Scale and Whimsy
Michael Graves's work for Target may be his most enduring legacy.
By Paul Goldberger
February 2004
There are two ways to look at the deluge of consumer products that have
been spewing forth from the office of Michael Graves for the past several
years. It could be an attempt to exploit the fixation with celebrity
that has affected architecture as much as any other aspect of our culture--after
all, Graves is as famous as any architect, and he has become more so since
he started affixing his name to teakettles, spatulas, watches, tableware,
candlesticks, earrings, lamps, faucet handles, and toasters. Or it could
be an attempt to broaden the reach of design and extend an architect's sensibility
to people who will never be able to afford to hire any architect, let alone
Michael Graves. Thanks to mass merchandising, a tiny piece of an architect's
ouevre is within the reach of everyone.
For all that the second theory may smack of noblesse oblige, I'm inclined
to give it its due. The democratization of design is the great design story
of our age, and Graves is the only serious architect who has participated
in it with total, unconflicted zeal. Indeed it is no exaggeration to
say that he is as much a cause as an effect of this phenomenon. It was one
thing when Graves created his teakettle for Alessi, in 1985, a witty if
not entirely practical object that, despite its cost--it sells for about
$100--became a kind of artifact of yuppiedom. It was quite another when
Graves began designing objects for Target, the mass-market discount store
where you could outfit an entire kitchen for $100.
The relationship between Graves and Target transformed both architect and
client. It turned Graves into a figure who had to satisfy the demands
of high-volume, low-cost production and made Target, paradoxically, into
a purveyor of high culture (or at least into a purveyor of a simple low-end
version of high culture). Rarely has an architect-client relationship been
as mutually beneficial, where each brought the other into a world they
could never have entered alone. And rarely, I suspect, has a business relationship
in the world of mass marketing achieved something as close to equilibrium
as this one. Graves is not a prima donna who dictates to Target what he
wants and demands that the company produce it. But neither is he a workhorse,
toiling without recognition and churning out whatever he is told to make.
He is something in between, producing prototypes, experimenting, sending
them to Target for its response, changing them, and changing them again.
It is a relationship that resembles more the dealings between an architect
and a client on a building project than a work-for-hire product designer.
It is tempting to think of the Graves-Target relationship as similar to
the arrangements between fashion houses and prominent designers. I don't
mean to suggest that Graves is Tom Ford, but that while Graves's name is
part of what Target is selling, it is only part. There is also a look, a
feel, to the products that is consistent, which comes largely from Graves's
own aesthetic. But the look also expresses the Target aesthetic, which embraces
a kind of exuberant, upbeat, slightly embellished Modernism. His objects
have a playfulness and warmth to them. They are almost always functionally
right--mass marketers have pragmatism in their blood--and yet they always
seem to have some whimsical detail that raises them above the purely practical.
Sometimes it is a matter of shape: Graves has a particular fondness for
slightly bulbous forms; his knife handles and toasters look like conventional
ones into which some air has been pumped. Sometimes it is a matter of color,
as in the cook's tools with the soft bluish-gray Santoprene handles, or
the cleaning brushes in the same color. A lot of the time, though, Graves
indulges in a slight twist from the conventional that is fairly subtle.
Much of his glassware, for example, isn't altogether different from the
stuff you see everywhere but for a slight change in the proportions and
shape. The same can be said of some of his less inventive objects--garden
furniture, brooms, ironing board, and hamper--which stand as reminders that
you can't redesign everything. In these cases Graves, perhaps restrained
by the practical instincts of Target, ends up with something that doesn't
seem to offer much more than a famous signature at the bottom.
I have never thought of Graves as an architect driven primarily by a desire
to see his name everywhere, however common his signature has become. Lately
we think of Graves in another context since a serious illness has rendered
him unable to walk and he is adjusting his life, office, and sensibilities
to a new mode of working. Graves has always struck me as a designer who
has the motivations of a teacher, who constantly tried to make his architecture
understandable to the average person. He seeks to avoid both the abstraction
of minimalism and the crutch of direct historical replication. Graves wants
to make buildings that are new and different but have the accessibility
of older ones. He has succeeded at this some of the time, but over the years
his style has never quite taken on the relaxed, natural air that he seeks.
Even his best buildings tend to be self-conscious; they can be overfussy
compositionally and sometimes feel a little bit like cartoons.
The objects, however, manage to do what Graves has always wanted his buildings
to do. When you look at his cooking implements, or at his chess set or Monopoly
game or wall clocks, they seem exactly right. They look like the images
we have always had of these familiar things but feel fresh at the same time.
And almost all of them do something that is wonderful for any object to
do, which is make you smile. |
 |
 |
|
The extensive line of products Michael Graves has designed for Target
includes such kitchen items as toasters and utensils, and a series of
games. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Top, courtesy Target; others, courtesy Graves Design Studio |
|
|
|
|
BACK TO TOP;MM_showHideLayers('navdepts','','hide')){kind=small}
;MM_showHideLayers('navfeats','','hide')){kind=small}
;MM_showHideLayers('navcolumns','','hide')){kind=small}
