words sensible recycling, or is it just very Texan?

Table Gun Lamp [Gun Collection] Philippe Starck Flos, 2005

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Fully Loaded Chair, BLACK Alexander Reh, REHaB 2007 Edition: 15

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C O T T O N CA N DY B O MB S

Let us have the music producer Pharrell Williams explain it himself: “I’m standing in the mirror … Shadow boxing … kicking ass … And I thought, how laughable the macho version of me […] I’m just a guy in the mirror trying to imagine what it must feel like to be young … headed into war … I’m sorry, how rude of me … I’ve left you standing … I’m sorry, please do … have a seat.” The cotton candy colors were chosen to symbolize the reapplication of the war machine into an object of peace, as in Simone Micheli’s “The Bomb.”

The Tank [baby blue ] Pharrell Williams Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, 2009

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The Bomb Simone Micheli Adrenalina , 2010

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CA R N A T I O N R EV O LU T I O N

The Portuguese Carnation Revolution of 1974, intended to overthrow the “Estado Novo” regime, takes its name from the flower that the military insurgents stuck into the barrels of their guns. It was a practically bloodless coup. The hippies, the peaceful rebels in Thailand, the revolutionaries in Tunisia, all made use of this symbolic image. The “Love & Peace Collection” created by Taiwanese Studio Biaugust sells best in the USA. Does that mean the USA is the most peaceful nation?

A PEACEFUL BOMB [Love & Peace collection ] Biaugust, 2008–2010

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Gun Vase Suck Uk , 2003

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KI T CHE N C R IME S CE N E

Raffaele Iannello and Jean Christophe Karich definitely don’t intend their designs to trigger violent scenes at the breakfast table. It is all to be taken with an ironic twist. But, on the other hand … early Monday morning. No hot water in the bathroom. Another letter from the Internal Revenue Service. Your husband is glued to his newspaper, and you’ve found a strange strand of hair on his jacket. And then you see this cup. It fits the hand so well …

Fisticup™ Jean CHristophe Karich Fred, 2009

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Voodoo Knife Set Raffaele Iannello RISCB Commodities, 2003 2nd edition 2010

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PC OR NOT PC

No, this gas mask shower is not supposed to remind anyone of a concentration camp. That would definitely be far too macabre! Chris Dimino says that he simply wanted to find something useful to do with all of the gas masks stockpiled by Americans after 9/11. What he designed is quite practical; it even has a built-in soap dish! As well, the lighter – found at a souvenir market in Phnom Penh – is only meant to be used to light memorial candles. What else?

Lighter Osama bin Laden Boerda Sm oking Set Co. Ltd. Before 2005

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Gas Mask Shower Head Chris Dimino, 2007 Prototype

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T h e B l oo d M y t h os

Blood is holy. Judaism and Islam forbid their followers to consume the blood of slaughtered animals. Christians believe that the flow of Jesus’ blood renewed his bond with God, and they highly value and worship blood relics. Depicting Christ as suffering or even dead on the cross has its roots in the Gothic age, until then the Son of God was shown as victorious and very much alive, seated on a throne. Now he has a gaping wound in his side. But people have always been careful about depicting blood. There is no blood to be seen in Annibale Carracci’s circa 1580 naturalistic depiction of a butcher shop; and even nineteenth-century paintings depicting battle scenes have also managed to largely omit it. However, blood has meanwhile become a familiar artistic medium. The “Actions” by Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch reference archaic rituals involving blood mysticism, and British artist Marc Quinn cast a self-portrait of his head in 1991 from 4.5 liters of his own blood. However, blood also still carries romantic associations such as blood brothers / sisters, or devotion, and so on, and, in this spirit, Angelina Jolie once presented a bottle of her own blood to her now ex-husband Billy Bob Thornton. After the divorce he threw it away.

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medium RaRe

eating meat means eating blood. Which is why the new Museum maintains that dishware designed by antonio Murado, which looks as though it is smeared with blood, is an “almost Baroque reflection on the act of consuming a meal.” antje gerwien addresses a completely different issue. for a student project called “the evil” at Weimar university, she invented a fictional advertising campaign called “revital advertising,” which takes a morbid twist on death and aging. it is so simple and convincing that you almost want to shield your wrist from any potential harm.

SalOme cOffee SeT antonio Murado sargadelos factory for the neW MuseuM, neW york , 2007 editio n: 15

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ReviTal adveRTiSiNg [cuT TiNg bOaRd ] antJe gerWien WeiMar university, 2005 unique Piece

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BLEEDI N G HEA R T

How are you today? Do you see blood or dripping red paint? This table is almost like a Rorschach test. John Nouanesing designed it after breaking up with his girlfriend. He painted and the paint dripped – and his broken heart bled and dripped along with it. Japanese designer Kouichi Okamoto, for his part, long ago got used to his liquid lamp being interpreted as a prop for a splatter film. “We welcome people’s flexible image,” the company states.

Liquid Lamp Kouichi Okamoto Kyouei design, 2008

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Paint Or Die But Love Me John Nouanesing Domeau & Pérès, 2008

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P S YCH O P A T H

There are people who always look to see if there is a murderer hiding behind the shower curtain when coming home. Hitchcock’s “Psycho” robbed innocence from the bathroom accessory; which is why bloody handprints make you recoil with morbid fascination. The “It’s OK if you can’t look away” effect also inspired the Nether lands Studio Oooms to create the bloody carpet design. But here there’s less risk of confusing the real and the fake.

Blood Bath Shower Curtain Spinning Hat Year unknown

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ROadkill caRPeT oooMs, 2001 designed to order

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Playful dead

a playful breaking of taboos: cartoons like “roadrunner” or “the itchy & scratchy show” in “the simpsons,” where the mouse is always chopping up, stabbing, or beheading the cat, inspired adam arber to create the “roadkill toys” series. cartoons, typically considered entertainment for children, are translated into a threedimensional form and become objects that are no longer suitable for young people. arber himself sees his cute and morbid stuffed animals as ironic toys for adults. artist Patricia Waller’s outsized crocheted objects, too, are derived from the genre of morbid comics as they take a critical look at what we consider a “protected idyll.”

WhO killed bambi? Patricia Waller, 2008 yarn, faBric, cot ton Wool , synthetic Material; crochet; 80 × 60 × 45 cM

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SPlOdge [ROadkill TOyS] adaM arBer, 2005

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R e v u l s i on , S e x , a n d F e c a l H u m or

Basically, life revolves around sex and shit. Two-year-old children take much joy from their shit, from learning how to control it, some play with it, smear it around their bedrooms. Sigmund Freud defined this as the anal phase, which is followed by the phallic phase, when children start to play with their genitals. They are growing up. It all ultimately converges in puberty, where revulsion, sex, and fecal humor play a large role in typical prepubertal drivel. Some never really develop beyond this stage: they become urophiles or coprophiles, enthusiasts of golden showers or scat play in the bedroom. Some go on to create great art works: Jeff Koons became famous in the nineties for his penetration pictures and sculptures that depict him and his wife, porn star Cicciolina; in 2008 Paul McCarthy installed a huge inflatable pile of dog shit in front of the Paul Klee Center in Bern; in 1987 Andreas Serrano shipped a crucifix in a glass of urine. But Piero Manzoni outdid them all: he filled cans with his own shit in 1961 and sold them as “Merda d’artista.” In 2008, one of these cans was auctioned for 84,750 Euros at Sotheby’s. Now, that is modern alchemy.

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dOmeSTic viOleNce

they serve us in silence although they are suffering: Mr. P. “happily” lets himself be tied up with computer cables and the like and a household pet serves as a pencil sharpener. in the words of the manufacturer: “Pop in your pencil and the poor little fellow meows in protest – well, wouldn’t you?” By the way: it is considered an early sign of severe psychological problems if a child is repeatedly malicious to animals, and many rapists and murderers have a history of exactly this.

mR. P ONe maN Tied chaiyut PlyPetch ProPaganda , 2006

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Sharp-end Luke Haslam-Jones Slam Design Ltd, 2003

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EA R LY EDUCA T I O N

You don’t need aggressive video games to glorify violence in a child’s playroom: the chicken stops making a noise if you choke it tightly enough. It’s as funny as when it happens in a cartoon! Maybe it will work with your baby sister …? But the “Kackel Dackel” dachshund will teach you to be neat. Feed it a clay-like mass and it will leave behind little piles of poo. “The first player to collect three poo piles gets a Dackel chip and is the winner!” If only that would work with the steaming poo piles in the park!

Kackel Dackel Goliath Toys, 2010

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cRaZy chickeN Playtastic™

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HA P P Y A S S HI T

The Japanese word for “happy” sounds a bit like their short form for “shit,” which is why poo pile designs in all shapes and forms are extremely popular in Japan. When Swedish Emma Megitt designed her “Pee & Poo” stuffed animals for her final degree, she never thought of producing them. But she underestimated the enthusiasm of her fans. Because not only Japan loves what comes out in the end, the market in the USA is also excited! Yummy!

Oh Deer! The Super Dooper Reindeer Pooper [Candy Disp enser ] Jelly Belly

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Pee & Poo Cuddly Toys Emma Megit t Actuate Industries Design 2004 production started 2006

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b O d i ly f lu i d S

actually, the bathroom should be the place where you free yourself of various bodily fluids. and for most people, the cleanliness of the bathroom is of utmost importance, the range of specific bathroom cleaning products is extensive, and they are best when they offer antibacterial protection. But here, we are dealing with “snot each time you squeeze,” as promised by the proud distributers. finally a chance to get really dirty! do you want to feel clean? Well, at least the poop soap smells like cappuccino.

NOSe ShOWeR gel diSPeNSeR By igeschenke .de

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OOPS – The dOg did iT – POOP SOaP audra l . synol-kruger kruger’s creations, 2010

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a m aT T e R O f TaST e

the basic idea behind these objects is to spice up your life. salt and pepper sets seem predestined for unique design ideas: a little cocaine on your boiled egg, a bit of sex on the table, a small flavor explosion, or time for meditation – the presence of salt and pepper shakers in everyone’s household means that there is a ready market for every absurd shape and form. Moreover, they are small enough to hide if serious visitors come to call.

SalT & PePPeR ShakeRS david shrigley, Polite coMPany ShOT Of SPice By enJoyMedia .ch bRaiN ankul assavaviBoonPan, ProPaganda

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bONeS christoPher stiles, stiles in clay uNTiTled

designer unknoWn

SalT & PePPeR ShakeR PigS By racheshoP.de daShhOuNd SalT & PePPeR kikkerland design inc., 2002 TaSTe eXPlOSiON™ thaBto maRia studio Mango, Present tiMe , 2009 65

L ’ AMU S E - GUEULE

Swallow don’t spit! “Cream Filled Willies” are a special treat that refer to oral sex as well as a sizable bite of a part of the body that brings Lorena Bobbitt to mind, known for cutting off her husband's penis.However, whether this counts as foreplay and “gets the girls going” as the salespeople claim remains to be seen. The “Solid Chocolate Hand Gun” is available in a foam-rubber-lined gun case, chocolate bullets not included. Now then, join the war against weight gain!

Cream Filled Willies By Racheshop.de

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Solid Chocolate Hand Gun By Chocolateammo.com

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click. me. ON.

the internet is definitely no stranger to porn: it is estimated that at least twelve percent of all websites are porn websites. the term “sex” is searched for about 16.6 million times a month on google germany. so, it makes sense that erotic orion mail catalog sells computer accessories, too – female torsos fit the hand very well. But we will not delve deeper into the subject of women and technology. nonetheless: was andy kurovets thinking of a safe place to hide his data when he designed the tampon usB stick?

SaNiTaRy TamPON uSb andy kurovets, 2009 concePt

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Sexy Body Mouse By Orion.de

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Conj u r i n g t h e S e x u a l Dr i v e

In psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid, sex is at the very bottom. His theory counts sex as one of the basic needs along with eating, breathing, and sleeping. It is no wonder that depictions of genitals and coitus have enjoyed much popularity throughout the ages. Sexual desire needs to be constantly stimulated otherwise people will lose their drive. No sex, no progress. Lust and ­frivolity are embedded in human nature. The Venus of Willendorf, created approximately 25,000 BC, has massive breasts and large vaginal lips. Even the erotic ceramic figures of the South American Moche [approximately from the first to the eighth centuries] spoke a very clear language – penis as handle, vulva as spout, coitus in 3-D. Before Pompeii disappeared under ashes and lava in AD 79, its inhabitants took much joy in the many penises adorning the street pavement, or serving as door knockers and lamp fixtures. Not to speak of the abundance of erotic frescoes, and not only in bordellos. Even the ancient Greeks covered the surface of their vases with painted erotic scenes. Incidental­ly, archeologists called this “symplegmata” – sounds more cultivated than pornography.

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GE N I T ALIA KI T S CH

Breasts and vaginas of the world unite! Fight the phallic dictatorship! Breast Christmas baubles turn the Christmas tree into pure temptation [but, in fact, the Chinese porcelain manufacturers didn’t even recognize the breast as such and thought the protruding bump was a mistake]. In contrast, the light switches in Cory Marc’s studio are unambiguous. His main goal is to trigger “strong reactions.” Even if it is the urge to close your legs really fast!

Clicktoris Cory Marc, 2002

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Christmas Eve Laura Strasser, Benedikt Braun Donkey Products, 2008

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The meaSuRe Of all ThiNgS

some people say that a penis is like a gun – it’s all about how you use it. as you may know, there are many different practical uses for the phallic form. large format examples are skyscrapers, particularly the torre agbar by Jean nouvel in Barcelona. But the penis naturally suits everything that has to do with insertion or impaling: barbecue skewers, bottle corks, towel hooks. it is a true multi-tool.

Shiva flOWeR vaSe et tore sot tsass, Bd Barcelona design, 1973 PeNiS SliPPeRS By orion.de PeckeR mug PiPedreaM Products haPPy maN bOT Tle STOPPeR Paladone Products ltd. SalT & PePPeR PeNiS By orion.de big bOy baRbecue SPiT By racheshoP.de 74

PeNiS PuT TeR PiPedreaM Products PeNiS TOWel Rail By orion.de JumbO STRaW PeNiS STRaWS By orion.de SeXy SOaP ON a ROPe By racheshoP.de

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imPacT SOuNd

Burping, farting, snoring: sounds that the body emits are usually considered unpleasant. there are very few talented people who have managed to turn them into a melodious sequence – and then tried to be on a talent show. time for electronic remedial action: swiping the “asspeaker” over the right half of the bum will raise the volume of the music, patting it on the left half makes it lower again. and with the “Boob radio,” not only volumes will be turned up …

aSSPeakeR Javad yazdani, Mohsen tafazzoly, younes daneshvar, 2008 concePt

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bOOb RadiO By orion.de

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T HE H O LIE S T O F H O LE S

Sex is redeeming. Jesus Christ is the spiritual redeemer. Barack Obama is the savior of America. Dildos are the solution to the absence of a partner. Therefore, a dildo shaped like Jesus or Obama must then be the highest form of redemption? Or at least that might have been the thought process that led to these designs. The designers at Divine Interventions summarized it as follows: “ Jesus was a carpenter, now he’s the powertool.” One of the nicer comments on their website is “You will burn in hell.”

Head O State Ozam Group LLC, 2008

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Jackhammer Jesus Nigel Ramsbot tom, Erik Core Divine Interventions, 1999

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W ICKED B O O B S

Our mothers’ breasts were cuddly, soft, and warm, and they even fed us. Talk about the land of milk and honey! There are a variety of handy devices that will help you to return to this blissful state: take the breast-shaped hot water bottle for your belly, breast-shaped slippers for your feet, a breast-shaped scarf to keep you warm, and a breast-shaped cup full of hot milk with honey to warm your hands, and you can fall peacefully asleep in the fetal position. Who mentioned sexism out there?

Boobie Warmer   By Orion.d e

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bOObie PillOW By orion.de bOObS aShTRay By orion.de bOObie bliNdfOld By racheshoP.de bOObie SliPPeRS By orion.de bReaST mug By orion.de bOOb ScaRf lourdes c orugedo, 2007 81

DI N N E R I S S E R VED

Even the Japanese themselves seem to be divided as to whether “Nyotaimori” is an ancient Japanese tradition, a newfangled tourist gag, or an entrenched urban legend. Anyway, serving sushi on the body of a naked woman does not sound like a practice that the German Food Control Administration would be thrilled about. However, many cultures do believe that women belong in the kitchen, one way or another.

Bodylicious Hiroshi Tsunoda Designcode , 2008

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Citrus Juicer with Tits By Racheshop.de

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feRTile gROuNd

Men penetrate, women conceive, that’s just the way it is. even on the sideboard: atelier van lieshout’s lamp clearly belongs to the tradition of archaic fertility symbols. the penis has taken on comic dimensions and the penetration dynamics are plain to see. the Plug & stephanie rollin, on the other hand, bring the hidden female fertility organs to light in the shape of a flower stand that is rich in umbels and ready to bear flowers.

feRTiliTy lamP atelier van lieshout, 2009

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uTeRuS vaSe the Plug & stePhanie rollin, 2008 edition: 20

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Bo d y Pa rts a s S a lv at i on

As definition, a body part is a part that belongs to the whole, but that can also be observed separately – which is exactly what happens. Off with their head, hand, finger: the removal of a body part was recommended as a just punishment as early as the Old Testament. Members of the Yakuza, or Japanese mafia, can supposedly atone for misconduct by amputating one of their own fingers. Lorena Bobbit cut her husband’s penis off in 1993 because he repeatedly raped her. Miniature body parts made of embossed rolled silver did not serve as punishment for pilgrims, but to ward off evil. These votives always take the form of the part of the body that is causing the suffering. The “Tongue of N ­ epomuk” for instance is supposed to ward off malicious gossip. The most well-known votive offering is the flaming heart, which is hoped to ease the pain of a lost love. Giving someone an organ as proof of affection has mass appeal in today’s day and age: the heart has found a stylized form that is no longer associated with the throbbing muscle in the breast. But would anyone eat a loaf of bread, baked by the Thai baking artist Kittiwat Unarrom, that looks like a rotting arm?

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T HE N E W I N W A R D N E S S

We should concentrate on our deepest selves more often. Find the center. Be aware of our own body. To give up smoking, for example, you should try to visualize again and again the way the black tar gradually coats each and every airway in your lungs. Be aware of how you digest your food; when you are eating, think about the way your intestines are moving so that any indigestible elements can pass through your body to the outside. Ommmmm … Or, don’t think about it and just enjoy.

Aspira AshTray Finding Cheska , 2004

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Flat Surgery #1 [Anatomy Rug ] Mathieu Lehanneur WITH Romain Guilet AND Thomas Schnür Carpenters Workshop Gallery, 2009 Edition: 8+4 AP

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B R AI N P O W E R

Alexander Lervik’s brain can be bought for 10,000 euros, which a French brain surgeon recently did. Now he can think more clearly under the glow of the illuminated head. The designer was inspired by the ornamental beauty of scientific illustrations of the human brain. He put himself through a MRI scanner and transformed the documented form of his brain into a thoughtful lamp. Jason Freeny's Magic Cube is more about intelligence than beauty: trying to solve the puzzle can really do your head in.

MYBrain lamp Alexander Lervik Gallery Pascale , 2007 Edition: 100

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Brain Cube Jason Freeny, 2011 Prototype

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O R AL FI X A T I O N

When Virgin Atlantic installed these urinals in the lounge at New York’s JFK Airport they enraged feminists. The objects were also removed from the Viennese Opera subterranean passage after angry protests because they were said to promote misogyny, sexism, oral sex, and urolagnia. But the female [!] designer was more interested in having fun. And Kobi Levi’s inspiration was pure formalism: the flap of the shoe reminded him of a tongue … an idea that had to be further developed!

Tongue Kobi Levi, 2005 Unique piece

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Kisses! Meike van Schijndel Bathroom Mania , 2005

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B O DY C O N T AC T

Mysophobia, verminophobia, and bacteriophobia are different forms of the fear of dirt and bacteria encountered for instance by using someone else’s dishes or by body contact. What helps people get over their phobias? Confrontation therapy! If you regularly use dishes that look dirty or like someone’s lipstick is smeared on, then a habituation effect can result, which, according to designer Danielle Spector, helps people overcome their phobias. For the fearless, the dishes are just fun.

Mouth Tea Set Danielle Spector Reshape Studio Design 2004 reworked 2010

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Teeth Mug Lee Weilang Afterain Design, 2009

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b O d i ly f u N c T i O N S

the design of the human body has remained constant for thousands of years, so why not use it as the basis of seating furniture? While Martin nash derives wicked pleasure from the piercing and saliva-like shine of his tongue chair, dzmitry samal dedicates his “human furniture collection” explicitly to the male body, since it usually loses out to that of the female. the furniture is also meant to be a statement against homophobia. so, who says design is only superficial styling?

humaN fuRNiTuRe cOllecTiON dzMitry saMal , 2009

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li ck-N-SiT chaiR Martin nash, nash studios and nashfx 2009 unique Piece

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HEAD S O R T AIL S

His “Woofers” are “functional kitsch,” according to Sander Mulder, “grotesque objects,” derived from a play on the words “woofer” and “to woof”. But being beheaded in that way means that the loyal loving eyes of a dog are missing! In the same vein, Susan Kniffin Davidson dissects sweet little things into smaller pieces: her shop offers bowls in the shape of upside-down baby heads and tiles with pudgy little arms sticking out of them. But the models are dolls and not real babies. In case any human rights activists are reading.

Woofer Sander Mulder, 2008

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Baby Head Bowl Susan Kniffin Davidson, 2010 Handmade pieceS

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A N IMAL HU S BA N D R Y

BrewDog clearly wanted to go overboard – the strongest beer: fifty-five percent proof. And the most expensive: 500 British pounds a bottle. And the most disturbing: it is packed in dead animals. That is an extreme case of guerrilla marketing. Its makers emphasize that the seven ermines, four squirrels, and the rabbit in the edition all died of natural causes. That is also true of the piglet that Colin Hart turned into a piggy bank. That didn’t prevent him from receiving several death threats from animal activists, however.

Piglet bank Colin Hart The Cheeky, 2010 Made to order

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The End of History Brewdog, 2010 Edition: 12

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h O R R i b ly fa S c i N aT i N g

“i remember telling my mother at a family lunch about the duck lamp idea i wanted to make. i could hear my words coming out of my own mouth with disbelief,” says sebastian errazuriz. But the idea of a duck lamp persisted. it seemed too mysterious, macabre, beautiful, funny, and bizarre all at once. there is a fine line between attraction and repulsion olivier goulet’s “skinBag” is a hybrid of a similar sort: you want to touch it, even though the specially eveloped material feels just like naked skin, freshly peeled and disgusting.

The duck lamP [deaTh SeRieS] seBastian errazuriz , 2002 unique Piece

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SkiNbag olivier goulet, 2000

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B e a u t i f u l For m s W i l l S oon B e Lost

Melancholy emerged in the middle of pomp. The Baroque era was a shimmering golden age of lavish decoration. But it was also the height of the awareness of transience. ­Everything we have will also be taken from us – which was an abiding fact of the day considering the plagues and religious crusades. “Oh think, what are those objects we prize beyond compare / Mere shadows, dust, and wind – all worthless, false and vain,” wrote the poet Andreas ­Gryphius, and flowers began to wilt in Dutch still-life paintings. On the one hand was the depiction of wealth – lavish silver goblet, exotic fruits – but those able to decipher the complex symbolism know that the tulips refer to the crash of the tulip industry in 1637, the fly symbolizes its short life, the fruits their decay. The ever-enduring vanitas symbols are the skull and skeleton. They reappear throughout the ages, in ancient mosaics, as anamorphosis in Hans Holbein’s work The “Ambassadors” from 1533, or as a picture puzzle in the painting “All is Vanity” by Charles Allan Gilbert from 1892. Today, vanitas attributes are used playfully at Halloween; blogs like streetanatomy.com collect their manifestations on T-shirts, tableware, or in street art: vanitas is now pop.

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FA S HI O N VIC T IM S

Judith and Holofernes, Salome and John the Baptist: women who be­ headed men have captured the imagination throughout cultural history. Women do not only have a penchant for beheading, but also for bags – now both passions can be satisfied with the “Head Hand Bag” by Raw-Edges. Artist Iris Schieferstein brings together a third female passion, shoes, with mythology: the re-fitted foot of a horse refers to Pegasus. Incidentally, people were more enraged by her horse feet designs than by the cow feet ones. Well, I guess, girls do love their ponies.

Horseshoes Iris Schieferstein, 2007 Unique piece

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Head Hand Bag Yael Mer, Shay Alkalay [Raw-Edges Design Studio] Royal College of Art, 2006

107

MEME N T O M O R I

Beauty is transient. What remains of it after death? The vanitas motif was very popular during the Baroque age, but the question is eternal. Vladi Rapaport interprets old Dutch still lives in the form of furniture; Polly van der Glas is more direct and makes slightly disturbing jewelry out of human hair and teeth: these dead, indeed never truly alive, parts of the body are too intimate. Both designers are exploring the beauty of death that destroys beauty.

Sterl ing Silver Human Tooth Ring Polly van der Glas, Since 2006 Unique piece

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Vanitas Collection Vladi Rapaport, 2008 Edition: 12; Lamp: unique piece

109

B O N E DE N S I T Y

“The idea was to incorporate the stories that Xrays represent into an interior design context. So perhaps not to remember death as much as to remember your own fragil­ity or limitations,” says Sture Pallarp. He is speaking of the many stories and fates that are hidden behind sober X-ray images of the body. Turning on the light does not make them visible but tangible. John Dickinson’s bone table looks fragile, the legs look like they are about to collapse, but they hold up.

X-ray Lamp Sture Pallarp in collaboration with Elin Hedlund and Emmelie Karlström, 2008 Unique piece

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Bone Game Table John Dickinson, 1977 Wood and paint; 76,2 × 105,41 × 105,41 cm

111

baRe bONeS

thorakotomy, the practice of sawing open the chest in order to operate on the heart, is a tough job and every patient recoils at even the thought of it. our ribs and bones protect and support us. their stability has something confidence inspiring, so we don’t want to fool around with them. the “skeleton Plate” by re is made of bone china porcelain that received its name from the technique of mixing bone ash with what is called frit, so producing a stronger porcelain.

bONe chiNa SkeleTON PlaTe siMon young, Jenny vaughan re [re-found oBJects], 2010

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Rib cage fOR iPad dave ryo lau sWitcheasy, 2010

113

m e aT i N S P ecT i O N

necrophilia or jokes about corpses? “i felt inspired to design this dildo as a throwback to all my favorite zombie films,” says cassandra Willms. “My first reaction to the toy when i saw the finished product was that of hilarity, and i thought if i can make at least one overly uptight, pretentious old biddy vomit in her mouth a little; i have done my job!” diddo velema also loves the mean joke his “shark suit” plays – he would love to picture a surfer wearing it returning to the beach from the water …

ShaRk SuiT diddo veleMa , 2009 PrototyPe

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ZOmbi aRT dildO cassandra WillMs necronoMicox, 2010 handMade Pieces

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P i c t u r e Cr e d i ts

10 Fabio Novembre, n ovembre.it;

Adrenalina

casamania.it;

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40 J . C. Karich industrial

worldwidefred.com

j essicaharrison.co.uk z wergen-power.com 28 s tefan strumbel stefanstrumbel.com photo: Oliver Rath oliver-rath.com; Circleculture

raffaeleiannello.com

New Museum

Starck.com; Flos spa flos.com 35 A lexander reh, REHHAB rehhab.com 36 C ourtesy Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris perrotin.com Photo: Guillaume ­Ziccarelli

Propagandist Company Ltd. propagandaonline.com,

kyouei-ltd.co.jp

j ohnnouanesing.fr;

Design: Ankul Assavaviboonpan 65  l eft   [from top to bottom]

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Domeau & Pérès domeauperes.com

stilesinclay.com

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enjoymedia.ch 51 D esigned by OOOMS oooms.nl 52 Patricia Waller patriciawaller.com;

e njoymedia.ch 64  b ottom

Kyouei design

49 J ohn Nouanesing

34 P hilippe Starck

davidshrigley.com

48 Kouichi Okamoto,

Studio Job Gallery,

viktor-rolf.com

David Shrigley

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Kyouei design

33 V iKtor & Rolf

Design:

47 A ntje Gerwien

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P olite Company politecards.com;

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n ewmuseumstore.org

Miami; Pavillon des Arts

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KrugersCreations 64 top [from left to right]

46 A ntonio Murado;

php?student=gerwien;

w earedorothy.com;

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chrisdimino.com

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32 D orothy

Thomas J. Becksmann 63 K ruger’s Creations

43 C hris Dimino, 2011

.com

Antwerp

peeandpoo.com 62 p hoto:

42 p hoto: Richard S. Ehrlich

circleculture-gallery

Exhibited Design Miami,

Thomas J. Becksmann 61 K iss&Bajs i Sverige AB

Design Studio

Projekte/einblick/­

studiojob.nl

Thomas J. Becksmann 60 p hoto:

41 R affaele Iannello

Gallery, Berlin

29 S tudio Job

Photo:

design studio FRED

27 100  % Zwergen-Power

goliathtoys.de 59 P laytastic

suck.uk.com

inkognito.de

montens.nl

slamdesign.co.uk 58 G oliath Toys GmbH

39 S uck UK

10999 Berlin,

26 J essica Harrison

propagandaonline.com 57 S lam Design Ltd

biaugust.com

karichdesign.com;

Design: Knetman

Company Ltd.

38 biaugust CREATION OFFICE

Erkelenzdamm 11–13,

22 J udith Montens

56 P ropagandist

Simonemicheli.com;

Casamania,

15 Round 2 LLC

118

37 S imone Micheli

k ikkerland.com

T habto thabto.co.uk 65 right Present Time

Courtesy Galerie

presenttime.com

Deschler

Design:

deschler-berlin.de

Studio Mango

Copyright: 2011, ProLitteris, Zurich 53 A dam Arber, Compost Communications Ltd roadkilltoys.com

studiomango.nl 66 r acheshop.de 67 C hocolateAmmo.com 68 A ndy Kurovets a ndykurovets.com

69 Orion.de 72 C ory Marc corymarc.com 73 S tudio Laura StraSSer l aura-strasser.de; Donkey Products GmbH & Co. KG donkey-products.com 74  l eft



photo: Andres Lejona 88 F inding Cheska findingcheska.com 89 M athieu Lehanneur m athieulehanneur.fr;

B D Barcelona Design

Gallery

b dbarcelona.com

cwgdesign.com

P ipedream Products

90 A lexander Lervik l ervik.se;

pipedreamproducts.com

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gallerypascale.com

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Paladone Products Ltd. paladone.com R acheshop.de 75 [ from top to bottom]



85 u [email protected]

Carpenters Workshop

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84 Atelier Van Lieshout

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119

Coen Dekkers/BNO 94 R eshape Studio reshapestudio.com 95 a fterain design studio a fteraindesign.com 96 S amal Design samaldesign.com 97 M artin Nash of Nash Studios and NashFX nashfx.com 98 Sander Mulder S andermulder.com photo: Diewke v/d Heuvel 99 S ue Davidson, Kniffin Pottery susankniffindavidson. etsy.com 1 00 t he Cheeky thecheeky.com 1 01 B rewDog Ltd. brewdog.com 1 02 S ebastian Errazuriz meetsebastian.com 1 03 O livier Goulet skinbag.net

1 06 I ris Schieferstein iris-schieferstein.de Photo: Bridget Weber 1 07 R aw-Edges Design ­Studio raw-edges.com 1 08 P olly van der Glas vanderglas.com.au PHoto: Terence Bogue 1 09 V ladi Rapaport vladirapaport.nl 1 10 Sture Pallarp sturepallarp.se 1 11 P Hoto: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Macy’s California 1 12 RE re-foundobjects.com 113 SwitChEasy switcheasy.com 1 14 D iddo Velema bydiddo.com 1 15 n ecronomicox.com Design: Cassandra Willms

I m pr i nt

Con cept Karen Bofinger T exts Volker Albus Karen Bofinger Rainer Funke Claus Richter T ranslation from German into English Laura Bruce Copy editing Julia Dawson P roject management Berit Liedtke Ulrike Ruh c over design, Layout, and typography Modulator [bigliotti, previsic], LuCerne Co ver Credits See pp . 26, 33, 34, 37, 50, 57, 64, 65, 72–74, 76, 81, 85, 88, 92–99, 100, 102, 113, and Picture Credits I mage processing and book production ActarBirkhäuserPro, Barcelona – Basel www.actarbirkhauserpro.com D istribution ActarBirkhäuserD, Barcelona – Basel – New York www.actarbirkhauser-d.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA. Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. This book is also available in a German language edition [ISBN 978-3-0346-0721-6]. ©  2011 Birkhäuser GmbH, Basel P.O. Box, 4002 Basel, Switzerland Part of ActarBirkhäuser P  rinted on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. TCF ∞ P  rinted in Spain

I SBN 978-3-0346-0722-3 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 www.birkhauser.com