The Memphis Group, also known as Memphis Milano, was an Italian design and architecture group founded by Ettore Sottsass. It was active from 1980 to 1987. The group designed postmodern furniture, lighting, fabrics, carpets, ceramics, glass and metal objects. The Memphis Group's work often incorporated plastic laminate and terrazzo materials and was characterized by ephemeral design featuring colorful and abstract decoration as well as asymmetrical shapes, sometimes arbitrarily alluding to exotic or earlier styles and designs. Despite the original group's disbandment, Memphis Design went on to become a ubiquitous aesthetic in popular culture of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, overtaking the earth tones of the 1970s and early 1980s. In the late 1990s, Memphis was succeeded by the Y2K aesthetic.
Background
Memphis was born on the evening of December 6, 1980, when Sottsass invited a group of young designers and architects to discuss the future of design. Together, they wanted to change the concept of what design had been focused on, which had been Modernism and aimed to do so by creating and forming a new design collective. After their initial meeting, the group went away to brainstorm different ideas and concepts, and three months later came back together ready to share over a hundred drawings they had produced during that time. The inspiration behind naming themselves "Memphis" came about during their first meeting when Bob Dylan's record "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" had been playing repeatedly in the background. "Memphis" is the name of a city in Tennessee, which was named after a capital city of ancient Egypt. The group of designers used the ambiguity behind the name to represent and symbolise their ambiguous design philosophies of furniture, objects and textiles. Sottsass showed great interest in the middle-class taste, the traditions of the Third World and the East, and unspoiled nature. Sottsass left the group in 1985 to focus on his design and architecture firm, Sottsass Associati. The group disbanded in 1987.
Impact
Memphis' colorful furniture has been described as "bizarre", "misunderstood", "loathed", and "a shotgun wedding between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price". Terence Conran, arguably the leading figure in British design, said of Memphis that "Sottsass meant it as a joke! It's joke junk." Jasper Morrison, the renowned British furniture designer, recalled the "cold sweat" and "shock and panic" he felt upon his first encounter with Memphis products, but also the sense of being "immediately freed by the total rule-breaking" they represented. During their active years, the group designed a series of non-conformist furniture. One of their most popular and well-known designs is the "Carlton" Room Divider, a totemic pole incorporating a variety of bright colours, solid shapes and voids. The structure itself is constructed using cheap plastic laminates, though designed to be sold by a luxury market, and incorporates a series of equilateral triangles, both real and implied. Memphis Design was heavily featured in the popular culture of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, such as in television, movies, video games, furniture, mall architecture, household items, and clothes. Surfing, skateboarding, skiing, and BMX companies were quick to adopt the aesthetic into their designs. Television shows such as Miami Vice showcased many architectural examples. Nickelodeon used the style as the basis for their Double Dare set design. In the late 1990s, Memphis was supplanted by the Y2K futurism aesthetic. Memphis Group served as inspiration for the Christian Dior's Fall/Winter 2011–2012 haute couture collection fashion show, for the Winter 2015 Missoni collection. In the 2010s, Memphis Design styles were often incorporated into the vaporwave Internet aesthetic. Notable Memphis style collectors included fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and musician David Bowie. Bowie, a passionate collector of the design collective's pieces, described the "jolt" and "impact" of entering a room with a Memphis cabinet. He noted that its effect was "visceral," especially when it first emerged. After Bowie's death in 2016, part of his collection, including the pieces he owned from the Memphis Group, was auctioned off at a Sotheby's auction. A "flat, geometric, figurative" illustration style "usually made up of solid colours", popular in the late 2010s, particularly with startups, was dubbed "Corporate Memphis" by Wired Magazine for its resemblance to Memphis style.
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