Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 07:37:34 +0300
To: Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
From: Lily Diaz <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Design, designing, commercial art: a note on terminology

Dear Ken:

Continuing the discussion, I am sending a section from Chapter 2 of
my dissertation, Art, Fact, and Artifact Production. In the excerpt,
the discussion focuses more on the relationship between art and
design .

In my opinion, the connection between identity and politics and its
subsequent effect on social organization is central to understanding
the shifting boundaries of contemporary design practice.

Best regards,

Lily


Design and Art

The historian Paul Greenhalgh has pointed out that the contemporary
term 'design' comes to us from the Italian (Latin) word used to
designate an object of drawing, or disegno. [1] I believe that traces
of this influence can be discerned already in the 16th Century. In
the 1568 edition of his work, Vasari on Technique, the Renaissance
painter and architect Giorgio Vasari described design as the
depiction, through drawing, of concepts and ideas originating in the
intellect. [2]

Vasari's almost modern terminology is as peculiar as the manual
itself. According to Baldwin Brown, who wrote the introduction to the
first English translation, unlike other art treatises written earlier
in history, Vasari's text was not solely concerned with knowledge of
materials and processes. Neither was it really concerned with the
metaphysical aspects of art. Vasari's treatise was a survey of the
manual activities during the late Renaissance from the point of view
of a practicing professional. [3] In architecture, for example, the
lines in a design, or drawing, were of essence to the architect,
since they are what defined his art, "for all the rest, which is
carried out with the aide of models of wood formed from the said
lines, is merely the work of carvers and masons." [4] The treatise
also introduced the notion of design and of the artist's ability to
visualize the work as a whole prior to execution. For example, in
sculpture, drawing and design was of service because it allowed the
sculptor to see different views of the forms he sought to shape,
before working them out on the material of choice. [5] In painting,
design was of use because it helped the painter to give the forms the
right proportions before they were filled with color or light and
shadow effects. [6] Therefore, in anticipation of many of our
contemporary ideas regarding design, Vasari on Technique placed
emphasis on planning, on results, and how materials are to be
manipulated to produce desired effects:

"Seeing too that from this knowledge there arises a certain
conception and judgment, so that there is formed in the mind that
something which afterwards, when expressed by the hand, is called
design, we may then conclude that design is no other than a visible
expression and declaration of our inner conception and of that which
others have imagined and given form to in their idea. "[7]

Vasari also referred to design as the "parent of the three arts of
architecture, sculpture and painting." [8] In alluding to these
three, Vasari in effect conjured the legacy of antiquity embodied in
the system of classification of knowledge of the ancient Greeks. In
this system, which was passed on to the Renaissance via Roman
translations of Greek texts, the term ars was used to denote theory,
and knowledge was classified into two separate branches, or
categories. Of these two, the preferred one was the Liberal Arts.
These seven liberal arts comprised all the theoretical knowledge
necessary to understand the structure of the world. [9] The other
category of the Mechanical Arts included painting and sculpture.
Because these were regarded as manual occupations, they were not
considered a part of the Liberal Arts. [10] The invention of
perspective during the early Renaissance forever altered the
relationship between art and theoretical knowledge. Perspective gave
the artist, and specifically the painter, the ability to quantify and
rationalize his work. From that of a manual worker, the artist rose
to become an intellectual worker.

Thus, in addition to providing us with an explicit definition of
design, Vasari's writing also offers us a glimpse of the ongoing
attitudes regarding the value of art as knowledge, and the position
of the artist as creator. Indeed, it is generally agreed that it was
during the Renaissance that the intellectual separation between art
and craft was further concretized. Within the widening schism that
positioned the Liberal Arts at one of the continuum and the
Mechanical Arts at the other, there was an ambivalent attitude
towards the value of design. In the end, Vasari straddles this
practice as stationed somewhere in the middle between craft and art,
with the latter being attributed the higher, or nobler position. For
according to Vasari, though through work and skill design can
approach art, it is the hand of the artist that in the end "exhibits
the perfection and excellence of the arts, as well as the knowledge
of the artist." [11]

Vasari's account of the practices of art and design placed a premium
on the importance of planning the execution of the work. During the
late 19th and early 20th Centuries, with the increased interest in
the role of arts and crafts in society, his treatise was brought back
from oblivion. A desire to underscore the ancient connection of
design with the fine arts, with all the connotations of high culture
that such a relationship may carry, may have contributed to this
revival. Perhaps it is because of the influence of works such as
Vasari's treatise, that throughout most of the European tradition,
design has been used to indicate a drawing in preparation.

It is the case, however, that though their paths may have bifurcated,
the activities of art and design have had much in common. They have
shared a set of traditions and knowledge. Schools of design
established in England, for example, have referred to design as "the
idea of preparing a study or design of a finished piece of work."
[12] And it was not until the late 19th century, when industrial
manufacturing became an established model for production, that the
notion of design as the preparation of templates for longer runs of
objects originally surfaced. This is a concept that further evolved
during the 20th century into the modern proposition of design as "a
problem solving activity lodged somewhere between art and science".
[13] According Greenhalgh, as part of these developments, there has
been a reclassification of design as a practice firmly associated
with industry, and clearly distinguished from art and craft. [14]
This is also reflected in the words of Adrian Forty, another
historian, who has sought to highlight the major distinction that
exists between the artifacts that are art and those that are the
result of design. In Forty's view, calling design 'art' suggests that
designers always occupy a privileged role in production, "a
misconception which effectively severs most of the connections
between design and the processes of society."[15] Though Forty is
referring specifically to objects of industrial design, I believe
that a similar situation exists in large-scale information design
projects involving the collaboration of multiple parties. Because of
the complexity and diversity of tasks and objectives of these
projects, the resulting artifacts cannot be seen as resulting solely
from the creativity and imagination of one person. However, beyond
those issues related to the activities of a practice, there are also
questions regarding the taxonomy of objects produced by a discipline.
In my mind, the issue of whether art is related to design, and
whether a designer can also be an artist, is more related to how the
institutions in our society help to forge a collective perception of
what art is and who, in turn, is an artist.
[Note: This is also true with respect to science.


Notes to chapter 2

1. Greenhalgh, P., "The History of Craft" in P. Dormer, ed. The
Culture of Craft, Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 1997.
P. 39.

2. Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, Being the Introduction to the
Three Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, Prefixed
to the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and
Architects, Baldwin Brown, ed., Dover Publications, Inc., New York,
1975. P., 205: [Design] "...is not other than a visible expression
and declaration of our inner conception and of that which others have
imagined and given form to their idea."

3. Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, Introduction, p., v.

4. Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, p., 207.

5. Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, p., 207.

6. Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, p., 207.

7. Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, p., 205.

8. Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, p., 205.

9. Wittoker, R., The Artist and the Liberal Arts, p. 4.

10. Wittoker, R., The Artist and the Liberal Arts, p. 3. The Liberal
Arts dealt with language and mathematics. They were: grammar,
rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.
According to Rudolph Arnheim, they were so-called because "they were
the only worthy of being practiced by a free man." Visual Thinking,
University of Califormia Press, Berkeley, CA, 1969. P., 2.

11. Vasari, G., Vasari on Technique, p., 206. See also, McCullough,
M. Digital Craft, The Practiced Digital Hand, The MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1996. P., 12: "At least in Europe, the Renaissance
introduced an intellectual separation of practical craft and fine
art. Art came to be held in a higher esteem."

12. Greenhalgh, P., "The History of Craft", The Culture of Craft, P.
Dormer, (ed.) Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 1997. P.,
39.

13. Greenhalgh, P., "The History of Craft", p., 40.

14. Greenhalgh, P., "The History of Craft", p., 40.

15. Forty, A., Objects of Desire, Design and Society since 1750,
Thames and Hudson, London,UK, 1986. P. 7.

Dr. Lily Díaz-Kommonen
Senior Researcher,
Systems of Representation
Tutor, Visualization and Dynamic Processes
Media Lab
University of Art and Design Helsinki/UIAH
135C Hämeentie SF 00560 FINLAND

+ 358 9 75630 338
+ 358 9 75630 555 FAX
+ 358 40 7256925 GSM

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