| Critical Design in Japan: Material Culture, Luxury, and the Avant-Garde Contributor(s): Bartal, Ory (Author), Ryan, James (Editor), Breward, Christopher (Editor) |
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ISBN: 1526139979 ISBN-13: 9781526139979 Publisher: Manchester University Press OUR PRICE: $123.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 2020 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Art | Asian - Japanese - Design | History & Criticism |
| Series: Studies in Design and Material Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6.9" W x 9.5" (1.70 lbs) 248 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Japanese |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This book tells the story of critical avant-garde design in Japan, which emerged during the 1960s and continues to inspire designers today. The practice communicates a form of visual and material protest drawing on the ideologies and critical theories of the 1960s and 1970s, notably feminism, body politics, the politics of identity, and ecological, anti-consumerist and anti-institutional critiques, as well as the concept of otherness. It also presents an encounter between two seemingly contradictory concepts: luxury and the avant-garde. The book challenges the definition of design as the production of unnecessary decorative and conceptual objects, and the characterisation of Japanese design in particular as beautiful, sublime or a product of 'Japanese culture'. In doing so it reveals the ways in which material and visual culture serve to voice protest and formulate a social critique. |