So for two dollar you have somesing in your bathroom that becomes somesing else

So, for two dollar, you have somesing in your bathroom that becomes somesing else. Because of this small, ‘umble micro-sculpture, your bathroom become small, ‘umble micro-museum…”The Starck brand is part of the whole march of evolution, even. “I try to show that we burn crystal of mud, we become bacteria, we become fish, we become frog, we become monkey, we become super-monkey, and from super-monkey we become what we are today. It is all mutation.”What does he mean by this? Is he, perhaps, trying to say that he’s taken the colander right up to the limits of its genetic potential? I don’t know, but do find it quite charming. What is it, I wonder, about the French that they always think they might be Sartre? With, perhaps, a little bit of Foucault and Camus thrown in.I ask him about the first thing he designed. He says it was when he was a schoolboy, and “I design torture room for my teacher.

I be quiet in the corner of the classroom, designing torture room.” Why? “I ‘ate school It was absolutely not adapted for me. I understand nothing of what they try to teach me, and that is why always I was escaping and every week the police bring me back, until I lie to my mother and never went.”For the last year, I never went. My mother was sure I was going to school, but I was in the forest, alone, very depressed, in the cold, in the snow, waiting all day for the school to be finished It’s where I learned to be alone to work. I am lonely dreamer.”What was in your torture room? “I cannot remember.

Oh, I remember there was tank of blue-ed.”"Tank of blue-ed?”"Yes Tank of blue-ed.”"Oh, blood!”"Yes Blue-ed.”He does sound like he was the most lonely child. Friends? “Almost not.” Your first girlfriend? “Not until I was 22.” Father? “Is dead.” Were you close to your father (an aircraft designer) when he was alive? “No I never spoke with my father I had a very strange youth. I was alone, in the middle of the forest, or alone in my bedroom, for years and years and years. But when you are completely lost in a society that is not designed for you, you are obliged to be a little creative to escape. That is what I have done.”I tell him that I think he’s been more than a “little” creative He says: “You are right More than a little, yes. But when you are invisible, almost dead, you become incredibly creative. At the end, I exist only by what I do.” Perhaps this, ultimately, is why a toothbrush will always have to be more than a toothbrush.

These objects are him.Whatever, he’s been fantastically influential, and prolific. On average, he says, he has 200 projects on the go, simultaneously. He would like, I think, to depict himself as some kind of idiot savant. “My conscious life is the life of a regular guy, who is not very brilliant, not very intelligent, not very elegant, but I am very happy because I have a subconscious that works without me and is really smart It delivers The images arrive, and I just have to copy. My brain is like printer.”Is that how the Juicy Salif came to you? Yes, he says, the image came to him while waiting for a pizza in a restaurant in Italy.