relationship between art & design
Patrick May
settings, design is a wholly different major than studio art, taught
with a completely different focus. Studio art training focuses on
selling the artist. The focus is on the artist's control over the
language process, a if-you-build-it-they-will-come attitude that your
audience will find you. I'm guessing that design focuses on results.
(find-out-who-your-building-it-for-and-what-they-want)
I'm wondering how this is echoed through the industry.
I'm also curious about individual designer's relationships to the arts--
Do you follow contemporary art scenes (New York, Los Angeles, etc.)?
Do you look at particular time periods?
Do you have opinions on differences/comparisons between the practices?
In my opinion, designers and artists share the same skills. The main
difference seems to be that designers serve a wide range of interests
(clients), while artists are generally each supported by a particular
(small and elite) community (client). Artists also deal with the
over-romantization of their process, while designers seem to have the
opposite problem, with their work being undervalued.
bkr
of creating, or destruction. design is more communicative(?) in nature. art
doesn't need to convey anything. here is a good way to think of the
difference, my professor in college told me this. art would be someone
masturbating in front of a group of people. design would be two people
having sex in front of a group of people.
Daniel Vena
> I'm a studio art major at New York University. In most academic
> settings, design is a wholly different major than studio art, taught
> with a completely different focus. Studio art training focuses on
> selling the artist. The focus is on the artist's control over the
> language process, a if-you-build-it-they-will-come attitude that your
> audience will find you. I'm guessing that design focuses on results.
> (find-out-who-your-building-it-for-and-what-they-want)
I'm currently majoring in Multimedia, taking graphic design for my minor,
and I notice something very interesting about design classes. Pretty much
my whole life I was a traditional artist, I only got into design a few years
ago. What I've noticed about design classes (here at UArts, philly, at
least) is that they FORCE you to start thinking like a traditional artist.
They force you to do illustrations. The first two weeks of my design class
from this past semester were spent doing still life drawings in photoshop
and illustrator. They want us to stop thinking of ourselves as different
from traditional art, and I think they're right. Perhaps it is because
design is mainly a commercial art form that we forget that it really is an
art.
> I'm wondering how this is echoed through the industry.
>
> I'm also curious about individual designer's relationships to the arts--
>
> Do you follow contemporary art scenes (New York, Los Angeles, etc.)?
Personally, no. I despise galleries. No, I don't have any real reason.
> Do you look at particular time periods?
If I were to pick a particular art period, I would have to say modern.
Modern meaning the past 20 years. I especially enjoy much of the
photomontage work coming out of the fantasy genre of literature. Such as
Dave McKean and his works for the Sandman comic series.
> Do you have opinions on differences/comparisons between the practices?
I believe that if you can draw or paint, it will help you design. Going the
other way around is a hell of a lot harder. Sculpture doesn't really help
as far as I'm concerned because I do not do 3d design. Drawing and painting
helps because they are direct manual translations of 3d to a 2d surface.
> In my opinion, designers and artists share the same skills. The main
> difference seems to be that designers serve a wide range of interests
> (clients), while artists are generally each supported by a particular
> (small and elite) community (client). Artists also deal with the
> over-romantization of their process, while designers seem to have the
> opposite problem, with their work being undervalued.
Most traditional artists take on several projects at once, simply to keep
food in their fridge. They're not much different then designers.
Personally, I don't know where you are coming from with the idea of our work
being undervalued. Do you want us to be making millions? I certainly
don't. It'd be nice, but it'd be idiotic and spoiling.
--
daniel vena - click2 media
http://www.click-2.net/
Michael and Margaret Jung
Patrick May wrote in message <3679C4FD...@is4.nyu.edu>...
>I'm a studio art major at New York University. In most academic
>settings, design is a wholly different major than studio art, taught
>with a completely different focus. Studio art training focuses on
>selling the artist. The focus is on the artist's control over the
>language process, a if-you-build-it-they-will-come attitude that your
>audience will find you. I'm guessing that design focuses on results.
>(find-out-who-your-building-it-for-and-what-they-want)
>
I've been giving this a lot of thought lately too. I'm a graphic
design/multimedia student at San Francisco State and lately I've been
wondering if there's a sort of trickle down effect from "fine arts" to
"graphic arts". The approach at my school is pretty hardheaded practical,
job market oriented, this-is-not-fine-art kind of thing. I studied fine art
as an undergrad, though, and it's more than a little amusing to find myself
doing exercises and projects in upper-division design classes that I've
already done in lower-division fine art classes, including technical and
conceptual skills.
>I'm also curious about individual designer's relationships to the arts--
>
>Do you follow contemporary art scenes (New York, Los Angeles, etc.)?
>Do you look at particular time periods?
>Do you have opinions on differences/comparisons between the practices?
I'm not informed about the contemporary scenes, to be honest- I run through
the galleries every couple of months or so and I'm a fairly regular visitor
to the SFMOMA, but that's about it. Art-wise 20th century stuff seems to
catch me eye first, particularly the granddaddies of abstraction, Mondrian,
Kandinsky, Brancusi, etc. Design-wise my interests right now are more in
line with researching the significant design movements of the past century,
and in finding out what movements there have been that the history books
DON'T label as significant. It seems impossible to study design history
without getting deep into art history as well, though.
>In my opinion, designers and artists share the same skills. The main
>difference seems to be that designers serve a wide range of interests
>(clients), while artists are generally each supported by a particular
>(small and elite) community (client). Artists also deal with the
>over-romantization of their process, while designers seem to have the
>opposite problem, with their work being undervalued.
I agree with you about sharing skills - knowing how to handle line and color
and composition and conceptualization all translate from art to design, at
least in the academic forum that I'm currently in. From what I hear and read
it seems that designers are undervalued, maybe not in terms of money but
more in terms of respect, or recognition as being both serious professional
people and serious creative people at the same time. This is not to say that
everyone who calls themself a designer is a really professional and creative
type, I would have to guess there are mediocrities like there are in any
other field. Personally I'd like a little more romance in the way design is
regarded.
Donald Harris
>
> art and design share an intimate relationship in what is involved in the act
> of creating, or destruction. design is more communicative(?) in nature. art
> doesn't need to convey anything. here is a good way to think of the
> difference, my professor in college told me this. art would be someone
> masturbating in front of a group of people. design would be two people
> having sex in front of a group of people.
But, when they got arrested, would they be put in the same cell or
separate cells?
Just wondering...
Donald Harris
Paul Harris Design
Fresh! Hot! Mental Soup
http://mentalsoup.com/
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes
the fundamental ills of society. If we're
looking for the source of our troubles, we
shouldn't test people for drugs, we should
test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed
and love of power. P.J. O'Rourke
Daniel Vena
> art and design share an intimate relationship in what is involved in the act
> of creating, or destruction. design is more communicative(?) in nature. art
> doesn't need to convey anything. here is a good way to think of the
> difference, my professor in college told me this. art would be someone
> masturbating in front of a group of people. design would be two people
> having sex in front of a group of people.
And both of them can be thought of as one person masturbating a group of people.
Patrick May
Daniel Vena wrote:
> Most traditional artists take on several projects at once, simply to keep
> food in their fridge. They're not much different then designers.
> Personally, I don't know where you are coming from with the idea of our work
> being undervalued. Do you want us to be making millions? I certainly
> don't. It'd be nice, but it'd be idiotic and spoiling.
I meant culturally, rather than financially (as professions, art and design both
rank pretty low on the pay scale). There's a discourse which places
art-that-is-real-expression against/above design-which-is-prostitution (this is
coming out of the art field). I think that kind of discourse is wrong--they're
both real expression, they're both prostitution, the difference between the two
communities is overemphasized.
But then again, this discourse maybe more common among artists ;)
pat may
Patrick May
bkr wrote:
> art and design share an intimate relationship in what is involved in the act
> of creating, or destruction. design is more communicative(?) in nature. art
> doesn't need to convey anything.
I disagree with you on this point. Most "traditional" art was made to support
specific interests--court painters, religious paintings. All of it had a
didactic end. Even the most abstract art movements (Abstract Expressionism) had
elaborate self-justifications about how they were fighting facism with their
art. Not that I >agree< with those positions, just that I don't think art is
divorced of a need to convey anything.
> here is a good way to think of the
> difference, my professor in college told me this. art would be someone
> masturbating in front of a group of people. design would be two people
> having sex in front of a group of people.
check out this performance artist--art or design?
http://www.heck.com/annie/index.html
bkr
Patrick May
Design isn't necessarily about conveying a message, it's about getting a
particular result. The result may be that people buy the product,
understand how to use something, etc. I don't think the viewer recieves
that result--I think they are moved (pushed, pulled, dragged if
necessary ;)
towards that result.
I think the goals of artists are just different. The forces which
make up the journey of the viewer are the same--same vocabulary, same
sub-processes, same iconic meanings. (plus or minus the historical art
or design references). Art/design is a big category applied after a
viewer has seen the piece and made a decision. It doesn't have much to
do with the mechanics of making an images.
Anyway, I think I posted this because art and design is a big binary
category--one or the other. I think I'm trying to find the point of
meeting,
because they feel almost the same, but there's a definite difference.
I think the difference has nothing to do with process, and everything to
do
with the context in which the viewer meets the piece.