Review: High’s fun, accessible design show centers on populist sneaker

Bottom line: A fun, lightweight show about sneaker design and their cultural meaning through the ages.

"The Rise of Sneaker Culture" at the High Museum of Art feels in many ways like the very successful "The Allure of the Automobile" exhibition at the High six years ago.

Both shows tackle design, specifically the design of objects familiar from daily life. And both exhibitions seem squarely aimed at luring a younger male audience into the museum. With their strong connections to sports heroes like Michael Jordan and to musicians like seminal hip-hop duo Run-DMC, sneakers have been an essential expression of street style for generations of men, sneaker designers’ and manufacturers’ primary audience.

Sneakers are “the most baroque accessories in the male wardrobe,” according to museum wall text, and “tools for cultural expression,” notes one catalog contributor, DJ and sneaker fan Bobbito Garcia. Wall text is straightforward in acknowledging the dearth of female shoe designers and also the lack of significant sneaker design targeted at women.

For those who haven’t contemplated sneakers in any great depth beyond a trip to the Nike store, this survey of both contemporary sneaker design and the history of athletic shoes (whose invention was tied to advances in rubber harvesting and the increasing popularity of physical fitness culture) at the turn of the century will surely be an entertaining crash course in the meaning behind this ubiquitous footwear.

GALLERY: You can see some of the shoes here.

The initial impact of the populist, accessible “The Rise of Sneaker Culture” can be slightly jarring. The sneakers are housed in torso-high vitrines, in tidy rows so that the exhibition at first glance resembles a high-end retail store. The vitrines are organized along certain themes: sometimes by a particular sport like tennis or basketball; sometimes by an idea, like designer sneakers created when luxury brands including Prada, Jimmy Choo and Louis Vuitton entered the sneaker market in the 1990s.

Innovations in sneaker technology are another theme, as manufacturers created sneakers to meet the changing demands of customers. Designers like Nike’s Tinker Hatfield, named by Forbes one of the 20th century’s “100 Most Influential Designers,” helped shape sneaker innovations like cross-trainers, numerous incarnations of the popular Air Jordan and designs for the U.S. military.

There are customized sneakers like Jimm Lasser’s Obama shoes featuring the president’s portrait on the sole, and vitrines devoted to contemporary artists like Tom Sachs, Kehinde Wiley and Damien Hirst whose “art” sneakers have commented on subjects from athlete hero-worship to African culture.

One of the most fascinating sneaker entries in the show is Argentine artist Judi Werthein’s special cross-trainers designed to aid immigrants crossing the border from Mexico to America. Werthein’s “Brinco” (the Spanish word for “jump”) shoes were created to aid immigrants on their perilous journey by foot and come equipped with a compass, flashlight, map and Tylenol. The inclusion of such shoes expands the show’s focus from a fan-based tribute to this beloved democratic accessory, into an exploration of fashion’s potential as social commentary.

Shoes are sourced from Toronto's Bata Shoe Museum, an organizer of the exhibit along with the American Federation of Arts, with the Nike and Adidas archives, and private collections also loaning sneakers for the show.

With their pumps and spat-like flaps, electric color combos and wildly evolving forms, these sneakers can definitely feel like an outrageous collision of technology and style, a chance for self-expression and a designers’ playground to see just how far you can take rubber, polyurethane and nylon.