THE AGE OF ICONICAL PROLIFERATION: POSTMODERNIST WORKS IN THE VALENCIAN ARCHIVE OF DESIGN

Abstract

The Arxiu Valencià del Disseny (Valencian Archive of Design; Spain) has among its collections a wide amount of records illustrating the works of designers such as Eduardo Albors, Paco Bascuñán, José Juan Belda, Pepe Benlliure, Lola Castelló, Silvia García and Vicent Martínez. These authors achieved international recognition during the last two decades of the 20th century, when a shift from modernist to postmodernist paradigms emerged with a sheer intensity in design. Sketches and drafts often document the projects from that era showing their creative processes as works in progress. Analysis of these records revealed the following prevalent features. First of all, the iconical proliferation present in graphic, industrial and interior design endows these creations with remarkable expressive power, some distinctive personal poetics and compelling connections with modern art. Secondly, the transference of iconical components from decoration to structure challenges the preconceived assumptions on semantics and ontology of the designed objects, compatible with a strong sense of functionality. Finally, the hyper-iconical burst in postmodernist design contributes to the setting of highly hybridised visual environments in which concepts of public, private, natural and artificial surroundings interplay to send complex and contradictory messages. Beyond the significance for the culture of design, the cases of study addressed in this study could be read as manifestations of some cultural trends: the blurring of the borders between art and industry, the calling into question of biopolitical relations between individuals and their habitats, and the emergence of postmodernists ideologies in the core of an activity grounded on modernist principles.