Learning from Lucienne Roberts
Lucienne Roberts is her own gesamtkunstwerk — a history, disposition, and design practice rolled into a singular, admirable, force.
by Allison Goodman
19 July, 2018
Culminating the month of June in residence at the HMCT, Lucienne Roberts’ “nice” exhibition opened in the Center’s gallery on 28 June (http://hmctartcenter.org/exhibition/nice/). Earlier in her residency, Lucienne and colleague Dave Shaw presented an overview of their work titled “SUBURBIA.” The conversation began with Lucienne’s recollection of her childhood home as an architectural response to the destruction and privation of WWII. Lucienne’s second inescapable cultural reference was bracketing her presentation with two references to Catholicism… her beloved convent education, and her 2016 self-initiated publication Looking Good: A Visual Guide to the Nun’s Habit. Looking Good is described by her publishing house, GraphicDesign&, as a cataloguing and comparison of “this ‘extra ordinary’ religious clothing” with accompanying text that reveals “how the story of the habit is also that of the struggle between the powerful and the poor; of politics, social care and the role of women; and of the interplay between culture, fashion and faith.”
That, in a nutshell, is also a description of Lucienne Roberts’ interpretation of the world around her; as a person, and as a designer.
I’m certainly not among the first to observe the connection. When inducted into the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) in 2013, Lucienne was described as having “a utopian zeal.” And because her work in the 80s and 90s was so important — even if not in the deconstructed fashion of the day — Lucienne was included as a signatory of the “First Things First Manifesto, 2000.”(https://www.emigre.com/Essays/Magazine/FirstThingsFirstManifesto2000) The Manifesto includes the pledge, “We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication… in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.”
Lucienne’s devotion to deploying design for societal good was not only apparent in Looking Good but through other projects presented during SUBURBIA such as On Solid Ground, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Women, Fashion, Power, and An Idiosyncratic A-Z of the Human Condition. (Lucienne’s catalogue raisonné of writing and design is well documented on the web, most easily found at luciennerobertsplus.com.)
The evening after the SUBURBIA lecture, I had the opportunity to speak with Lucienne about her recent presentation. My first questions were about the cultural references mentioned above: WWII and Catholicism. Not surprisingly, Lucienne wove the two together in a revealing tale of childhood experiences, family history, and the political and social unrest today — both universally and within her own heart and her own mind.
Like her mother before her, Lucienne was sent to a convent school that she describes as a vividly good experience where she learned to see faith as a means of global understanding. While not extraordinary in its own right, the story of her Catholic schooling does become remarkable as Lucienne explains that only as an adult did she find out that her Austrian-born grandmother was Jewish, something even her mother never knew.
The discovery was made while Lucienne and family were researching genealogy in Vienna, Austria. Unexpectedly, they found records that located Lucienne’s family in the old Jewish Quarter of the city. Lucienne’s continuing amazement was palpable during our conversation as she described further discoveries; including that her great-grandparent’s headstone had survived the Nazi occupation and meeting her mother’s cousin who had been hidden by the Austrian resistance.
But it wasn’t nostalgia that Lucienne took away from those genealogical revelations, but rather a clarity regarding future choices that may arise… might she have to hide a Muslim in her basement one day? When will she know that it is time to take counter-measures? To take to the streets? Lucienne even spoke of her phone’s data as evidence of her progressive ideals, understanding that should society change its standards, her phone could easily be used to indict her. Like many others with a profound connection to war, depression, famine, etc., Lucienne firmly believes that we are not immune to repetition of the type of events that once drove her family to emigrate, and into hiding.
For now, it is through design that Lucienne demonstrates and practices a vigilance that seems to have been with her always. Her “adherence to the principles of modernism,” mentioned in her AGI biography, are a rationality and simplicity that compel Lucienne to see the world around her as open to messages of hope. As declared on the LucienneRoberts+ website, “We believe that ethical design is defined by its ability to increase quality of life alongside the message it conveys.” That is the synthesis that Lucienne lives — and designs — by.
