Branding the V&A exhibition: Grace Jones in a maternity dress, 1979, designed by Jean-Paul Goude and Antonio Lopez © Jean-Paul Goude
➢ View Sarfraz Manzoor’s Guardian video in which he meets co-curator Jane Pavitt and others at the V&A’s new show in London, poses such questions as “What does Grace Jones’ maternity dress have in common with a Day-Glo toaster and a chair made from a gas pipe?” and elicits these insights…
❏ The godfather of postmodernism, architect Charles Jencks, dates the end of modernism and hence birth of postmodernism to the blowing up of Pruitt-Igoe, a housing estate in Missouri from the 1950s, based on Le Corbusier’s work. It was demolished on March 16, 1972 — “at 3.32pm, a fact repeated so often it became a social truth”.
❏ The ceramicist Carol McNicoll admits she realised as a student in 1985 that suddenly “decoration was fine and people liked it — no more bentwood — lots of silly plastic”.
❏ Co-curator Glenn Adamson says: “Postmodernism culminates in the act of performance. It’s is all about adopting a pose: you wouldn’t have Lady Gaga without Grace Jones.”
➢ Discover the many forces that shaped deconstruction, structuralism and postmodernism, from Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Rorty, Baudrillard, Jameson
➢ Patrick Hannay reflects on the waste and diversion of energy by a movement that purported to cure a cultural malaise — at the Times Higher Education supp
➢ The Victoria & Albert Museum’s latest blockbuster-style exhibition is … “both a horrible mess and a hypnotic snapshot embracing some unspeakably hideous pieces of furniture alongside some sublime drawings and film clips” — Edwin Heathcote at The Financial Times
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 