miami art deco interior design
um... this exhibition liberty equalityand fraternity was a collaboration uh... with the wolfsonian floridainternational university and the centre national des arts plastiques in paris and the cnap as it's known is the collecting entity of the frenchstate and i was invited to do a design exhibition from their collection which would look at the frenchdesign patrimony uh... but through the lens that thewolfsonian brings to its collection
of the cultural and political andeconomic context so i invited a group of collaboratorsmatali crasset m/m paris and alexandra midal to work withme curatorial and design collaboration to present french design from the nineteen fortiesto today in miami to an audience that i felt would know some of the history but notall of the history and so this is an exciting exhibitionthat takes the motto of france liberty equality and fraternity
and looks at some of the main themes and themain a historical design figures that have created french design culture today so included in the exhibition is work by roger tallon who unfortunately hasrecently passed away really the father of frenchindustrial design after the second world war of course philippe starck who reinvigoratedfrench design and is truly a global design star from the nineteen
ninetys to today as well as many contemporary designerslike the bouroullec brothers, there is martin szekely, pierre charpin and some of the figures that are knownuh... very well in france today but also in the context in miami within the design fairs that are herenow uh... that uh... people are becoming more familiar with the frenchcontemporary designers um... the exhibition was organized in nine thematic sections andeach section either takes an idea
or takes a characteristicmomgraphic approach and so for example matali crasset who isone of my collaborators uh... one section focuses on ideal home and in her work she hasreally contested our agreed upon relationship with the builtenvironment and objects in has created objects that have a multiple uh... expression multiple uses in terms of being able to redefinethe environment and our relationship to
the objects uh... again someone like philippestarck whose work is so widely known and has done everything from atoothbrush to architecture uh... we try to select in philippe starck'swork a kind of manifesto and thinking abouthim as a design star who was able to bridge the gap betweenworking for the high elite so we have pieces here that were done forthe elysee palace the french presidential home
as well as products that are downfor a mass audience for a company called trois suisses which is amail order catalogue and so we wanted to present this topoles of french design. another theme that runs through liberty equality andfraternity is how we characterize french designperhaps most popularly as being really an elite craft orienteddesign cultures so working against the prewar idea of the decorator orensembliã© with the more technological
engineering aspect of design modularitymonumentalism and works such as that by jean prouvã©for example so we've tried to give a picture of french design that not only reminds us of some of thethings we already know but also to repropose of reading of french design history within a political and cultural context the exhibition liberty equalityand fraternity
was organized as a collaboration andinstead of curating it myself with a list of objects and then handingit off to designers to design the set and the book i decided to work the wholeproject as a collaboration and the designers and i worked together as acuratorial and design team and with that taking the motto of france as theoverarching idea the designers m/m and matali crassetand alexandra midal use the idea of le corbusier's modulor,the metric system that he devised based on the human body to be the
the theme that runs throughout thedesign of the show and they made a sort of kit i'd say a kit of parts to create a scenography for the showso every element is really drawn from this one essential element of the modulorof le corbusier of course working with french designersand giving them the title of the show uh... i think they also wanted to in a kind of ironic way to say you know this is really aboutfrench design so we
make the colors of the show redwhite and blue and also to put the title of the show infrench, libertã©, egalitã©, fraternitã© on all of the structural elements ofthe exhibition