Il Salone / la Città (The Salone / The City). An exhibition of exhibitions

MP: The exhibition layout was built on a critical reading of the many exhibitions that were held regularly from the Sixties onwards. The themes were interpreted and brought together to form a poetic mise-en-scene with a synedochal logic. The aim is to encourage visitors to carry out a visual and oblique reading, without the need for a chronological exhibition of events promoted by the Salone. It’s not a historic exhibition in the classic sense. For example, it begins with the concept of the archive, a record of what has happened. The archive is rendering the memory of these years visible, but there are two symbolic pieces of furniture in the centre, separated by a large double mirror: a chest of drawers by the School of Giuseppe Maggiolini, one of the first Salone exhibitions, and another chest of drawers from the late Twenties by Gio Ponti. It is the beginning of a story, a subtle, reflective threshold between the great Italian craftsman and the awareness that in-dustry is built on savoir faire.

MP: There are nine sections. The first is devoted to critical reflection on the changing languages of furniture, underscoring the two factors that led to the setting up of the trade fair. On one hand the existence of an established Italian industrial body and on the other the desire to capture and affirm an Italian identity through furniture design, the meaning of design and the critical spirit of the designer. A major exhibition, Mobili Italiani 1961/1991. Le Varie Età dei Linguaggi (Italian Furniture 1961/1991. Languages through the Various Ages) illustrated this theme very clearly, going back over the unrest that marked the first 30 years of the Salone, an intense period that spanned the economic boom and the limits on public consumerism. Another section is devoted to the great masters, a series of one man shows that demonstrate the ideational wealth of Italian and international design through a number of figures such as Ponti, Sottsass, Magistretti and Aalto, with no rhetorical intent or pretension to exhaustiveness. The theme of Italian identity, or genius loci and Made in Italy, draws on the exhibition held to mark the 40th anniversary of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in 2001, in which design and fashion, symbols of Italian style and much more besides, were intertwined for the first time. Here a beehive contains original images from the documentary archives of the Salone and materials from the Design Museum.
Another powerful theme relates to the philosophies of home living, tackled by various exhibitions and media more closely associated with a historical and critical spirit or the pursuit of research and experimentation, theatre and dance for example, or the theme of food and its rituals, which has natural repercussions on the commercial rationale of the Salone. An unusual Last Supper will engage the public and facilitate their interpretation of this section. Then there’s the theme of ecolo-gy, or rather the constraints to production, represented by awnings carrying images of some of the installations and one of communication: advertising, the posters have been condensed into one sin-gle scenic object.

MS: It has completely changed. Originally what the Salone wanted to do was to communicate a commercial event, i.e. the opportunity to visit a fair that sold furniture; subsequently it began to communicate the objects, so the people – businesspeople and designers, who had become famous in the meantime – and the lifestyles and experiences that design transmitted. Until relatively recently, when communication picked up on contemporary cultural themes, the new demands and urgencies of the social agenda. This exhibition highlights the way in which communication has always addressed an international audience and how the design industry has managed to draw in graphic artists, photographers, and designers, whose part in the creative chain it recognised; artists, famous authors for the city installations and theatrical performances, world famous art directors …
MP: such as Massimo Vignelli, who carved out the Salone’s first corporate identity and produced the graphics for some of the exhibitions, to whom we wanted to pay tribute in the section devoted to the masters. The communication methods certainly reflect the spirit of the times. Over the years the Salone has opened up to different reflections, on the relationship between industry and design-er, for instance: more than 20 years of SaloneSatellite are proof of that. Looking to the
present, the general public seems more inclined towards the performative dimension, entertainment and the approach mechanism to things is mediated by the technologies - extremely effective but also standardised.

MS: The city has never been just a background to exhibitions for the Salone, but a fabric on which to hold the events that – albeit temporary – have established a tradition. The title Mario chose for the exhibition underscores the overlap and the closeness between the two entities. An event and a context that feed off each other, to such an extent that over time the city has increasingly regis-tered the presence of design throughout the year on a daily basis.
MP: That’s because each of these events is Milan. Starting with the Triennale, a container that embodies the way cities are lived. Increasingly it’s fair to say that the city is the Salone every day. You only need to look at how the cultural policy of the municipality has been inspired by the Salone and Fuorisalone over the years.
MS: Which makes the sharing and internationalisation of this particular week a model that the city could adopt on other occasions.

MP: A black and white photograph that I’ve placed in the section devoted to the genius loci and Made in Italy. It portrays a spherical silvered vase with holes for individual flowers designed by BBPR in 1940 (signed by Banfi, Peressutti and Belgiojoso but not by Rogers, who had already had to flee from Italy) and produced for the seventh Triennale. I was struck by the idea, the original shape for the times. Not just that – a while ago I designed a very similar object, a marble vase like a bowling ball and with a number of holes for individual flowers. A coincidence, a surprise, but perhaps everything goes round.