The Good, the Bad and Alessandro Mendini

The line that divides good and bad can be thick or it can be thin. Alessandro Mendini, architect, designer and artist (and the artist behind the wall painting 'Futuro' that dominates the entrance to the Aula Magna), has made a hunting ground out of that line, one of the places where he develops his art. "Beautiful, ugly, good taste and bad taste, the positive, the negative, the kitsch: my work is intentionally always teetering between these elements," says Mendini, a longtime outsider of the art academy. On 13 February (1pm in the Aula Magna Gobbi), the designer will be a guest speaker at an event that is part of the Broaden Your Frame series, organized by the Bocconi Graduate School, on the topic of bad taste. The event is only open to Bocconi students.

Mendini will address the audience of students by discussing beauty and ugliness in architecture, fashion and furniture, touching on the concept of kitsch as well. "In an absolute sense, good taste is the attitude people have to be inclined towards beauty, but in practice good taste is always related to the time period," the artist explains. "The problem is that beauty and ugliness are obsolete concepts, obscured by categories that are more relevant today, such as being right or wrong or ethics versus violence." An example of this is realness and fakeness in fashion, according to Mendini: "A real fur coat is beautiful but immoral, a fake one is ugly but ethical."

Alessandro Mendini, born in Milan in 1931, is one of Italian design's innovators (and designer of the Proust armchair). "He is a real leading player in the design and architecture of the past fifty years, he's done it all: iconic objects, furniture, locations, paintings, installations, architecture," explains Severino Salvemini, Professor of Management, who will present during the event. "He is therefore the right person to talk to students about such a delicate topic like good taste, a true antidote to the spread of low forms of mass culture."

The choice to hold an event with Mendini is perfectly in line with Broaden Your Frame's goal: to expand students' point of view as much as possible. "This series of events," adds Antonella Carù, Dean of the Graduate School, "is an opportunity for enrichment outside the fields of economics and finance. It's also a chance to discuss issues with people from the worlds of art, philosophy, literature, music, science and architecture."
At the end of each event, students can send their feedback through a 'triple-tweet,' a short essay with a maximum of 840 characters. "Anyone who attends 80% of the seminars and sends feedback after each event will earn a certificate of participation," adds Carù.