Today a very humble little item. I came across this little pin tray recently and just had to have it. It’s a small simple metal dish but with an unexpected modernist design on the inside. It is really great to see how these new artforms permeate all aspects of society. It probably dates from around 1965-1970 and the abstract design fits in very well with the brutalist movement of the time. The higher smooth raised areas are interspersed with darker, rougher areas. It is not necessarily a pretty dish but clearly someone has taken the effort to create the abstract pattern so this makes for a rather unsettled aesthetics. The fact that the shapes give us little clues as to what is shown here does not help either. At first it looks like it could be a human skeleton but at closer inspection this does not seem quite right. In short, this in-your-face ambiguity makes for a wonderful artistic experience. As if you are somehow forced to appreciate it for what it is without really understanding why. This is something that all brutalist art shares: a mysterious and rather unnerving imbalance between functionality, design and aesthetics.
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