Memphis by Barbara Radice

Sottsass “As we know very well, when you try to define the function of any object, the function slips through your fingers, because function is life itself. Function is not one screw or one measure less. Function is the final possibility of the relation between an object and life.”

Sottsass “Decoration as we [Memphis] imagine it involves disregard of the support structure as the basic structure of the design. People have always ‘believed’ in the in the basic structure; they have always believed that the structure ‘had’ to exist; they have aways believed in design as a succession of moments and in the unalienability of mental structures, as earnestly as they have believed in the principle of causality. We [Memphis] tend to imagine the design as a series of accidents that come together by chance; we imagine a possible sum, not an inevitable story. And what we believe holds this story of accidents together and gives it meaning, is that every accident has a decorative identity. A Memphis table is decoration. Structure and decoration are one thing.”

Radice’s book was the first comprehensive work on Memphis to be published, and is a vital exploration of the New Design as what she calls ‘a milkshake of possibilities’. Nathalie du Pasquier says that decoration lays bare the soul of things. For Memphis, the primacy of pattern undermined the archetypal outlines of furniture and function, encouraging a different attitude towards use. Design and its industrial production and distribution were seen as vibrant means of communication; a language of seduction rather than conviction, relations provisional, expressive, emotional.

1986 reprint of the 1984 edition. Profusely illustrated. Paperback. Good condition.