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Indepth Arts News:
"First Exhibition to Explore Dynamic Impact of Aluminum on
Design Tours to New York, Montréal, Miami, Detroit, and
London."
2000-10-28 until 2001-02-11
Carnegie Museum of Art
Pittsburgh, PA,
USA
The first major museum exhibition to explore how aluminum has inspired
creativity and sparked innovation in design begins an international tour at
Carnegie Museum of Art, its organizing institution, from October 28, 2000,
through February 11, 2001. The exhibition traces aluminum from its first use
as a precious metal in the nineteenth century through its evolving role in
daily life and explores how its unique properties inspired designers of
furniture, jewelry, architecture, fashion, and consumer and industrial
products.
This groundbreaking exhibition demonstrates how aluminum's essential
qualities of brilliance, strength, light weight, ductility, corrosion resistance,
and ease of recycling have provided an unparalleled medium for design and
creative engineering. Aluminum by Design: Jewelry to Jets features work by
such visionaries as René Lalique, Jean Prouvé, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,
Russel Wright, Charles and Ray Eames, Gio Ponti, Donald Judd, Shiro
Kuramata, and Philippe Starck.
Seeing 150 years of material culture as manifested through aluminum is
certain to be both intellectually and visually stimulating, says Richard
Armstrong, The Henry J. Heinz II director of Carnegie Museum of Art. It is
most fitting that Carnegie Museum of Art is the organizer of this
comprehensive examination of so dynamic a material because of
Pittsburgh's historic role in the story of aluminum.
The objects tell the story of aluminum as a design medium from its earliest
beginnings, when it was an expensive material of great rarity often preferred
over traditional precious metals. A table centerpiece, made in Paris in 1858
by Charles Christofle, was presented to Napoleon III, the great promoter of
aluminum in France. A French bracelet of the same date combines the metal
with gold.
As technological developments made aluminum more widely available, it
came to symbolize modernity. The greatest practitioners of the avant-garde
used aluminum, whose silvery color, lightness, and malleability made it an
ideal medium for the new streamlined modern design. Otto Wagner's 1906
Postal Savings Bank in Vienna was one of the first buildings to use aluminum
extensively; Marcel Breuer won first prize in a 1933 international competition
in Paris for the best seating designed in the metal. This design sensibility
quickly spread to industrial goods, such as the meat slicer made by Hobart or
the kitchen utensils and coffee pots designed by Lurelle Guild that were
manufactured for a wide consumer audience in the 1930s.
Aluminum production dramatically increased during the Second World War,
because the metal was a strategic material crucial to the war effort. After the
war, aluminum companies engaged designers to create new applications for
aluminum and promote its use in order to sustain production. For example,
the exhibition features a rug and two tables by Marianne Strengell and Isamu
Noguchi respectively, designed specifically to encourage innovative uses of
the metal.
Because it can be resmelted indefinitely without deterioration of its
properties, aluminum recycling is economically viable ñ making it an ideal
medium for the beverage industry and increasingly so for cars. Masterpieces
of recycling in the exhibition include a throne of a chief from the Hwedom in
Africa, made of wood with applied decoration recycled from aluminum pots,
and Boris Bally's Transit Chairs, 1997, made of recycled aluminum traffic
signs.
The final section of the exhibition looks at contemporary uses of aluminum,
ranging from a dress made of aluminum disks in 1969 by the haute couture
designer Paco Rabanne to a steelworker's protective suit. Furniture includes
a series of chairs by the London-based Israeli architect/designer Ron Arad
that traces a specific design from its aluminum prototype through the
aluminum limited edition to the mass-produced plastic version, 1997 - 99,
and Marc Newson's limited edition Lockheed Lounge, 1985 - 86, whose
streamlined, riveted surface recalls the bodies of jet airliners.
The exhibition is organized by Carnegie Museum of Art. Curator of the
exhibition, Sarah Nichols, curator of decorative arts and chief curator of
Carnegie Museum of Art, led a distinguished team of international scholars
who contributed to the exhibition and its publication.
This exhilarating exhibition looks at the design uses of one of the most
significant new materials of the twentieth century from an innovative and
interdisciplinary perspective. It reiterates the impact that aluminum has had
on every aspect of the material world. I think the visitor will be amazed by the
multifaceted nature of aluminum and the wide spectrum of uses for which it
excels,î says Nichols. Working on this exhibition has been a wonderful
journey that has broadened my horizons and led me down many fascinating
paths. I am astounded at the versatility and prominence of aluminum. If
aluminum didnít exist, the world today would be a very different place.
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