History of Modern Design: graphics and products since the industrial revolution

by David Raizman

Laurence King Publishing

$75pb, 400pp

History of Modern Design has developed from a course of the same name at Drexel University in Philadelphia. In keeping with its didactic origin, the subject is presented in chronological order, illustrated with more than 500 images, 125 of which are reproduced in colour. The book is ambitiously broad in its coverage, commencing with the seventeenth century and ending in the twenty-first, focusing on design from Europe and North America, and ranging through furniture, interiors, metalwork, ceramics, graphic design, typography, and product design. A good two-thirds of the book is devoted to the twentieth century, which is presented in context from the preceding historical surveys. While the focus is on design for mass production and industrial processes, the crafts are not entirely neglected. An extensive bibliography on design, coupled with helpful reading lists, will prove popular in this useful introduction to the complex and wide-ranging subject of design. (CM)

Where would the picture book industry be without animals? Talking or non-speaking, cute or obnoxious, mischievously alive or poignantly dying, animal characters can be utilised to teach life lessons, and to make complex issues accessible and less confronting for young children. Add humour, passion and strong original writing, and you have a winner.

Leigh Hobbs combines all three in Fiona the Pig, and the appeal starts with the cover. Who could resist that beaming piggy face, all blonde curls, pink ribbons and stage-struck ambition, framed by red velvet curtains and a large heart? Like Horrible Harriet and Old Tom before her, Fiona is a misfit. ‘Why can’t Fiona be more like us?’ wail her puzzled and disappointed parents. Fiona is fastidious: she takes bubble baths instead of wallowing in mud; she hosts dainty tea parties for her dolls instead of living in filth; she wants to be a ballet dancer. Her parents consult the wise Dr Pinkysnout, who reassures them that Fiona’s behaviour is not abnormal: ‘Most pigs are very clean and very neat, you know.’ Mr and Mrs Pig decide that it is they who must change, which is easier said than done. But blood is thicker than water and, in a warm and funny resolution, the parents learn to accept their ‘different’ child.

Hobbs is able to convey a wide range of porcine expressions, often by just the curve of a mouth or the (mis)placement of an eyeball, and he’s equally brilliant at portraying exuberant activity. Fiona’s solo performance in her ballet ‘Pigs Can Fly’, and her attempts to teach herself to tap dance are only two of the pictorial gems in a book that will captivate readers of all ages. But I couldn’t help wishing Fiona had been a Floyd or a Freddie: now that would have tested Mr and Mrs Pig.

Holidaying in Tuscany, I once met an escapee from a Glenn Murcutt lecture. The class of American students had flown from New York to be immersed, in the modern manner, in six weeks of architecture beside an Italian beach. Murcutt delivered the first lecture.

His first words were never to think of applying for a job with him, as every student across the globe wanted to work for him and he didn’t employ students. Work for him — good God! He went on for three and a half hours and I couldn’t get away quickly enough.

Of course, the wider Tuscan landscape could tempt even the most earnest student, but readers of Françoise Fromonot’s book will feel some sympathy for my student.

Murcutt is probably Australia’s best-known architect internationally. Although he builds only in this country, he teaches and lectures, takes part in juries, and wins great acclaim, around the world. The breadth of this acclaim is remarkable, and includes the Alvar Aalto Medal, the Richard Neutra Award for Architecture and Teaching, the Thomas Jefferson Medal for Architecture, and, most recently, the 2002 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Books, of course, should not be judged by their covers. In this case, however, the choice of cover illustration – the historic Reichstag veiled in silver fabric by the Bulgarian–American ‘wrap artist’, Christo – seems unusually significant, and not only because the author devotes his concluding remarks to it (more about that later). German history is a well-ploughed field. With library shelves groaning under the weight of books on the subject, only the narrowest studies, aimed at specialised markets, will offer much that is really new. The only justification for yet another narrative history of modern Germany – and with a title as blandly generic as this one – is therefore that a familiar story will be presented in a new wrapping.

And how German history needs such a new wrapping. For decades now, it has been all but monopolised by the Sonderweg (‘special path’) brand in its two major flavours: Germany’s deviation from the high road of Western liberalism through its illiberal patterns of philosophical thought; or through the German bourgeoisie’s self-interested pact with an authoritarian, militaristic, and aristocratic Prussianism. They are simultaneously teleological and apologetic, in that they explain Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust in terms of deep-rooted pathologies in German history while reassuring a sceptical audience of Germany’s rehabilitation following defeat, occupation and integration into the West.