Exhibition

Depot Show Product and Society: White

6 June - 31 August 2014

What do a Cubist teapot by Kasimir Malevich, a table lamp by Elio Martinelli and a Chinese wine beaker from the Qing Period have in common?

Nothing, you would think. True, all three objects are in the collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst, but they come from completely different regions and utilization contexts. The only thing that makes them similar is the colour white.

In this Depot Show, the Museum Angewandte Kunst is presenting objects whose shared theme is white material: from early forms of Chinese porcelain of the Tang and Song Periods (seventh to thirteenth centuries) and Neoclassicist craftwork to Jugendstil, Art Déco and the product design of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Wherever it appears, the reduction to white introduces an element of concentration. The form takes centre stage, and the absence of colour sets the object apart from our surroundings, which we generally perceive as colourful.

In architecture, it is not least of all Richard Meier’s building for the Museum Angewandte Kunst that makes an unequivocal statement on the theme of WHITE – and will now serve as the vessel for the Depot Show: Product and Society – White.

Exhibition director
Dr Stephan von der Schulenburg