This is all very deliberate, as you might imagine. As the Museum’s new director, the journalist, critic and fashionista Alice Rawsthorn, puts it: “I want Essex lad to bring his girlfriend.” And if, when Essex lad and laddette tire of drooling over the carbon-fibre, Ferrari-beating, Ford-financed Aston, they stumble into a complete floorful of subtle Noguchi - arranged on nine tonnes of black lava sand by the American theatre designer Robert Wilson - why, that might result in some fruitful cultural cross-fertilisation.
According to Rawsthorn, the Design Museum’s members want more cars and graphics. The Museum has also found that architecture shows pull in the crowds more than pure design shows - hence the last blockbuster pre-Noguchi, a lavish exhibition devoted to the cult Mexican architect Luis Barragan. But Rawsthorn is in no way embarrassed by the boy’s- toy Aston - which is present both as a complete car and as one of those cutaway models evocative of the old Science Museum. Engineering design, she points out, is as important as any other branch of design. She might have added that Britain for some reason is a world leader in designing supercars, even though we don’t have the roads to drive them on.
Not driving the Aston is what most of its owners will do - and there is already a two-year waiting list, though it does not officially go on sale until September. This is one of those cars that will be shrink-wrapped in airconditioned garages as an investment, or placed in the stables of rock stars for very occasional outings when it’s not raining. But never mind: being in the Design Museum benefits both Aston - which gets design cred - and the Museum, which gets more visitors. And the car is undeniably handsome in its awesomely predictable, stupidly fast way.
But try to forget that posing-pouch car. Noguchi will soon be the real reason to go to the Museum. Noguchi was an intriguing figure, a sculptor, stage designer, landscape architect and furniture designer. His 1940s tables and seating for the Herman Miller company, for instance, look absolutely fresh and contemporary today. Even the enduring popularity of Japanese paper lanterns is due in no small part to the mulberry-paper light sculptures he made for the city of Gifu in the 1950s, which gave the ancient craft a new edge. He was in New York at the right time to collaborate with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham on sets for contemporary dance. Noguchi worked with everybody: the sculptor Constantin Brancusi, composer John Cage, architect Louis Kahn, engineer and eco-prophet Richard Buckminster Fuller. He created public gardens that are a lot like flat relief sculptures - in one case even making one of these on a cruise liner.
That fusion of art, craft and design - curiously enough a very Prince Albert, mid 19th century vision - is what distinguishes Noguchi, who died in 1988. It is, however a slightly difficult vision to market - since he did everything, how do you describe him? Which is why it is a very deft touch to have the Aston there as well, at least until the end of August. An Aston’s a bloody Aston. We know what a fast car is. It’s a photo-opportunity, mainly. End of chat.
