Masterpieces & Curiosities: Memphis Does Hanukkah

Peter Shire was born, raised, lives, and works in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. His pottery, sculpture, paintings, drawings, and furniture deliberately confuse and intertwine art and design. His aesthetic is informed by art historical movements such as Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism, as well as the irreverent and often humorous rebuke of modernist doctrines that came to define the history of West coast art and artists, its social, and cultural politics. Intrinsic to this spirit is a disregard for the status quo, and a full embrace of the pluralist and idiosyncratic impulses that motivated Memphis, a visionary moment in design history, one that continues to resonate today.

In the late 1970’s Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass and Shire became acquainted through a series of magazine articles, which highlighted their shared love of dubiously functional objects. The Italian invited the American to join the Memphis group, a Milan-based coterie of international designers like Michele de Lucchi, Barbara Radice, George Sowden, and Natalie du Pasquier. Sottsass hoped Memphis would instigate a radical philosophical and aesthetic shift. Its pieces were statements, that when inserted into a landscape of neutral-hued interiors loudly demonstrated their uniqueness. Its seating, tables, lighting, carpets, textiles, laminates, and objet d’art are composed of pastel, primary, and neon colors, wacky graphics, and illogical geometries. Inspired by Art Deco, Pop art, African and Far Eastern cultures, punk, cartoons, toys, and 1950s kitsch, the Memphis designers responded to and rejected the orthodoxies of modernism and the notion of good taste; and privileged ideas over functionality, posing far more questions than solving design problems. The combination of questionable utility, cartoonish shapes and hues, and cheap materials was playful and radical, bringing a little bit of low culture and humble materials to high class design. Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld entirely outfitted his Monaco penthouse in Memphis, garnering press for his intrepid interiors sense. Shire contributed pieces every year until the collective disbanded in 1988.

For this exhibition, the typically subdued, dark grey gallery will come alive with pattern, color, and imagery. Photographic blow ups of Memphis interiors and cultural phenomena will be set against objects by the designers. Shelving and pedestals holding other objects and ephemera will be covered in Memphis laminates. Jewish Museum Judaica objects, textiles, and artworks that resonate with Shire’s expansive approach to form and materials, will be exhibited alongside an array of objects and ephemera relating to both Shire and the Memphis movement.

#MemphisDoesHanukkah

Masterpieces & Curiosities: Memphis Does Hanukkah is organized by Kelly Taxter, Associate Curator. The series is organized by Jens Hoffmann, Director of Special Exhibitions and Public Programs.

In the Press
“This is Judaica done right, Judaica made interesting, made relevant. Here’s hoping that other Jewish museums around the world take note.”
— The Forward

About Masterpieces & Curiosities

Masterpieces & Curiosities is a series of intimate “essay” exhibitions organized around single works from the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum. Each exhibition examines and rethinks the piece on view by surrounding it with other artworks, objects, documents, and source materials. Unlike traditional museum exhibitions, it does not offer a master narrative to reinforce an artistic canon or explain knowledge and experience, but rather explores the stories that inform the individual artwork or cultural object.

Some of the works in focus are masterpieces—recognized artworks of unmatched value, great significance, beauty, and craftsmanship. Others are oddities—unexpected and eccentric creations that merit closer attention. Even the most apparently traditional or peculiar work of art reveals complex histories and rich layers of meaning when it is seen freshly, through a contemporary lens and in the larger context of cultural and social history.

The Jewish Museum’s permanent collection is vast and heterogeneous. Masterpieces & Curiosities aims to invigorate our study and display of these objects in innovative ways, thus celebrating their diversity and discovering some of the collection’s many hidden treasures.

Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs