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Tuesday night, eight and a half hours at the Stubentor: in front of the main entrance of the Museum of Applied Arts, not only a number of Jaguar cars carrying the inscription "Beauty", but especially a long line of people, such as they had never done it before the U4 at the corner of the street, far in the Weiskirchnerstrbade, almost up to the lemur heads of Franz West.
Rise of the snake: opening of the exhibition "Beauty" by Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh. Already, his last exhibition at the MAK – "The Happy Show" from October 2015 to March 2016 – had met with great success, so much so that elitist art critics have already blamed the MAK of "populism". This will certainly be repeated in the new exhibition, created in cooperation with the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt, which will visit several museums around the world.
The G & # 39; riss around the birth of Bregenz Sagmeister may have a connection with the fact that his success story fits into the magnificent scheme "A little country boy gets big in the big apple of New York" , probably also because he has big name album covers like the Rolling Stones. Lou Reed and David Byrne – but also for the Tyrolean group HP Zinker. Of course, but by the fact that he poses big subjects in an apparently naive, at least docile way, quite similar to that of David Byrne, whom he had formerly called his favorite client. What – as a designer, that is, as a representative of a typical applied art – is more likely to be outside the curator's speech. Usual art.
So he dared to ask Jessica Walsh what had not been asked in the visual arts for decades: what is beauty? Did Marcel Duchamps prevail with his intention expressed in 1917 to remove them from the arts? And clearly admitting to her in the exhibition, moreover, that she is firmly in line with the "Manifesto of Beauty" that Günther Nenning and Jörg Mauthe wrote in a great unusual coalition in 1984. In their manifesto, Sagmeister & Walsh speak at least of "psychotic uniformity" in which architects and designers have "bitten" for decades, and explain: "We want to show why this renunciation of beauty is so absurd and what that we oppose can do. "
On the critics, such as the font used in the exhibition, and even on kitsch suspicion already expressed routinely, reacts Sagmeister thoughtful and friendly. His goal was simple, he explained: "After visiting the exhibition, a visitor said," Yes, there are S "Beauty has an influence on how I feel."
Invitation to the show "Beauty"
Serene, he also managed the rush of Tuesday night, which was not simple logistically: removed from the MAK Sagmeister in full, accompanied by the director Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, just at the time of the biggest crowd of – Luckily half-way nearby – Sofiensäle, to attend the "press" gala, take a deep breath and accept the Austrian Prize 18 of the Minister of Culture, Gernot Blümel – who had already made a speech at the MAK.
"I think the exhibition has become very beautiful," he said with slightly self-destructive nonchalance, adding, "I hope everyone in the room will take the time to look at it – and that together we can magnify the beautiful. "
Many Sagmeister fans were wondering: what will he do next? The truth? Good? Sagmeister waved no. He had not planned such a comprehensive project for a long time. Meanwhile, he continues to take care of what a designer should be concerned about: beauty.
("Die Presse", printed edition, 25.10.2018)
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