Gopnik's Daily Pic: Martian aestheticism
By Blake Gopnik
The latest feed from my morning musings about art and objects at www.blakegopnik.com.
(Courtesy the Baltimore Museum of Art)
An 1880s plant stand by the Bradley & Hubbard Mfg. Co. and Longwy Faience, recently added to the permanent collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. (Yes, the Daily Pic is there again). I have a reputation for liking weird art, but this is weird, cubed. (And I still like it.)
This little table is officially considered part of the Aesthetic Movement, but that seems to stretch the term "aesthetic" to the breaking point. How could this piece live under a tender Whistler or a Thomas Wilmer Dewing? It would look better as a Martian lander's bride.
A steamwork's brass tubing + pseudo-Chinese and Turkish ceramics + vaguely (with the stress on "vaguely") medieval metalwork = pre-modernist postmodernism. Memphis, eat your heart out.
By
Blake Gopnik
| November 4, 2010; 8:09 AM ET
Categories:
Blake Gopnik, Design
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Daily Pic
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