Design. Mark McGinnis
the tea ceremony of medieval Japan to the elaborate, decorative aesthetic of Rococo France. The last decades of this century in the United States have seen the rise to dominance of an extremely unfortunate aesthetic — the aesthetic of violence. The entertainment industry of the nation decided to capitalize on the very old knowledge that violence has the power to create an aesthetic experience. Viewing violence and vicariously participating transport the audience transported from their everyday world into an adrenaline-filled world of brutal excitement. Especially in a society where many people feel powerless, this quick fix of brief highs temporarily fills a void with fulfillment. The negative repercussions of this dominant entertainment in our country are many. Heschel has expressed it in broader perspective:
Modern man may be characterized as a being who is callous to catastrophes. A victim of enforced brutalization, his sensibility is being increasingly reduced; his sense of horror is on the wane. The distinction between right and wrong is becoming blurred. All that is left to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror. (192)
Within another realm of aesthetics is the feared question “What is art?” The answer varies from person to person. There is no answer and there are many answers. Marjorie Elliot Bevlin states, “Art is concerned with the creation of a work that will arouse an aesthetic response”(8). John Canaday gives us the following functions of art: “To bring order to the chaotic material of human experience” and “To clarify, intensify, or otherwise enlarge our experience of life” (3 & 5). Lois Fichner-Rathus gives the following imposing list: art as beauty, art as truth, art as elevation of the commonplace, art as expression of the universal, art as reflection of social and cultural context, art as immortalization, art as order and harmony, art as the product of heart-hand- mind, art as the source of intellectual stimulation, art as meeting the needs of the artist, art as recording and commemorating experiences and events, art as expressing religious values, art as social protest, art as decoration, art as commerce (V). To all these definitions I would say, yes. Art is all these things and more. To answer the question from an even broader viewpoint, Rabindranath Tagore has said, “’What is Art?’ It is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real.” (Tagore, WR, 139)
A debatable separation in defining “what art is” involves the many divisions created within the large realm of art: the difference between art and design, fine art and applied art, art and craft, fine art and commercial art, and other borders that are formed to create insiders and outsiders. I have no problem calling whatever falls in any of those areas art - even to the level of hobby art and crafts. These, too, are art and serve the function of amusing, entertaining, and giving gratification to many people. Do hobbyists create work of the same high quality of many professional artists and craftspeople? Certainly not. While I have no problem in calling a wide range of activities art, I believe there is a wide spectrum of quality in that range. I believe that there is “good and bad” art. Making these judgments is a subjective exercise but I believe a necessary one.
An irritating attitude held by a few people in the art world is that anything functional or commercial cannot be considered “art.” Our recent list of what art is puts to rest this narrow and somewhat “uppity” view. The snubbing of commercial art seems pointedly out of place in our society. In many early societies art functioned as a necessary component within the whole society; the religious, political, and social uses of art made it essential to the functioning of the entire society. Examples abound; the indigenous tribes of the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific provide dazzling and immensely diversified cases. In larger civilizations, it is difficult to think of an exception to this rule. From the Egyptians to the Renaissance, art played a vital part usually allied with religion and government. With the rise of the industrial age, the role of art in society diminished, and this still seems the case today in our “post-industrial” society. What role does the contemporary art of the galleries and museums play in our society? While it may play an important role in the lives of many individuals, how does it affect the workings of our civilization? Well, there is the monetary function of investment and auction, and if one wishes to be more philosophical, the avant-garde sometimes serves as a kind of barometer or “canary in a coal mine” for the rest of society. But in practical everyday terms there is little relationship between the fine arts and the day-to-day workings of our society. On the other hand, the commercial arts, and especially advertising design, play an enormously important role in making our capitalist-consumer society function. For better or worse, commercial art is one of the driving forces in the cycle of money and goods. Advertising design distributes the information and creates the desire for the new and the dissatisfaction with the old that makes consumerism work. Commercial art serves the economic system of today in a very similar to the way art served the Catholic church of the middle ages, or the way art served the religion and government in city-states of ancient Greece. In some ways consumerism is the new contemporary religion being served by art.
In future centuries, if we can sustain ourselves, I wonder how art historians will study our times. Will they look at the “fine” arts or the “commercial” arts as truly reflecting the essence of our society? Will they look at our contemporary museum art or at Calvin Klein and Nike ads?
INTEGRITY
The final term in the long list of lofty words that make up the title of this chapter is “integrity.” As with all this list, there is no general consensus, by those in the arts, as to its meaning.
A broad definition of integrity is the quality or state of being whole (Bevlin 26). This definition implies a pure and unaltered state — the quality of wholeness in a philosophical sense. Integrity can relate to all aspects of design. Integrity of materials suggests materials that are used to their optimum, materials of which the designer’s knowledge is complete and whose qualities are not compromised by misuse or distortion. Metal is not made to look like plastic, plastic is not made to look like wood or tile. Materials are to be used in accordance with their limitations and advantages. Materials in architectural constructions must be strong enough to handle the stresses that will be applied to them. Outdoor sculptures must weather the elements. Paintings should not crack, flake, or peel (Bevlin 26). All materials have an innate quality of integrity that is either used or abused by the designer or artist.
A classic area of integrity in design is that of integrity of form, the shape and mass of the designed item. The famous Bauhaus school of design that functioned in Germany between the two world wars formulated the dominant theory of integrity of form in the 20th century. Their famous decree was “form follows function.” The clearness and directness of the statement itself reflects the integrity of the concept. In their designs, primarily architecture, textiles, furniture, and household items, they believed in stripping away all unnecessary and decorative elements. They wanted to pare the design down to the essential so that the form would be an indication of the function. The item was to be a direct reflection of the function, the materials, and the machine process used to produce it (Bevlin 28). In Bauhaus thinking a chair didn’t need embellished carving and spindle legs. It didn’t need elaborate upholstery or claw feet. A chair needed to support the seated human figure and design should attempt to accomplish that objective with simplicity of shape and economy of materials. This concept became so ingrained in 20th century design that its revolutionary nature is sometimes forgotten. We need to remember what a dramatic break this was with centuries of elaborate and decorative design as seen in the styles of the Art Nouveau, Romantic, Rococo, Baroque, and Renaissance.
In a way the Bauhaus was really returning to a rule of a nature in design. “Form follows function” has always been the ultimate rule of nature’s designs - from the tiniest to the largest. The process of natural selection in nature is a process of refining form to facilitate function; that is, to create the most functional designs possible in relation to the environment. One of the most fascinating places to observe this is in the structures animals and insects build. The efficiency and simplicity of the constructions are models of form following function.
Directly related to integrity of form is integrity of function itself. The use of materials and the item designed leads to the functional integrity of the product: how does it work? Does the drawer open and close well? Does the coat keep you warm? Does the car run dependably? Does the computer perform the functions it is supposed to? Modern life is plagued with innumerable