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.

POSTMODERN: New languages in art: the philosophies of the ’80s

Saturday, 26 February, 15:00

Place: The Auditorium of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Philosophy and theory gained great influence on the creation of art and on the interpretations of visual arts in the 1980s. Jean Baudrillard, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Fredric Jameson, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan and Jean-Francois Lyotard were obvious references in the discourse. In art academies a gradual switch took place from teaching technical skills to concept-based knowledge. Today it is difficult to tell theory from practice.

Conversation: Sara Danius, professor of aesthetics at Södertörn University; Lars O. Ericsson; philosopher and art writer; Gertrud Sandqvist, professor of art theory and history of ideas at the Malmö Art Academy; Cecilia Sjöholm, professor of aesthetics at Södertörn University; Kim West, editor of Site and Oei.

Moderator: Daniel Birnbaum, museum director at the Moderna Museet.

Follow-up gathering: Deconstructed Piano Music. Piano bar with Eva Sidén who, among other things, will perform Om Om, 5 Minimalistic Piano Pieces and Small talks with melodies from the 80s.

More information: www.modernamuseet.se/sv/Stockholm/Program/Programserie-Postmodernt/

Moderna Museet together with Södertörn University and the Swedish Art Critics Association.

The conversation will be held in Swedish.