Design Context: Lecture 7: High Culture VS Low Culture

Objectives:

•Understand the term ‘avant-garde’

•Question the way art/design education relies on the concept

of the avant-garde

•Understand the related concept of ‘art for art’s sake’

•Question the notion of ‘genius’

•Consider the political perspectives relating to avant-gardism

•Question the validity of the concept ‘avant-garde’ today

Marchal Duchamp

'Fauvers'

Wild Beasts

Visual Communications
‘The second level aim s to let you experiment within you chosen range of disciplines’
‘Our aim is to encourage students to take a radical approach to communication’
To be a student on the course you need to enjoy:-
‘Challenging conventions’

Printed Textiles
& Surface Pattern Design
Our aim is to provide an environment which allows you to discover, develop, and express your personal creative identity through your work’
‘Level one studies concentrate on ‘… experimentation’

Interior Design
‘We encourage students to challenge conventional thinking ’

Furniture
‘Throughout the course you will be encouraged to form a personal vision and direction based upon critical self –analysis’

Fashion/Clothing
We encourage you to develop your individual creativity to the highest level . . .
‘Level one studies concentrate on . . . .experimentation’

Art and Design (Interdisciplinary)
‘What will unite all your creative output will be the ability to apply your creative and technical skills in innovative ways, which are not limited to traditional subject boundaries’

LCAD quotes prioritise certain concepts:
(feel free to question these)

1.     Innovation [creating new stuff]

2.     Experimentation [process involved in order to achieve new
        stuff]
3.     Originality [to copy is bad, to be original is good]

4.     Creative genius [to bring out a hidden creative depth held
            deep within the student]

ITS ART FOR ART'S SAKE

End of the 19th /early 20th C
two approaches to avant-garde art

1.     art that is socially committed [artists being the ‘avant-garde’ of society, pushing forward political objectives]
2.     art that seeks only to expand / progress what art is (in itself
        and for itself) / art for art’s sake

Significant Form

The relations and combinations of lines and colours, which when organised give the power to move someone aesthetically

Socialist Realism

Vladimirski ‘Roses for Stalin’ (1949)

Constructivism

Rodchenko ‘Books’ (1924)

A major problem for the avant-garde is that it seems to necessitate ‘ELITISM’

So for those members of the ‘left wing’ [interested in social change] there was a tendency to have to rely on ACADEMIC TECHNIQUES in order to appeal to the ‘public’.

What is Kitsch?