I recently decided to make some live action art videos. I wanted to park a huge truck in the efficiency car parking spaces at Best Buy and film myself in a lounge chair while it idled. Maybe until The guys came out and kicked me off the property.

I suggested it on the internet, and a girl I didn’t know told me “That’s stupid. Art is supposed to make you think!”

I didn’t respond to her, largely because there were too many directions I could go in, but two in particular.

The first is- This doesn’t make you think? It questions the necessity of these stupid signs! Don’t get me wrong- Best Buy has every right to put up these signs and insist that only people that drive ‘efficient’ vehicles should be allowed to park there, but I am allowed to have an opinion on the matter as well. And this will get people to think, even if it’s only thinking that I’m an idiot. A lot of the art out there seems to fall into that category. It seems to be trying to make a point, with that point acting to make people mad, but it seems that the only acceptable points are the ones that question traditional society. Otherwise it’s just stupid.

It’s ironic. For the most part, the culture that people are aware of- the accepted culture- born in large part from television, music and movies, accepts and celebrates the ‘let’s make a statement’ art as long as it agrees with the culture of popular sentiment. And it usually does. Anytime someone complains about a piece like Piss Christ, (where Andres Serrano took a picture of a crucifix submerged in his own urine) that someone is portrayed as an unenlightened neanderthal.

However,

if someone makes a piece questioning the religion of the culture (Earth Worship, Sex Worship, Government Worship) or one celebrating something traditional- like family or God, they are seen as the neanderthal.

Part of the reason I’ve been pondering this is the second reason. Whatever happened to art that’s nice to look at? Why must it be accepted that a nice Renaissance or Romantic era style painting made today would be kitsch? Marina Abramovic made a piece called

Art Must be Beautiful, Artist Must be Beautiful

It questions to notion of art being nice to look at- but now it seems to be that if it is nice, it’s considered junk. Not to mention the afore mentioned values!

A lot of people want something nice to put in their houses. They are derided and looked down upon on record by people such as Clement Greenberg in his vastly misguided essay

Avant Garde and Kitsch.

This is hypocrisy, in my opinion. It’s arrogant- people complaining about how their art isn’t accepted (even though it is) and putting down art they don’t agree with.

A recent example of this is Jon McNaughton’s painting

The Forgotten Man.

It depicts Obama standing on the constitution. It’s beautiful to look at, and get’s a point across. It’s considered controversial. One comment was “This guy is a right wing christian extremist who has no idea or desire to be historically accurate”

“When the Bush/Cheney administration pushed the “Patriot Act” through Congress and Bush signed it into law why didn’t McNaughton do a picture of them trampling the Constitution.”

He also has several paintings depicting God. Beautiful paintings at that. I think we need more of this- after all, these are the paintings that challenge society.

]]> http://codadesign.net/Blog/?feed=rss2&p=62 1 http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=56 http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=56#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:38:49 +0000 Christopher Allen http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=56 Continue reading →]]> Last night I stopped for gas at a Casey’s on the west side of Wichita. There was a guy changing the trash that I recognized from my last semester at college. He didn’t say a whole lot to me in college, but he had a slightly condescending attitude towards me. I mentioned that there was a red headed guy that was in our class who I’ve seen during the day. I decided to be friendly, so I asked him if he’d been doing any freelance work (since he obviously wasn’t working in the field). He mentioned he did a poster for a band- cool. So I told him what I’d been doing- a few corporate identities, a website for a local newspaper, and some work for a guy in Houston. Oh, and I also teach web design at ITT-Tech part time.

He looked a little disgusted and said “They must be hard up for teachers there.”

Really? My first inclination was to get angry. It brought back a lot of bad feelings from my last semester. I seem to remember that he thought I should do some remedial work. I was really depressed that semester, thinking that maybe I wasn’t any good. Every idea I had kept getting shot down, and it got to the point that I wasn’t even trying.

In the middle of the semester I had a change in emotions, though. I was trying to figure out what it was that I just wasn’t getting, when my teacher pointed out that I ought to look at a web site that showed some great examples of design on it. At about the same time I’d bought a book on logos. I found that in both of them I saw what I considered to be worthless crap heralded as awesome work. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that it doesn’t matter what ‘the establishment’ thinks; all this ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are just the current trends. I personally think the current trends are bad. There was another guy in my class who was about my age who agreed with me too. And more importantly, there are clients that agree with me. I’m doing my part by pointing out that I disagree with some of the current fads in class. I can fake them, and do. But this ultra clean, homogenized work isn’t good for all situations. In the book I bought I realized that while all the logos fit several criteria of good logos, they didn’t fit the main one- unique and identifiable.

In retrospect, I suppose I ought to be sorry for the guy. I’m working full time and he’s changing the trash at a convenience store.

]]> http://codadesign.net/Blog/?feed=rss2&p=56 0 http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=46 http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=46#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:15:45 +0000 Christopher Allen http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=46 Continue reading →]]>

When I was in college, we had a discussion about the culture wars. We looked at a photo of the art piece known as ‘Piss Christ’ where the artist had submerged a crucifix in his own urine.

The professor then pointed out that there were elements in congress that complained about certain works of art, and questioned whether government should be funding them.
A question was then posed to the class- should the government discriminate against certain works of art that they don’t understand (obviously, according to the professor) just because they found them offensive? If they did, then wouldn’t that amount to censorship? Or should they fund all types of art, since that would be fair and not discriminatory?
It did seem to be aimed at getting the kids to admit that they were either thoughtful or discriminatory, backwards jerks, but more to the point, he didn’t give another option- which I added when it was my turn to answer.

“I don’t think the government should fund art that I find truly incredible and absolutely love.”

This really got a reaction, since the going rumor going through the art department was that our new governor, Same Brownback, was getting rid of the art funding for our state, this was to be replaced by a non profit organization that would get funding for the arts in Kansas through donations. Making this suggestion was somewhat akin to blasphemy in the company I was keeping. But I stuck to my guns.

It’s not the government’s place to pay for art. On top of cost, where do you draw the line? The fairest way to decide what art to fund is to not fund any of it.

This is why I got into graphic design. I still like painting, and I enjoy ceramics, but I know that it’s a hard field to get into. I mentioned this in the class, and this genius suggested that this would make all of the art just be Pepsi logos. Obviously, she didn’t understand what I was saying, which is- You just need to have a backup. Lots of actors and musicians work a day job as they try to get their music/acting career. I was one of them. I was going to be a professional in both of these fields when I was in my twenties, at which time I got fairly good at delivering pizza. If artists or classical musician get money for their craft, why not give it to aspiring movie stars or Heavy Metal musicians?

If you want to make art, nobody’s stopping you. In some countries of the world, you get beheaded for making art that others disapprove of.

The government not paying for you to make something is NOT censorship.

Why is it so important that government funds it? Or anything besides basic infrastructure? There seems to be this crazy notion that if the government doesn’t do something, it won’t get done. Art existed before the NEA, and will continue to exist long after it ends. Another discussion I got into on the subject ended with being told that government had to fund the arts to prove that it had a soul. Wow- I really didn’t know how to respond to that one except by pointing out that governments don’t have souls! People have souls, governments aren’t alive. They’re groups that are supposed to keep you safe, provide roads and such, and regulate commerce. These are fairly neutral ideas, and don’t take a soul to accomplish. Art is a product- whether you’re going to a gallery to see an exhibition, paying to see a symphony or play, or buying something related to these such as a painting of DVD. If you’re really good, as well as lucky and persistent, you might get world renown and become rich. You might not, but those are the breaks. There are plenty of businesses that don’t make it, even though they have good people running them and good ideas. But it isn’t the government’s place to support it. If it’s good enough, it will get bought. You will get a benefactor. But you’ll have to work hard at it. Is this cruel? No, it’s fair.

]]> http://codadesign.net/Blog/?feed=rss2&p=46 0 http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=43 http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=43#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 13:08:42 +0000 Christopher Allen http://codadesign.net/Blog/?p=43 Continue reading →]]> There are no visual limits. Art is what it is. It’s whatever it wants to be, and is only limited by the artists’ imagination.

This is especially true as we constantly redefine just what art is.

To suggest that artists have some sort of outside ‘rules’ that they adhere to while making a piece of art is not only unlikely, but ridiculous. Artists in general make art based on what they want to say, and if someone tells them that they aren’t allowed to do something, they are usually inclined to tell that person to go to hell.
Artists can’t even seem to agree on what a definition of art is, 1 much less the rules for keeping it a certain way. This definition goes into line and form, by is repudiated by Paul Vogt.
..In the face of the tremendous processes that have emerged and the complexity of the external forms they have assumed, one might question whether… an approach dictated by the traditional concept of a linear development can still be adequately elucidated…2
Art has been used both to promote and protest ideas (usually in government or religion) for a long time now, and the first amendment has made it flourish here in the United States, but that hasn’t stopped it in other areas. Consider, for instance, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose art has been described as ‘overtly political’ 3. (read protest art against the regime of
China) He’s been detained for his art on multiple occasions, but he still keeps at it because it’s his passion- and tied with his passion for his country and the people in it.
Challenging the establishment seems to be a running theme with artists. I don’t know if this is due to the personalities of the type of people that are attracted to the idea of becoming artists, or if it’s just part of the culture of art that rubs off onto the artists that join. Probably a little of both. You take like minded people and put them in the culture, and like a culture in a lab, the little ideas of each individual grows, feeding of one another.
Artists, as the highly individual people that they are, have a tendency to trash any boundaries or limits that are set before them. Artists are a big ‘screw you’ to anyone that tells them that they can’t do anything. It’s almost as if boundaries are looked for so that they can be broken, although it seems to be more about being unable to ignore an affront to freedom and personal expression.
It seems as if this notion of freedom is being spread like wildfire around the world right now, with the the most prominent example being Libya. Granted, there are also people that are lined up to try to take control and exert their own brand of lack of freedom on the people of the these countries, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood, but it seems that the average person is just sick of the social controls that are going on in the middle east.
Hosni Mubarak was a brutal dictator. So is Ghadafi, only with a Kim Jong Il type craziness to boot. The media from all over the planet has been watching these countries (also included are Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) with baited breath, and for the most part has decided on who the good guys and bad guys are. There’s really very little disagreement on who should be backed in these conflicts; most of the disagreements stem from what should be done exactly. In our country we have two other wars going on already, and Obama is concerned with how the rest of the world sees him, and by extension, the United States.
The media (when the media is mentioned, I’m pretty much referring to all media that isn’t Fox News, unless otherwise specified) will support their cause- Chomsky is correct. The cause isn’t necessarily one of war, though. Following the invasion of Iraq, the news was littered with anti Iraq war stories, especially on NPR. Stories about the collateral damage, and questions about if we should even be there. Stories about people like Cindy Sheehan protesting the President at his ranch. The fringes of the media such Michael Moore in his movie Fahrenheit 911even went so far as to question the 9/11 bombing of the world trade towers by suggesting they were actually planted by the President himself to boost his popularity ratings! Gas prices were going through the roof (especially after 2006) and there were stories about it constantly. Iraq was said to be a war for oil. People did stories from gas pumps, and it was all George Bush’s fault. The movement to destroy George W. Bush was on.
This movement spilled over into the art world as well. In music you had bands such as Ministry with their song No W and Rage Against the Machines ceaseless rantings everywhere. In the visual art world There are almost too many paintings to mention. Just in colleges I personally saw several anti Bush paintings- usually portraying him as a power hungry mad man or greedy money grubber. I don’t have pictures due to these being student paintings, but they were there and portrayed the basic mood of the populace at the time as defined by the popular media.
We are currently still in the Middle East. The media usually dismisses any protesting that might happen against president Obama. The gas prices are through the roof again. It took a very long time for the media to say anything about it at all. Now that they are talking about it, our president is never held to account. Never mind that along with the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative easing program, all the money our Federal government has put into the system has decreased the value of the dollar, making it more expensive to buy everything. (this isn’t the only cause, but one of many- the unrest in the middle east being a major factor as well.)
Why talk about these things? Because that’s the power of the media to shape public thought. The media drives public opinion. When Walter Cronkite expressed doubts about the Vietnam War on February 27, 1968, the big turn against the war started. Then president Lyndon Johnson was quoted as saying
“That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”4.
This isn’t to say that everyone’s opinions are based solely on the News or popular television programs and movies, but they do affect how a large portion of the populace thinks, as well as what they think. The artists either go with or go against this, and sometimes it’s the same thing.
After 9/11 happened, it seemed that all of the news outlets, including Fox, were united. The House, Senate, and President were also united. The people of the country were united. There were exceptions, of course- but for the most part everyone was united in their patriotism. Little flags were on every cars antenna and full sized flags wouldn’t stay on the shelves at the stores. While this was great, it didn’t last. Eventually the country divided again, and now it seems more divided than ever. It seems as if there’s another war going on through the media- an uncivil war of words. Nobody sits down and calmly discusses the issues anymore, but rather, they ridicule by saying things like “Well, that’s the problem, you tried to use logic with a conservative.” and talk over anybody trying to make a point that differs with their own. It seems especially true in the Media, with people like Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews leading the way.
But this doesn’t mean everyone. Just as all people are individuals, no matter which side of the spectrum they line up with, there are movements from all points of view no matter what the prevailing winds happen to be at the current time.
Rothko and Pollock’s work was considered the fixed way that art ‘should be’ according the the writings of Clement Greenberg. There have been several movements since then. The anti conservative, anti founding fathers thought process has a counter protest movement of new, patriotic art.
There are two artists in particular that fill this idea. One is Steve Penley, with a litany of portraits of the founding fathers, including George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, among others. He also does more recent political figures, such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. The whole point is to inspire, as he finds that the ‘fix’ in the art world to be unacceptable.
A small minority of intellectual elitist are attempting to force a sometimes unwilling public to accept it’s hopeless and demented world view as the norm. Many today who want to be accepted by this clique only consider artwork which is cynical and negative to be important. 5
Another artist that has taken this approach is conservative talk show radio host Glenn Beck, whose series of paintings Faith, Hope, and Charity were featured prominently on his hugely popular television show in 2010. The paintings were done in the style of the famous Hope painting of Barack Obama by Shepard Fairey in his campaign for president in 2007. They feature founding fathers Samuel Adams, George Washington and Ben Franklin, respectively. These paintings have been dismissed and ridiculed by the art community and the media at large, and a large portion of the populace is pretty much unaware of them, for the most part. John Haber believes that the conservatives are trying to fix art in a post 9/11 world, though.
On the right, the rhetoric of McCarthyism has translated effortlessly into a world without even a Red menace: a powerful enemy still lurks and still determines every response. 6
He doesn’t seem to get that he’s the McCarthy here- trying to find enemies of humanity is the vast evil conservative effort to crush the average man. By saying that that conservative art isn’t worth anything, he’s the one that is trying to take away freedom.
There are, however, people that yearn for these pieces of art. These aren’t propaganda pieces sponsored by the state like the soviet paintings or Nazi posters, but art made by citizens that simply wanted to make them for their own purposes.
Art is moving the debate of how the country and the world should be within its own existence, and it will continue forever, at least as long as there are human beings, anyway. People are all different, and disagree on many things. Edward F Rothchild said
The work of art is regarded as the locus of various cultural factors.7
There are so many factors contributing to a persons worldview that it’s pretty much impossible for all people to be exactly alike. Here are some examples.
1. Where were you born? Someone born in Wichita has different experiences than someone from rural Namibia or Islamabad, Pakistan.
2. When were you born? There are periods in history were ideas like slavery and human sacrifice being all right are perfectly acceptable.
3. How were you raised? The circumstances in which you were raised make a big difference in how you see the qorld as well, as the people who raised you put certain influences into your life. The influences of someone raised Orthodox Jewish are different that someone raised in an Atheist household, or someone raised in an orphanage in the Ukraine.
4. The individual personalities of humans. Some people go along with the crowd. Some reject everything they were taught. Some are a combination of the two that sit down and think it out.
Combine the first three variables with the last one and you end up with a vast difference in people, making a vast difference worldviews. This is why communism simply won’t work. Some people are greedy, some are lazy, some have aspirations for their futures. All of these things get in the way of living for the collective.
In variable number 2, when a person lives is considered. This, combined with number 4 means that art and design will always change based on how long it’s been around. The whole concept of retro, with a nostalgia for the 50s 60s or 1600s will always be around.
In the eighties, the concept of disco making a comeback was totally unthinkable, yet it did after a period of about fifteen years. Current design trends are in a retro motion as well, with the ultra simplicity of the modern era taking hold. These have a lot to do with ‘when’. If you’re bombarded by a certain style of art, design, or music, it can get boring. When the next latest greatest thing comes out and all of the media changes to its style, and another after that, experiencing the older style can seem refreshing, simply because it’d been awhile since you saw or heard it.
This insures that there will always be change of some sort.
Here’s the apparent paradox. People as a whole don’t change. There are some basic personality types, but humanity doesn’t evolve into different personalities over time. If someone from Wichita were born in one of the other areas instead, with the same base personality he or she has here, they could turn out to be a vastly different person. And if in a crisis that caused society to revert to a more primitive time, who’s to say that people wouldn’t revert as well? The notion that people have somehow evolved ‘beyond’ is nonsense. People react to their environment. Change the environment and the person will change as well.
Both of these apparent contradictions come to the same conclusion, though. Society is always changing, with new people and and both new and the reintroduction of old ideas. Because of this, art will always change, being constantly in flux. There are no rules, there is no fixed style.

1. http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference/f/what_is_art.htm What is Art? Shelley Esaak
2. Contemporary painting ND 195.V5713 Harry N Abrams Inc. Publisher
3. http://www.npr.org/2011/04/04/135106133/dissident-artist-missing-amid-crackdown-in-china
4. http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/change-viet2.html
5. http://www.penleyartco.com/pages/about
6. http://www.haberarts.com/ascocks.htm
7. Studies in the Meaning of Art ND 195.S82 Published 1934 University of Chicago

I’ve often talked about music as a metaphor for art, but then, music is painting on air, as Sensations Fix said. The whole idea of what you get from art- any art- be it painting, sculpture, music, poetry, or architecture, is at least somewhat based on the sensation you get from it. With a painting are you relaxed? Is your mind intrigued? Are you outraged? All of these things can be achieved with the choice of subject matter and or colors. Sometimes, like with a lot of the abstract expressionists, they are one and the same. Just putting colors can elicit an emotional response. Red produces hunger and anger. Blue can give a feeling of serenity. Yellow can give you a sense of enthusiasm or boredom.

There seem to be both cultural and natural reasons for a lot of the use of color in art. Green, for instance, can mean money, environmentalism, or envy.

These are examples of cultural responses.
It can also give a vague feeling based on the shade of green. A bright green can produce images of springtime and grass, while a dull green with a low chroma and a lot of shade can make you think of being sick, as you can ‘feel green’ as a way of showing that you are ill.
These are simplistic examples, but still valid. As the ABC’s can give rise to the concept of words, which develop into sentences and eventually books, the art colors can give the sensations of complex emotions over time as the viewer understands the meanings more clearly.
Instead of ‘I have a vague sense of happiness.’, there might be an understanding of what causes the happiness. Maybe it’s a propaganda piece put out by the USSR to show the power and joy that you were supposed to feel as a worker or soldier. The red can give you a feeling and strength and belonging as it was the symbol of communism, with the shared blood of your comrades. It also shows solidarity, as it used by other countries that shared the communist dream as well. The expressions on the faces of the subjects are happy and proud. A quite joy at doing whatever your job is for the collective, wheter it’s a farmer in the field or a laborer in the factory- or a soldier protecting the workers from all foreign and domestic turmoil. It’s unmistakable.
This is used in advertising quite a bit, which is just propaganda for a product instead of a cause. One of the best examples is the feeling of ‘fun’ which is hard to describe as a feeling. Camel Cigarettes had their ‘Joe Camel’ campaign in the 80s that definitely gave the sensation of fun and belonging. All of these anthropomorphic camels hanging out and having a good time. Lots of blue and white was incorporated into the art. Not just the piece here, but in all of the Joe Camel pieces. Blue is generally considered a ‘cool’ color, giving it a double entendre’ of being ‘cool’ in a Fonzie kind of way, with the message being that if you smoke Camels you will be cool as well.
This is less easy to understand with more contemporary art. It range the gamut of being totally about color such as ‘Work and Play’ by Taetzsch to totally about the subject matter, such as Marina Abramovic’s performance art piece ‘Art Must be Beautiful’ .
Work and Play seems to be a study of the colors themselves. The zig zag lines seem to denote a sense of playfulness, with lots of primary colors. Color arrangements like this are usually reserved for childrens’ toys, again giving a sense of play. The feel is almost like finger painting. It seems to be very childlike in it’s nature, without being childish. There are clear delineations between the separate areas of the painting, as you can see a sense of structure. This isn’t just a glob of painting eventually getting into an unrecognizable mess. But the first glance feeling is of playing and fun. This could be for the viewer, or the artist might be trying to show that his work is play.
Art Must be Beautiful seems to be commentary on art itself. Red in nature- it seems to be painted in blood. The artist is holding a bloody animal bone in her hand; the actual piece is the words written on a sheet in letters that evoke an image of a serial killer writing something on the wall for the police in the blood of the victim. The words written in this manner, ie in a way that isn’t beautiful- make you think that it’s more of a commentary on art- which a lot of art has been over the past few decades. Art about art. It challenges the ideas- the concept of what art is.

While some people seem to think that the only purpose of art is to ‘push boundaries’ (direct quote) and make some sort of statement to reach into the soul of and challenge the thinking of whomever is making and/or viewing it, I really don’t think that the Greeks had any grand way of thinking with their urns, yet who could deny that they are art? They are beautiful to look at, and probably took a fairly skilled artisan to make them in the first place.

It is, however, an artifact as well. (from Merriam-Websters)

Something created by humans usually for a practical purpose; especially: an object remaining from a particular period (caves containing prehistoric artifacts)

These urns were probably used for carrying water or wine, so useful purpose like that. But they are nice to look at too. This idea has been used for most of time, with just the rooms of colonial houses represented in museums (The Nelson is Kansas City, for example.) Even though these things may or may not have been thought of as art when they are made, they still qualify as art now. So when something like a door knocker is considered art, it should only be natural that something made with far less skill, such as a cave painting or a fertility doll- that was considered art by the people making them- should be considered art as well.

And also, they are artifacts. They tell something about the society that used them. In just the same way as the a primitive example of Slave art from the American South would be considered an artifact due to the insight it gave to the understanding of the slave point of view.

Art is a curious beast. It can look at a bowl made by the Wichita Indians and simply marvel art how it was made. One could just admire the curves and the craftsmanship. You can look at the materials that were used to craft it, or the tools that may have been used. But the idea of the society that produced that craftsmanship would only have a marginal interest.

Archeology (the people interested in the bowl as an artifact) may not care at all how well it’s made. The main concern is ‘what can this bowl tell us about the society that created it?’. This, in a nutshell is the main difference between the two concepts of art and artifact.

Art is interested in the object. It wants the understand the bowl, painting, statue, whatever. Artifacts, by definition, tell about a society. The people that see an artifact are really more concerned with the society that the artifact tells them about. Who were the Wichita Indians? Why did they make a bowl like this? Did it have something to do with their environment or beliefs? What was it about their environment or beliefs that caused them to make the bowl in this way?

By asking these questions they tried to get into the minds of, and therefore the culture of whatever group of people that they were studying- in this case it would be the Wichita Indians. The pottery is really only a portal into there understanding of the culture. Art, on the other hand, seems to be about the object in particular. While this isn’t completely true, it does seem to be the main idea behind the study of the piece, just as while the archeologist may find beauty in the piece itself, the culture is the main point behind his study of this bowl.

A while back I heard something at a talk. Human nature does not evolve. It had never occurred to me before, but I believe that it’s true. Our society tolerates somethings and doesn’t tolerate other things. A lot of these things are pretty much the same as they were two thousand years ago. Bigotry and tolerance goes in and out of vogue- for instance, in the early part of our country African Americans were treated a lot better than they were in the 1800s, when it became horrible. While homosexuality is considered simply just one way of existing in our contemporary culture, 20-50 years ago it was considered totally abhorrent in our country. Yet it’s pretty much the same as ancient Greece.

Humans are humans. Their surroundings are different, but their basic natures aren’t. So if we can similarities to people that were alive 2500 years ago, why can’t we have similarities with people that are separated by distance?

To put it another way, there are only so many basic ideas that people can do with art. There are cave paintings that actually are more ‘primitive’ than some that were made in an earlier era. How can this be? Maybe they aren’t primitive, but rather abstract? If you were to look at one of Picasso’s pieces and compared it to Rembrandt 1000 years from now, which one would you see as more modern based on the observed skill of the painter? Picasso can paint realistically, he just chose not to in his later work. The same could be said for the artists at later times than the Chauvet cave.

Having a clear idea about what art is or isn’t is a comforting idea. Not having to ask the question of whether or not something is art prevents you from looking stupid in public. Some paint slapped onto a canvass that looks like something in the real world is easy to call art. A lot of the critics seem to want to classify everything as art as a way to insulate themselves from looking stupid at their own profession, and also to bolster their own egos. After all, if I’m the expert, whatever I say is or isn’t true has to be the case, or else I’m talking out of my ass. (As it sometimes seems as if the ‘experts’ do on a regular basis.

The problem comes from the ideas, though. A Jackson Pollock is art and an Iron Maiden album cover isn’t. Mike Parr holding his breath as long as he can is art, and a poster asking you to re-elect Fred Thompson isn’t. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason for most of the distinctions, mainly they seem to be based on if the artists’ ideas are accepted by the public for whatever reason.

The very act of asking whether it’s art or not breaks down the binary, as asking breaks down the binary, as just the idea that it can (or can’t) be art enters into the mind, giving it at least some play. When you ask if something is art, then you open yourself to the idea of ‘Ok, if it is in fact art, then why? How am I supposed to look at this piece and what am I supposed to get out of it?

With structural pieces like The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch, the message is, at least at first glance, fairly apparent and clear. Sin gets you to Hell. You can live well and have a lot of fun, but you’ll pay for it in the end. Oh, and it’s Adam and Eve’s fault. While there may some other, deeper meaning to it, its primary meaning is really pretty apparent.

Now compare this with a performance piece where someone puts themselves in a wooden box. What’s the meaning of this piece? While it might be possible to to get a meaning immediately- say, it’s a statement against the oppressive wall of reality- this interpretation is not the only interpretation someone might come up with. For instance, it could be an attempt to become closer with nature. It could be a statement about art itself! There’s no real narrative, and much is left to the imagination. The play on a deconstruction piece like this is far greater than the Bosch painting.

The deconstruction, avant garde’ forms of art seem to have a role in making people better in their understanding of earlier forms of art. After all, since more is left to the imagination, there’s more effort of the imagination involved. Consider it like a form of mental weight lifting. The harder you work, the harder you think about this piece, the easier it will be to understand it, and other pieces. The term ‘No pain, no gain.’ could be used in this situation, albeit in a joking manner, as the first time you really think about a piece that has you stunned and wondering what in the world it is could be likened to pain in comparison to what might be expected by the normal understanding of what art is.

In music, there’s a genre that came out in the eighties called Death Metal. It’s extremely hard to understand, and is generally considered to be as ‘hard’ or ‘heavy’ as music is capable of getting. It involves extremely distorted guitars played as fast as possible, with vocals that aren’t so much yelling as very loud growls. On average, most death metal is incoherent to most listeners. This is so much so that one band, Grave, actually had a contest in which the object was to decipher and write down the lyrics to one of their songs. The unexpected side effect of listening to this music was that listening to music that other people had a hard time understanding was crystal clear, like a normal person listening to the Carpenters. In much the same way that bands on this classification, like Napalm Death and Carcass, help tune the ears of it’s listeners to Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, it seems that trying to interpret deconstructionist pieces makes it easier to understand pieces from the Renaissance, or even from as recently as the impressionists or cubists.

Art is whatever it wants to be. Understanding it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. But when you push yourself out of your comfort zone, it can help you understand art on all levels better. The understanding that something you don’t like is still art will help you grow as a human, well as an art observer. Trying to understand something that has you shaking your head at first glance can really expand your horizons, as well as your ability to understand the things that you like at first glance.

They constantly change the form by the nature of pushing the envelope, but still, there are always rules. You can’t take a picture by Robert Mapplethorpe and call it an abstract expressionist piece. It just doesn’t fit that description. One is about breaking down sexual boundaries, and one is about communing with pure color and design. It’s not to say that one is better than the other, they’re just different. Chocolate isn’t better than bacon, but the reverse isn’t true either. They’re just both different and both delicious.

Art changed significantly in the postwar era, as well as the ideas behind what art is.

The idea of good art is purely in the eye of the beholder. Art changed so much during the postwar era that it’s conceivable someone from the previous century might not even be able to recognize it as art. While art seemed to be constantly challenging the status quo as to what new and upcoming ideas were, something like a Jackson Pollock or Rothko seems to push these ideas to the extreme. A bunch of swirly lines or a rough edged series of boxes probably wouldn’t register at all with the people of the late eighteen hundreds. While I think they could get it on an intellectual level, the shock against their whole paradigm and understanding of just what art was would probably render them speechless. After all, artists like Van Gogh or Monet were considered extremely radical at the time. A good comparison would be a scientist who used ENIAC seeing a smart phone that was more powerful than his computer that took up multiple rooms. It was basically unthinkable.

However, it didn’t stop at Pollock. People like Clement Greenberg showed a certain small mindedness in their efforts to be intellectuals by saying ‘This is what art is’ and more importantly ‘All other art is crap’. Or Kitche.

kitsch, destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide.

The newness of the Abstract expressionists seems to have captivated him to such an extent that other more traditional forms of art were considered passe. Artists of the time continued to go further. Art evolved into the second movement of Abstract Expressionism, and beyond in other forms of art- interactive, exhibition, you name it. And some of it did in fact have at least a passing resemblance in it’s subject matter to things that exist in the real world. Like Martin Luther when his followers asked him why they needed to do what he said after he told the rulers of the Catholic church to shove it, they moved on and did their own thing.

So, if these two vastly differing forms of art can both be considered art, then why not let it go even further? Recently it was decided, as it were, that Norman Rockwell was in fact an artist. He was often put down as ‘just being an Illustrator’ due to the fact that he worked from photos. By the same line of thinking, why can’t design be seen as a form of art? Just because it was done for money to sell a product? Art has been used to change peoples’ thinking for millennia. The statue of Augustus Caesar was basically a promotional piece, just like the giant painting of Obama with the word HOPE under it in large letters. And if we can think of design as a form of art, then who’s to say if it’s good or bad for any reason other than its effectiveness at moving a project? Otherwise, the rules of the moment are just limiting something that can’t be limited by placing arbitrary restrictions on them in the same way the Clement Greenberg did.

Part of the problem seems to be the whole concept of education, just like in the early days of art in general, with the academy deciding if art was good or not. Art can be good even if it isn’t considered good simply by the fact that people like it. Thomas Kinkade could easily said to be one of the most successful artists of our day. His stuff is everywhere and most people know who he is.

Similarly, pulp fiction novels have what might be considered horrible artwork- but is it? It could be considered similar to the pop style art, particularly the comic book works of Roy Lichtenstein such as Blam. Even though one is ‘high’ art and one is pulp art- their style is somewhat similar. Of course, the there’s the simple idea that art is supposed to make you think, but while it can accomplish this, it shouldn’t be the only criteria. It could just be to look good, or maybe just interesting.

As all people are different in their tastes, at least a little, this goes into the obvious conclusion that art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And, as design is basically a type of art, it is also in the eye of the beholder. For the most part, the beholder is also the customer.

As mentioned before, this conclusion comes from the rebellion of art in general. It seems to have really started with Marcel DuChamp and his 1917 work Fountain. While rebellion in art had been going on for a while, this piece really questioned ‘What is art?’ as the main purpose of the piece. In the past there was a piece that pushed the rules, but it was usually because the artist just wanted to make the piece. Fountain itself- a sideways urinal, was really was was a big finger at the art establishment. This particular piece basically asked the question, ‘Who is anybody to say what is and isn’t art?’ and now we can say the same thing about design. We do have the rules, but a lot of the rules can change. In the late 1800s a lot of the design was very ornamental, and in the modern period all of the ornamentation was seen as superfluous, and ‘good’ design was seen as having a good clean layout- usually on a grid. In the Fifties and Sixties there was a lot of ‘funky’ design with multiple sized letters in single words. Eventually in the Eighties through the early millennium, design got really wild in the postmodern era. It almost didn’t have any rules except make a big impression.

If people didn’t look at design and say that they’d like to do it a certain way, it would cease to progress. But, old ideas can be good too. The current fad seems to be a return to the sensibilities of the modern era, with clean lines and strong axis.

Recently I got a book on logos for study purposes, and I noticed that there were several pages of logos that fit this formula, and they were totally unmemorable. Pages of ‘good’ logos that looked exactly the same. Now, there must have been some merit to the logos, as they were in a book and published. And it was claimed that they did by Uli Meyer-Johannson of Metadesign.

Looked at from the outside, brands seem to consist of few elements- some colours, some typefaces a strapline or slogan, all topped off with a logo or symbol…frequently consisting of a simple typeface…

She then goes on and explains how some old logos are bad.

Some brand managers… hate change, and the cling to the outdated belief that the most important audience for the brand is the customer.

Excuse me? The customer is who pays you.

Concerning the logos themselves, they looked like good ones according to today’s rules, but I didn’t really like a lot of them. It’s my opinion, and I think it’s good enough. Likewise, I really don’t think my designs would make it into a book like that. A lot of them don’t fit the mold of what’s good. But as mentioned before, my customers like them and so do I. So, really, who is anyone to tell me what’s good. You can only say if something is good based on the rules that have been set out at the time. But rules existed in previous eras, and people liked them then. Are we so superior to them that our stuff is better simply from being newer? I think you can follow any rules you want, or if you can come up with something that doesn’t follow any of the rules set out by the establishment and people still like it, then more power to you. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and art and design should be judged on the understanding of the beholder, whoever that happens to be at any given moment.

I’m not saying that knowing the concepts of design in general is a bad thing, after all, there have been ideas about what make good design since ancient Greece, with the idea of the Golden Mean stemming from the Nautilus shell. But the main benefit from knowing these ideas is to

1. Know how to fake it. Some customers want a certain look, and you have to know the rules to create it.

2. Like Jazz, you can break the rules to make it truly good and your own thing.

The current trends tend to be more of a throwback to the clean look of the modern era. Simple fonts, clean lines, lots of white space. I personally don’t like the current trends. I can see them being used is certain types of businesses, but most of it bores me, and doesn’t really seem to make much of an impression.

In the book Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, there is a character named Howard Roark. He is a purist that wants to do his own thing. At the time of the book, which takes place starting in the 20s, what he wants to do would be what we would considered modern architecture- the type of thing that was practiced by Le Corbusier or Gerrit Thomas Rietveld. He doesn’t like the old ideas of using pillars or anything like that, and for the most part, refuses to do so. While I disagree with his aesthetics, as buildings and design in our current time push exactly what he likes, I agree totally with the message of following your heart, although I will fake it for the right amount of money. I try to get customers that like my work, and I know they exist, as I have some of them.

The reason some people like older styles could be the nostalgia known as ‘retro’ looking at an older style and wondering why people don’t use that kind of thing any more. There’s also a growing understanding that just because something is old, doesn’t make it bad. Small appliances such as blenders and ice cream makers made in the early part of the twentieth century are still around. They are made with better materials and they are made to be worked on, as opposed to the whole ‘throw is away and get a new one’ mentality that permeates today’s thinking. Houses had planks making the floors instead of particle board. Retro thinking realizes this old can be good concept, and it carries over into design. In fact, it seems almost as if all design is somewhat retro now. Postmodern design is considered a cliché, and contemporary is retro as well. To illustrate, I’d like to compare two logos, The newest Pepsi Logo, and the Flying Dog beer logo.

The new Pepsi logo is the ultimate in simplicity. It has a very thin font with the word pepsi, and a reworked swoosh that looks something like a smile. The font is very similar to the diet pepsi font for the 70s era cans. It’s totally rounded typeface in a way that hearkens back to the Bauhaus movement in Germany. I don’t like it. The typeface has no mmph, and the logo itself is yet another change. It’s been mentioned that they’ve changed it several times over the years, while Coca-Cola has basically the same logo as when they began. It’s gotten some good reviews, including an actual mathematical explanation as to why it’s so good. As well as an critique of the math.

The contents are at once hilarious, pretentious and delirious as they try to establish Pepsi as the center of the universe. Some select pages are posted here and the PDF should still be publicly available somewhere on the internet. Long live the internet as a tool for exposing lameness.

A lot of people just don’t like it.

Yuck. The font and layout make me want to cry. Then there is the logo. Or logos. Hey – why have one logo when you can have three? I can’t get the “Terrence and Philip” connection out of my head. Even the new design with the old logo would have been better.

In 1990, the Flying Dog Brewery was created, with designer Ralph Steadman creating a wild logo that looks hand drawn, with paint splatters everywhere. It has a batlike creature in it and text going everywhere. This is an incredibly cool logo, in my opinion. It’s not clean, it doesn’t seem to go along any lines or axis, but it works. It makes a statement and is memorable.

However, if this design was presented in a design class today, there’s a good chance that it would be rejected by the teachers. It’s all over the place and doesn’t really have any sense of hierarchy. The paint splatters would be considered superfluous, and asked if they really helped the logo. I think they add to the coolness factor myself. The text doesn’t give you a sense of the whole, but rather seems like it’s in several sections.

I, however, like it. Liking a logo can help you remember it, and that’s the real point behind a logo or logotype- this is picture that helps you remember a businesses. It’s also a visual representation of the business. It’s real sin is simply that it doesn’t follow the rules as they are set out for today. (Those rules are listed in the violations above.) The Pepsi logo, on the other hand, follows the rules explicitly. It’s clean, it’s concise, and it’s boring. But it follows this rule of simple clean text and a little picture about it or beside it. Or, as suggested on the internet,

On average, simplicity tends to emphasize a design’s intent more powerfully than complexity.

However, I don’t necessarily think this is true. It can be true, but I don’t see it as being a catch all. Why should rules that are simply older be worse? I like complexity, and so do many other people. Design is design, just like art, and as long as somebody likes it, it’s good. The same set of rules don’t apply anymore to all people, otherwise it’s just a fad, not some superior idea that we’ve evolved into. It’s good because I say it is.

1. AVANT-GARDE AND KITSCH, Clemen Greenberg, 1939, Originally written for the partisan review. http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html

2. Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, Ron Schick. Little Brown Publishing, November 5th, 2009

3. Logo Design, Julius Wiedeman, Published by Tachen

4. Ayn Rand- Howard Roark from “The Fountainhead” Published 1943 Bobs-Merrill

5. http://www.todesignwrite.com/services/designgood.html

6. http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/pepsi_new_bottles.php

7. http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/in_brief_the_wrong_kind_of_bre.php