test one: review [what you need to know]
test one: review 10 multiple choice (.5 pt each) = 10 mins 5 short answer (1 pt each) = 15 mins 2 essay (5 pts each) = 30 mins ** plus 5 mins to review you answers
Total of 60 mins + 20% of final grade
the continuing curve [design before ‘Design’]
Pierre Woeiriot 1555-1562
How are these images related? How do they represent different positions within the ‘pendulum swing’ of the continuing curve? How might each be seen as expressive of a ‘irrational’ or ‘rational’ impulse within design?
What were some of the criticisms of this work? and of the Rococo style generally? What was the role of function verses beauty in the 18th-century debates on design and aesthetics? In what ways did these debates also touch upon questions of the appropriate use of materials?
Juste-Aurele Meissonier Candelabra Paris, 1734
Discuss
Parody of Art Nouveau /Jugendstil Interiors, Berlin, c.1900
Discuss
Rococo • • • • • • •
curvilinear, organic exuberant and emotional feminine, private amoral and irrational synthetic and inclusive artist as servant, artisanal a-historical
Neo/Classical • • • • • • •
rectilinear, geometric restrained and rational masculine, public moral and rational reductive and exclusive visionary and academic ancient pedigree
Discuss
A New Book of Ornaments AntonioVisentini England, 1753
John Baskerville Title page for Virgil’s Bucolica England, 1757
Beauty+Utility [the politics of design]
The True Principles of Pointed Architecture, A.W.N. Pugin, 1841
Industrialization What were some of the impacts of industrialisation on Western society? Socially? Environmentally? Economically? Politically? In what ways did these effects impact the debates on design in the last third of the 19th century?
Discuss
What is the difference between these two wallpaper samples? How do they express central ideals of the design reform movement—or not? How are they related to social concerns in the latter 19th century? (give five specific characteristics, quotes, themes)
How does this table represent ‘true principles’ and ‘good design’ according to Pugin?
Octagonal oak table from the Prince’s chamber, Palace of Westminster, by A.W.N. Pugin, c.1830s
Why was The Great Exhibition of 1851 [The Crystal Palace] a significant event in the history of design? What was the purpose of the ‘Great Exhibition’? Who was involved and why? What were some of the outcomes of the Exhibition?
Craft vs. Design moving beyond a tired dichotomy
In what ways does this cartoon represent the principle criticisms of design? How is ‘craft’ represented?
Discuss design
craft
•Conceptual, intellectual •Form-based •Mass production •Progressive, forward-looking •Amoral, capitalist •Fragmented, disconnected •Individual, autocratic •Masculine, first world •Academic
• • • • • • • • •
Visceral, manual Materials-based Small-scale production Regressive, backward looking Moral, socialist Holistic, authored Communal, democratic Feminine, third world Vocational
What similar ideas about craftsmanship might be drawn from both of these images? How do they relate to ‘narratives’ of craft and the craftsman as artist?
What is “craftivism” and/or “critical craft”? How are traditional crafts used in these image to present political or politicised objects?
Discuss Why is craft is being reassessed? • • • • • •
Dissolution with homogeneity of mass market goods Dissolution with conceptual art and design Reemphasis on the physical world Pre-digital and pre-electrical nostalgia –the simple life Reconnection with embedded cultural meaning and “aura” Emerging postdisciplinary era
photography: film: modern vision
In what ways did the camera introduce “us to unconscious optics” –as Walter Benjamin argues in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’? What did it allow us to see that we hadn’t before? In what ways did it change our perception of time and duration?
In what ways did the x-ray and other optic technologies change our perception of the world? What kinds of benefits was it predicted to bring?
unique in time, space, history
In what ways is Benjamin’s description of ‘aura’ illustrated in Donatello’s David?
authenticity
In what ways is it ‘unique’ and ‘authentic’?
aura
Donatello’s David, c.1440
We have lost our capacity to grasp the reality of war. The horror of war is consumed as though it were a horror movie.” [Neil Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture, 1999]
In what was does the statement above relate to Benjamin’s theory of the loss of ‘aura’ with the reproduction of images? Discuss.
Discuss
Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second…with close-ups space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended…An unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man. [Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 1935]
Discuss I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see. [Dziga Vertov ]
test one: review • trust your instincts when responding [ your first answer is usually correct] • be specific in your responses [!] – don’t just tell us what you think, tell us why you are taking a given position and how it relates to readings, lectures, and/or tutorial discussions • refer to specific authors, concepts, objects, critics, etc. to provide evidence in your responses • take a few moments before answering each essay question to determine your position (thesis statement) and how you intend to support it (evidence)