Postmodernism

"A chair must be really important as an object, because my mother always told me to offer my chair to a lady" (Sottsass, 1976)

Some people believed modernism was overly pretentious. It was too clean, bland, and too simplistic for some designers. That’s what led to a more controversial colourful new style of design using salvaged materials and distressing them into something new. The purpose was to bring some excitement to design almost a funny element, that’s playful. I would call postmodernism a more absurd form of design, exaggerated furniture, fake materials, cliché. I can understand it as designers feeling more liberated but I believe in modernisms ‘form follows function’, the colour of an object should come secondary in response to the actual purpose of the design. Sottsass is a postmodernist, his influence came from India; Colour was worn even by the poor there. He wanted to bring that colour back into his designs both in architecture and furniture. The Carlton shelf in figure 1 shows iconography to its best; the combination of symbolism and consumerism is rather evident and typical of Sottsass. Modernism brought about technology that looked big cold and rather daunting, Sottsass wanted to change all that. Inspired by pop-art America and Warhol he brought back patterns and textures to Italy. His objects could make you laugh and his architecture could make you smile.

Figure 1 Carlton (1981)

McGuirk, J. (2011) 'Has Postmodernist Design Eaten Itself?’ In: The Guardian [online] At: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/sep/12/postmodernist-design-v-and-a-retrospective (Accessed on 09.05.14)

(2011) Postmodernism. At: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/postmodernism/ (Accessed on 14.04.14)