WTF is Design and Art anyway? To me, at least.

The art I create is most definitely for myself only.  Although I enjoy drawing, painting, and creating, I insist what I make is for my own pleasures only, a creative or meditative release only.  I don’t create for anyone’s pleasure but my own.  When I took a welding class a few summers ago, I created small pieces of table art, and as I welded these pieces into one object, the design of the piece began to formalize, I did not think about the end result until I was nearly 3/4 way complete.

To me, the difference between and an artist and a designer is usually black and white, but I agree that art and design can function as one.  A chair for example can be creative, beautiful, and functional all at once.  Designers that can use visual appeal to create a functioning piece of ‘something’ are not just designers but also artists.  My own opinion is this kind of functioning art is not of necessity, but of aesthetics and sensuous appeal.

Art, created for art’s sake, is pure in it’s meaning and creativity.  I cannot overlook, however, the sometimes political meanings in some art, for example, Picasso’s Guernica, that states a clear message of fascism and destruction of heart and people.  Artists like Picasso, that can create a message other than pure beauty are what makes art meaningful and desirable to see or own.

I like it all.  I appreciate simple beauty in a Monet painting or the storytelling in a Van Gogh, but I also love to own an Ansel chair to sit in or look at just for it’s visual appeal that takes up functioning space.

 

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