A couple of weeks back our class visited the marvel that is the Cooper Hewitt Museum. The museum provides an intimate homely ambiance, and houses some of the most incredible artwork I have ever seen. The museum is structured in a way that it guides you to walk through the exhibits, the way your train of thought navigates the realms of your mind, when you turn an idea into a product.
Unfortunately, since i cannot seem to be able to open the account they made for us, that stores all the data we collected at the museum, and the sketches and prototypes we created on the tables using the pen device, I will be basing this post on the brief notes I took in my journal.
As soon as you climb up the winding wooden, staircase , past the red carpeted lobby, you walk through the chamber of prototypes. bearing prototypes of different famous architectural spectacles.This chamber is linked to the ideation centre , which not only displays the processes and rough sketches of different artists that went into creating the product, but also provides large tables of what is to me incomprehensible technology that help you to create virtual prototypes of your own ideas for projects.
The second floor is a medley of objects, and projects which at first might seem like a random collection. However, after observing them carefully, you realize that they have been thus categorized, not by the date or artist, but by colour, technique or material they are associated with. Which makes you realize the enormous scope of possibilities of the diverse products you can make, or projects you can achieve , from one material or technique, and also instigates ideas about combining two or more materials or techniques.This floor allows the atmosphere to be was playful and fun, essential for bouncing around ideas in the initial stages of the process. My favourite part of the floor is the Wallpaper room where you can design your own wallpaper and have it projected on the walls, and then experience being shrouded in your creation.
On the highest floor of the Cooper Hewitt was an astounding exhibition that brings to life the craziest ideas imaginable. ‘Provocations’ is the perfect way to describe the genius lunacy, that is the work produced by the Heatherwick studio. What with Hairy Buildings, expanding furniture,Rolling Bridges, and the most intriguing Christmas cards I have ever seen, this floor is the Willy Wonka’s factory of innovative architecture and product design. one thing that struck me as extremely unique and interesting about this studio is how it is made of individuals who have very different styles, and work ethics and how, they always come up with a list of crazy question, sometimes seemingly impossible, sometimes in rhetoric, almost always not having an answer, and try to answer them as they go on with the project.
Finally the exhibition titled “How Posters Work” occupies the lowest level and a part of the first level. Paula Scher is one of my favourite artists and I really enjoyed her poster for ‘Him’, that was being displayed there. Other posters that I thought were really fun and hilarious were the ones for ‘The Birth Of Cool’ and ‘Tea Drives Away The Droop’. But I think the poster that i loved the most in the entire exhibit was the one by Milton Glaser titled, ‘ Something Unusual Is Going On Here’. The poster portrays the perfect harmony between whimsy, wit,satire and parody, with surreal undertones. It depicts an enormous tomato sitting in an elaborately upholstered armchair, in a fancy, and in my opinion over decorated, room that bears a strong resemblance to old blue blood houses with velvet curtains, and words and colours like burgundy and parlor, hanging in the thick perfume particle clogged air. I love this poster, because it is very close to the kind of art i really enjoy and make. The poster is smart and hysterical and unique, especially for the period it was created in. It is a powerful and precocious poster, that look like the artist had fun making it. Also this unique whimsical poster works not just for its clever aesthetic qualities, but also in how the depiction of a grand faceless tomato is used to signify Tomato music company( now called tomato records), which is why the swirly patterns on the floor and clashing colours on the wall, make sense because a lot of music album and poster art in those times was inspired by the art noveau movement. The swirls, surrealism, parody,whimsy, fancy and sarcasm captured in the image perfectly symbolize a sense of freedom of expression that music artists and bands who the label signs up, relate to and crave. Thus this poster is an extremely genius and effective piece.
The Cooper Hewitt was unlike any museum I have ever visited before because its content was simply so out of the realm of anything i could have expected, which work that dabbles in a panorama of media ranging from fabric to metal to postage stamps and photoshop. It was a truly remarkable experience. What I got away from it was a new technique of thinking. Once presented with a brief for a project, it will really help with laying a strong conceptual foundation for the project, if I make a list of questions that the project could answer, that i don’t already know the answer to. I know that I must not hold back from writing down a question simply because it sounds a little unrelated or absurd because I might later, after pushing my self to ask these questions and reading them to myself come u with an idea of concept that ties them all together, to result in something I could never have thought of otherwise.
Thus this visit significantly influenced the way I go about a project.
