The Museum of Modern Art is hosting an exhibit through March 14th entitled “Counter Space: Design and Modern Kitchen“, which highlights the transformation of the kitchen from the early 1900s to the modern day.
This exhibit was featured in a recent New York Times article (which can be viewed here) which describes the kitchen as a home’s “heart and brain”. To Roberta Smith, the article’s author, the kitchen and its appliances are a perfect model of efficiency and design. She continues to describe and detail the symbolic nature of the kitchen its importance “in a broad historical context”.
The kitchen is not something I would necessarily associate with art, but this article and exhibit definitely got me thinking. In my house, the kitchen definitely does have a symbolic meaning, as family meals are something that is very important in my household. My kitchen has become a main location of conversation and of bonding.
My home kitchen is also filled with family photographs and pieces of homemade artwork. Many appliances themselves often have stories to go with them. The potato peeler reminds me of the time my grandfather helped me make potato pancakes and we subsequently clogged the sink, and we have a certain mixing bowl which we always use for preparing the Passover meal.
I love how this article made me reevaluate common home items and see the beauty in the everyday. Art is truly an interpretive term, and who says a kitchen is not artwork? I certainly do not any longer.
I think almost everything, if not everything can be considered art; the kitchen is no different. If I have time, I may go see this exhibition, it seems really interesting. The kitchen, as well as the other rooms that are included in a home, have definitely transformed since the 1900s, mainly in the department where technology is concerned.
And like you pointed out, the kitchen is decorated not only with appliances, but with memories too. My younger sister and I have a fridge covered with art and pictures that we have spewed out throughout the years.
Everyday life is beautiful and artistic, no matter where you are, I believe.
One of the many streams of “artistic” thought in the 20th century that was
“new” was the idea that there is artistic expression in the everyday. We tend to take this for granted in the 21st Century, but 100 years ago, this was a quite radical idea. Of course, it makes it complicated for the uninitiated to decide if something really IS artistic or not, but it is interesting to ponder this corner of artistic expression. I would not recommend, however, that you consider everything everyday as “art” to the exclusion of art that is crafted in less mundane terms.