Jessica Harrison Andrea, 2013
“In the particular lies the universal” – James Victoré
Inspired by Victoré’s ideas and concerned with understanding the grey areas between art and design, I visited “Body & Soul: New International Ceramics,” an exhibition at the Museum of Art & Design in New York. Body & Soul contemplates the work of fine artists who left their comfort zone to experiment with a mundane material: ceramic. In addition, the exhibition foresees a return of the human figure to be the center focus of artists worldwide.
The exhibition is organized in form of a U inside a U and the first encounter when the elevator opens is with an appalling piece by Kim Simonsson. After that you proceed to read the wall text. The pieces are mainly sculptures created by 25 artists from around the world. For the purpose of this writing I am focusing on discussing a couple of pieces that seem relevant to the idea of design and art as advocates for the development of society.
It was a simple one floor exhibition, with pieces around the wall creating the first U shape and then the second U shape was created by a display with ceramics in the middle of the room. The first piece by Simonsson (Finland) advocates for the need of gun control worldwide. The concept is communicated through life size white sculptures of three little girls. Two of them, with eyes, are kneeling in front of the third one, who is hiding a gun behind her back and have no eyes. There is a highly suggestive symbolism in this piece. First, the absence of color suggests that we are all human and equal. Secondly, the empty eyes compel visitors to take a look inside of this girl, thus inviting introspection and self-reflection. In this ceramic I find an overlapping area between art and design, because both disciplines are taking inspirations from the ordinary, the personal, the inside in each one of us and making it universal.
On the right wing of the room, the ceramics by Jessica Harrison (British) are accurate examples of the overlapping of design and art when working with semiotics. In this series Harrison created 10 sculptures where each one represents inner truths in a physical manner. For example, a woman who took her heart and holds it in her hand, another who removed her brain and other who decapitated herself. One of the reason why I considered that these pieces represent an overlapping between the two disciplines is in how each costume and name represents a different culture. For instance, we can see in a piece call “Emma” woman dressed as a gypsy with no flesh on her arms. Her arms are up and suggesting that she is about to or just finish dancing. Another example is “Andrea,” who looks like Marie Antoinette while she holds her head, the result of a self-decapitation, in her hands. Even though these pieces can be considered more expressive than communicative. Similarly to design these ceramics successfully use the symbolism of clothing, names and feelings.
Is design creating what art is reacting to? That was my first question after seeing the sculpture by Chris Antemann (American), located in the right side of the exhibition and titled “Lust & Gluttony”. The piece serves as a critique to the everyday life. Design and media are enormous factors in portraying and helping in the creation of stereotypes. Consequently, “Lust & Gluttony” is a reaction to a contemporary form of living. In this sculpture the ornaments and artifact on a dining table embodies the individual aspect of the human being, as Antemann describes it “as seen the unseeing”.
Next to Antemann’s sculpture is Elsa Sahal (French) questioning ideas of heritage and identity in her piece “Pieds Noirs”. While cultural values are of great interest for designers and artists, the disciplines seem to split at this point. On one hand, art can advocate for issues that relate to heritage and identity. Design, however, creates around and for the same issues. Design seeks not only to advocate but also to serve as a tool.
In addition to the ceramics, the exhibition featured a video by French artist Valérie Delarue titled “Coprs Au Travil.” In this experimental expressive video, the human body is the one creating art in a determined space. The twenty-minute film shows the artist caged in a room, as she starts covering the wall with clay. Later, she proceeds to jump, push, dance or just stand against the walls. It is a piece that communicates the difference between a place and space, a topic of great significance for both disciplines nowadays.
Art, at least in this exhibition, is trying to create art with a purpose. The era of art for art’s sake might be over and artists are looking to communicate new ideas that go beyond the purely artistic. In this aspect art and design are really similar, both disciplines are looking for ways to innovate towards the development of society
In conclusion, I believe the exhibition needed a different approach in its curation if the museum wanted to successfully convey the idea of “art giving voice to a cause,” as is stated in their description. The aforementioned pieces are among the ones that try to convey this concept but some ceramics where not as successful. In my opinion, the pieces by Michael Gourey, which were supposed to empower people to have a voice, merely seemed like sophisticated sculptures. The concept wasn’t well communicated, it was an example of giving more importance to form than function. The Museum of Art & Design focuses on ways that designers and artists can transform the world around us. This perspective seems meaningful to both disciplines. For this reason, I believe it is necessary to find the areas where the two fields overlap and proceed to embrace them towards the progress of society.
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