transform traditional folk art into guillotine chic: just add 34 thousand bucks

[cimorene]

Sometimes you're innocently on the Internet taking in random trivia and you learn about Italian appliance manufacturer Smeg, well-known for their retro 50s-style fridges, collaborating some years ago with Dolce & Gabbana to make a line of hand-painted thirty-four thousand euro refrigerators, and you fall down a spiral of ranting about how much you hate rich people.

But then sometimes a reference or a caption leads you to google another phrase and learn for the first time about the origin of the Sicilian cart, el carretto siciliano, a centuries-old tradition of elaborate artistry and skilled craftwork and the stylistic inspiration for the D&G Smeg appliances. (There are smaller, hence less outrageous ones, like coffee makers and toasters, that they still continue to make, and they are still looking like hand-painted folk art and the key thing is that all D&G did was hire the actual folk artists who really do this painting to paint the things, giving them a salary, when the artists are still responsible for both the labor and the design, so D&G are essentially like... interior designers, here, except they aren't even designing an interior, they're just suggesting artisans to decorate one specific object that the artisans could be decorating themselves except Smeg wouldn't have hired them to do it without intervention.) ... But anyway, Sicilian carts are fantastic and knowing about them has added to my quality of life considerably.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Fascinating!

[yvannairie]

Oh, so that's what they were :D I took the train from Palermo to Catania (and back) during my stay in Sicily, and you could see art like that around the stations.

[cimorene]

It seems there's a lot of derivative art, or rather, other objects painted in similar/inspired style too so that makes sense. Would make some great scenery!

[vass]

Gives a whole new meaning to putting someone's art on your fridge.

the key thing is that all D&G did was hire the actual folk artists who really do this painting to paint the things, giving them a salary

Not a commission?

I am very, very curious about how much of that €34K made it to the artists. And if their contract included a non-compete clause to prevent them (when they've finished painting the 100 limited edition fridges) from doing more commissions for whoever wants a hand-painted fridge from the people who did the D&G ones, as is their normal livelihood with other items.

[cimorene]

This made me curious and I went back to look at the articles. I don't think a commission is unlikely. I get phrases like "signed by Dolce" and "scenes of theater [...] and lemons painted by the hands of Sicilian artists", and "each one meticulously hand-painted by renowned artists and transformed into works of art", "Sketching and more than 240 hours of painting went into the creation of these artworks. They were treated with a glaze to ensure their preservation. With free creative reign, the artists, from different regions in Sicily, depicted visually spectacular stories unique to their region using acrylics and oil as primary mediums". The fridges are large, so they are probably paid a lump sum for these - though it might be calculated based on the amount of time they were given. And 240 hours certainly supports the higher price. Also since there were 100 of them in a limited edition, but they all have the same set price, it's more logical to pay a commission (since the artists' fees would vary in slight ways otherwise based on the time each one took). Also they worked from their own sketches, but they are sketches, so it's not unlikely that they would have agreed to not make an identical design, but I would assume that usually each thing they painted would be unique, particularly with larger things like carts and fridges. It seems unlikely that they could prevent them from painting any fridges for anybody else?

But the small appliances are silk screened with the painted designs (a bit more googling informed me), which means an artist designed and painted the original and was paid for that... and I don't really know enough about this industry to say which manner is more likely. Assuming these artists don't work full-time for D&G, but in some sort of contract, I would imagine a salary is less likely since they're gonna sell so many copies of something that took a relatively short time to make... maybe they get royalties instead. "The look of each item was left to the discretion of the artist, as Christian Boscherini, Marketing and Events Specialist for SMEG USA, explained. The artists were told only to consider the design of the fruit carts people once pushed around Sicilian cities."