SALONE NEWS in Milan
by Masayuki Kurokawa

SALONE NEWS 2007 in Milan vol.6
Common Patterns

2007/04/20
I’m obsessed with patterns. I remember, 40 years ago, I was always asking myself what ‘decoration’ should be like. And I thought that without attaining the ultimate answer for this question, it might be impossible to know the essential nature of designs. I recently started to work on the production of porcelain in Jingdezhen in China. There, I encountered characteristic antique patterns the excellence of which moved me and, at the same time, began to make me suspect that something seems to be wrong with modern platter-drawings like those of present day Jingdezhen porcelain.

I believe, while drawings are allowed to be unique individualistic arts, decorative patterns should be common expressions shared by the members of their community. I think ‘design’ was originated as such common expressions in communities but not as individualistic art-works. I believe modern design has realized the embodiment of a certain kind of common expressions with their universal nature acquired in the process of its development.

China, however, because of civil wars, didn’t enjoy the developmental period for modernization that the outside world went through. While the rest of the world was acquiring the ideas of design, China didn’t give birth even to the concept of design. Most professors of the graphic design course of Fudan University’s Visual Art School where I’m teaching as a guest lecturer are artists but not designers.
I assume it’s the character particular to China that didn’t go through the period of modernization, which gave no chance for the concept of design to develop. In China it’s not rare journalists ask me what the difference between art and design is.

When I was pondering over the meaning of decorative patterns, observing China, the concept of the ‘common element of community’ hit upon me. I also realized that ‘design’ is related with the idea of community, as decorative patterns are.
Now let me mention my idea concerning the meaning of decorating furniture with patterns. By not regarding them as just ornamental elements, not regarding them as artistic drawings but by regarding them as the patterns to be accepted as the common expression shared by the members of their community, the modern significance of design will manifest itself. Design for its own sake will come to be clear.
The reason why we can feel the estheticism of modern world in the paintings of such people who lived from the end of 19th Century to the beginning of 20th Century as Gustav Klimt, Yumeji Takehisa seems to me to be related with the common decorative nature that ‘design’ is required to have. Then, how about the works of Ogata Kourin? It must be not an exception, I believe.

There was a crowd of people around the furniture with great decorative patterns I found at a small corner.