EXHIBITION REVIEW: ETTORE SOTTSASS AT THE ARTIZON

August 25, 2026 ,exhibition ,featured

Installation views, photos: Yuya Furukawa

The Artizon Museum's decision to put on "Ettore Sottsass: Design Begins Where Magic Begins" breaks new ground for the museum that rose from the ashes of its predecessor institution, the rather stuffy Bridgestone Museum, knocked down and rebuilt in 2020. This show is the Artizon's first "design" show and is entirely in keeping with transforming the artistic institution, funded by the Bridgestone company, into something a lot cooler and more multifaceted.

The Italian designer on whom this show centres is a rather ambitious choice, as Post-Modernism is now generally loathed in much of the world. But here in Japan, it has always had its devotees, probably because the style not only represents an aesthetic freedom that has a strong appeal in a deeply regimented society, but also because the sleek garishness of Sottsass exerts a visceral appeal on the Japanese, who are a lot less wabi-sabi-inclined than most Westerners would like to think.

The works are drawn entirely from the Ishibashi Foundation’s newly assembled holding of over a hundred works, and include furniture, ceramics, glass, drawings, photographs, the lot.

The chronologically arranged chapters map half a century of restless questioning: late-1950s collaborations with Italian firms, 1960s experiments, 1970s "wanderings," the "Memphis" explosion of the early 1980s, and the freewheeling late adventure of the period from the 1990s to the mid-Zeroes.

You enter to bold striped Poltronova cabinets that already telegraph the mischief to come, then the famous red Valentine typewriter of 1968. Visitors seem to feel a genuine affection for this humble item.

It is still the perfect illustration of Sottsass’s early conviction that an office tool should feel like a "companion" rather than a piece of cold office equipment.

The 1960s section ramps up the strangeness—ceramic totems that look like ritual objects more than products, and the Superbox cabinets, while the 1970s photographs from his Catalan wanderings offer a quieter, more philosophical interlude.

These monochrome images are unexpectedly compelling. Then the "Memphis" period arrives (actually Milan, but the background music at the inaugural meeting of the designer group was Bob Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”). This was in December 1980, right around the time that Japan's exuberant Bubble Economy was threatening to swallow the world. The two phenomena seem somehow telepathically related.

Accordingly, the room fills with the Carlton, the Casablanca, and the Malabar—multifunctional storage and display units that are variously described as bookcases, sideboards, cabinets, or room dividers. These iconic pieces of furniture, designed by Sottsass for the Group in the early 1980s, are asymmetrical and primary-coloured, as if intending to be unstable.

With Sottsass, the shapes and colours grow bolder with each decade; but the initial sense of disharmony gives way, after prolonged viewing, to a subtle sense of harmony. Works by friends Michele De Lucchi and Shiro Kuramata appear alongside, the latter underlining the Japanese connection to the Memphis Group.

The final glass vases from 2006 feel like a late summation—still playful, still negligent of bland utility. We see again Sottsass’s lifelong scepticism toward the modern design gospel of problem-solving and optimisation. He wanted objects that restored a sense of freedom, humour, and vitality to everyday life—"design begins where magic begins," as he put it.

In a city that still finds room for the cheerfully excessive, that message lands with particular force. The Artizon has given us an evocative survey that lets the colours and shapes do the talking and they have plenty to say.