Pop Quiz!
for each of the following items, tell me whether they are art or design:
- CSS House 2
- CSS Zen Garden
- Joshua Davis' Work for the BMW Z4
- Mies Van Der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion
- Frank Ghery's Jay Pritzker Pavilion
The distinction between art and design is semantic and objective. There is no aesthetic consideration in distinguishing one from the other. Design always fulfills a function. Designs succeed by functioning well while being aesthetically beautiful. Art is an expression unto itself. It succeeds or fails on the validity, clarity, and beauty of that expression alone.
This does not mean that designers cannot make art. Or that artists can't design. In fact, there is plenty of crossover, which sometimes makes the distinction difficult to judge on the surface. The answers to the quiz rely on an understanding of each project. If you're not familiar with each one, you'll need to read up on them in order to understand the process and ideas behind them. Because while there is crossover, the distinction is not fuzzy.
Ugly art is still art. Beautiful design is still design.
And yes, the starting point for this was Andy Skelton's semantically incorrect title for a post about semantics. But it's a point that's often missed. Usually in the form of "you wouldn't tell picasso to redesign his paintings!" Answers will be posted as an update.
11 Comments
Interesting. I’ll mull this over.
The answer for number 5: form, form! I know it! Wait, design or art? Grr. I’m stupid.
heh, yeah, i didn’t really add any ‘easy’ questions. they’re mostly crossover examples.
don’t get freaked out, this is very non-trivial, i didn’t have a concrete understanding of the distinction until my senior year of college.
i agree with the point that art and design often blend together. these days i’m particularly interested in parametric or algorithmic design for acheiving many different things. whether it is keeping a building model flexible for modifying it in a multiplicity of variations in real-time, or for finding the perfect body form of a boat hull, either the parametric design has a purpose for expediency and efficiency, or it is merely to express the idea that nothing is static in our world and we participate in how it changes in a constant flux.
Tricky set, Adam. Thank you for the opportunity to display my ignorance. I see Ugly Art, Beautiful Design, Art About Design, Design, Design.
I think the trick in your question is that there is a distinction between Art and Design but when an item bears qualities of both categories, the subjective is called upon in order to call the A-B blend A or B.
This is coming from someone whose last attempt at art was to tear up an O’Keefe print to make a portrait of a friend who hates O’Keefe.
I used the term CSS Artists for several reasons. Not all of them bear discussion but I think you could have guessed that exaggeration was intended.
Still, just as Joshua Davis can use elements of a design to create artistic expressions and Frank Ghery can integrate art into his design, a WordPress theme can be artistic. By providing the markup pattern as a sort of canvas, I hope a ‘designer’ will create an artistic canvas for the words of a blog.
Andy Skelton said:
Actually, my point is that the blend is a long way from what you were discussing. Portrait painting is an example of a blend.
My intention in choosing the first two is that there are very few instances where CSS can be evaluated on its own expression alone. I’ll leave the rest of your reasoning alone.
true, a theme can be artistic, i.e., skillfully done. but it cannot be art. A theme’s fundamental purpose is to render the text of a webpage elegantly. it exists to fulfill that function, not for its own expression.
that is not in any way to lessen the beauty of a well designed theme.
The idea that ‘artist’ is an exaggeration of ‘designer’ is one of the fundamental misconceptions i’m trying to correct here.
The meaning of CSS Artist is lost on you as long as you insist on fitting it within the academic strictures of Fine Art and Design that you have learned so well. Academia has no place meddling in what is essentially promotional copy.
Gentlmen! We’re arguing semantics!
Andy Skelton said:
I’m well aware of the use of ‘artist’ to mean someone skilled in a particular craft. That’s actually secondary to your repeated refusal to use the word ‘designer’ in relation to anything web-based. The idea that ‘promotional copy’ on the web is somehow separate from the promotional copy of newspapers, magazines and TV is faulty at best. The idea that material learned in school is incompatible with information passed freely on the web is so poisonous to the free exchange of information that i hope you reconsider it.
I delight in reading your blog Adam, although the text over graphics creates a real challenge for me vision wise. I have to struggle, squint and ctrl + a lot but doing so is worth it.
I am enjoying the art-design semantics debate but have nothing of value to type into the comments box. I see both the artistry in design and the design in art and from my point of view leaving the seams blurred actually enhances my appreciation for both in a way that trying to distinguish between them doesn’t.
Thumbs up for creating a blog discussion environment that encourages passionate debate without rancour.
Adam, perhaps it is better to say CSS Designers for all of the reasonable reasons that you give. If it pains you every time I write “CSS Artist” then consider this discussion my apology for offending your sensibilities.
I also thank you for bringing fine examples to light so that we can learn by exploring. That was a good exercise.
What remains is that I will continue to regard some designers as artists in much the same way that I regard some coders as poets. Perhaps you will learn to see the human expression, however square, that qualifies these things as art in my mind. Cheers, mate.
Being an artist/designer myself (no, I don’t think my websites are “artworks”, but i DO paint and take photos on my spare time ), there is an appeal to the word, “artist.” I sounds better than “designer,” because I think deep down people do understand these art-design stuff you’re talking about and unconsciously agree to it. I mean, why the conscious refusal to use “designer?” Because design DOES fulfill a function. And that’s kind of hard to admit if you feel you have an artist’s soul. It’s easier to just fashion yourself to believe that you are a “web artist,” or whatever you’d want to call it, that openly admit that you are adhering to a specific function.
I’ve been doing design for 9 years, and art for practically my entire life (both my parents are artists). I know when I’m doing art I feel I don’t have boundaries, and basically create an entirely different world based on how I feel, think, etc. Although I sometimes follow correct form (ie. realistic painting), it’s my finished painting that makes it distinguishable from being a DESIGN: there’s no practical USE for it, it’s just there, on canvas, made for the simple reason of expressing art. But when I design, there are a lot of things that I have to consider in order for the finished design to fulfill it’s function: for whom it’s for, what it’s for, when it’s for…
I guess that’s why I don’t agree with the “CSS artist” thing. Art is beyond functional. And no, it’s not because of “Academia” that gives me this thinking. I’ve never studied it (my course was MANAGEMENT), but I AM living it
kinda hard not to. You’d feel the same way too if you’ve been raised to love art the moment you learned how to use a crayon.
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