Bruno Munari: Design as Art

“The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing.”

Described by Picasso as the new Leonardo, Munari’s work was very much a marriage of art and design. His most known pieces are his “useless machines”, designs which his friends couldn't take seriously. His inspiration to create these pieces came from art in Italy at the time; the pure geometric shapes that spanned canvases, abstract and colourful but often created from still life of real objects such as vases. He often wondered what would happen if these art forms were released from their 2D boundaries, shapes and lines popping out of the canvas into the real world as such, and so there started his journey into working within the fourth dimension: that of time. There’s often more involved than meets the eye in his designs, they aren't just randomly put together and hung with pieces of string.

“I cut out the shapes, gave them harmonic relationships to one another, calculated the distances between them, and painted their backs (the part one never sees in a picture) in a different way so that as they turned they would form a variety of combinations. I made them very light and used thread so as to keep them moving as much as possible.”

The title given to his work ‘Useless machines’ is named as such because although you see them as works of art, Munari intended them as machines. Although they do not produce anything and have no assigned use, they’re made from a number of movable parts fixed together, hence deemed ‘useless machines’.

“Machines would not exist without us, but our existence would no longer be possible without them.” (Munari, 1952, p.23).

Munari’s ethos of design working together in perfect harmony with art is very much an ethos designers share today. Artists are no longer bound by the frivolities of just being ‘artists’ stuck in the romantic period. And designers are no longer forced to create objects only fit for its purpose. There’s a leeway in which designers are given more freedom to create works that function, but are considered art at the same time. In order for a design to be successful it must appeal to both natures. Today it is very much the deal that artists and designers must be of both to succeed, they must respond with humility to the working world, unashamedly answering the demanding needs of their neighbours.it is often a preconception that design and art are two separate entities, and so it becomes the job of the designer and artist to convince people otherwise that they are not conditioned to think one way or the other but rather have an all rounded work aesthetic.

“If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide” (Munari, 1952, p.25).



Figure 1 Design as Art (1976)



Munari, Bruno (1952) Design as Art. Penguin Modern Classics.

Popova, M. (2012) Bruno Munari on Design as a Bridge Between Art and Life. At: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/22/bruno-munari-design-as-art/ (Accessed on 3.05.14)