But what about the gnome side table?

This is old news, but I remembered it again this week when I was trying to figure out why there are so many ugly designer shoes. Phillippe Starck, designer, made this pronouncement to the German weekly newspaper Die Ziet: "Everything I have created is absolutely unnecessary." The interviewer, it would appear, expected to hear what famous people most often have to say about what they produce, something along the lines of false modesty and pseudo-pontificating. It is never very honest, and Starck here gives a pretty good idea of how to at least be frank about a current crisis, rather than publicly dissecting it prettily to Vanity Fair a few years after it's passed.

If we can trust this translation, the interviewer starts out with a "clever" desert-island type question (I'm paraphrasing): What do humans really need?

Starck: Nothing. Love. Ethics. Maybe a pillow.

The interviewer: You can't be serious.

Starck: Oh, but I am. "Design, structurally seen, is absolutely void of usefulness." My career was in vain.

I don't exactly know how to take this, um, kind of dramatic analysis. His career has been a combination of designing interiors for high-end clients (the president of France, swanky hotels) and for Target shoppers. From a "Design for All" perspective (thank you, Target . . . I think) that is exactly the right kind of career. If you are in the business of producing goods that you are presumably proud of offering to the world, that have some kind of new, innovative, or aesthetically pleasing aspect, then it is reasonable to me to expect that some objects will be designed for design's sake (for art's sake, you might argue) and some will be designed for people to use or enjoy.

Given the option of two toothbrush holders mass-produced in China both being offered at The Container Store, say, I would choose one with Starck's modern aesthetic vs. one with gold-embossed roses. That would not be true for my friend Mary, and if Starck became a designer to put clean, modern objects into the world, then I thank him for giving me another option.

I will leave true analysis of art's place in the universe to the experts, but my other response to Starck's crisis is that it's kind of insulting to people who have appreciated his work. There is a strong argument to be made for his contributions to design for art's sake by the addition of aesthetically appealing things into the world, even if they feel, suddenly to him, pointless. To me, the aesthetic of designed objects is subjective in the way that abstract art has the reputation of being (to use Starck's phrase) absolutely devoid of usefulness. Does that devalue its very existence?

A few years ago NPR replayed an old interview in which Barnett Newman explained what he wanted people to feel through his abstract canvases. This one is called "Yellow Painting," and certainly many people have questioned its justification as art, which gives it not only monetary value but cachet such that it hangs in The National Gallery. Newman said this: "I hope that my paintings give someone who looks at it a sense of place, so he sees and feels himself; the feeling is that you're here and out there is chaos, so that what you have is a sense of yourself. The feeling is instantaneous, complete, and you can't ever wipe it out of your mind. If I succeed in doing that I feel that I have moved in relation to the true feeling of what it is to be alive."

For me, that is among the best explanatory reason for any art to have existence: to be appreciated by people of varying tastes and experiences. The personal sense of self Newman wishes for us may be achieved through sitting in Starck's Ghost Chair (below) or by staring at the original "Yellow Painting."

Putting aside the million dilemmas, economic and ethical, about the actual, physical production of mass-produced goods, wouldn't one of those experiences justify the existence of those objects, at least from a purely aesthetic standpoint? I think I would argue that they do.