I was reading a review of a show by Pae White at 1301PE Gallery in the LA Times and thought of several people in this class. Critic David Pagel describes White's work as "mobiles, sculptures and wallpaper [that] bring back a good deal of cheesy goofiness that has been purged from midcentury Modernist design" and generally praises her humorous take on high design through ceramics, glass and prints. (some yummy images unrelated to her current exhibt can be seen here.)
I got to thinking about how - as Paul pointed out in his proposal - we've reached a point of category-collapse where the category of "artist" is uselessly broad. I've thought that other disciplinary boundaries have been eroding for some time, like curator and critic, but I think the one most under siege may be the category of "design", especially in its modern incarnation.
in the name of democratizing design, now everyone (okay, pointedly not everyone, but the middle class) can got ot Target and get "good design" on the cheap. Magazines have sprung up to help us recognize (and eventually, one would assume, buy) good design. Design has become another of the things reasonably educated people are supposed to care about, along with that list of books we were supposed to read in college but most of us never did.
And as I thought further, I found myslef thinking of the magazine ReadyMade, in which a certain homely modernist aesthetic is promoted on a do-it-yourself level, as if Martha and Mies were collabortors, or at least engaged in some careful market segmentation. Sure enough, in the August/September issue, the MacGyver Milk Crate Challenge was won by Philadelphia's own Basekamp, the artists' collective fronted by Scott Rignby, Leigh Stevens and Jen Goettner. It may be true that everyone wants to be an artist, but the artists, it would seem, increasingly want to be designers.
I'm not sure what all this means, but I put it out to you - especially those who are thinking about decoration, installation, kitsch, and the indentity of the artist.
2 comments:
This concept is reminiscent of thoughts I had in connection to the drawing class and our loosely defined idea of drawing. What happens when practically anything can be considered a drawing, or when anyone and their grandmother can be considered a designer? I guess we are currently finding out.
In one of the books I have read (Bluebeard) the main character points out that the average draftsmen, who at one time would have been cherished by their community, has all but been replaced by technology, so that only a few elite "artists" can make it, and everyone else has to bottle up their artistic energies, and find some mundane day job. But now thanks to Martha and company everyone can have monthly releases of creativity, complete with easy step by step diagrams.
g., Thanx! Read same article, Pae White for me is my dream of hybridizing Polly Apfelbaum w/ Cornelia Parker...with a sprinkle of Ritchie and Gormley! The Bengelis and Woodman images were a plus. My writing has shifted a bit, but plan to link it all up!. Regards, Terri
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