Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Tactile


I've recently come across this interesting book, Tactile, by Robert Klantan. The premise is that graphic designers are now exploring the boundaries between 2-D and 3-D, exactly where I'm investigating in my ceramic forms. Modern technology has 'liberated' text and images into collages, sculpture and installation, the authors argue.
As the reviewer from Wallpaper magazine observed:
"Tactile is a timely review of a very contemporary graphic movement. Three-dimensional graphics have made a comeback, a reaction against the screen’s lack of depth and the general sense that when it comes to visual design, anything goes."
Interesting Lecture.......

Here is a link to the lecture Garth Clark gave at the opening of a new craft museum in Portland, Oregan. It's a podcast of his provocative lecture arguing that the original crafts movement has died and that 'crafters' need to move on and embrace their craft nature and forget trying to be described as 'fine art'. A few quotes:
  • "Functional pieces can only live in your culture through ritualization.
  • "Compared to the current developments in art and design, craft is now more marginalized than it's ever been."
  • "Crafters are no more accepted today (in the fine arts) than decades before. What has changed is that craft materials, processes and contexts can now be used in fine art. And that an artists working in these materials will not be automaticallly rejected. But this is the result of the post-modernism..."
  • "Imitating art was not the route to success...."
  • "Craft's slowing market cannot be blamed on general economic conditiions..."
  • "Craft today is really a branch of design..."
  • "Making a partnership between design and craft will take craft into a much more sophisticated and urbane world- and out of the 'little house on the prarie' rustic bias that seems to rule the field..."
  • "As for fine art and craft, if you feel you belong in the former, please leave, there is no point telling craft you are really a fine artist, particularly if you are accepting rare and precious craft funds in the process. Leave and prove yourself in the arena in which you belong. If you fail and become a born-again crafter, you can always return."
  • Click here to go to the museum's home page (the podcast link is at the bottom).