Jacques Schumacher
ran the year 1980, and what if he did it because the decade started in a hurry to live it all, when a group of young designers decided to kill all the established dogmas about the functionalism in industrial design.
With the architect Ettore Sottsass as the father of the movement, in September 1981 the collective's first collection was presented at the gallery Arc'74 of Milan. The whiplash soon moved the foundations of art and design: acid colors, prints reminiscent of the aesthetics of comics, impossible shapes -and possible-, postmodernism and kitsch irony in abundance they found the key of what it was time to see and live.
Interior for an Italian Design Show in Tokyo, 1984, by Sottsass Associati
karl lagerfeld , who better, he perceived it right away and a year later he decorated his Monte Carlo apartment with a potpourri of Memphis pieces. He thus blessed the work of a group whose name was born from another pop carom, since the song Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again , by Bob Dylan, played during their first meeting.
Forty years later, the Vitra Design Museum pays homage to this genius that barely lasted –Memphis suddenly dissolved in 1987– but that left a mark as acidic as its intention.
The exhibition Memphis, 40 years of kitsch and elegance , curated by Mateo Kries, will remain until January 2022 and promises to be the trigger for another return to the crazy and fun 80s. The penultimate.
Bel Air Sofa, by Peter Shire, 1982
***This report was published in *number 144 of Condé Nast Traveler Magazine (Spring 2021) . Subscribe to the printed edition (€18.00, annual subscription, by calling 902 53 55 57 or from our website). The April issue of Condé Nast Traveler is available in its digital version to enjoy on your preferred device