○• Pop Design •○

Introducing 'Pop Design'

Pop Design bombarded in 1958 right after the Post-War period. The name itself refers to the popular culture during that period.The Pop Design designers wanted to change the ugliness of streamlining and dymaxion to a fun twist based for youths and have a more effective and different approach to previous movements.

The new thing, according to the Barbican Art Gallery's imminent exhibition Pop Art Design, is to show them together. The idea is that both are the products of the age of pop, a time when artists like Warhol found beauty in the mass-produced objects and imagery of daily life, and when designers like the Eameses used new technologies to make those objects and images beautiful. It was a time for obliterating hierarchies, of high and low art, oil paint and petrochemicals, artists and designers.

There is nerve, verve and freedom, the nonchalant ability to do things never previously thought of as art. This party is a happy one – the anxieties of the age, such as the bomb, Vietnam and urban riots, mostly don't get to cross the velvet rope. One of the feelings aroused is envy – why does art of our own time have to be so canny, so calculated, so emotionally pre-programmed even when it's striking, and why is so much industrial design in a cycle of repetition and refinement? Why can't there be as much fun as in pop art, and as much invention as the Eameses had?

                              

‘Nerve, verve and freedom’: a swimming pool in Hamburg designed 

by Verner Panton in 1969. 

Photograph: © Panton Design, Basel. 

Pop Art Design originated with the Vitra Design Museum in southern Germany, which was created by the Vitra furniture company, whose chairman Rolf Fehlbaum appears in the catalogue as a young man. He is discussing one of the most important products of the age, the Panton chair, with its designer Verner Panton. It's not surprising that Vitra wants to talk up the importance of design in this legendary movement, and it does so successfully, even if the evidence of this enjoyable and thought-provoking show is that art and design were not, even in the age of pop, identical.

References:     

                      Studio 65. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.studio65.eu/. [Accessed 03 February 2014].

                      Andy Warhol work on show for Pop Art Design exhibition at London's Barbican - YouTube.                      [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e2WwmCwzW0.
                     [Accessed 03 February 2014].

                    Vitra Design Museum. 2014. Vitra | Vitra Design Museum.
                    [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.vitra.com/en-us/campus/vitra-design-museum.
                    [Accessed 03 February 2014].

                    Pop Art Design | What's On | Design Week.
                    [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.designweek.co.uk/whats-on/pop-art-                                                   design/3037376.article.
                    [Accessed 03 February 2014].

                    Barbican - Home. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.barbican.org.uk/.
                    [Accessed 03 February 2014].

                   VERNERPANTON. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.vernerpanton.com/.
                   [Accessed 03 February 2014].