These past few weeks there has been discussion in the Netherlands about two Studio Job designs. One was a commission for a fence and gate, the gate in the form of two smoking chimney’s, elegant barbed wire style fencing, and a bell with the suum cuique / ‘to each his own’ motto. This motto was used in its German translation (‘jedem das seine’) at concentration camp Buchenwald.
The original design for a private commission (gate and fence)
For another client Studio Job designed tablecloths and napkins with the same concentration camp theme. Samples were made, but these were refused by the client, and were not put in production. In this second design you find barracks, watchtowers, skulls, and, in the center, a pile of eyeglasses.
original design for a tablecloth and napkins incorporating skulls, watchtowers, and barbed wire
Reactions were as could be expected. What happened in the extermination camps only a few decades ago defies our understanding of what humans are able to do to each other. Are these motifs suited to be used as decorative elements for gates, fences and napkins?
And of course, as decoration, they are not.
But motives, symbols etc. can be used in art to tell us something, – be it the artists view on the world, the time he/she is living is, thoughts, his/her surroundings, persons, etc. Art can tell us a story.
Art does not need to be beautiful or nice: sometimes it can be unsettling, scary and/or ugly. But it can make us think about things we otherwise may not have thought of, and make us discuss things we thought were given facts.
The people of Studio Job stated that the pieces mentioned were (meant as) art, and not as mere objects of use, and that the design was inspired by the artwork Vision of Hell by Jake and Dinos Chapman.
A detail of the diorama "Hell" (1999/2000) by Jake and Dinos Chapman
An interesting question: does art always needs to be limited to what the art world today recognizes as art (namely paintings, installations, sculptures, film, photo etc), or can it also be an object of use, like a fence or a napkin? An interesting, and –I personally find– difficult to answer question.
I think art isn’t limited by form. An artwork can be a painting, a movie, but also a firework/series of explosions or a landscape. And thus even a napkin.
Cai Guo-Qiang, black rainbow, explosion art, Valencia Spain 2005
But, with some heavy themes (amongst them genocide), we demand respect, and carefull use. The use of genocide motifs as decoration on a functional object like a napkin, makes the theme common, and ‘light’. It makes it possible for them to be decadently used in a setting of enjoyment and laughter, and to be overlooked, or used to wipe a mouth without thought. We don’t want that to happen.
I feel that as a sign of the times the use of the genocide theme for a napkin is interesting though. The world we live in is a tough dog-eat-dog world for many people. In this society of haves and have-nots, money and status (even at the cost of suffering) play an important role.
We have gotten hardened by witnessing suffering on TV (while eating our sushi), and one might say, have come to accept some of the suffering as ‘colleteral damage’ of our way of living. We might not have concentration camp themes on our napkins, but we wear clothes made in sweatshops, and eat cheap meat while choosing to cry about a lonely, stranded seal. A cynical world.
So, is this a product of our time, or comment on our time? If it is a product of our time, it is sad. If it is comment, it might be art after all.
