The Groove Issue 34 - Make The Familiar Strange
Welcome to the 34th issue of The Groove.
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MAKE THE FAMILIAR STRANGE
When we see something familiar in a strange setting, we can’t help but become curious and inquisitive. We also feel a good deal of sensations that evoke both the idea of knowing something as well as that of novelty and surprise. In both business and art, this is one of the most effective ways to be creative and innovative.
Magritte in his studio in Belgium in 1964 finishing his painting Man in a Bowler Hat.
Piquing The Mind By Creating Alternatives
Belgian Surrealist René Magritte remains as relevant as ever even though he died in 1967. Most of what Magritte chose to paint was familiar objects in unusual contexts, and through that he taught us that things don’t always have to be what people tell us they are. There are millions of alternatives, if we choose to explore them.
Magritte wanted to evoke new and surprising feelings and trigger critical thinking in the viewers of his paintings and the readers of his essays. He wanted to question the relationship between painting and the objects it represented, and he famously did it with The Treachery of Images from 1929. It was an illustration of a pipe with a statement under it that read: Ceci n’est pas une pipe, or “this is not a pipe.” Not only did Magritte want to play with people’s minds but in reality, the image painted wasn't a pipe, but the representation of it. To make his point he used to say: “Can you smoke my painting? Well, then it isn’t a pipe!”
Magritte’s 1964 self-portrait Son of Man.
When in 1964 he painted what is probably his most recognizable work, his self-portrait Son of Man, he placed his face behind a hovering green apple. Magritte said: “everything we see hides another thing...there is an interest in that which is hidden.” An apple is normally used to decorate a table, or something people eat at the end of a meal, but what about if an apple is placed to conceal a man’s face?
And he was right - not only has the Son of Man inspired thousands of artists, including John Baldessari and Andy Warhol, but it was this very same green apple placed out of context that gave the symbol and name of the Beatles’ record company “Apple Corps” because Paul McCartney was obsessed with the Belgian painter’s work. It has even been said that Steve Jobs gave Apple Computers its name in part due to the Beatles’ logo.
Render The Ordinary Into Extraordinary
The iconic bottle of Absolut Vodka designed by Gunnar Broman in 1979.
When we question our everyday, not only do we come up with more creative ideas, but we also have the ability to render ordinary things extraordinary.
Take for example the invention of the bottle of Absolut Vodka, the iconic design that turned a failing business into one of the top three best-selling spirit brands in the world. One hundred years after L.O. Smith had started a quest for an “absolutely pure vodka” in a small island in central Stockholm, nobody really cared for his pungent beverage anymore. Lars Lindmark, the CEO of the company that was managing what was left of the business, thought that to save the brand, he needed to sell the product to the United States.
This was the 1970s and Lindmark called renowned marketer Gunnar Broman to redesign the bottle. Broman came up with a new design: it will look sleek and resemble the containers found in apothecaries and pharmacies. “That’s quite strange,” Lindmark thought. But he let Broman go with it and try to place the familiar “old pharmacy bottle” in the very unusual setting of bars and restaurants.
Absolut was almost shutting down its operations when in the spring of 1979, it was relaunched at a trade fair in New Orleans. Soon enough orders started pouring in from East Coast bars and lounges, and Manhattan establishments took heed. The bottle was so conspicuous next to all the ornate spirit containers and both familiar and strange, that people couldn’t help noticing it and ordering its contents on the rocks or in cocktails. This familiar bottle in a strange setting is what saved this brand from forever disappearing and falling into a forgettable has-been.
Play With The Familiar in Unexpected Ways
Magritte’s 1952 painting: Personal Values. Small objects with human proportions. Inside and out are inverted by his rendering of a skyscape on the interior walls of the room. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, the normal, strange.
The familiar placed in an unexpected context has enormous power, even if it’s originally just registered by the subconscious. Think about these two examples out of hundreds of thousands that exist: an artist who left his mark in the art history canon and a brand that was saved from bankruptcy and turned into the level of iconicism that only a handful of products ever reach. What they each share is the use of everyday objects taken out of their context and placed in a very different setting than where they could normally be found.
In an interview that Magritte gave to Elle Magazine in 1960, he told the writer that “I make efforts to make what is familiar strange again.” Magritte was teaching us to look at things closely and not take images or concepts given to us at face value. His advice is valid in any area or field where people want to refresh their ideas or launch exciting new ventures that keep people guessing and coming back for more.
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