Starck Reality
PHILIPPE STARCK
“The best everyday example of relativity, the finest symptom of human intelligence, is humour … Design without humour is not human. The word “beautiful” does not mean anything. Only coherence counts. An object, design or not, is primarily an object that meets the parameters of human intelligence, which reconciles opposites. The lack of humour is the definition of vulgarity.” — Philippe Starck
We’re now so used to seeing works by the likes of Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967), Jean Royère (1902-1981) and Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) et al that in recent years Paris’ many gallerists have been looking for something new. Despite an array of works by French modernists, by far one of the most interesting pieces at the 2022 edition of PAD London was an Illusion table (1992) in bronze and moulded glass by French industrial designer Philippe Starck (b. 1949), shown by Galerie Jousse Entreprise, which seemed somehow radical in its restrained simplicity and purity of form. Asked about the renewed interest in his work, Stark opines, “It’s completely artificial because they think I’m going to die, so one must increase the market value. It’s normal speculation in the field of artistic creation.” This is, of course, a typically droll and modest reply from the man who put French product design on the world stage, but in essence, the real reason for his earlier work being put back under the spotlight, in a similar way to that of designers Andrée Putman (1925-2013), Olivier Gagnère and Garouste & Bonetti, is that we’re finally realising the 1980s and 90s has more to offer in design terms than shoulder pads, conspicuous consumption and “heroin chic”. Starck’s pioneering post-modern work brazenly subverts classical forms in a way which seems simultaneously radical and familiar; the most famous example of which, perhaps, being his crystalline Louis Ghost Chair (2002), created in collaboration with Italian furniture retailer Kartell, which, along with products such as the Juicy Salif (1990) citrus squeezer (part spaceship, part tentacled sea creature, sketched on a napkin when Starck was at a restaurant, waiting for a slice of lemon to go with his squid — and now part of the permanent collections at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the V&A in London), Heritage chair (2001), and Miss K table lamp (2003-2004), as well as innumerable hotels and restaurants worldwide, which quickly led to his becoming a household name.
Starck’s interiors for futuristic Asian fusion restaurant Kong, on the fifth floor of a Haussmann building, at the summit of Kenzo’s Paris headquarters — a somewhat unexpected juxtaposition of Japanese pop and seventeenth-century French — became an overnight success, with the city’s glitterati all desperate to bag a table. Indeed, along with Colette, Fouquet’s and Maxim’s, globally speaking, it became such an innate part of Paris’ urban cultural landscape, that it took the spotlight in season six of Sex and the City, An American Girl in Paris (Part Une) (2004) when sex columnist and fashion plate Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker (b. 1965)) made an ill-advised move to the City of Lights in pursuit of her latest squeeze, Aleksandr Petrovsky (played by Mikhail Baryshnikov (b. 1948), a divorced conceptual artist staging an exhibition at Jeu de Paume (what could be more French…). Early on in the episode Bradshaw arrives at the restaurant, late, to meet Petrovsky’s ex-wife, Juliet, played by non-other than César Award-winning actress Carole Bouquet (b. 1957). Having been led to her table by aristocratic French supermodel Caroline de Maigret (b. 1975) (so as to further ramp up Parisian stereotypes), Bradshaw, enamoured by her Starck-designed surroundings exclaims, “Wow, this is a fantastic restaurant”. An elegantly silk-sheathed Bouquet looking around icily, unimpressed, replies, “Yes, it used to be, not so much any more. These chairs they’re hideous. Hideous”, in reference to the bespoke Louis Ghost chairs emblazoned with a serigraphy decor of three faces “representative of the Kong spirit” (actress Audrey Hepburn, the classical Geisha and modern Kawaï from Omotesando). This, essentially, summed up the contemporaneous attitude of the haute bourgeois apropos Starck’s design, which, through over-saturation, had already rather lost its sheen. However, twenty years later, the art and design world, which, more often than not, is entirely cyclical, in terms of trends, has once again come to appreciate the designer’s extensive body of work, a result of a radical and humorous vision, which served to make Starck an international celebrity.
The “Phil Lizner” (1988) bar stool in aluminium by Philippe Starck, part of the recent exhibition at Galerie Jousse Entreprise
Asian fusion restaurant “Kong”, designed by Philippe Starck, on the fifth floor of a Haussmann building, at the summit of Kenzo’s Paris headquarters
In terms of advertising and unbridled creativity, Starck’s work embodied eighties Paris like that of no other designer, and it’s perhaps of little surprise those gate-keepers of great Parisian galleries have come to realise his art-historical significance. As such, the designer’s work has, already this year, been spotlighted in a trio of exhibitions, evincing a renewed interest in Starck’s extensive oeuvre. Années 80. Mode, design et graphisme en France at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (through April 16) includes Starck’s furniture pieces alongside works by fellow designers Martin Szekely (b. 1956), Élisabeth Garouste (b. 1946) and Mattia Bonetti (b. 1952), as well as Jean-Paul Goude’s (b. 1938) now iconic and androgynous photographs of model, musician and actress Grace Jones (b. 1948) and fashion by the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier (b. 1952) and Thierry Mugler (1945-2022). Starck’s whimsical Fauteuil Club (1983), acquired during François Mitterrand’s (1916-1996) presidency for the bedroom of his wife, Danielle (1924-2011), at the Elysée Palace (on the say-so, naturally, of then Culture Minister Jack Lang (b. 1939)), serves only further to highlight the designer’s institutional importance. Part of the Collection du Mobilier National, the Fauteuil Club typifies Starck’s anti-bourgeois approach; by hollowing out an archetypal leather club chair, replacing the main body with a moulded aluminium seat and two metal legs (eventually one in a later incarnation, the Richard III armchair (1985), designed as a gift to Mitterrand for his reading room in the Presidential apartment), Starck was upending affluent associations society imputes certain items of furniture or design. His work is also the subject of two gallery shows: Philippe Starck: UBIK, a retrospective exhibition at Ketabi Bourdet gallery focusing on the furniture he designed in the 1980s, most of which sport names taken from American writer Philip K. Dick’s (1928-1982) groundbreaking 1969 science-fiction novel, set in a future 1992 where psychic powers are utilized in corporate espionage. In Philippe Starck: Mobilier 1970-1987 the designer explains, “My furniture often has curious names... they are taken from Ubik, a novel … which fascinates me by its very real intuition of modernity. I had said, and I think I’m going to deny it, that I would stop creating furniture when I had used all the names contained in this book. There is only one left”.
Starck’s avant-garde design for the “Felix”(1994) restaurant and bar, perched atop Hong Kong’s historic Peninsula Hotel
Reading between the lines, the novel appears as a kind of manifesto to Starck’s work throughout the 1980s, and as such, provides certain keys to understanding, or rather, interpreting it. In total, nearly sixty pieces are named after the writer’s characters, with some slight modifications, for e.g. changing a letter, the first name or even the sex; Joe Chip becomes Joe Ship, Sammy Mundo becomes Lola Mundo, etc. Christine Colin in her 1989 book on Starck even goes so far as to wryly hypothesise, “Everything suggests that Starck, the designer, was born not in France but in ‘Science Fiction’, with Ubik”. Among the pieces on display were Starck’s gracefully sloping Pat Conley II armchair (1983), the fluorescent neon Easylight (1979), which, in its minimalist simplicity, is reminiscent of Dan Flavin’s (1933-1996) colourful glowing, totems, and the Dr Sonderbar armchair (1983), in tubular steel and perforated sheet metal, its elegant, ellipsoidal form teetering on three slimline legs. Similarly, after the success of their 2020 exhibition Philippe Starck, the 80’s, Parisian heavy hitters Matthias and Philippe Jousse of Galerie Jousse Entreprise are currently staging a second exhibition, showcasing a selection of characteristic objects and furniture that have been produced in small series, as well as prototypes such as that for the now instantly recognisable Coste chair (1984) and an extraordinary pair of cast aluminium Tito Lucifer andirons (1986). Essentially, after Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967), Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) and Pierre Paulin (1927-2009), for those collectors looking for the “next big thing” in terms of twentieth-century collectable design, Starck’s work is a safe bet. “I discovered Starck as a teenager and when I visited the Royalton [Hotel] in New York, I found it revolutionary because it was the precursor of boutique hotels,” enthuses gallery director Matthias Jousse, who started collecting the designer’s works six years ago. “Starck is one of the only French designers known internationally, like Andrée Putman. What he made was very contemporary for its era [and] is still very contemporary in 2023.”
Starck’s work never stops pushing the limits and criteria of design, and whilst he has, indisputably, become one of the most acclaimed contemporary creators, as he likes to put it, he is most of all “a careful observer of our humanity and an explorer of possibilities”. This is, in essence, the starting point from which he draws his visions and puts them into practice in places and objects that are “good”, i.e. objects that work, before being “beautiful”. This is not only the case for products of everyday life, such as the furniture and utilitarian objects for which he’s best known, but also revolutionary mega-yachts, as well intensely vibrant and phantasmagorical hotels and restaurants which set the pace in terms of design innovation and technology. “I don’t think anything of the past,” Stark muses, “I’ve always thought about the future but never about the past.” In the early 1980s, the designer enjoyed close working relationships with a number of major international editors, especially those in Italy, fostering mutual respect and simpatico that allowed for an output that was increasingly liberated and visionary. At the core of Starck’s practice, is a mission statement that whatever form creation takes, fundamentally, it should aim at improving people’s lives for the better; this is why he began with the egalitarian mission of creating urban furniture, with a relatively low price point, designed to be used by anybody. This can be seen for example in his collection with JCDecaux, the largest outdoor advertising corporation in the world (known for its bus stop billboards and highly visible street furniture), for which he created a revolutionary street lamp, Streetlight (1992), or the cast aluminium cantilever chairs for Parc de la Villette (1984), which seem to operate outwith the laws of gravity. Representative of their time and a forerunner to Stark’s future works, all of these extraordinary creations showed the designer’s instantly recognisable paw; the elegance of materials reduced to their bare minimum, with a stripped-back, often monochromatic design, with the focus on producing products as beautiful as they are functional. That is, to exclude his citrus squeezer, which, looked at from a user standpoint, is not the best example of architect Louis Sullivan’s (1856-1924) much-parroted modernist maxim, form follows function, especially for those with marble counters; though in defence of his streamlined space-age creation Starck has explained: “I have this mental sickness called creativity. My juicer is not meant to squeeze lemons; it is meant to start conversations.” So there we go - for all those who’ve fallen victim to lemon juice in the eye, it’s all part of a wider academic discourse on the ramifications of democratic ecology.
The “Royalton” chair prototype (1988) designed by Philippe Starck, part of the exhibition “Philippe Starck, the 80’s” at Galerie Jousse Entreprise
Besides furniture, Starck is known for his architecture and interior design, creating unconventional and stimulating places, for which he has achieved global recognition. In the 1970s and 80s, the designer turned his hand to nightclubs, resurrecting a former nineteenth-century bathhouse, Les Bains Douches (which became a playground to the Parisian beau monde, including couturier Yves Saint-Laurent (1936-2008) and actress Catherine Deneuve (b. 1943)), followed by La Main Bleue (1976) in Montreuil, which, Starck said, was designed as a “black hole”, a place that celebrates “the darker side of youth”, and the Starck Club (1984), which, when ecstasy was still legal, became the most hedonistic forward thinking club in America; which was located, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, in the buttoned-up, conservative city of Dallas, Texas. Entering the 1990’s Starck focused himself on hospitality, and of particular significance, was his avant-garde design for the Felix (1994) restaurant and bar, perched atop Hong Kong’s historic Peninsula Hotel. “It was in creating the Felix restaurant that I was able to check what I later applied in my hotels,” proffers Starck. “The most important is not the beauty of a place, it is that the place can transport people elsewhere, out of themselves especially, transport them to the best.” Starck’s fascination with futuristic forms and materials comes from his father, André Starck, an aeronautical engineer (remembered for inventing the twist-up lipstick tube and non-slip coating), who instilled in him the idea that research is a mission, meaning that one should create for the largest demographic. “A long time ago, when I started designing, I felt [the profession] was very elitist. There were beautiful but very expensive pieces, made only for the few. I felt this was unfair,” Stark explains of his ethos and approach. “According to me, if you have the honour of being visited by a good idea, your duty is to share it with as many people as possible. So I came up with the concept of democratic design. Creation, whatever form it takes, must improve the lives of as many people as possible. It is about trying to provide great design, in the best quality at affordable prices.”
This was a radical point in design history, in the sense of its being a departure from that which had gone before, but especially so in France, a country where, even with the advent of modernism, designers, architects and decorators, unlike for example, those from the contemporaneous Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, were not interested in mass production; thus, the avant-garde works of Perriand, Prouvé and Pierre Chareau (1883-1950) et al, although less expensive than that of their Art Deco forbears (which were often veneered in precious woods and ivory and outwith the reach of all but an elite), remained luxurious, and tied to the high-quality, labour-intensive craftsmanship that had set French decorative arts apart since the eighteenth century. Starck’s wholesale rethink apropos the built environment and product design can in part be explained by the revolutionary social changes precipitated by the Paris uprising of May 1968, regarded as a model for libertarian possibilities, resulting in a more populist and democratic mode of thought. “French taste was conservative then. Every bourgeois dining room mantelpiece had two candlesticks either side of a clock,” explains Putman, whose egalitarian philosophy preempted what was a revolutionary sea change. “We were fighting to breathe new life into French culture.” Arguably, Stark’s more than just a household name, essentially, he popularised the idea of cheap and chic, and in doing so, became the best-known designer of the 1980s; as such, he’s a physical presence, at least by proxy, in countless homes around the world, with his now iconic, affordable designs bringing high-concept contemporary style to an aesthetically driven mass market. In 1880 English textile designer William Morris issued his now famous edict, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Starck has, in effect, taken this one step further, operating under the premise that every item in your home can be both. At 73 years of age, the designer is currently working with Axiom Space on a living module for an international space station, as well as Orbite, a training complex for future astronauts; and what could be more appropriate for a future-centric designer, explorer, the son of an aircraft engineer than to set his sight on worlds beyond our own. A multihyphenate in the true spirit of the Renaissance, looking back over his working life, and approach to design, Starck offers simply: “Nobody has to be a genius, but everyone has to participate.”