by Ste fano Follesa*
memories
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renewed WITH THE ACQUISITION OF THE RICHARD GINORI MANUFACTORY, GUCCI SAVED THE HISTORY OF ITALIAN PORCELAIN In a cultural phase dominated by a progressive hybridising of the arts with other disciplines, we witness the surge of a critical reading of modernity which is aimed at identifying the negative and positive elements on which a new conception of progress could be based. A process that involves also the objects which have sparked the consumption boom, and which are held responsible for the fortunes and catastrophes of our modern way of life. Modernity has brought with it a new way of relating to objects. This is mostly due to the changes in the production processes and to the economic and social transformations that these changes have engendered: standardisation, serial production, delocalisation, economies of scale, the simplification that is necessary in industrial processes, the creation of needs that are functional to selling ever-growing quantities of products. These are the issues which material cultures and their communities have had to face at different times and in different ways, and which have progressively contributed to alter the relationship between man and objects. As a result, we have lost the faculty of attributing to objects the same values, symbolism and rituals that were customary in the past. The force
of these new “languages” distracts us from a long-term relationship with objects: we no longer feel the need for durable products, and on the contrary we continuously change the few we own. The objects that once filled our lives were durable and not programmed for “self-destruction” after one season; they were made to remain with us throughout our entire existence and to be passed on from one generation to the next, the ritual perpetuation of customs in a society that was constantly evolving. This was the case, for example, with ceramic objects, which had the dual role of “assets” and “family legacy”. Ceramic objects could be found in bourgeois and peasant homes alike: they were tributes to the art of making, to travel, to a passion (for collecting), to a status symbol (whether real or feigned) and to generational continuity. All this is disappearing, since nothing seems to be made to last in our global vision of progress. The value of things is equal to the contextual value of their function; they last until they are substituted, or until obsolescence proclaims their demise. Modernity has abandoned objects and shifted its attention to people. This notion of society is opposed by a new kind of modernity, which has rediscovered the true
* l e c t u re r a t t h e D I DA D e p a r t m e n t o f t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f F l o re n c e
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