Beginning with the Beat Generation, slowly and gently, like pot smoke seeping from a college dorm room, America’s counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s insinuated itself in unlikely places with unexpected results. In Denmark, the architect Verner Panton, a scion of Bauhaus rationalism and Scandinavian good taste, picked up the scent. He went on to design mind-bending interiors and a singular chair that is erotic in its sensuality.
To mark the 100th anniversary of Panton’s birth (he died in 1998), the Vitra Design Museum, in Weil am Rhein, Germany, has mounted a comprehensive retrospective, “Verner Panton: Form, Colour, Space,” which opens next Saturday. The show includes Panton classics as well as objects, drawings, models, and archival materials from the museum’s extensive holdings.
