Art vs. Design

Honestly, I think the line between art and design is very thin these days. The two are starting to blend into each other as artists use design techniques and vice versa. But as we were looking at the exhibit of BYU students I did notice some things that separate the two groups.  Design is less about an intellectual concept. I find that often it is more about the formal elements such as form, line, and color. In today's art world you would be hard pressed to find a piece of art that doesn't have a concept, or some idea that the artist is trying to share. I also noticed that design works are often more illustrative. They are more concerned about telling a story. Design work is meant to be easily read and understood, while often art is meant to be pondered over. That is not to say that this is always the case for either area, but these are how they generally work. Design also often has a customer lined up ahead of time who wants something specific while art is made more how the artist wants it.

Modernism

Modernism was a movement that began in the early 1900's. It was a group of people who were questioning how things, especially art, functioned. They were trying to take things down to the essence of what they were. Painters were painting for the sake of painting. Modernists did not want to create an illusion but to emphasize the heart of painting; the flat surface and paint. That is how we ended up with artists such as Mondrian and Pollock. Both artists were focused not on imagery but on formal elements.

Making it Small in Hollywood

 I really liked this article by Mike Birbigila. Especially his advice on failing and learning from it. It's inevitable that we are going to fail as artists, so I really like this idea of turning failure into something better. In another class of mine we looked at Francil Alys who believes that his art is never done. He sees it as a kind of rehearsal. Alys is open to changing his work and title depending on the context and doesn't like to call things finished. I've begun experimenting with this idea and I like how it bounces off of Birbigila's thoughts.

Interesting things