Designer-architect-artist extraordinaire Ron Arad may be called an artist by designers, an architect by artists, and a designer by architects, but Arad doesn''t like to be defined as any of the above. Last year, the Centre Pompidou gave Arad free rein to declare this in a show aptly titled "No Discipline," offering the arguably irreverent modern art museum a platform for the irreverent designer’s oeuvre. The show drew record crowds and gave Arad followers an inside look into the mind of this famously indefinable designer. Now, MoMA has opened an Arad midcareer retrospective with the same title but very different in nature, showing that even the undisciplined créateur can be tempered. Marina Cashdan spoke with Arad about the two exhibitions, his design philosophy, and his continuing struggle not to be pigeonholed.

"Ron Arad" will appear in the September 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from the current issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters'' Summer 2009 Table of Contents.