In 1951, the sudden, unplanned reading of several issues of the famous American design review Interiors allowed Pierre Paulin to discover the creative work of Charles and Ray Eames, whose success was revealed to be already manifest(1). Paulin was immediately enthusiastic about their work ethic, the perfection of the forms they designed which tended toward archetypes, and for their humanism imbued with modesty. The impact this event was going to leave on his work is well known. As early as the end of the 1950s, the effects of this legacy could be felt in his first completed works, but in a critical mode. For Paulin, functionalism was indeed bound to disappear, for its aesthetic no longer corresponded to the lifestyles and sensibility of current times. The French designer saw in this somewhat intransigent quest for purity an evidently obsolete Puritanism. Through his interest in the Eameses’ creative work, he came to encounter the broader concept of Good Design, a norm of taste affiliated with the work of this couple of American designers. It should be noted to what extent this norm was able to serve, for more than a decade, as the symbol of American capitalism, beginning as a matter of fact with the mid-1950s. In the mid-1960s, several American artists (Richard Artschwager, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol) were going to tarnish Good Design by creating object sculptures that celebrated Camp style(2). In this way, the supposed purity of high modernism was deposed. In works that glorified surface effects and pointed to a void at the heart of volumes, their art gave full recognition to the reproduction process of objects. The phenomenon of porous boundaries between sculpture, design, and mass culture that had been established at the time would go on to favor such a “proliferation of hybrids,” which today seems to have reached its apogee(3). We know, along with Francis Haskell, how much the history of taste represents a basic datum of art history. In this instance, it was design that played a central role--and, more particularly, it did so starting in the Sixties on account of its assimilation into mass culture and the beginnings of its exposure in the media. In 1951, Paulin had little inkling that his interest in the Eameses’ work would lead him to play a major role in the transformation of norms of taste, as was to happen in Europe between 1962 and 1972.

Surface Issues

        Of mythical stature, Paulin’s chair 560, called The Mushroom, dates from 1963. The initial functionalism of the shell dissolved into its gaily colored foam coating, which beckons the body to curl up with ease within its cocoon-like shape. Unlike the seats of the Eameses, it was no longer the structure that determined the aesthetics but rather the softness of the protective and welcoming envelope. The predominance of surface wins out in the field of perceptual experience, a key issue in the constitution of taste for an entire era. A similar transformative phenomenon may also be noted in France in the area of forms as regards some creative works related to New Realism. While the relationships between such works and manufactured objects have been analyzed well from the standpoint of process, very few studies take into account the resonant connections between art, design, and mass culture that were established by Arman and Martial Raysse, but also by Jean-Pierre Raynaud. A few examples suffice, however, to bring out these otherwise tenuous ties. In 1961, the directors of the Roche Bobois company called upon Paulin to design the exterior decoration of their shop located at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue du Bac in Paris. “In order to highlight the Baron Haussmann facade--the archetype of institutional Paris--he limited himself to throwing a protective covering, in huge volumes of transparent glass, over the building’s original street-level structure.”(4) Behind this glass wall was the shop itself, presenting objects of interior appointments, the objects of everyday life. The visitor thus got from the start a feel for the layout even before experiencing the space itself. The designer’s intervention, which was of an extreme simplicity, was thus also here quite effective. Such perception in the apprehension of the object was not unreminiscent of Arman’s vitrines, his “showcases,” a series developed more particularly between 1959 and 1962. Boxes in which objects were arranged according to a principle of accumulation were enclosed by a plane of glass or Plexiglas. Each ensemble was presented on the wall vertically. Home Sweet Home (1960) and Madison Avenue (1962) exemplified this principle. As Arman confirms, “In my surfaces--and I really mean surfaces, for even in my volumetric compositions, my intention is always more pictorial than sculptural, that is to say that what I desire is to see my propositions taken from the perspective of a surface more than as a three-dimensional construction.”(5) Not without some critical insistence, this surface experience also predominated in one’s apprehension of artistic objects. In the time of an affluent society, the undersides of mass culture were starting to come to light. At the instigation of François Mathey, curator at the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts, the Antagonismes 2, l’objet exhibition made a splash in 1962 as a big event. On the one hand, it unreservedly admitted its connection with the famous polemical exhibition of 1960, Antagonismes, of which it claimed to be in some way the new counterpart, and, on the other hand, it intended to celebrate “a renaissance of forms” said to correspond to the “new art of living.”(6) Mathey’s selections were international in scope and brought together visual artists and designers. Invited to participate, Arman executed for this occasion a chandelier made up of a simple accumulation of bulbs. The parallel with Paulin’s lamps designed in 1961 to decorate the Artists’ Foyer at the Maison de la Radio--the famous “Round House” inaugurated by the French National Broadcasting Service (ORTF)--is universally acknowledged. The principle of accumulation acts as guarantor for the aesthetic of this bouquet of bulbs, in perfect harmony with the French designer’s flower-shaped 560 chairs. It must be noted that these bridges between the visual arts and design lead in both directions. What comes to light here therefore is not a question of influence, but rather a more elemental search that corresponds to a transformation of the social and cultural fabric visibly manifest in a history of objects of all kinds. As a matter of fact, Edgar Morin’s book, L’Esprit du temps, which shows how much mass culture and manufactured objects were starting to merge in the 1960s, was published in 1962(7).
        The connection Raysse established in his work with the mass culture of the time cannot be grasped solely by reference to the Prisunic brand, for these low-end department stores were in fact a chain created in the 1930s in response to the economic crisis of 1929. The artist’s interest resides in the profusion that reigns in mass culture’s consumer centers, as much on the level of the quantity of products as on that of the abundance of colors.(8) Étalage. Hygiène de la vision (1960) et Le Rayon Prisunic (1961) exalted via exaggeration the artificial sheen of plastic. A highly accentuated--indeed, overly accentuated--surface effect was the result. The very use of plastic material, moreover, was part of everyone’s daily life during those years. Everything can be plastic coated; would not the world itself be plastic coated? This thin film of material engenders a multiplicity of surface experiences that is not without consequences for how one grasps reality. Barthes could observe the menace behind the myth by pointing to this omnipresent use of plastic(9). In fact, design in the 1960s placed great emphasis on this material, which became emblematic of new trends affiliated with the most fashionable manufactured objects. It is less well known how much the Prisunic stores turned out to be pioneers in the domain of design, at the initiative of Denise Fayolle, who was able to develop a number of collaborations with some of the most important creative designers of the time in order to promote a popular, economical line of furniture. Paulin’s rival, Olivier Mourgue, as well as the famous English designer Terence Conran, contributed to the success of this effort. Raysse’s works pointed to that present time of the Prisunic stores, which was characterized not only by plastic’s hegemony but also by a mass culture matched with a youth culture, a culture for small budgets. Like the works of Arman, Raysse’s works transcended the duality between art and design, high and low, so as to give birth to hybrid entities that asserted themselves as such. The phenomenon of a porosity of boundaries coupled with the mass culture’s growing power of absorption weakened the distinction of hierarchies and challenged dualist systems. According to Fredric Jameson, this situation resulted in “a new kind of superficiality,” a “depthlessness” that would lead to Postmodernism(10). Arman and Raysse adopted a critical attitude toward mass culture. For them, it was not a matter of prolonging the somewhat naive sociological optimism of Pierre Restany(11). The omnipresence of surface was there to denounce the traps of mass culture and to threaten it with collapse. Their research thus resonates with the analyses of the historian Bertrand Lemonnier, who showed that we are “witnessing a crisis of mass culture that probably began in the mid-1960s. . . . Mass culture becomes less and less ‘culturally correct,’ introducing elements of doubt, uncertainty, and revolt that contrast with the relative euphoria of the years 1955-1965.”(12) Paulin’s works helped to create this youth culture by championing a kind of design that was inviting to the body--a body that claimed to be unfettered, a free body--not unreminiscent of the May ’68 generation and the hippie movement. Did not chair 577, The Tongue Chair, become the emblem thereof?

Aesthetic Norm of Taste, Statist Norm of Taste

        Paulin’s great success would contribute to the establishment of a more new, popular, more bodied-oriented norm of taste. That spelled the downfall of Good Design and of functionalism. This transformation very quickly overflowed French borders. Indeed, Great Britain and Italy were also going to play a major role in the emergence of a European-wide norm of taste, whose impact, as much on the aesthetic as on the social level, would lead to the dethroning of old values. Sir Terence Conran’s opening, on May 11, 1964, of the first Habitat store at 77 Fulham Road in London was a huge success. This kind of furniture design was addressed more specifically to the young and to others with tight budgets. Furniture design lost its previous character as an exceptional investment so as to become a consumer object whose vernacular dimension connected it with mass culture. London held the leadership position in design during the Swinging Sixties. Let us mention here the cardboard furniture of Peter Murdoch, who opened the way to disposable design, as well as the Mary Quant shops. As for Italy, reception of Paulin’s creations was filtered through coverage in the review Domus, which devoted several articles to him in the Sixties. Exchanges were established, all the more so as Italy was a pioneering country for design at that very time. Numerous companies were created, which allowed Italian manufacturers to respond to the demands of mass culture. Like Paulin, whose creations they appreciated, Italian designers were opposed to functionalism. As for the 1968 Domus, formes italiennes exhibition at the Galeries Lafayette department stores in Paris, it garnered a huge success. The public greeted new Italian design with enthusiasm. The UPS chair designed by Gaetano Pesce in 1969 was not unreminiscent of the enveloping shells, the foamy sensuality, and the flamboyant redness of Paulin’s chairs, but it fit more into the genre of protest design. The dark times to come were not far off. The UPS seat, moreover, was sold flat, vacuum packed. One needed only to open the box and the chair found its correct form. Experience of surface thus predominated over an experience of volume. In order to appreciate the extent of the new European norm of taste, one should compare the Paulin and Pesce chairs with the famous Djinn chair created in 1964 by Mourgue. The characteristics are the same. The spread of this new norm reached unequaled breadth in 1968 through Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the Djinn chairs appeared. It was thus tied up all the more closely with mass culture.
        In the early 1970s, a reversal took place that was going to transform this aesthetic norm of taste into a statist one. Creative works became at that time a symbol of power. In France, this change could be seen to take place through a kind of drift. Pierre Paulin made the acquaintance of Jean Coural, the Director of the Mobilier National, who introduced him to French President Georges Pompidou. Thus would Paulin be led to design and execute the interior decoration for the private rooms in the Elysées Palace (dining room, living room, smoking room, library), for which he was to obtain in 1971 both success and a controversial reputation. This was an environment in its own right, inspired once again by the cocoon concept, but done this time on a larger scale with everything round and fluid, sand colored, and without great pomp. A symbol of modernity, Paulin’s furniture design became the decor for power agendas. What had been the embodiment of mass culture was turned inside out and made into an elitist emblem. Instrumentalized, the use value assigned to design was diverted from its primary function so as to respond to the needs of statist value. We find here another perversion of the norm of taste, like the one the Eameses’ creativity had undergone in its time once it received official recognition. It must be noted once more how tenuous the gap between design, norms of taste, and the agendas involved in showcasing was revealed to be. As Laurence Bertrand Dorléac pertinently points out, “He [Pompidou] saw the site of power as a showcase for the liveliness of French creativity, whence the constant change in decoration he foresaw for it. He offered a demonstration of this with Paulin’s futurist furniture, which he counted on imposing on the world over against the domination of Italian interior design.”(13) In its different incarnations, the notion of showcasing is the site of a tipping point. Does not the 1972 Douze ans d’art contemporain en France (Twelve years of contemporary art in France) exhibition, scheduled for Paris’s Grand Palais, express this principle? One realizes on this occasion just how ambiguous visual artists’ relationship to the new norm of taste really was. In the Sixties, that norm represented for them all both a basis and a foil for their creative work. Arman’s participation, or else that of Jean-Pierre Raynaud, in the famous “Pompidou exhibition” in effect associated their works with the statist norm of taste. Yet it was in 1972 that this new norm achieved its full political ambition, when filtered through the Italy: The New Domestic Landscape exhibition at MoMA in New York. Italian counterdesign (Pesce, Joe Colombo), with its aim of shaking up society’s structures, was celebrated there, an admission of the end of American design’s prior dominance. The new European norm of taste triumphed, all the more so as Paulin enjoyed official recognition in the United States from 1968 onward--the year he won the Chicago Design Award. When Europe stole leadership in design from New York, the phenomenon of transformation that had been at work between 1962 and 1972 came to light. For the best and for the worst, use value is certainly therefore a vehicle for major change. It plays a role of its own in the transformations of the ties between aesthetic value, statist value, and elitist value. One should look for the operative modes of action, for use value can also be envisaged as an element of vigilance, nay even a tool of resistance. It is up to each person to know how precisely to make good use of it.

Notes

1. Pierre Paulin, interview with Anne-Marie Fèvre, “Prendre langue avec un Viking,” Pierre Paulin (Paris: Dis Voir, 2001), p. 56.
2. On this question, allow me to refer to my article, “La reproduction de l’objet au temps des masses. New York City, 1963-1966,” Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne, 99 (Spring 2007): 62-81.
3. I am using this expression in reference to Bruno Latour’s 1991 book, We Have Never Been Modern, transl. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
4. Anne Chapoutot, Pierre Paulin: Un univers de formes (Paris: Éditions du May, 1992), p. 44.
5. Arman, “Réalisme des Accumulations,” quoted in the Arman catalogue (Paris: Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, 1998), p. 197.
6. “Visite à l’atelier,” in the Antagonismes 2, l’objet catalogue (Paris: Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, 1962), no pagination.
7. Edgar Morin, L’Esprit du temps. Essai sur la culture de masse (Paris: Grasset, 1962).
8. Martial Raysse, previously unpublished text that appeared in the Martial Raysse catalogue (Paris: Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume), p. 36.
9. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Le Seuil, 1957), p. 173.
10. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 9.
11. See, on this topic, the texts by Didier Semin (“Pompéi mental”) and Jill Carrick (“Le Nouveau Réalisme: un détournement de la profusion des choses”) in the Nouveau Réalisme catalogue (Paris: Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 2007), pp. 158-60 and 176-81, respectively.
12. Bertrand Lemonnier, “Le développement de la culture de masse,” in Culture et action chez Georges Pompidou, ed. Jean-Claude Groshens and Jean-François Sirinelli (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), p.104.
13. Laurence Bertrand-Dorléac, “L’Art du mouvement,” ibid., p. 111.