the victoria & albert

A few days ago, on my last day in London, I spent three hours at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Three hours despite being ruthless with what I saw there. 

My cousin Becky was disappointed I didn't see there collection of wedding dresses. She also thought I was cracked for racing through the jewellery collection on the way to the photographic exhibition.

Here are some of the things that stuck out for me:

The museum, especially their design collection, was a breath of fresh air after so much of the old stuff seen earlier on the trip.

In the design collection they have a Handspring Visor. An iMac. A Sony Vaio which, only 10 years old, looks ancient.

I had a Handspring Visor - the follow-up to the Palm Pilot.

They mention the iMac as being designed by Jonathan Ive. You hear his name a lot over here. This must be because he is from here.

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Seeing David Bowe's "Aladdin Sane" album cover and one of Elton John's outfits it seems that they might be more properly considered Lady Gaga's main influences more so than Madonna

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In the Gold exhibit there is a portrait of Charles I on bone china. Portraits of him are everywhere in this country, which I find interesting because it was he that was beheaded at the start of Cromwell's interregnum.

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Theatre and Performance exhibit

On Creating

"The process of creation differs from artist to artist but always springs from the premise that something must, could or should be created."

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Post-Modern Exhibit

"…the working parts of electronic devices were so small that they did not dictate anything about form: 'if mechanical design is about function, then electronic design will be about decoration.'"

-George Sowden

This was echoed by Ives in the documentary Objectified where he pointed to an iPhone and talked about how to this point in time, the purpose of an object was obvious from its design. A chair looked like a chair. A toaster looked like a toaster. But now, with the iPhone, it's not possible to discern the objects utility from its shape.

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They had a copy of the cover the May 1986 issue of the New Socialist Magazine. Despite being 25 years old the front cover stories wouldn't be out of place today:

"Style Wars"

"israel's Unholy Alliance"

"Feminism and class politics"

"Fall-Out Over Libya"

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"As the 'designer decade' wore on and the world economy boomed, many post-modernists participated enthusiastically in a culture obsessed with wealth and status. Ultimately, this was the undoing of the movement. Postmodernism collapsed under the weight of its own success."

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Magnificent that the PoMo exhibit ends by spilling you into its own specialized gift shop.