ARTWORK Jon Wozencroft

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It's absolutely bloody fantastic, but it is also useless. Nothing useless is truly beautiful, as William Morris once said...how many did we do?" 24 Hour Party People - attrib. Anthony Wilson

Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake? A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes John Heywood

Of course there isn't an answer, or a need even to convince an audience that there is a distinction - or a need even to look for one - between art and design. Although, some useful time could be spent seeing who and what exactly is being served by posing the question in that form, assuming even that there is a case to be answered in this area, assuming even that there is a 'this area'. After which, it might be possible to move on to forming some questions concerning the differentiation of art and advertising, an apparently more pressing issue. This may mean (probably does even) that examinations in these parts become an exercise in rhetoric. But, isn't that what academic art is, in the end: a performance of this ancient public entertainment, possibly beautiful, but hardly useful? All the same, it might be best not to get stranded on that little island just yet. Instead, while admitting the oppressive limitations, the seductive claustrophobia of the attempt, light out once more for open seas; offer again that cruise and see if there is any pleasure in it.

There is a running gag in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People about the work of 'designer' Peter Saville, the man who gave Factory its visual identity and a significant part of its appeal. Throughout the film, the Saville character is seen arriving again and again with a finished design job that is simply too late to be put to any use. At different times a poster for a gig, and a set of tickets for another gig are presented to Wilson inside the venue as the door opens for the events. The poster (a decidedly Tschicholdy number) is therefore useless for advertising the gig, as the concert tickets are for the advance sales for which they were originally requested. (For his part, Saville retorts that Wilson would fail to provide either a brief or a deadline, thereby provoking the old 'uselessness' issue, as well as some of the most influential British graphic work of the last decades of the twentieth century. Even if it was all nicked.)

The reaction of Wilson to his (briefless, deadlineless) designer was one of appreciation and even reassurance, tempered with aesthetic fatalism: "It's absolutely bloody fantastic, but it is also useless. Nothing useless is truly beautiful, as William Morris once said...how many did we do?" The restatement of Gaultier (handed down through the Albion of blender William Morris) seems extraordinary under the circumstances. But - press pause - like all such credos of transcendental beauty, turns out to be rather useful for its apostle. But Wilson's (and Gaultier's and Morris') approach - bound up in questions of industrialisation that must have been replaced by now - is only one of many. It all relates to what paradigm you've got loaded. From the infinite recess of available approaches to terms such as 'utility', 'craft', 'beauty', 'labour', 'capital' and 'society', you may pick one - or two at most - and, depending on your choice, you will calibrate an instrument for measuring the distance between art and design.

So what will we use, for the sake of it? Could we all forgive each other if, looking at art and design, and the crispy areas at the edge of each, you were to imagine yourself witnessing a primal, evolutionary struggle for territory and resources; a frantic, academically-sanctioned orgy of lamppost-pissing? I could. I could because that is, at least in one significant reading, exactly what you are witnessing, if, indeed, you are witnessing anything at all. (For you may not really be witnessing. You may be consuming: consuming pop promo as art, painting as design, accountancy as religion.) There has to be more to this than simply dividing those art school graduates who chose to follow the sign down the corridor to the Fine Art department, from those who didn't. Although, of course, take a look at the history of art schools who attempted to puncture the distinction, to promote cross-fertilisations and end the hierarchy which sought to keep the tradesfolk and the artists apart, and you might accidentally see institutions who took the division rather seriously.

It was Richard Wagner, of course, who gave the Bauhaus the term it needed to try and keep all sides of the production process in tune. They didn't worry unduly (or was it initially) about the composer's baggage when they took on board the word Gesamtkunstwerk as a principle in their new flavour of art education. There would be, Gropius had hoped, a synthesis of all the arts (under the guiding light of those project managers of the cultural sphere, the architects) which would bring into being the products of the Twentieth century, products which might bring to everyday industrial lives some of the values that had been lost in the move to the big cities. (Presumably Gropius - and indeed William Morris - would today see the ugly products of the media, and know that here was the area that now need a draft of useful beauty. And like Wilson, might articulate his alternative through an indie label and a guns 'n' drugs niteclub. Possibly.) Would it be possible then to call into being the Gesamtkunstwerk in some other fashion, to create a synthesis of what the 'designers' were doing with that which those legitimised by the term 'artist' were doing?

Towards the end of the twentieth century, the debt of one to the other became increasingly foregrounded. Particular pressure points occurred around those artists who had 'crossed the floor', moved from working as commercial artists, designers, to producing product for the art markets. (You do know that's what's going on here, now, don't you: let's not be babies.) Warhol had clearly broken ranks, and by the time Barbara Kruger parlayed her Condé Nast work into an gallery career, it seemed like a logical step. The painter of modern life would of course paint what had been created by the designers of modern life. (Of course, neither was the nineteenth century short of floor-crossers, like Renoir, or dabblers, like Toulouse-Lautrec. And indeed the twentieth century may be better remembered for those who abandoned production altogether, for those who chose only to choose, or to indicate, bless them.) All the usual arguments to help differentiate the two seem now rather limp. The problem, of course, is that with its mystique removed, the art object finds itself under assault from its analogues out there in the real world. They don't know they are ugly; they don't know that their utility renders them damaged goods.

And then there's Andrea Zittel, isn't there? Now, where does that fit, this woman, sitting in twenty-first century Brooklyn and re-fighting William Morris' battles by the East River? Hers is, to some extent, an extension of Gropius' project, one that makes the Gesamtkunstwerk an even more fraught concept. The artist makes furniture, clothes and interior design and the purpose of her work is to be as organised, comfortable and useful as possible. Now is that such a bad thing? And if, as a by-product even, something emerges - an experience? - of the fraught, utopia issues hovering around the modernist project, well, too bad. So perhaps - oh, let's hope it's true - the significant differences are in the experience, the user experience, even. How about setting it up like this: the designer is the one who tries to design the experience you will have with a chair, while an artist designs the chair, leaving as much of the experience of it as possible to be governed by you and your bottom. All the same, even that gap is, naturally, closing up, in an assault lead off with skirmishes in the zone of new media, and the opening of a front of research in the field of captology (c'mon, you know how to use Google dontcha?).

The new Gesamtkunstwerk emerges as the artists begin to see the merits of a new way of playing, begin to wonder about control. In 2001, Nathan Shedroff created a manifesto for an emerging approach to design in his Experience Design: "The elements that contribute to superior experiences are knowable and reproducible, which makes them designable," Shedroff says in the introduction to his tract, later adding, "How many different types of experiences are there? Most likely, the diversity isn't infinite..." Can't help feeling he needs to run those figures again.

Luke Clancy is a critic and broadcaster.

Article reproduced from CIRCA 101, Autumn 2002, pp. 48-51

Copyright 1999-2002 CIRCA Art Magazine

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