Alan, I was interested in your post and am going to indulge in some
shameless self-promotion by suggesting my forthcoming primary-source
anthology *The Industrial Design Reader* (New York: Allworth Press, October
2003) as a resource that gathers together some relevant writings on product
design. The anthology includes writings from 1850-2000. In particular, I
think the shift in design patronage--or imagined patronage--from a
cultivated elite to the masses is nicely suggested by, say, comparing the
Work-Program of the Wiener Werksta:tte (1905) to Earnest Elmo Calkins's
essay "What Consumer Engineering Really Is" (1932), both of which are
included in the anthology. A number of the other selections would probably
also relate at least tangentially to your interests.

Carma R. Gorman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Art History
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
School of Art and Design, mail code 4301
Carbondale, IL 62901
United States of America
voicemail: 618-453-8634
fax: 618-453-7710
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Murdock" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 11:37 PM
Subject: Re: Creativity


> Chuck, do you have a citation for this quote?  I'm working on an idea for
my students that might turn into a paper, if I find the area in question to
be lightly charted territory....
>
> "In response to the question "Is design an expression
> of art?" Charles Eames famously replied, "I would
> rather say it's an expression of purpose. It may, if
> it is good enough, later be judged as art." To me the
> judgment regarding creativity is similar and more
> immediate."
>
>
> Here's my thought process:  I teach an Art and Ideas class for
undergraduate design students in the areas of Apparel, Graphic, Digital
Media (film), multimedia (web), apparel, game, animation, and interior
design.  This is supposed to be their art history class from modernism to
the present.  I start in the Rococo to show the transition in the
relationship between the institution of art and the individual work as
Western History moves from royal patronage to bourgeois culture, modernism
(industrialization, aestheticism, avant-garde etc.), 20th c. government
sponsorship, postmodern revolt, fall of (US) government sponsorship in
1980's through cultural conflict to today.
>
> So, (let me mop my brow for a second) I want my design students to
understand how design parallels this development of the institution of art.
My thesis, though I have little support for it as yet, is the following.
>
> In the Rococo art and design are very close - almost the same thing, as a
royal house was to physically represent the power and importance of the
owner through aesthetic production.  This includes the architecture,
furniture, apparel, and even performance of the individuals through courtly
life.  This production exists in a linear patronage format that allows funds
to flow down from the patron to artist/artisan and products to flow up from
the artist to the patron.
>
> Once the bourgeois culture is developed no one has the same funds as the
royalty had to support a patron/artist relationship, so we have the fall of
the salon system and the development of the gallery system between the time
of Manet and Monet in France.  (I use Peter Buerger's "Theory of the
Avant-garde" as support in this transition as well as a pile of standard art
history texts.)
>
> However, Buerger does not chart the role of design once we move to the
bourgeois culture.  I postulate that design maintains the patron/artist or
artisan relationship, only they must diversify their clientele because the
new money does not function the way the old money did.
>
> Art and design become a nonlinear system.  Art uses a gallery system to
diversify collectors while giving the artist freedom to develop work along
his or her concept or technique.  Design maintains the patronage
relationship, meeting the particular needs of clients, but diversifies the
number of clients.  Rather than working for a royal family to develop the
aesthetics of a palace with paintings, ballroom, gardens, etc.  The designer
develops relationships with many businesses.
>
> I've been thinking and writing about whether or not design has an
"institution" as such, and I think, as the Charles Eames quote above points
out, design does not need a historicizing institution of its own because art
institutions step in and do the work when (and this is more of my thesis)
the aesthetic of an object connects enough with a meaning that is culturally
relevant enough to posit the work as art.  Also, because of the
designer/client relationship an institution is not required to validate the
work.  Increased sales on the part of the company or business validate the
use of design.
>
> I would also contend that this does not contradict with Stephen Heller's
concept that fine art and design should be and are merged.  I think what
Heller is arguing against is a form of cultural elitism that came out of the
modernist separation of design and art that says artists can't cross the
design boundary and vs. versa.  I believe the division was for the sole
purpose of artificially separating aesthetics from design and handing it to
art even though aesthetics are democratic, being possessed by everyone.
This does not conflict with an assessment of the functional systems art and
design created upon and after their separation.
>
> Resources:  I've been looking at a lot of aesthetic and cultural theory
from Adorno to Peter Buerger or Burger (with an umlaut), early modernist
aesthetics, Greenberg from 30's to 50's, Hans Belting, Stephen C. Foster,
Foucault and friends, Stephen Heller and Raymond Williams.
>
> Any thoughts or additions?  Is this well charted territory and I'm just
swimming behind the boat?
>
> Best,
>
> Alan