From Art Nouveau to Metamodernism – the changing face of display

Dr. Kerry Meakin

Dr. Kerry Meakin BA (Hons), MA, PhD, Honorary Fellow of the British Display Society

Dr. Kerry Meakin has over 35 years Visual Merchandising and design experience in the retail sectors in Dublin, Ireland and London, England. She has an honours degree in Interior Design (2008), and a Master of Arts in Higher Education (2011). Kerry has been the Programme Chair of the BA Visual Merchandising & Display at the TU Dublin School of Art + Design since 2014. She has been the WorldSkills Ireland Expert since 2013, responsible for running the annual competition, and has represented Ireland as a VM Expert at WorldSkills competitions in Abu Dhabi and Kazan, Russia. She was conferred with a Doctorate from the Modern Interiors Research Centre, Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London in 2022. The title of her PhD thesis is The Professionalisation of Window Display in Britain, 1919-1939: modern styles, associations, and education. Kerry has presented her research at international conferences and symposia. Recent publications include ‘The Bauhaus and the Fundamentals of Window Display’ in Bauhaus Effects in Art, Architecture and Design, edited by Prof. Kathleen James-Chakraborty & Sabine T. Kriebel, 58-79 (New York: Routledge, 2022), and ‘The Bauhaus and the Business of Window Display—Moholy-Nagy’s endeavours at window display in London,’ Journal of Design History 35, no. 3 (2022): 265-280.

Display practitioners have always been innovative. Display has never been just about commerciality but rather a combination of art and commerce. Due to its close connection with the quickly changing nature of retail, display practitioners must understand what styles are in the past, those which are current, and what are in the future. Armed with this knowledge display is an inventive practice. With the fundamentals of display as a baseline, display practitioners are constantly learning to create in new ways. However, to look forward we also need to be aware of our past. This paper first considers the history of innovation in display by examining how the fundamental practices of display materialised during its inception as a profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Second, it explores the compelling link between modern art movements and window displays throughout the twentieth century. Display windows were often the platform from which the general populous were introduced to new art movements in a threedimensional context. Third, it examines the current art movement Metamodernism. This is a philosophy and way of life that corresponds with a digitized, post-industrial global age. A vastly simplified explanation could be ‘how do we communicate something genuine in a culture where emotional expression is so disingenuous? How can we be earnest without the cringes.’ To summarise, Metamodernism can be thought of as the oxymoron ‘ironic sincerity.’ It is a movement that playfully mocks itself and accepts its inadequacies, there is beauty in its striving. A combination of humour and critical thinking. It is an essential movement for the problems we face today, climate crisis, war, and global pandemics. It is an essential movement for display practitioners to spread to the world.

Does Visual Merchandising as our trade/ brand name quantify the exhaustive list of Visual Merchandising attributes?

Michelle Lalor

A comprehensive review of VM through the last and present century and how it has evolved. VM is referred to and described in so many ways, it is a challenge to synthesise them down to a few words. The words ‘visual’, ‘merchandising’ and ‘display’ have many perceived meanings and we question if they represent the true nature of the role as a university offering and the career paths the skills can lead to.

The technical abilities and skills a competent VM acquires are boundless and ever-changing. At the very least we are designers in our field; the research on the term ‘display’ holds us in high regard in the past and present. Art goes hand in hand with display designers but how do we rebrand visual merchandising to encapsulate this mastery of skill? VM holds a unique quality of being able to change to suit different eventualities. From the creative design perspective, we need to celebrate uniqueness and nurture thinking outside the box. Does putting us in a visual merchandising box celebrate our ability to make the exhaustive list of skills needed to quantify VM mastery?

Names that resonate with what can define our trade: Retail, Design (domestic, commercial, retail, event, museum), Experience, Image, Creative, Display.