Style Report: MEMPHIS (Revival)

Thirty-three years after designs by the Memphis Group caused a "mass-media event" at the Salone del Mobile, the bold graphic style they created is back in favor in Milan and is appearing in some unusual places. Clashing colors, blocky shapes and loud patterns could be spotted in galleries, shops and on stands around Milan, signalling a return of the Memphis style often associated with these elements.

"Although you know it when you see it, it's hard to accurately describe Memphis design without resorting to specific 1980s pop cultural references. It's Pee-Wee's Playhouse meets Miami Vice. It's Saved By The Bell plus Beetlejuice. And it's all coming back, in a very big way." - Gizmodo

"Briefly forgotten, but by no means gone, Memphis—the 1980s phenomenon that shook the design world to its foundations—is creeping back into the mainstream. Original Memphis, which peaked from 1981 to 1987, illustrates the hallmarks of postmodern '80s design: strong geometric motifs, mixed materials often including laminate, clashing and saturated colors, and a repudiation of anything streamlined and tasteful—a veritable shotgun wedding between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price.'" - Curbed

The original group, headed by Ettore Sottsass with colleagues like Michele de Lucchi, Andrea Branzi, and Nathalie du Pasquier, as well as international names like Michael Graves, Peter Shire, and Shiro Kuramata, thumbed their collective noses at the tried-and-true geometric rigor of the staid International School and ruled the design news for seven years with brightly colored and patterned laminates and technicolor-hued furniture. Sottsass's departure from the collective in 1987 coincided, coincidentally, with a major stock market crash. After that, new Memphis designs never appeared. To keep the company alive, the four businessmen who had backed the rebels took a completely new tack and produced the work of fine artists including Mimmo Paladino, Sandro Chia, and Alighiero Boetti in 1991 and 1992, calling it Meta Memphis. But by this time, interest in over-the-top decor had almost completely disappeared.

"Memphis has been the last big movement so people remember very well," said Alberto Bianchi Albrici, the exhibition's curator and head of Post Design - the company that continues to produce the pieces. Sure it's more popular today more than ten years ago," he said. "Firstly because we have internet. Also because we are sought after by several people from stores who see the exhibition at the museum. I think that is normal." - dezeen magazine

However, Memphis was not originally just about decoration, color and graphics.

"Memphis is being used as a style and as a styling tool by a lot of designers and companies, whereas it was actually more of a philosophy and way of working," explained Agerman Ross.

Albrici agrees that the term "Memphis" shouldn't just be thrown around to describe the patterns and clashing colors added to designs.

"What's funny about looking back at the Memphis work today is that, more than any other pieces of furniture from any other period, it unmistakably evokes a particular moment. It just looks like the 80s. But even back then critics and commentators loved to poke fun at it." - Gizmodo

"Memphis wasn't about decoration," said Du Pasquier's partner and fellow Memphis Group member George Sowden. "There wasn't even a Memphis style, despite what everyone says."

He believes that the Postmodern philosophy may still be present today, but that is has changed. "Maybe younger Postmodern designers are using it themselves also as communication, but I don't think they're doing it in the same way we were doing it during Memphis time."