From hand axe to multipack carrier: selection of objects from the exhibition’s prologue. ©Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein. —Andreas Sutterlin photo
NEW ORLEANS, LA. — “The Essence of Things: Design and the Art of Reduction,” on view through September 11 at the New Orleans Museum of Art, brings together approximately 150 objects from 100 years of design history, ranging from humble items like flip-flops and rubber bands to high-concept living pods.
Charles and Ray Eames, DSS stacking chairs and DAX armchair, 1954/1950. ©Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein.
Furniture, appliances, lighting, graphic design and architecture are represented in this exhibition, which includes work by well-known historic and contemporary designers such as Gerrit Rietveld, Jean Prouvé, Le Corbusier, Ray & Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, Donald Judd, Jasper Morrison and Shigeru Ban.
“NOMA is delighted to be working in partnership with the internationally-renowned Vitra Design Museum to bring this exciting, thoughtful exhibition to New Orleans as one of only two venues in the United States,” says Susan Taylor, the museum’s Montine McDaniel Freeman director. “This is NOMA’s first presentation of an exhibition dedicated to Twentieth Century and contemporary design. It vividly demonstrates today’s interconnected world of visual arts, design, media, architecture and technology.”
“Essence of Things” explores how many designers embrace minimalism as a way to achieve both function and elegant aesthetics, whether they are planning a chair, an article of clothing or the newest smartphone. These designers operate under the idea that “good design” is when nothing can be added but also nothing can be taken away. This principle of simplicity has increasingly guided the international field of industrial design for more than a century, but it manifests in a variety of ways. In concept, “Essence of Things” explores these many facets of minimalism and demonstrates the disparate ways designers have sought to approach “the essential” in an object.
Sybold van Ravesteyn, lamp, 1926. ©Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein. —Andreas Sutterlin photo
Introducing this exhibition is a prologue gallery featuring a surprising selection of 50 everyday objects that show a minimalist approach as the solution to a successful design. The gallery considers diverse objects including a prehistoric stone hand axe, a metal paper clip, a cardboard egg carton, a cut diamond and an iPod shuffle. “I love how this exhibition will encourage you to think about familiar objects in a new way,” says Mel Buchanan, NOMA’s RosaMary curator of decorative arts and design. “Something as deceptively simple as a golf ball, a Lego block or a fiberglass Eames chair is the result of a designer’s experimentation and calculation with both science and art.”
The exhibition follows four large themes of “Manufacture,” “Function,” “Aesthetics” and “Ethics,” with each large idea shown through a variety of well-known designs and products. Icons like Nineteenth Century bentwood Thonet chairs and a clear plastic chair by French design superstar Philippe Starck are complemented with photo and video projections showing examples from related fields — graphic design, photography, painting, sculpture, architecture, landscape design, product design, fashion, food design, theater design and technology.
The exhibition, accompanied by a catalog published by Vitra Design Museum Publications, was organized by the Vitra Design Museum in Germany.
The New Orleans Museum of Art is a 1 Collins C., Diboll Circle, City Park. For further information, www.noma.org or 504-658-4100.
