Before i talk about the wall clock, I want to give a background of Memphis group. We need to go way back to 19th — 20th century though.
A lot of people have their own definition and interprentation of post-modern design, Most of them lead to architectural view, But what we want to focus on right now is the product at that era. Now let’s talk a little bit of history, it’s going to be a lot but i’ll try my best to explain what i capture from different resources. Postmodernism is more complicated than you think. But with the help of jean baudrillard, a well-known french French sociologist, philosopher and poet who take an interest of culture and hypereality, he help us understand better about postmodernism.
There are 3 stages development of art based on jean baudrillard, Theres pre modern era, at that time painters, sculptures and writers represent it through their arts with the their own understanding of the world at the time, and that is the reality. they applied reality through culture with their arts. Not long after, Modern era comes in and in this era we already know how to produce image, film and printing. This all started because of Industrial Revolution. Now of course films and images looks more alive than paintings because it captured at that exact moment. this is what jean baudrillard call a simulation. After the world war, new ideas are starting to emerge and this era rejected the old past and creating a new and sort of efficiency in art.
And finally we have come to PostModernism era. To put it simply, After premodern and modern era, There’s a lot of media produced, Massive media and there’s a diversity to it. We are so surrounded by the media at those era that we inevitably need it for references to make a product. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological, pluralism, irony, clecticism and many more, It rejects the universal validity.
“ All of my explanation here are inspired or a summarize from Mr. Jordan Peterson from The Media Insider. “
Now let’s dive deep about Memphis. Memphis Group born in 1980, A group of young italian designers and architects led by Ettore Sottsass were discussing the future of design. Together, they wanted to change the concept of what design had been focused on, which had been Modernism. they all have the same Opinion, which was their dislikes towards modernism minimalist design style. While the designers were brainstorming, Bob Dylan’s record “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” was playing on repeat. The name ‘Memphis’ was finally found. ‘Memphis’ represent Tennessee, USA, and ancient Egypt’s capital city. The duality was hand in hand with Memphis Design Style aesthetics of art deco with the aesthetics of 1950s kitsch and mass-produced pop art objects. Three months later in 1981 the Memphis group share hundreds of Drawing and materials that clash with the balanced proportions of Modernism. Therefore, the Memphis Design movement outlined the post-modernist aesthetic.
Now let’s talk about the Memphis wall clock, shall we?
This a Wall clock produced by Kley & Co. They combine Memphis and Scandinavian design together. We can see the Memphis touch based on the color choices, We have an abstract color choices as well a chaotic and complex asymmetrical shapes. For the Scandinavian design, we can see how minimilastic and simple function this clock , That is to tell the time and how easily to hang it on the wall. This Memphis wall clock also have a bit of influence from kitsch art in 1950’s, it’s a poor design yet conspicuous so people sometimes appreciate it but in a ironic way. We could also see semiotics is applied here, Since most of us knows what and how wall clock works, We could tell the signs Such as the minute and hour hand. The hour hand is the longer one and the minute hand is the shorter one. and without the numbers we could tell from our habit of watching wall clocks that the dots on the clock represent the hours.
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