As Long as It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste
From the Publisher. In this book Penny Sparke argues that “taste” has been a quality assigned to women while “design” is a man-made construction that has taken aesthetic authority away from women. She uses familiar objects of our everyday environments—furniture, cars and domestic appliances and interiors—to look at how taste has become a gendered issue in our culture. Ever since the industrial revolution, the cluttered interior has been associated with femininity while the minimal forms of modernist architecture have acted as markers of a masculine aesthetic. This in turn has succeeded in trivializing and marginalizing women’s material culture. Ranging across histories of domesticity, feminine consumption and home-making, as well as modern design and broader cultural theories, Penny Sparke offers a rethinking of the history of our modern material culture.
This is a fantastic book for anyone who doubts the infallibility of modernism, or who harbors a secret admiration for pop and kitsch. I am sure it is too one-sided to make for a good textbook in design schools, but I enjoyed it, learned from it, and really respect Sparke for writing it.
I am eternally indebted to Alec Bernstein from Designworks USA for turning me on to this masterpiece, along with three others on my list—An Essay on Typography, The Nude, and Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons. He’s a smart guy.
Announcements
Save the Date for This Year’s Designers & Books Festival: November 12, 2016, NYC
Designers & Books Festival: Onstage & Backstage 2016™
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Fashion Institute of Technology
Katie Murphy Amphitheater
7th Avenue and 27th Street
New York, New York
A full day of programming that celebrates the special relationship between the deisgn commuinty and books.
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For more information, contact: info@designersandbooks.com
Details on Designers & Books Fair 2015™
See the Work of Illustrators Revolutionizing Italian Publishing: September 29–October 26, 2016, NYC
Cover Revolution! Illustrators and the New Face of Italian Publishing
Opening, Thursday, September 29, 2016
Italian Cultural Institute
686 Park Avenue
New York, New York
“Cover Revolution!” is an exhibition and book (published by Corraini Editions) featuring work by the most popular and beloved Italian illustrators active in book design, including Lorenzo Mattotti, Franco Matticchio, Guido Scarabottolo, Gianluigi Toccafondo, Emiliano Ponzi, and Olimpia Zagnoli. Curated by Melania Gazzotti.
Details and to RSVP: http://bit.ly/2cy6iBw
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