Reading #4
1. I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t care about his work, I think it has more to do with the fact that he doesn’t put an excess amount of thought into his work. He creates because he enjoys creating, he doesn’t create for any audience, and I don’t think he thinks much about his art outside of himself. I also think that rather than not caring about his work, he doesn’t care what people think about it. He might create it on the scale that he does because he’s popular, but he doesn’t care that he’s popular and he doesn’t try and figure out why.
2. We had to kind of let go of control of the last project. We couldn’t stage the pictures the way we wanted to, and we couldn’t make anything perfectly. Andy mentions that he’s always surprised at the way his paintings turn out, but he doesn’t ever seem disappointed by that. We need to be able to roll with the punches and create for the sake of creation rather than to accomplish a goal. If we end up thinking too much about it, we just end up getting frustrated at not being able to create our ‘vision.’
Personal Reflection
1. I’m usually pretty full of excitement over my ideas. This leads to trouble in letting go of things that I might find essential but really have little meaning or serve any purpose to the project. But I don’t get terribly self-conscious. I don’t even know what there is to be self-conscious about. Are people going to like it? Doesn’t matter. Am I going to get a good grade? Well, did I follow the instructions to the best of my abilities? If the answer is yes than I’ve done what I can so.
2. First I think it’s a pretty great attitude to have. If you live a ‘grand theft auto’ life, there aren’t any limits. You create for yourself. The con of this is that you can also lose standards. If you don’t care whether people like your work or not, you have little reason to push or challenge yourself to create.
Reading 3
Clement Greenberg Recentness of Sculpture
Paul Rand Politics of Design
Vilem Flusser About the Word Design
Hal Foster Design and Crime
1.
Greenberg only explicitly mentions design a few times, an when he does, it’s in the context of ‘Good Design.’ Greenberg views Good Design as a negative, something where novelty art lives, and something that true artists need to ‘rise above.’
Rand refers to design as a problem solving activity that requires talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. However, Rand identifies a problem in that Design is often tainted by bureaucracy and the need to sell things en masse.
Flusser deals with the literal definition of design and how it is used outside of an artistic context, in order to examine the connotations of the word inside that context. A designer here is cunning, luring an audience into traps. Plato would here view designers as traitors to ideas because they take that which is in its purest form and mold it into something else.
Foster discusses how the modern designer has succumbed to the consumerist culture, and how postmodern design has turned into branding.
2.
Greenberg uses his definitions of ‘Good Design’ to imply that design in this context is a separation from art, a form of expression made by non-artists to live in the artistic world. Rand also makes design into something less than an artform, but does so in an entirely different way with an entirely different tone. It is viewed in two forms, depending on the audience: When viewed by the artist, it is design; when viewed by anyone else it becomes a good or a product. Designers are artists not only for art connoisseurs, but also for the crowd, since their work is now consumed generally in a public space (especially in a business context). The way these two authors view ‘Good Design’ is in direct opposition. While Rand refers to good design as ‘appreciated and ardently accepted,’ Greenberg clearly finds it unpalatable.
Flusser finds a certain truth about the purpose of design in the real world when discussing a Designer being a deceiver. When working for, say, an advertising agency is aiming to entrap viewers, a designer’s job is to garner a certain response with the result (hopefully) of the viewer buying into whatever the ad is for. Design does, however, form a bridge between technology or machines (quantifiable, scientific) and art (aesthetic, expressionistic). A great example of this would be modern architecture. Design is deceiving nature by means of technology.
Flusser is also in opposition to Rand. Where Rand discusses how the designer is entrenched in consumerist culture through no fault of their own (and is still above it), Flusser finds that postmodern design had turned into branding.
Personal Reflection
1.
I think that keeping an open mind while considering a project from several different angles helps artists to better understand what will work aesthetically. I also think it is ridiculously important to view art as an iterative process. The fear of making a mistake stifles work endlessly. You are never going to create your best work the first time you try anything. Craft is such an important aspect of art, and it’s necessary to practice before perfecting craft.
2.
I journal constantly, and keep a dream journal as well. Writing fiction and world-building is what I use to bring the images in my head into reality.