The Promiscuity of Images
Ettore Sottsass, 1946
And now, to swing to the other end of the Bauhaus philosophy, I recently found this piece designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1946. Typically, when Sottsass comes up in conversation (and yes, I'm that groovy and cosmopolitan, it happens all the time) I think about the Memphis design movement or the 1969 Olivetti Valentine typewriter. Sottsass designed this portfolio soon after being released from a Yugoslavian concentration camp and moving to Milan.
Ettore Sottsass, 1946
It's clear from this that his approach rejected the minimal and functional Bauhaus. He not only disregards a grid or sense of order, his use of imagery is promiscuous at the least. Victorian clip art, modernist photography, and hand-made forms compete with pieces of typography and magazine clippings. While it doesn't rely on melting clocks, the piece is related to the Surrealist movement, happening at the same time. The elements exist as disparate symbols in the unconscious, pieces of everyday life that combine in a dream.
I've had a special admiration for Sottsass since I learned that he took 1,780 photographs on a short trip to South America, and for years photographed every hotel room in which he had slept with a woman. He also wanted to publish a book consisting of pictures of walls. I would buy a book of photos of walls.
