Above: The credits
created by M/M for
the film About go it
alone on the wall of a
gallery leading to the
screening room at the
1999 Venice Biennale
Left and far left:
Fashion clients have
included Prada and
Stella McCartney
CoURtesY thAmes &
hUdsoN m/m pARis
m/m
he explains it as ‘being artistically driven
and using the artistic tools appropriate to
our time’, citing Andy Warhol in the USA
and Peter Saville in the UK as artists who
used mass distribution methods like album
sleeves to take art beyond the gallery. ‘If
you take something like Peter’s work for
Factory, it’s as interesting as any series of
artworks by a fine artist’, he says, before
touching on the importance of spontaneity
in M/M: ‘We like to follow a train of thought,
but not overthink it’, he stresses. For both
of them, he says, urgency is a driving
creative force that informs their style and
shapes their direction: ‘Having something
to say and wanting to say it, but also
constantly experiencing things. It’s why
we have a monograph in our mid-40s!’
For both men, the work is about
expressing the idea of a dialogue, and in
the book artists, designers, art directors,
photographers and musicians all attest
to their collaborative, dialogue-driven
approach to developing ideas and
projects. French curator and art critic
Nicolas Bourriaud, for whom they created
a ‘graphic scaffold’ for the Palais de Tokyo,
describes the process as ‘a blind date, a
very interesting one… a collective mode of
operating’. Artist Sarah Morris says ‘they
flicker between very mainstream and very
marginal forms in a way that questions
“
FOR BOTH MEN THE WORK
IS ABOUT EXPRESSING THE
IDEA OF A DIALOGUE, AND IN
THE NEWLY PUBLISHED BOOK
ARTISTS, DESIGNERS, ART
DIRECTORS, PHOTOGRAPHERS
AND MUSICIANS ALL ATTEST
TO THEIR COLLABORATIVE,
DIALOGUE DRIVEN APPROACH
TO DEVELOPING IDEAS AND
PROJECTS
these categories in the first place,’ while
former Balenciaga designer Nicolas
Ghesquière, who worked with M/M in the
Nineties, observes ‘Their process is much
more than artistic direction – it’s about
making a whole world.’
Many of M/M’s collaborators touch on
their technical skills as a solid foundation.
‘From the outset’, says Augustyniak,
‘we knew our future would be devoted
to self expression, and having direct
conversations that would be spontaneous.
But we spent a lot of time perfecting and
crafting the tools we would use, and that’s
our ethos.’ Punk has been a big influence,
but so too has the nouvelle vague and
‘directors like Agnes Varda and JeanLuc Godard, who learned the skills of
filmmaking, and then broke all the rules’.
In many cases, M/M’s ‘graphic’ work
literally breaks out of its comfort zone
and imposes itself in the world through
three dimensional projects. A logo for the
Biennale de Lyon broke out of its 2D form
to become a range of 3D objects, including
a bench and helium-filled balloons; film
credits escaped Phillip Parreno and
Pierre Huyghe’s film, About, to stand
alone in a gallery leading to the screening
room at the 1999 Venice Biennale. For
Björk’s album cover Medúlla, M/M created
the Tree of Signs sculpture with artist
STUFF OCTOBER 2014
27