1960s debate on arts and crafts and design in Sweden. The Critics’ Salon of the Swedish Art Critics Association visits the Tuesday Club

Tuesday, 5 April 2011, 19:00

In the 1960s, industrial designers were criticized for being immoral junk makers, and artisans for supplying the bourgeoisie with exclusive status symbols. What was art, handicraft or politics? Free embroideries, rugged silver, new clay, glazing or oil paint; the artistic genres were eroding. The difference between utility goods and free art was erased while the Duchamp aesthetics claimed it was the observer who decided what was art. Arts and crafts attracted much attention at Liljevalchs and the National Museum, but still remained marginalized. Cilla Robach structures and close reads the debate on this bewildering period in her thesis “The Liberation of the Form” from 2010.

Cilla Robach, design historian and curator at the National Museum since 1998, will relate the debate on arts and crafts and design in the 1960s. Afterwards there will be a discussion with the author of the book, former professor of design history at Konstfack Kerstin Wickman and the Swedish Art Critics Association chairman Christian Chambert.

A bar serving light food will be open from 18:30.

Address: Konstnärsklubben, 2nd floor, Smålandsgatan 7, Stockholm. Ring door bell marked ”Konstnärsklubben”.

The evening is arranged by the Swedish Art Critics Association in collaboration with the Tuesday Club – the meeting place for artists at Konstnärshuset (the Artists’ House) on the first Tuesday of every month.

This event is held in Swedish.