But is it Art?
April 15, 2022
I have always loved the work of Stefan Sagmeister. I’ll never forget seeing his iconic AIGA poster. He wanted a design that would visually communicate the pain that accompanies his design projects. So he had his intern Martin literally cut the type into his skin with an X-Acto knife. According to Sagmeister, “yes, it did hurt real bad.”
Since that crazy poster in 1999, Sagmeister went on to do pretty much every kind of commercial project for every kind of client. But after 20+ years, his focus has shifted away from the commercial gigs and toward the personal work.
One of his recent projects is titled Beautiful Numbers. In true Sagmeister fashion, it’s immaculately conceptualized, executed, and presented. The project is based on the idea that relative to the entire human timeline, things are actually pretty good right now.
He states, “short-term media like Twitter and hourly news create an impression of a world out of control, with democracy in peril, ubiquitous conflicts, and an overall outlook of doom. But if we look at developments concerning the world from a long-term perspective - the only sense-making way - almost any aspect concerning humanity seems to get better.”
To manifest this idea visually, Sagmeister pulled out his trusty X-Acto knife and carved up some old paintings, surgically implanting clean new infographics that speak to life-quality indicators such as average life span, poverty levels, infant mortality rates, the right to vote, literacy, etc:
Sagmeister states that these works can serve as “reminders that the latest tweets are just tiny blips in an overall rather healthy environment. Doing that they retain functionality, which is why they are pieces of design, not art.”
I can appreciate any project that has a positive outlook like this, that asks us to look at things in a more favorable light. But this last statement about design / art threw me off. He believes he is making design not art. So I looked into it, via the ANSWERS section of his site, where I found this:
“…as Donald Judd famously said: Design has to work, art does not. He separates the two neatly by function. At the very core, all design, in order for it to qualify as design, has to function. If it does not function, it is not design. If I design a chair, one of my goals will be that it is comfortable to sit on. I can design a chair and push the design so hard, until I cant sit on it anymore. But then the chair ceases to be a chair and becomes a sculpture. Art on the other hand, can just be. It does not need to do anything.”
I’m not sure what to make of this. These Beautiful Numbers paintings are really nice to look at. I’d love to have one in my living room. However, before I learned more about them, I had no idea what they meant. I just liked their balanced, mysterious vibe. Learning about them did not make me like them any less, but all of a sudden they now have a “function” which (according to SS) means they are no longer art, they are objects of design. Do creative works have to be one or the other? Art or design?
So many questions.
Before I knew what the shapes on Sagmeister’s paintings meant, were these paintings art, to me? And upon learning more, have they become design? I can sit on one of Donald Judd’s steel boxes like a chair, or use two giant Rothko canvases to make a pup tent. Does this mean that these works of art are no longer art because they have been assigned a function? Or the classification ultimately tied to the original intention of the artist? Alternatively, if I find a cool looking piece of stamped steel on the floor of a machine shop, and I have no idea what it’s for, is it art?