marshall art as design

7/31/2019 Marshall Art as Design

1/7

John Marshall

[email protected]://designedobjects.blogspot.com/

Dan Graham

Art As Design

Design As ArtDan Graham

Original text explored thesources of Grahams workInterior Design for Space

Showing Videotapes (1986)shown at Fruitmarket Gallery

in 1987.

Claes Oldenburg, Dan Flavin,Robert Venturi, Andy Warhol,

John Chamberlain and JohnKnight.

Dan GrahamThree Linked Cubes - Interior

Design for Space Showing Videos

Three Linked Cubes: a series ofrectangular bays with one side open

and with side panels of alternatingtwo-way mirror or transparent glass

has a dual identity. Placed outside it isan opened pavilion illuminated by the

sun; placed indoors, it is transformedinto Interior Design for Space

Showing Videotapes. Here variousvideo monitors and speakers are

placed to allow three separateprograms for audiences subdivided

into 6 groups. The effects of thechanging illumination from the videoimages reflected on the glass panelseffects the mirror ghosts of audience

members seen in other enclosed baysof the divider. The work is both

functional exhibition design and anoptical art work.

(Source: Dan Graham, Pavillons,Kunstverein Mnchen, Munich 1988,

p. 46)

Dan Grahams work hasalways had a hybrid quality, a

subversive sense ofundermining the accepted

boundaries betweencategories.

according to the way inwhich the text is constructed,

as a collage of quotations,revisions of Dan Grahams

earlier texts and newsections, we have employed

the new technology ofDesktop Publishing, ratherthan traditional typesetting

and offset printing.

Mark Francis


2/7

ClaesOldenburg

Bedroom Ensemble, 1964

Dan Flavin

John Chamberlain

Barbara Bloemink

DesignArt: Functional

Objects from Donald Judd toRachel Whiteread

Curated by Barbara Bloemink at theSmithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National

Design Museum, 2005.

The separation of fine art fromdesign is a fairly recent Western

conceit, and has only been consideredan issue during certain eras. So too is

the idea, still prevalent, that art isnon-functional. Throughout Western

history, art has functioned asreligious, ideological, and politicalpropaganda, economic currency,commodity, decoration, and as a

vehicle for personal self-aggrandizement. (p18)

Donald Judd, Plywood Box, 1974

Office of Clarence Judd Architects,

Marfa Texas Scott Burton, Two Curve Chair, 1989

Rachel Whiteread, Daybed, 1999

Dan Flavin, Untitled, 1992

Richard Artschwager, Pink Tablecloth, 1964

Troels Degn Johansson


3/7

http://www.superflex.dk/

http://www.raca.dk/

By intervening in particular living conditions, artists seem tostress the idea that their work makes a significant differenceto other people's lives: that art, by means of design, may

empower people. Hence the notions of micropolitics andmicro-ethics which have often been used to characterize theparticular ethos of the relational avant-garde.

Described in these terms, relational art demonstrates astriking resemblance with strategies applied among designersinvolving user participation in design processes, and it wouldcertainly be worth while to discuss whether the experiencesgained within relational art may contribute to theunderstanding of participative methodologies in design.

admit that so-called avant-garde strategies operating inart and design today should be seen in a context of post-avant-garde, in which it is no longer relevant to distinguishbetween the two

The term relational aestheticswas coined in 1996 by French

theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud

to characterize artistic practice in the1990s.

Relational aesthetics is a theory ofaesthetics in which artworks are

judged based upon the inter-humanrelations which they represent,

produce, or prompt. (p112).

Alex Coles

DesignArtAlex Coles

Tate Publishing, 2005

Let it be clear from the outset thenthat it is a term derived from

many of the contemporary artistsassociated with it. Joe Scanlan,for one, frequently peppers his

felicitous essays on the subject withit. In a 2001 essay co-authored with

Neal Jackson entitled Please,Eat the Daisies, he furnishes thereader with a crisp explanation of

the term:Design art could be definedloosely as any artwork that

attempts to play with the place,function, and style of art by

commingling it with architecture,furniture, and graphic design.

A key issue to keep in mind whenthinking about designart

is that all art is designed, even if it

endeavours to appear otherwise.


4/7

Tobias Rehberger, Come-in, 2000

Joe Scanlan, Product No. 2, 1999Jim Lambie, Zobop, 2002

Jorge Pardo, Project, Dia Center forthe Arts, 2000

Liam Gillick, BigConference Limitation

Screen, 1998

Design and ArtAlex Coles

MIT Press, 2007

Much of this contemporary debate onthe relations between design and art

has centred on the specific termdesignart. This came into being in

the late 1990s as a way of describing

the work of contemporarypractitioners as various as Jorge

Pardo, M/M, N55, Tobias Rehberger,Studio van Lieshout, Superflex and

Andrea Zittel

So it comes as no surprise thatrecently galleries and auction housesfind the term useful when marketing

such work and that glossy lifestylemagazines such as Wallpaper find it

such an engrossing subject. Perhaps,now that designart refers to

something much more limited inscope than that intended by Scanlan,

the term should be discarded.

First and foremost, all the claims that I have inventoried thus farare predicated on certain clichs of what constitutes progressive,vanguard or advanced art and are based on assumptions aboutcurrent conditions of cultural practice that are out of syncwith their realities. One such assumption is that mediumcategories in art or disciplinary divisions in the humanities are stilloppressively strict, so that any art that touts interdisciplinarityor crosses boundaries is attributed with automaticandunquestionedcritical value. But it seems to me that even whilethe disciplinary debates/fights continue in certain sectors ofacademia, the destabilized state of medium specificity anddisciplinary categories is already the dominant or given condition ofcultural practice. As such, rather than serving an interventionaryfunction within exclusive art institutions, so-called cross disciplinarypractices or events that blur categorical distinctions may simply besymptoms ofthe tendency towards de-differentiation thatpervades cultural experience generally.

Miwon Kwon Jorge Pardos Designs on Design 2002


5/7


6/7

Siah Armajani, Thomas JeffersonsHouse, 1976

Alice Aycock, Maze, 1972

Mary Miss, Field Rotation, 1981

Klein Group Diagram by Rosalind Krauss from Sculpture in the Expanded Field.Originally published in October 8 (Spring, 1979).

Hal Foster has more recently suggested that the expandedfield described by Krauss has imploded and that thecategories are no longer held in productive contradiction. Iwonder if this is the ease because it seems to me that thefield has exploded rather than imploded and that it is for thisreason that the categories are no longer held in tension.Today, definitions and categorizations of art are

occurring across multiple disciplines rather than withinone, requiring new terms and modes of thinking that allowus to identify the particularities and differences of the variousrelated practices in ways that go beyond opposition. To dothis I propose that we need to understand artworks asproducts of specific processes, of production andreception, that operate within a further expanded andinterdisciplinary field, where terms are not only definedthrough one discipline hut by many simultaneously.

Jane Rendell in Art and Architecture2006


7/7

An area of inquiry?

A field of study?

A hybrid discipline?

Boundaries for transdisciplinary practices are the boundaries of the

problem being addressed, not the artificial boundaries ofconventional disciplines.

Gavin Baily & Tom CorbyCyclone.socwww.reconnoitre.net

Adam Somlai-Fischer, Bengt Sjln & UsmanHaqueWiFi Camera Obscurawww.haque.co.uk

Human BeansWhats Cooking Grandma?www.humanbeans.net

NIO ArchitectenWatermarkwww.nio.nl

Geoffrey MannFlight - Take Offwww.mrmann.co.uk

Simon HussleinWarpwww.husslein.net

Justin MarshallCoded Ornamentwww.justinmarshall.co.uk

Future FactoriesHoly Ghostwww.futurefactories.com

I have no answersor declarations -questions are,however, alwaysappropriate.

Richard Tuttle in DesignArt

[email protected]

http://designedobjects.blogspot.com/

marshall art as design

Documents