Tuesday 4 December 2012

OUGD401 - Context of Practice: Art, Graphic Design and 'Value'

'What are the differences between Fine Art and Graphic Design?'

We were asked to discuss the above question in small groups and produce some answers:
  • Graphic design is mass produced
  • Graphic design is meant to communicate a message whereas fine art is someone's own interpretation
  • Graphic design is more type based
  • Graphic design is more desposable
  • Graphic design is more digital
  • Fine art often have their work exhibited whereas graphic design is more commercial
  • Fine art is high culture, linked to expense, showing a class distinction
  • Graphic design is communication and fine art is expression
  • Graphic design is understandable as a rule
  • Fine art doesn't care about being understandable
  • Graphic designers don't sign their work whereas fine artists do
  • Mass production vs individual creation
Arisman, M (2003) 'Is there a fine art to illustration?'
  • Fine art is pure
  • Illustration is the beginning of selling out
  • Graphic design is commercial art
  • Advertising is selling - period
'Pure' contradiction - Fine artists make the most money

We then discussed the differences Richard had listed and we had actually covered them in what we had previously discussed:
  1. Ambiguity or complexity of meaning
  2. The designer as wage labourer
  3. Cultural significance
  4. Expression and individuality
  5. Creativity/problem solving
  6. Function
What do they mean?
  1. Graphic design is simple, whereas fine art is complex
  2. Because graphic designers do what the boss tells you to do, not for free
  3. Fine art is more expensive and sold for more money - more accurate depiction of the world
  4. Fine art is more expressive/individual
  5. Graphic design problem solving implying no creativity
  6. Graphic design has less purpose as it has a function whereas fine art has no purpose and yet still works
1. Ambiguity or complexity of meaning
  • Sigmar Polke (1969)
  • Monet (1882)
  • David Carson
  • Allen Hori (1989) - A poster that attempts to deconstruct a poster
  • Often people five fine art more meaning that artists themselves
2. The designer as a wage labourer
  • Can't sell his work as noone understands it so he kills himself
  • Van Gogh shot himself in the asylum as he was a manic depressive
  • He has a wealthy brother to make himself believe he was great
  • Cut his ear off and everyone thought he was strange
  • We only recognise his work after his death along with other fine artists
  • Fine artists are outside of society and don't care about money
  • They don't need to have a job
  • Hagiography - look up if I do this question
  • Damien Hirst - Shark, spots etc
3. Cultural significance
  • Ephemerality - Look good for a certain amount of time the discarded (Graphic design)
  • Fine art is eternal whereas graphic design is throw away
  • Graphic design reaches a larger audience therefore it is more culturally significant
  • Constable (1821) The Haywain - Painting represents everything English
  • The Japanese tourists go every year to capture the landscape
  • 13 workers in the background represent minor figures
  • At the time there were mass riots however and it is a revolutionary painting
  • People think it is reality
  • But the England captured is a lie
Monetary value...
  • Assumption - Value makes art more important
  • Picasso Les Notes de Plerrette 1905 sold in 1989 for $49.3m
  • All people who bought works were Japanese and paid more than the amount the paintings were worth
  • It turned out that the money was drug money and they had invested into art work to maintain the value
4. Expression and individuality
  • Pollock (1947) - Painting for an audience
  • Expression - means same for fine art and graphic design
  • Communication of an idea through the visual
5. Creativity/problem solving
  • The notion os creativity as 'irruption' is mistaken and mystified
  • Both graphics and art are two ways in which experience is made meaningful and visually communicated
  • Neither is created in the above sense
  • Raymond Williams (1961) 'The Long Revolution'
6. Function
  • L'art pour l'art
  • Whistker (1872-7)
  • Art for the sake of art is ultimately redundant and useless


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