Behind the Curve:
Blobjects and Beyond—The New Fluidity in Design
by Amos Klausner



The role of nature as informer and form giver has influenced many designers over the past century, and the roots of organic design reach back to the inspired patterns and exposed woodwork of the Arts and Crafts movement. Although the unadorned, hard-edged modernism of the International Style may have taken the spotlight away from flowing organic forms, designers and the public never turned their back on the power of graceful curves to inspire products and the people who use them.

Mid century industrial design, during the heyday of functional Modernism, was an especially bountiful time for fluidity. Legendary designers like Russell Wright and Eva Zeisel relished in creating sensuous shapes. Wright's designs for the Iroquois China Company, introduced in the late 1940's, and Zeisel's work from the same period for Red Wing Pottery were both highly successful and embraced by homes throughout the country. In 1950 the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in conjunction with the Chicago Merchandise Mart, began an annual design competition matched with small exhibitions of winning work that were hosted simultaneously at MOMA and the Merchandise Mart. Edgar Kaufmann Jr. of MOMA called the program Good Design and enlisted the help of Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames to bring critical mass to the project. The Good Design competition, now the oldest design competition in the world (currently run by the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design), looked for products that were contemporary, practical, technologically advanced, emphasized the inherent beauty of materials, and were visually unified. Early Good Design winners included Wright and Zeisel as well as others with an interest in the organic like Edith Heath, George Nelson, and Raymond Loewy.



Not only did flowing forms survive the more competitive environment of mid century design, in many ways (especially through Kaufmann's Good Design), it defined the period. It is a testament to the inherent connection consumers place on the ergonomic, the organic and the recognizable.

Design movements ebb and flow over time and edges soften and harden with increasing regularity. The latest crop of softer forms was coined in the late 1980's as blobjects, shorthand for blobby objects. Over the last decade blobs have taken the market by storm (just like the movie beast from the 1958 sci-fi cult classic). Unlike the organics of the past, today's global economic and social structures allow new designs to penetrate the market with amazing speed and acceptance. This is definitely the case with blobjects and the San Jose Museum of Art, with the help of guest curators Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov, rides the wave with Blobjects and Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design. Holt, former editor of I.D. Magazine and his wife Mara, an independent curator, collaborated to research, prepare, and present Blobjects and Beyond, the first exhibition dedicated to design in the San Jose museum's thirty five year history.



Talking about the genesis for the exhibition, Holt describes a beach vacation to the Hawaiian island of Kauai. He and his wife found themselves walking a funky beach littered with glass and ceramics. The beach debris had been shaped and smoothed by the action of the surf, and Holt was intrinsically drawn to the resulting objects. He brought a pile back to California and they sat on display at their home where Holt and Skov considered, and reconsidered, their attachment to these contemporary fossils.

They discussed the convergence of organics, aesthetics, culture, language, art, and technology. They determined that blobjects are an ideal visual representation of an increasingly fluid and changing world where borders and boundaries are disappearing and culture is being shared at a fever pitch. Furthermore Holt and Skov postulated that fluidity of form implies dynamism, communication, and progress-all signs of hope that instill blobby objects with an inherent optimism. This prompted the couple, four years ago, to approach the San Jose Museum of Art and ask them to consider an exhibition on the curvaceous and optimistic shapes that are being created by a new generation of designers.



Blobjects and Beyond is divided into a variety of blob categories with names like "proto-blobjects," "kandy-kolored," "fluid," "cutensils," "bio/exo/derma," and "chromified." In the multi-faceted rise and wide acceptance of the products, architecture, graphic design, and art that have oozed into every consumer market segment, these divisions attempt to make sense an uneven landscape. But because blobs tend to overlap and defy categorization the divisions seem irrelevant and are hard to follow.

The exhibition, which sheds light on what the curators call a critical cultural phenomenon, is by no means an exhaustive design survey. It includes blobjects from the late 1980's through the early 2000's and most all of the pieces in the show were designed and produced between 1999 and 2003-the high water mark for blobs. This small snapshot doesn't include any derivative organic forms from the early or mid twentieth century. Select source objects are included and briefly discussed in the excellent catalogue published by Chronicle Books that accompanies the exhibition. By sticking to what is current, Holt and Skov free their show from the complicated histories that can muddle a curatorial message. As the title of the exhibition notes, this is a new fluidity in design. That point could easily be argued, but Holt and Skov have the fallback position that new modeling software and new, cost effective technologies in fabrication allow today's crop of blobjects to morph and mutate into shapes that hand-designed blobjects of the past could never match, and in doing so differentiate themselves by leaps, bounds, and complex curves.



The show begins with proto-blobjects and the design-fathers of fluidity: Marc Newson, Philippe Starck, Ross Lovegrove, and the ever-present Karim Rashid (who joined the curators and Hartmut Esslinger, founder of frog design and leading proponent of the idea that "form follows emotion," for a casual round table discussion as part of the exhibition's opening festivities). Newson, with his iconic Lockheed Lounge, and Rashid, with the Farrago table lamp, almost simultaneously reengaged the design community in this renaissance of sensual form starting in the late 1980's. But there aren't very many of these trend-setting blobs on display, and the exhibition moves quickly through the early- and mid-1990's with few examples. Alessi, probably the most important company to shepherd neo-organicism from the design studio to the kitchen, is represented in this niche with Starck's Moosk radio from 1996, and La Cucina Elettrica, a set of domestic appliances designed in tandem with the Phillips Design Team in 1994.



Looking at blobjects quickly leaves you with the insight that they share a repetitive similarity of form. Holt and Skov, understanding that too many blobs could overwhelm (or underwhelm) visitors, didn't stuff the galleries with every curvy, ergonomic item they could find. Instead, with the help of Richard Karson, the museum's installation designer, they have attractively juxtaposed a few large-scale blobjects (like the Smart Car designed by the Merecedes-Benz Advanced Design Team, the Sparrow electric car designed by Mike Corbin, and Cory Ness' Curvaceousness motorcycle) with smaller objects that are spread evenly throughout several rooms.



There are a few standout pieces that rise above the rest in both their rarity and aesthetic beauty. Takahide Sano's Kumo vase is translucent, hand blown glass that takes its cue from cloud formations (the original blobjects?). The gentle pillow stands on a tripod of glass legs, delicate but ready to walk away at a moments notice. On a more personal side, the bone vibrator, designed by Tom Dixon and the pebble vibrator designed by Mari-Ruth Oda, both for Myla, are sensual forms for sensual times. Similar in shape to the bone vibrator are Phillipe Starck's POAA barbells. The title is a play on the French word for pounds, poids. It could also be a play on Marcel Duchamp's famous drawing of the Mona Lisa with a moustache titled LHOOQ, which loosely translates to 'she has a hot ass.' Leave it to Starck to design a beautiful object that, if used regularly, could lead to a hotter ass. Still, the show and its premise rely heavily on the work of the usual suspects (Rashid, Lovegrove, and Starck) and the object list skews in their favor.

In considering their rapid growth, Holt and Skov believe that Blobjects touch a core human desire to connect with organic forms and in turn have stimulated a rise in visual literacy at both the consumer and corporate level. The ease and efficiency of creating blobs, and their obvious success has also resulted in a crush of ergonomic curves. Perhaps too many. Some signs indicate that the pendulum is beginning to swing against the tide of fluidity. Apple Computer has moved away from bulbous, candy colors in favor of the harder edged iPods and the redesigned iMac; each now underscore materiality and technology over form. The curatorial proposition that blob appeal is part of an innate human connection to organics is valid and we should expect that blobjects, regardless of the fashion of the moment, will stick around well into the new century. Skov, in talking about this during the roundtable discussion with Rashid and Esslinger, staked out her position by noting that our first encounter with blobjects happens early on, when we are introduced to our mother's breast (an idea reinforced by Yves Behar's nipple-topped packaging for Philou's line of shampoo products).



While design critic Nicolai Ouroussoff of The New York Times bemoans the decline in the quality of architecture and design exhibitions, and notes a "rise in second rate shows organized by curators with little scholarly background or critical detachment," Blobjects and Beyond is neither second rate nor does it lack critical objectivity. The curators have eloquently detailed their thinking on how these shapes can force (and be forced by) culture, but unfortunately, that comes across best in the exhibition catalogue. The limitations of the exhibition format may have impeded Holt and Skov's ability to fill their show with deeper meaning. But the meaning is there if you look hard enough.

Blobs have always been about evolution. They are born, they grow, and they morph and mutate over time. They are a reflection of our own organic experience. You only need to go as far as the exhibition's co-curator for proof of concept. Having received a kidney transplant that began to lose function in 2000, and now battling cancer, Steven Skov Holt knows first-hand how seemingly foreign, yet still organic, shapes can have a lasting impact. Holt even jokes that he knows about design's true idiom: form follows infection.



Blobjects and Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design is on view at the San Jose Museum of Art through July 10, 2005.

www.sjmusart.org/blobjects