Like Maurice Chevalier’s song, Valentine, in which he poetically reminisces about his first love of a petite, charming, young woman with a small chin, New York will be singing the same tune when Ettore Sottsass Design Radical show closes at The Met Breuer tomorrow October 8, 2017. This is the first design show presented at the Breuer. Ettore Sottsass was an Italian architect and designer who produced work during six decades (1917-2007). The highlight of the show is the sleek and portable seductress-red Valentine typewriter. Sottsass radically made use of the colors in many of his designs and felt that colors are like words expressing emotions. Sottsass had commented, "I worked sixty years of my life, and it seems the only thing I did is this fucking red machine. It was supposed to be very inexpensive probable, to sell in the market, like pens...Then the people at Olivetti said you cannot sell this." Though impracticable, the Valentine typewriter was certainly expressive and a darling of pop culture and the show.
