In Bologna, Bentivoglio garage window displays miniature of Ettore Sottsass's Carlton bookstore

In Bologna, May 2-25, 2024, the BENTIVOGLIO garage street art showcase will host another design piece from Palazzo Bentivoglio’s permanent collection: the miniature Carlton bookcase by Ettore Sottsass.

The Carlton was presented at the 1981 Milan Furniture Fair by the Memphis Group, a design and architecture collective founded by Sottsass with Michele De Lucchi, Martine Bedin, Aldo Cibic, Matteo Thun and Marco Zanini. Its anthropomorphic form did not go unnoticed, achieving immediate success but also attracting criticism precisely because of the disruptive force of the design and its ambitions.

The combination of wood and plastic laminate, resting on a base decorated with “Bacterio” laminate-the unmistakable pattern designed by Sottsass himself, so named precisely because of the visual assonance between this surface and bacteria seen under a microscope-made the Carlton bookcase a distinctive example of the use of modern materials in the field of design. The plastic laminate, in particular, had symbolic significance for Sottsass, who wanted to demonstrate in this way the possibility of creating refined design objects even with consumable materials. For Sottsass, Carlton demonstrated that a design object need not be serious and complex, but could draw on playful shapes, bright colors, be made from inexpensive materials but simultaneously assert its authorial and stylistic component.

On the choice of the piece to be displayed in the art showcase, Davide Trabucco says, “Artificial light with its pervasive diffusion in homes represents perhaps one of the most disruptive social changes. Art, on the other hand, is the field in which technological experiments have most affected our gaze, delivering us perfectly and evenly lit statues and paintings. Works that had known shadow for centuries thus end up inside the white museum rooms, with no longer the possibility of changing along with the path of the sun. The rooms of Palazzo Bentivoglio, often lit during the day by the only light coming in through the windows overlooking the garden, still allow works and furnishings to be viewed immersed in half-light, to have the vague outline of projected silhouettes drawn on the walls. Ettore Sottsass’s Carlton is one of the most representative design objects of the 20th century and, like all Memphis furniture, has the characteristic of being egoic, of channeling all gazes toward it and wanting nothing else beside it, ”like monuments in squares."

The bookcase stands out on the wall with its totemic silhouette and testifies to the prevalence of form over function, paving the way for countless bookcases that have made the aesthetic datum the key component, such as Ron Arad’s Bookworm (1994) for Kartell.

“So thanks to a simple play of light,” Trabucco concludes, “a collectible Carlton miniature is projected onto the wall at human size, leading us to stare at the shadow, to make it seem real for a moment, as happened to the prisoners in Plato’s mythical cave.”

Bentivoglio garage hours: Wednesday through Saturday from 7 to 11 p.m.

Image: Ettore Sottsass, Carlton, 1981, garage BENTIVOGLIO - Palazzo Bentivoglio, Bologna. Photo by Carlo Favero

In Bologna, Bentivoglio garage window displays miniature of Ettore Sottsass's Carlton bookstore

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