‘Could it be argued that fine art ought to be assigned more ‘value’
than more popular forms of visual communication?’
Value can fall within the realm of a piece of fine art which has had
a huge personal effect on somebody’s life and a work of visual communication
such as Harry Beck’s London Underground map which has helped and continues to
help millions of people every year. So is value monetary or something less
tangible?
The fine art world as we know it is ruled, obsessed by wealth. ‘A
few years ago… [‘The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist’]
was known only to scholars. It became famous because an American wanted to buy
it for two and a half million pounds. Now it hangs in a room by itself. The
room is like a chapel.” Berger, J (1972). Berger’s comment highlights a
cultural value, which has been placed on fine art in recent years. Value equals
value. In other words, the incredible rise in prices paid for works of fine art
has glamourised the art world to an extent where a false value is placed on it,
based not on the quality of the work but the value paid for it. The general
public is more likely to know that a Manet is worth however many million
dollars than the story or feeling that the work was originally intended to
convey.
Graphic design as an art form is at a polar opposite. It rarely
exists in galleries and unlike a one off painting, designs are often printed
hundreds or thousands of times, there is very rarely a master copy, an
original. Designers fulfill a brief for a set price, the design exists to
communicate information, often for long periods of time and to innumerable
amounts of people. Berger argues that since the advent of reproduction,
particularly photography, fine artwork has taken on a ‘bogus religiosity’ where
the original becomes a mystical object in spite of the thousands of
reproductions. ‘If the image is no longer unique and exclusive, the art object,
the thing, must be made mysteriously so.’ Berger, J (1972). We can search
online for Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ and find thousands of photographs, yet we
still visit the Van Gogh museum in our millions to see the original for
ourselves. This is where fine art’s one off ‘value’ trumps graphic design,
where the original, the master copy is so rarely lauded.
Berger’s position on the reproduction of art leaving the original
with even higher auratic value is in contrast to Walter Benjamin’s
groundbreaking essay The Work of Art in
the Mechanical Age of Reproduction, which argued that ‘the reproduced work of
art is to an ever increasing extent the reproduction of a work of art designed
for reproducibility’. Benjamin was predicting the end of the aura within
artwork, believing that mass reproduction would in turn decrease the value of
the original. ‘What shrinks in an age where the work of art can be reproduced
by technological means is its aura’ Benjamin, W (1936) The essay finds Benjamin
seemingly worried for the state of the art world, the advent of mass film and
photography threatening the very process and ideology behind creating artwork.
No longer will the artist paint with abandon, safe in the knowledge that the
work will remain just that, one work, to be admired in the flesh. Instead the
artists will release their work into a world with a potentially limitless
outreach, photographic reproductions of the work won’t necessarily convey the
minute intricacies and skill of the painting, thus within possibility changing
the very way the artist creates their work.
Recently, rap legends Wu Tang Clan announced a new album, pressed
onto an elaborately packaged vinyl only once, toured around museums, galleries
& music festivals and then to be auctioned to the highest bidder. On the
issue, they stated, "Is exclusivity versus mass replication
really the 50 million dollar difference between a microphone and a paintbrush?
… By taking this step, we hope to re-enforce the weight that music once carried
alongside a painting or a sculpture." Robert Barry – art critic and writer
for The Quietus – saw obvious echoes between this project and Walter Benjamin’s
theories of aura when writing his think piece Why the Music Business Shouldn’t Turn into the Music Business on
The Quietus. ‘Benjamin considered the aura to be the one thing inevitably lost
in any reproduction, no matter how perfect, because it is the "here and
now" of the object, which underlies its "authenticity"…
Cilvaringz (a member of Wu Tang Clan) himself seemed to recognise this when he
told Forbes, "One
leak of this thing nullifies the entire concept."’ Barry, R (2014). I
accept that the release is largely exciting due to the one off nature of the
music but, by placing the album within a hand carved, nickel-sliver box, the
group are harking back to the physicality of the one off piece of fine art. In
conclusion to his piece, Barry refers to the wild-west nature of digital
reproduction; ‘Today, this capacity to derive income from a work's
reproducibility is being undermined by the seemingly uncontrollable nature of
digital reproduction. But it seems incredible to suggest that the answer to
these challenges should rest in a denial of all kinds of reproducibility by
harking back to feudal times with "kings' sceptres" and so forth.
That way lies a very few Caravaggios and a vast army of lumpen global freelancers
eking out a living on the crumbs of live performance and goodwill donations.’
In this particular case study, I think Wu Tang Clan should be applauded simply
for bringing such a concept into fruition, however I’m inclined to agree with
Barry on his conclusion that the idea provides no real future for the vast
majority of struggling artists, and riches to the already established few.
‘Great design should be invisible’. It is this mantra that puts
graphic design in an entirely different spectrum to fine art, historically a
more romantic field, one which serves little initial purpose other than its
aesthetic value. It is also a theory which puts the appreciation of quality
graphic design outside the realm of the general public. I would argue that a
member of the public uninformed in the arts would have more to appreciate when
viewing a Van Gogh in the flesh than the original specimen of Helvetica - a
design classic itself. ‘Some things are so well designed that we don’t notice
them any more. Our experience of them is invisible; almost beyond form and
function… unless they break. The same holds true for Web design. Users stop
noticing Web design if it works. Users keep noticing design if it’s broken, or
when it gets in the way. Good design strikes a balance between elegance and
invisibility. Invisible design relates to function and purpose, rather than
appearance.’ Friedman, V (2011) While I agree with the sentiment, particularly
within the realm of web design - where interaction with the page is paramount –
I feel that when one sees a particularly outstanding piece of visual
communication, one will most likely notice. A successful visual language
carried across a range of media, perhaps throughout a brand, will not go
unnoticed by the general public, let alone designers themselves.
With very little to no practical use in the real world, perhaps it
is this very nature of fine art that gives it its mystique within public conscious.
This romanticism, the idea of the artist, a free spirit devoting their life to
something with no practical purpose is something, which the public has always
bought into. Artists inspire an admiration from the everyman. Their separation
from the wage obsessed rat-race coupled with the age-old stereotype of the
eccentric gives the profession an aura which is certainly not mirrored by the
office/studio dwelling straight laced stereotype of the design professional. It
is this argument, that it is fine art’s lack of practical value, which gives it
its auratic value. This is particularly hard to stomach as a graphic designer,
where successful work attempts to convey, help and communicate.
Perhaps age has something to do with the differing levels of
appreciation for the two subjects at hand. The history of popular Fine Art is
so vast that original pieces have gained reputation and adoration, in large
part due to their age. An 18th century work has had a much larger time
within social consciousness to gain reputation and ‘value’ than a piece of
graphic design from the last 50 years. To highlight this, I will weight up the
similarities and differences between a classic piece of fine art and a brand
new piece of Graphic Design.
The visual similarities between Mark Rothko’s ‘No. 14, 1960’ and
Fleur Isbell’s ‘Jamaica’ code generated colour pattern for the 2013 D&AD
annual are immediate, but their values within the world are hugely separate. Rothko’s
hugely abstract swathe of colour is painted with the viewer in mind. This is
not a selfish work, not an exercise in precise brushwork or minute levels of
brush skill but more an invitation to the viewer. Rothko wanted his viewers to
stand around 18 inches from the canvas and to take the colours in at close
proximity. While Rothko’s work was extremely successful during his lifetime,
his abstract style caused controversy and opposition from the traditional art
world, with particular accusations taking issue with the size of Rothko’s work.
“I realize that historically the function of
painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The
reason I paint them, however is precisely because I want to be very intimate
and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your
experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a
reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t
something you command!” Rothko (1951) This explanation is sufficient for me to
accept that there was real intent and purpose behind Rothko’s work, that it was
a reaction against the ‘grandiose and pompous’ fine art of the past. In the
flesh, the piece glows with a feeling somewhere between warmth and danger, for
me it is a hazy yet visceral sunset, with the dark blue suggesting water or a
wasteland. In reality, the piece is simply two hazy slabs of colour, their
‘value’ is derived from Rothko’s quotes contextualising and in turn, the high
art cultural value passed down throughout the years. The fact that these huge canvases are thick with paint, hand brushed by a
human, who’s intentions were to create something so romantic, so invested into
one idea is what makes them and fine art itself valuable.
Rothko fits the eccentric, romantic idea of an artist I highlighted
earlier. Quotations from throughout his career give us a glimpse into the
artists mind. Incredibly, Rothko was against his work being labeled as
‘abstract’. ‘I am not an abstractionist. ...
I am not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. ...
I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom
and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when
confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions.’ Rothko
(1957). Rothko here confirms his position as a ‘true artist’. The public buy
into this, lapping up the myth that is built around the work and thus
snowballing it into what we have today, where Rothko’s work is given unprecedented
space within galleries to breathe and to be experienced as he intended. ‘The people who weep before my pictures are
having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as
you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!’
Rothko (1957).
There is no doubt that Rothko’s work does and should hold high cultural
value. It represents a huge mainstream change in the world of art from the
literally representative to the emotionally and spiritually representative. It is
for the everyman, inviting him to bring forth his own conclusions about the work.
It does, however, remain isolating, alien and to a large section of the public
I’m sure, confusing as to what its value really is.
While very similar aesthetically In comparison to this work, Fleur
Isbell’s series of code generated artworks for D&AD’s 2013 annual has a
vastly different cultural value, which represents a large proportion of visual
communication as apposed to the fine arts. For one, the works were commissioned
as a book cover, a publication as apposed to an exhibition. This contrasts the
public view of the romanticism of the artist, guided by his or her free will to
create whatever strange, mysterious work they please. ‘For her design, Fleur took the geolocation
and weather data for each of the 196 countries in the world and created a
code-generated coloured pattern for each; the 42 countries whose work appears
in the book were in this way represented on the cover.’
The work – a set but
I have chosen ‘Jamaica’ as the comparison to Rothko for its sheer aesthetic
similarity – is in essence a computer code, an image generated by an input of
numbers. While I may sound cynical of the design, Isbell has come up with an
incredibly clever and well thought through response to a daunting brief from
which many designers would shy away from and merely create something pretty,
but pretty meaningless. It is clear however that this computer generated
imagery, like a large proportion of graphic design, lacks a certain value in
comparison to fine art, the hand-drawn (or programmed) on screen is a huge
distance apart from the hand-painted brushstrokes on a Rothko, there is a human
connection that people miss in Graphic Design and so dearly love in works of
fine art. In Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin would see this digital production and therefore simple
reproducibility as a loss of cult value – or aura – although with an increased exhibition
value as the work is so freely available to see and reproduce. A purely digital
artwork in turn means that no master copy as such exists, in fact rendering
even the idea of the cult or auratic value of the artwork insignificant.
What I am neglecting
is that Isbell’s work has arguably a greater degree of meaning and context than
Rothko’s work. Her images are produced through coding based on the location,
temperature etc. of every country in the world, giving the book a global,
communal feeling – drawing interesting comparisons to Rothko’s statement on his
work being ‘not paint(ed)
for design students or historians but for human beings, and the reaction in
human terms is the only thing that is really satisfactory to the artist.’
Rothko (date unknown). What must be weighed up is whether the highest ‘value’
derives from an artist such as Rothko’s innate reasoning behind his work or a
designer such as Isbell’s more theoretical, calculated approach, one which has
solid proof of its working out.
This is an
area, particularly in the example I’ve given, in which other forms of visual
communication trump fine art. The sheer nature of graphic design as a
commission based, suitability and quality dependent profession lends itself to
more extensive forms of research and logical thought processes than the fine art
spectrum. A designer will only get the job if their work is of a high enough
quality and suitability. In terms of value, within our society, one that
largely values hard work and good work, I believe that more value would be
placed with graphic design than the more off-piste, spontaneous and personal
processes involved within a large proportion of fine art creation.
Ultimately,
I’m unconvinced that fine art should hold as much value as it does, particularly
in comparison to other forms of visual communication, namely graphic design.
Yes, there is a certain undeniable romance and quality to the artist dreaming
up ideas and painting with their own fair hand. The public love this vision and
the romantic idea of the artist, fuelled by the myths poured around the work by
the artists themselves has pushed up monetary value around artwork to an
incredible degree. This then, makes the graphic design community the unsung heroes;
the differences between the values of the disciplines seems to come down then
to the cult values of the respected work, referenced by Walter Benjamin. Fine
art is valuable for its one off nature, no two paintings will ever be the same.
Yes, photography has changed the distribution and the ‘exhibition value’ of
fine artworks but unlike graphic design where exhibition value is its only value;
a fine artwork exists at its source as a one off, hand rendered piece, its auratic
value incredibly high. I don’t, however, believe that value should necessarily
be assigned to a discipline purely for the circumstances in which it exists. I
would argue that the quality and process that has gone into the piece of work,
be it fine art or otherwise should be held in the highest regard when assessing
the piece. Despite this, there is perhaps too much historical context within
the realm of fine art or graphic design for this theory to hold water.
Bibliography:
Berger, J (1972). Ways
of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin Books.
Walter Benjamin
(2008). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
London: Penguin.
Clifford, R (1990). Abstract
Expressionism Creators and Critics. New York: Abrams Publishers. p172.
Rodman, S (1957). Conversations
with Artists. New York: Devin-Adair. p 93.
Adele. (2013). Fleur
Isbell D&AD Annual Unveiled. Available:
http://artdesign.bathspa.ac.uk/news/fleur-isbell-dad-annual-unveiled/.
Seitz, W.C (1984). Abstract
Expressionist Painting in America. Harvard: Harvard University Press. 116.
Barry, R (2014). Why The Music Business Shouldn’t Turn into
the Art Business. Available: http://thequietus.com/articles/14940-wu-tang-clan-music-industry-art-world
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