THE ART OF LIVING 2028 - BY LIDEWIJ EDELKOORT
Recently the language of art and design has become similar, correlating in their conceptualisation and materialisation, proposing similar points of view of our current chaotic and fearful lives. Both are concerned with the planet and its people, its fluidity and diversity, its romantic brutalism, and its ruins to be picked up as valuable resources for creation. Both insist on telling stories but also try to seek refuge in the abstraction of modernism.
Making sense of the present while opening up to possible futures. The art of living becomes the new goal, profiting from personal choices and indulging in strange combinations, exalting in unique finds, mixing old and new, making the most of all moments.
A common ground for a culture that wants to appease and ground people, healing as a prerequisite for a better existence, a safer place. A fascination with aesthetics as a moral medication that allows us to design and communicate, transforming consumers into collectors, creating awareness about the benefit of beauty. Hence the surprising realisation that both disciplines use the art of MARBLE, WOOD and recently GLASS, and that both plebiscite the heavier art of METAL, of thrown EARTH and of narrative NATURE. That shapes are generous and sinuous in the repetitive art of UNDULATION and constructive in the art of the GRID and reassuring, even reconnecting, in the art of ABSTRACTION. Organic and almost elastic forms emerge in the art of SCULPTURE, as they do when reconstructed and emotional in the art of RUINS, promising the end of an era. All disciplines, including fashion, are inspired by the art of COLOUR, as a new way to live in half tone harmony.
While outsider art and artefacts continue to be fascinated by the art of FOLK, carrying on the hand painting and embellishing of basic goods. A special mention is needed for an emerging trend towards modesty and restraint, where
the arms and legs of chairs are upholstered, concealed in tweeds and tapestries and by the overwhelming art of VEILING and curtains, gathered around stools and cabinets, decorating spaces, bringing secrecy and mystery to public and private interiors. Both ideas strangely resemble the Victorian era when the legs of tables and chairs had to be hidden from sight with fabrics, away from the overwhelming prudishness of those times. Long sleeves, long gloves, long skirts and long hair are infiltrating fashion. Does this mean that a moral revival is imminent? – Lidewij Edelkoort
