FAT AND ILL

Fine art (in this case, fat for short) and illustration (ill for short) have a reputation for falling out, often over ethics. Ideas require justification if they are to be taken seriously, but justification and explanation are not the same thing. Consumer principles are difficult to define in the art world: fine art with money thrown at it for the sake of making a point; and design which sells superficial products for lots of money. At what point does an idea become unethical?

Design-endorsement company D&AD are a board of creative figures who nurture talent from specifically commercial fields. They are hugely important to the survival of artistic advertising and differentiating the good from bad- giving credibility not just a wad of cash to those who truly stand out. Their manifesto pins this absoluteness that anyone can be creative, but the best really have to have something special [1].

Besides money, the debate concerns controversial ideas. Commercial art that uses controversy has huge stigma attached, but that which has survived the ages has a manner of indestructability the British household protects- and in a way the most cctv secure museum just couldn’t.

We don’t like to think about art as something mathematical because it is one of the more irrational things in life we can indulge fantastically in; on the other hand, we subconsciously are drawn to trust something which looks factual or to have some kind of poster-esque or confident typography or colours, regardless of authenticity. It is how designed you want your identity to come across.

The ‘British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age’ show at the V&A in London over the summer of 2012 exhibited art and design from the most potent times in recent British heritage. For the sake of this essay’s argument, it wonderfully showcased the ‘good’ and little of the ‘bad’ which made it biased and mainly incredibly predictable as the Telegraphs reviewer Alastair Sooke complained[2]- posing patriotism as something of bad taste. It did highlight, probably not to many people’s observation, illustrative methods as the backbone to much of the work. From blueprints and prototypes to concept art, experiments in scale and reproduction.

In Bruno Munari’s ‘Design as Art’, the disappearance of old categories of art is discussed: how current work, ‘commercial article(s) stripped of mystery and reasonably priced’ has replaced them. The categories are now the audience- the artist breaks the circle: Artist – dealer – critic – collector – gallery. It is very difficult to put pure subjectivity through the cycle; and so ‘the artist transforms to designer’ he says: ‘when the objects we use every day and the surroundings we live in have become in themselves a work of art, then we shall be able to say that we have achieved a balanced life.’.

GOOD = IDEA

HOW WELL = IMAGE

IDEA + IMAGE = VALUE

There is definitely a changing value system; specs as used to measure product-success are now frequently used in the art world as a measure of fashion i.e. economics, component cost and obsolescence.  When techniques change, new materials are discovered, social problems arise and forms become outdated; the year of the ‘lucky charm’ as Munari describes. The good idea is becoming the unconditional excuse: probability and statistics applied to a gimmick[3].    

In Creative Review magazine of May 2012, George Lois expressed his sadness for the death of human instincts in advertising[4]. In another article, Rob McIntosh of Frog Design in Munich, a speaker at the SEGD symposium’s innovation session refers to data filtration (relevant, pertinent info only) as ‘the art of big data’ in a new approach to ‘augmented reality’. Information (IT in particular) is definitely the spark of ideas interesting to those who are looking to create themselves, although Ross Philips of Frog still believes: ‘start with an idea then use whatever technology is appropriate, not the other way around.’.

An article from the same magazine had a refreshingly positive outlook on narrative in the internet: not e-books, but specifically, Facebook. The new timeline format forces brands to engage and not just sell- brand stories are fun and allow you as a consumer to be the fly on their wall for a change. The danger again, like all online developments, although the premises are incredibly exciting, is the issue of copyrighting and how professional portfolios are now so difficult to get right. In article ‘To Vectorise or Squeegee?’ digital printing is commended, but the way poster art is responded to, described as culturally vague[5].

Cover Photo by Coca-Cola for Facebook, 2012

Cult book The Medium is the Massage, although over forty years old now, still makes very important insights which are still relevant: ‘there is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening’ –we have an obsession with understanding, even if not to like something, which favours low art forms in a big way. ‘Nobody can really imagine what private guilt can be anymore’ when you are encouraged to ‘stumble upon’ a website –tailor made to you- as someone with the same interests as somebody else.

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[1] D&AD today is a restless, enquiring, agitating organisation, determined to perpetuate brilliance in commercial creativity. It constantly pushes boundaries, initiating debate and encouraging experimentation, nurturing a tradition of craft skills and celebrating excellence within the creative industries and beyond.

[2] the fact that successful video games such as Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto have a British heritage is of limited interest, to me at least.

Moreover, seeing so many commercial products clustered together (a vacuum cleaner by James Dyson; Jonathan Ive’s colourful iMac G3) gives the final gallery the unwelcome air of a state-sponsored pavilion promoting contemporary British design at an overseas trade fair.

In general I could have done with less drum-beating and greater emphasis upon more difficult aspects of the past 60 years, such as the decline of Britain’s fortunes as an imperial power, the impact of successive recessions upon artists and designers, and the lamentable disappearance of the great tradition of British manufacturing, which once earned this country a reputation as the “workshop of the world”.

In fairness, these elegiac subplots do feature in the detail of the show, but you have to look hard to find them. As a result, how much you enjoy British Design 1948-2012 will depend upon the intensity of your patriotism.

[3] When a lot of money comes along before culture arrives, we get the phenomenon of the gold telephone. And when I say culture I don’t mean academic knowledge, I mean information: information about what is happening in the world, about the things that make life interesting.

[4] There isn’t a client who hasn’t taken the marketing courses or business courses in college. They’ve all been taught that advertising is a science. Advertising is not, but how are those colleges going to teach that advertising is an art?

[5] ‘These trends call into question how we frame the cultural value and authenticity of this kind of work, when the very ideas of history and culture have themselves become styles and palette swatches.’ ‘While illustrators borrowing from visual ideologies or transforming historical imagery into faddish style is nothing new, this kind of referencing is important to bear in mind when looking at the cultural value of an artwork.’