Embodiments

It is paradoxical that French poetry, through the intermediation of Francis Ponge, managed to side with things, while French design seems to have sided with images and signs, through being forced to deal with a sort of semiotic diktat and the hypertrophy of the figure of the designer. How then are we to describe, circumscribe or even approach the idea of French design? Is it even possible to define the characteristics of the French approach to design? Is it even possible to speak of French design or should we be talking about French designers? It would appear that this list of questions poses a certain problem, as it is tricky to try to envisage common ground between the work of someone like Philippe Starck and that of Martin Szekely, for example, or the work of Roger Tallon and that of Marc Sadler. If we are to believe what we read in mainstream magazines on the subject, French design can be characterized by the “art of plundering the past to constantly reinvent itself,” or even, to quote the photographer Mario Testino, we can recognize French design by its “blend of precision, elegance and sophistication that always harbors an element of surprise, bold ideas and an impeccable ‘savoir-faire’.” However, does the same not apply to Italian, Swedish and Japanese design? Decidedly, whatever we say about it, design is always a question of balance between the past and the present, between stability and disruption.