The Planet as Festival: Study for Design of a Stadium for Rock Concerts, project (Aerial Perspective)

1972–73

Not on view

Returned to lender

This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.

In 1972 Casabella magazine published a series of lithographs and drawings by Sottsass, titled the Planet as Festival, finalized and colored by Tiger Tateishi. The series contributed to a long tradition of "paper architecture," which proposed visionary, utopian ways of life by reimagining the physical structures of society. Sottsass determined that those concerned with architecture and city planning had limited their thinking to what he described as "the insane, sick, dangerous and aggressive idea that men must live only to work and must work to produce and then consume." His disdain for consumerism had not abated since the 1950s, so he imagined a world, filled with art, music, dance, and illicit drugs, in which individuals "come to know by means of their bodies, their psyche, and their sex, that they are living."

Artwork Details

Overview

Exhibition History

Title: The Planet as Festival: Study for Design of a Stadium for Rock Concerts, project (Aerial Perspective)
Artist: Ettore Sottsass (Italian (born Austria), Innsbruck 1917–2007 Milan)
Date: 1972–73
Medium: Graphite and white ink on paper
Dimensions: 14 3/4 × 11 1/2 in. (37.5 × 29.2 cm)
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the Howard Gilman Foundation, 2000
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art