by Jacqui Palumbo
Ricardo Bofill, La Muralla Roja (“The Red Wall”), 1973. Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura.
“Beauty as the height of aesthetic achievement has fallen out of favor,” designers Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh declare in the intro to Beauty (2018), a book that is equal parts history, analysis, and visual splendor. In it, they argue that designers, artists, and architects no longer use beauty as the lodestar of their work, and often avoid the word altogether. “At one time a universal aspiration, the pursuit of beauty came to a crash landing at the beginning of the 20th century,” Sagmeister and Walsh write.
“We believe this rejection of beauty is utterly stupid,” they continue. “Beauty is the dose of humanity that makes our lives better.” The pair, darlings of the intersecting worlds of art, design, and culture—clients of their firm span Snapchat, Vitra, the Guggenheim, and the Olympic committee—lament how modernist principles have been diluted in contemporary design, where function is favored over individuality, resulting in a lack of diversity, or, in their words, “a psychotic sameness.”
In their sweeping treatise, Sagmeister and Walsh examine what beauty is. They ask: Who does beauty better, nature or humans? Do humans instinctively recognize it? (Science points to yes.) They distill beauty into features that theorists have agreed upon over time: “simplicity, symmetry, balance, clarity, contrast, and proportion.”
The book traces our pursuit and celebration of beauty back to the dawn of humanity, from the first tools—stone axes that had no reason to be symmetrical other than for aesthetic value—to ancient Greece, where beauty ruled art and philosophy, and to the transcendent experience of light and space in Islamic and Christian places of worship. Indeed, sublimity was the overarching aspiration in art and design up until the 20th century.
Following World War I, beauty became a crisis of conscience, the authors write: “If human beings could annihilate each other using killing machines, what role, if any, should beauty play in our lives?” Thus entered the anti-aesthetic period of ready-made art and the functionality of modernist architecture, as well as
Pop art
’s elevation of the commercial. Even today, Sagmeister and Walsh assert, companies like Facebook, Airbnb, and Etsy embrace uniformity of design.
So, what do they consider to be the most beautiful works in design history? The final section of the book is an archive of the objects, buildings, and graphic design compositions that they consider the most visually pleasing. Below, we share 21 of them, with Sagmeister and Walsh’s own words.
“Predictive Dream” (2010–14) by Katsuyo Aoki
Katsuyo Aoki, Predictive Dream XV, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.
“
[Katsuyo] Aoki
is known for her delicate ceramic sculptures, which often depict dark subject matter, creating an enticing contrast between the grotesque and the beautiful.”
Milan Cathedral (1386–1965)
Milan Cathedral, 1386–1965. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
“We vividly remember attending an Easter mass in this extraordinary Italian cathedral. The entire space was filled with incense smoke. The cone-hatted archbishop was followed by hundreds of bishops, priests, and altar boys, while the light of God streamed through giant windows. The spectacle felt like the start of an epic rock concert. The minds of peasants who made the journey to Milan a thousand years ago must have been blown to smithereens.”
Hasegawa Co. Poster (1985) by Makoto Saito
Makoto Saito, Hasegawa Co. Poster, 1985. © Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Courtesy of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
“This masterpiece was created by the Japanese star designer
[Makoto] Saito
for a company selling Buddhist house altars. With its unusual composition and color, it serves as an early example of how newness presented in the right context can immediately be seen as beautiful.”
Chauffeuse basse dite Kangourou (ca. 1955) by Pierre Jeanneret
Pierre Jeanneret
Kangourou lounge chair from Chandigarh, c. 1955
Wright
“The architect
Pierre Jeanneret
, a cousin of
Le Corbusier
and also an accomplished furniture designer, was one of the chief architects of the planned city of Chandigarh in India. He designed a large range of furniture, among them this comfortable Kangaroo Chair made of teak and cane.”
San Marco Basilica (828–1094)
San Marco Basilica, 828–1094. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
“The floor of Venice’s famed basilica is covered with the rarest marbles from the Eastern world. It is almost 1,000 years old, and we think a more beautiful floor has not been made since.”
City Palace, Jaipur, India (1729–32)
City Palace, Jaipur, India, 1729. Photo by Brando, via Flickr.
“During her honeymoon, Jessica traveled through Rajasthan. One of her favorite stops was City Palace in Jaipur, a palace complex built by Sawai Jai Singh II. The building is exquisitely decorated with mirror work, mosaics, intricate ornamentation, and paintings.”
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium(1705) by Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, 1705. © Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Courtesy of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
“
[Sibylla] Merian
began collecting insects as a young girl, which was a controversial hobby in the 17th century, considering that insects were seen as disgusting at best, and at worst, related to witchcraft. Rather than ending up burned to a crisp, she went to Suriname on a research trip to collect the creatures in order to study and draw them.”
Meissen Porcelain Königlich-Sächsische Coffee Service (1880–90)
Meissen Porcelain Königlich-Sächsische Coffee Service, 1880–90. © Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Courtesy of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
“The desire to go completely overboard with ornamentation and cover every square centimeter of this coffee set with designs inspired by nature may seem extreme, but we’ve always found extremism a rather juicy design strategy.”
Fallingwater (1935) by Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, 1935. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
“Yes, yes, yes, we know, including such a classic in this list might seem a little banal. It’s just that it is truly so good.
[Frank Lloyd] Wright
understood that his clean lines would work best when contrasted against the ruggedness of nature. The results are stunning and possibly even sublime.”
La Muralla Roja (“The Red Wall”) (1973) by Ricardo Bofill
Ricardo Bofill, La Muralla Roja (“The Red Wall”), 1973. Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura.
“La Muralla Roja is a housing complex designed by [Ricardo] Bofill in the Spanish town of Calpe. Inspired by the architecture of coastal North Africa, the striking colors, staircases, and platforms are reminiscent of an
M.C. Escher
image of impossible architecture.”
Ricardo Bofill, La Muralla Roja (“The Red Wall”), 1973. Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura.
“Beauty as the height of aesthetic achievement has fallen out of favor,” designers Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh declare in the intro to Beauty (2018), a book that is equal parts history, analysis, and visual splendor. In it, they argue that designers, artists, and architects no longer use beauty as the lodestar of their work, and often avoid the word altogether. “At one time a universal aspiration, the pursuit of beauty came to a crash landing at the beginning of the 20th century,” Sagmeister and Walsh write.
“We believe this rejection of beauty is utterly stupid,” they continue. “Beauty is the dose of humanity that makes our lives better.” The pair, darlings of the intersecting worlds of art, design, and culture—clients of their firm span Snapchat, Vitra, the Guggenheim, and the Olympic committee—lament how modernist principles have been diluted in contemporary design, where function is favored over individuality, resulting in a lack of diversity, or, in their words, “a psychotic sameness.”
In their sweeping treatise, Sagmeister and Walsh examine what beauty is. They ask: Who does beauty better, nature or humans? Do humans instinctively recognize it? (Science points to yes.) They distill beauty into features that theorists have agreed upon over time: “simplicity, symmetry, balance, clarity, contrast, and proportion.”
The book traces our pursuit and celebration of beauty back to the dawn of humanity, from the first tools—stone axes that had no reason to be symmetrical other than for aesthetic value—to ancient Greece, where beauty ruled art and philosophy, and to the transcendent experience of light and space in Islamic and Christian places of worship. Indeed, sublimity was the overarching aspiration in art and design up until the 20th century.
Following World War I, beauty became a crisis of conscience, the authors write: “If human beings could annihilate each other using killing machines, what role, if any, should beauty play in our lives?” Thus entered the anti-aesthetic period of ready-made art and the functionality of modernist architecture, as well as
Pop art
’s elevation of the commercial. Even today, Sagmeister and Walsh assert, companies like Facebook, Airbnb, and Etsy embrace uniformity of design.
So, what do they consider to be the most beautiful works in design history? The final section of the book is an archive of the objects, buildings, and graphic design compositions that they consider the most visually pleasing. Below, we share 21 of them, with Sagmeister and Walsh’s own words.
“Predictive Dream” (2010–14) by Katsuyo Aoki
Katsuyo Aoki, Predictive Dream XV, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.
“
[Katsuyo] Aoki
is known for her delicate ceramic sculptures, which often depict dark subject matter, creating an enticing contrast between the grotesque and the beautiful.”
Milan Cathedral (1386–1965)
Milan Cathedral, 1386–1965. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
“We vividly remember attending an Easter mass in this extraordinary Italian cathedral. The entire space was filled with incense smoke. The cone-hatted archbishop was followed by hundreds of bishops, priests, and altar boys, while the light of God streamed through giant windows. The spectacle felt like the start of an epic rock concert. The minds of peasants who made the journey to Milan a thousand years ago must have been blown to smithereens.”
Hasegawa Co. Poster (1985) by Makoto Saito
Makoto Saito, Hasegawa Co. Poster, 1985. © Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Courtesy of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
“This masterpiece was created by the Japanese star designer
[Makoto] Saito
for a company selling Buddhist house altars. With its unusual composition and color, it serves as an early example of how newness presented in the right context can immediately be seen as beautiful.”
Chauffeuse basse dite Kangourou (ca. 1955) by Pierre Jeanneret
Pierre Jeanneret
Kangourou lounge chair from Chandigarh, c. 1955
Wright
“The architect
Pierre Jeanneret
, a cousin of
Le Corbusier
and also an accomplished furniture designer, was one of the chief architects of the planned city of Chandigarh in India. He designed a large range of furniture, among them this comfortable Kangaroo Chair made of teak and cane.”
San Marco Basilica (828–1094)
San Marco Basilica, 828–1094. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
“The floor of Venice’s famed basilica is covered with the rarest marbles from the Eastern world. It is almost 1,000 years old, and we think a more beautiful floor has not been made since.”
City Palace, Jaipur, India (1729–32)
City Palace, Jaipur, India, 1729. Photo by Brando, via Flickr.
“During her honeymoon, Jessica traveled through Rajasthan. One of her favorite stops was City Palace in Jaipur, a palace complex built by Sawai Jai Singh II. The building is exquisitely decorated with mirror work, mosaics, intricate ornamentation, and paintings.”
Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium(1705) by Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, 1705. © Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Courtesy of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
“
[Sibylla] Merian
began collecting insects as a young girl, which was a controversial hobby in the 17th century, considering that insects were seen as disgusting at best, and at worst, related to witchcraft. Rather than ending up burned to a crisp, she went to Suriname on a research trip to collect the creatures in order to study and draw them.”
Meissen Porcelain Königlich-Sächsische Coffee Service (1880–90)
Meissen Porcelain Königlich-Sächsische Coffee Service, 1880–90. © Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Courtesy of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
“The desire to go completely overboard with ornamentation and cover every square centimeter of this coffee set with designs inspired by nature may seem extreme, but we’ve always found extremism a rather juicy design strategy.”
Fallingwater (1935) by Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, 1935. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
“Yes, yes, yes, we know, including such a classic in this list might seem a little banal. It’s just that it is truly so good.
[Frank Lloyd] Wright
understood that his clean lines would work best when contrasted against the ruggedness of nature. The results are stunning and possibly even sublime.”
La Muralla Roja (“The Red Wall”) (1973) by Ricardo Bofill
Ricardo Bofill, La Muralla Roja (“The Red Wall”), 1973. Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura.
“La Muralla Roja is a housing complex designed by [Ricardo] Bofill in the Spanish town of Calpe. Inspired by the architecture of coastal North Africa, the striking colors, staircases, and platforms are reminiscent of an
M.C. Escher
image of impossible architecture.”
