Art v. Design

While I was in Miami, I attended a panel on Mid-Century Modern Design. While I don’t know quite as much about design as I do art, the subject is nonetheless very interesting to me. I have a good friend who has her own design firm and it is always interesting to see the sort of things you can do with a good design background (and how something as simple as a couch or a chair can transform the way someone lives in their home). On this panel were several prominent figures of New York City’s design world including the design director of the Noguchi Museum, head of the Eames Office, owner of a design gallery, and the specialist of Sotheby’s Modern Design department. These men (and yes, they were ALL men) talked at length about what design means to the world around us, how there has been a recent convergence of art and design (mainly due to the fact that so many designers are now issuing design editions – like print editions – wherein they issue only a limited number of the design in question), how the term “mid-century modern” is sort of a conundrum in itself, and other interesting tidbits. This talk reinvigorated me to learn more about design (beyond the countless Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn and West Elm catalogs I read every month). So in addition to writing about art in this blog, I hope to bring in some information about design as I set out to learn more about it every day.

 

To begin my education in Miami, I attended the design fair. It was MUCH smaller than the main Art Basel fair and even much smaller than the other satellite fairs like Pulse or Scope. There were maybe twenty booths with an array of furniture, mirrors, carpets, lamps, tables, chairs, etc. Sometimes the gallery or designer created a cohesive “room” while other times it seemed more like a whole bunch of stuff just crammed into a single space. It is a whole lot more expensive to transport and display furniture than it is art, but I think the general public and the design industry could do with more exposure of the artsy high end stuff. I hope in the future we’ll see more influence of these innovative designers (like the Campana Brothers who I hope to write about in one of my next blogs) on everyday mass produced markets.