I just came across a small article in either the latest Azure or Metropolis magazine claiming that several of Karim Rashid products are identical matches to existing vintage designs, that the magazine was able to dig up to prove their point. I wasn't really surprised to read this because a couple of years back, I googled his Garbo trash can and came across a pic of a very old vintage wooden trash can that was 100% identical to his. I'm not sure where that pic came from but it was out there when I was surfing the net and I can't track that trash can down anymore. Has anyone read this article that I'm talking about?
Not that it really matters...
Not that it really matters but Karim is not gay. He lives with his wife/girlfriend in New York.
It seems most here doesn't like him, could someone then tell me why he has become so huge? Is it simply the shock effect of his pop colours, publicity and amount of work he's flooding the market with that convinces people to think he's good? I really don't understand it. I thought people wanted quality, not quantity.
I admire modernism's committment to excellence and innovation, but...
modernism, excepting the Eames, has always lacked much sense of humor or joy. Modernism can be rather protestant in its astringent severity towards its subject matter. As a result, it often has a hard time critically assessing jubilant, entertaining artifacts, art and literature.
I have a Rashid O-chair in my garage that I sit on to clean the chrome on my old bicycles. I got it at a thrift store. I'm always kind of amused by it and I like that feeling of amusement occassionally.
I also have a Michael Graves pepper grinder with a peanut on it. It cheers me up every morning when I make scrambled eggs for me and my son.
No, I do not my entire life reduced to amusements, just as I do not want a strict diet of comedy in movies. I like all the genres.
I am not qualified to say whether Rashid's work is technically proficient design. I'll leave that to working designers. But I will say that I find his ebullience occassionally suited to my taste.
No, I would never decorate a house or office largely with Rashid, at least of what I have seen so far, but I think one can understand some of the popularity of Rashid if one thinks about the Eames popularity as an analogue.
People often forget the context in which the Eames arose. They came along on the heals of a great depression and a world war. By the late 40s and early 50s, America was desparate for some fun and it was exhuberant about its place in the world. The Eames strain of modernism tapped into that desire for fun and exhuberance. America was just fortunate that the Eames also happened to have quite alot of genius to go along with their sensibilities being in synch with the times.
Frankly, I think Karim Rashid's sense of fun and exhuberance has tapped into America's dizzying ascent to solo superpower on the heels of a long, grim, cold war followed by a dot.com bubble burst and then a bunch of cheap money to try to float the economy.
Clearly, if Karim Rashid is plagiarizing other designers without attribute he lacks the creative integrity of the Eames. And I think it is also fair to say that he lacks the genius and skill at designing useful, well thought out and innovative designs that the Eames possessed.
But by the same token, it seems also clear that no one else in the modernist revival has with virtuousic talent and skill tapped into the gestalt that Rashid has.
Perhaps this unfortunate situation has arisen, partly because designers more gifted than Rashid have rediscovered the Eames designs, rather than the Eames skills and techniques and enthusiasms. I can't say for sure, but I can say that I don't see any really exceptional neomodernist designers today with the kind of exhuberant life force exhuberance the Eames evidence for the best, and Rashid for the adequate.
Hmmm, ok. I think you're on...
Hmmm, ok. I think you're on to something there, dcwilson. A very nice reply, thank you.
Though the "fun" is completely lost on me when I esp. see his furniture. I don't the fact that he gets so much attention when there are better things available out there. I have a hard time seeing his furniture and objects appearing as modern classics and harvesting high bids at the high-end auctions houses 50 years from now.
I wonder if he's reading this.
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