Modernism and Post-Modernism.
Feb. 1st, 2005 05:58 pmActually, I have to start with yesterday, before I get to todays topic. Yesterday I left Darmstadt and arrived in Frankfurt. It was a local train line, so I didn't have to get off at platform 104 of the Hauptbahnhof, but actually made it to the stop for the youth hostel before it. Very good, I thought, since you have to get away from the train stations. (Although my free map of Frankfurt advertises the pleasures of the airport, and recommends a visit. I will be spending close to three hours there on Saturday morning anyway.)
In the evening I saw Von Suchen Und Finden Der Liebe (of the seeking and finding of love). Which is a recent German film, with Moritz Bleibtreu, who was the boyfriend in Run Lola Run, Uwe Ochsenknecht, who was in the film I saw for German Orientalism last semester. It's quite an odd film, sort of conventional love story, set to the story of Orpheus in the underworld, and featuring a fantstically camp Hermes. I really can't describe it, but odd, and moving, and German. (I understood some things that would not be able to be translated into English, go me!)
Today I went to galleries. I went to the Shirm Kunsthalle and saw their exhibition on 'The Naked Truth,' an exhibition featuring Klimt, Kokowska and Schieler, artists from Vienna in the late 19. early 20. century. (Which is when I like my art and design to come from). It also looked at the scandal of Alfred Loos's unornamented building, and his treatise of the unimportance of having buildings with ornaments on them. ('Ornaments are unnecessary to the enlightened man,' or something like that.) The artists were about challenging the taboos and traditions of the time. The exhibition was not suitable for children under the age of sixteen.
Then I had lunch. I got to have a proper creamy potato soup. I also had a cup of coffee, which I proabably shouldn't have, but oh well. I don't think I'll be able to sleep anyway, at least one of the other girls in the dorm snores. (And other has a clock radio which keeps finding static, and they keep sending text messages.)
Then I went to the Design Museum to pass the next three hours. I really should have spent longer there, but I didn't know it was going to be so good. They had a special exhibition I didn't really get to see because I didn't know it was there until it was too late. But it was about Post-Modern design, which, in a reaction to modernism and Loos, tries to put as much irrational ornamentation on to anything it can. It was actually quite an interesting exhibition, because it talked aobut how people really go for things that look interesting or new. Swatch is able to keep selling the same watch components over and over again because they look different (two designs a year). It is also worth noting that they had four Apple designs (a palm pilot, a notebooky/palmpilot thing, the first Apple Mac, and a raspberry iMac), but nothing from IBM.
They also had a exhibition of Arabic art, for all times. Actually of Arabic caligraphy, whith follows the same idea of strict discipline, tradition and mastery as Asian caligraphy. And they talked about current Arabic artists look back to tradition, rather than setting out to break it. They said it was surprising the range of things that could be done within such strict confines. But really, necessity is the mother of invention; or, the rules help, because they give you an idea of what else there is, and something to bounce off.
But it fell on me (that's the German expression, and I learnt it reading Harry Potter) as I was walking through the 18. Century furniture that the problem with minimalist art is that it isn't art at all. And I don't mean that I say it isn't art. I mean in the sence that it is actually design. The 'artworks', those empty metal boxes (and the other exhibition at the Shrim, which I didn't go to), aren't created hands on by the artist, but designed. This is a good thing, because we no longer have to ask 'what does it mean?' or 'what is the idea behind it?' (and listen to a lecture about the comodification of sexuality, or the distruction of personal identity, a lecture we can't relate to the art). Instead we get to ask 'what is it for?'
Jewellery is designed to be worn and be admired and look pretty. Minimalism art, though, seems to be designed to sit in a museum (even art is not created for galleries). And museums aren't real spaces.
It's tied up with the dreadfully attractive phrase 'form follows function.' (Alliteration and good rhythm, but note that form comes first in the saying, please.) Which leads me to my first conclusion, nobody knows what a teapot look like.
A teapot is something that you use to make and pour tea. Most people would be able to tell you what a teapot was for. Most people wowuld be able recognise a picture of a dog as a picture of a dog, even if they hadn't seen the picture (or even the type of dog) before. Computers can't do this. If you want to design a teapot, you can start by saying that teapots have a handle and a spout (and are short and stout, of course). But if you just stick the elements of a teapot together, it will certainly look like a tea pot. But it may not actually be able to pour tea (at least not well. Like the space ship that was sent to Krikkit in Hitchhikers Guide to the Gallaxy). But if started from a form, any form you like, a cow, a house, a face, a random lump of clay, then you could adjust it until it did pour tea. And if it pours tea, then regardless of what it looks like, it is a tea pot.
(Like Kublai Kahn and Marco Polo's model cities in Invisible Cities. Perfect adjusted enough to be lived in (and obviously a model), or only the inconsistencies and impossibilities, adjusted enough to exist.)
I hope some of that made sense. You can just say, 'hmm, very interesting, Lex' when I get back and then you don't actually have to pay attention to it. :-)
I have plans for tomorrow and the second half of Friday. I probably update again then, Friday afternoon, before I go to church and then take myself out to a nice restuarant. I'll see what happens to me on Thursday. I like Frankfurt, I think it's a good city, despite the proliferation of post-war buildings.
(Oh, I found the old and good looking parts of Darmstadt yesterday when I didn't get off the bus in time and walked through more (but different) back streets to get back to a bus that would take me to the station.)
In the evening I saw Von Suchen Und Finden Der Liebe (of the seeking and finding of love). Which is a recent German film, with Moritz Bleibtreu, who was the boyfriend in Run Lola Run, Uwe Ochsenknecht, who was in the film I saw for German Orientalism last semester. It's quite an odd film, sort of conventional love story, set to the story of Orpheus in the underworld, and featuring a fantstically camp Hermes. I really can't describe it, but odd, and moving, and German. (I understood some things that would not be able to be translated into English, go me!)
Today I went to galleries. I went to the Shirm Kunsthalle and saw their exhibition on 'The Naked Truth,' an exhibition featuring Klimt, Kokowska and Schieler, artists from Vienna in the late 19. early 20. century. (Which is when I like my art and design to come from). It also looked at the scandal of Alfred Loos's unornamented building, and his treatise of the unimportance of having buildings with ornaments on them. ('Ornaments are unnecessary to the enlightened man,' or something like that.) The artists were about challenging the taboos and traditions of the time. The exhibition was not suitable for children under the age of sixteen.
Then I had lunch. I got to have a proper creamy potato soup. I also had a cup of coffee, which I proabably shouldn't have, but oh well. I don't think I'll be able to sleep anyway, at least one of the other girls in the dorm snores. (And other has a clock radio which keeps finding static, and they keep sending text messages.)
Then I went to the Design Museum to pass the next three hours. I really should have spent longer there, but I didn't know it was going to be so good. They had a special exhibition I didn't really get to see because I didn't know it was there until it was too late. But it was about Post-Modern design, which, in a reaction to modernism and Loos, tries to put as much irrational ornamentation on to anything it can. It was actually quite an interesting exhibition, because it talked aobut how people really go for things that look interesting or new. Swatch is able to keep selling the same watch components over and over again because they look different (two designs a year). It is also worth noting that they had four Apple designs (a palm pilot, a notebooky/palmpilot thing, the first Apple Mac, and a raspberry iMac), but nothing from IBM.
They also had a exhibition of Arabic art, for all times. Actually of Arabic caligraphy, whith follows the same idea of strict discipline, tradition and mastery as Asian caligraphy. And they talked about current Arabic artists look back to tradition, rather than setting out to break it. They said it was surprising the range of things that could be done within such strict confines. But really, necessity is the mother of invention; or, the rules help, because they give you an idea of what else there is, and something to bounce off.
But it fell on me (that's the German expression, and I learnt it reading Harry Potter) as I was walking through the 18. Century furniture that the problem with minimalist art is that it isn't art at all. And I don't mean that I say it isn't art. I mean in the sence that it is actually design. The 'artworks', those empty metal boxes (and the other exhibition at the Shrim, which I didn't go to), aren't created hands on by the artist, but designed. This is a good thing, because we no longer have to ask 'what does it mean?' or 'what is the idea behind it?' (and listen to a lecture about the comodification of sexuality, or the distruction of personal identity, a lecture we can't relate to the art). Instead we get to ask 'what is it for?'
Jewellery is designed to be worn and be admired and look pretty. Minimalism art, though, seems to be designed to sit in a museum (even art is not created for galleries). And museums aren't real spaces.
It's tied up with the dreadfully attractive phrase 'form follows function.' (Alliteration and good rhythm, but note that form comes first in the saying, please.) Which leads me to my first conclusion, nobody knows what a teapot look like.
A teapot is something that you use to make and pour tea. Most people would be able to tell you what a teapot was for. Most people wowuld be able recognise a picture of a dog as a picture of a dog, even if they hadn't seen the picture (or even the type of dog) before. Computers can't do this. If you want to design a teapot, you can start by saying that teapots have a handle and a spout (and are short and stout, of course). But if you just stick the elements of a teapot together, it will certainly look like a tea pot. But it may not actually be able to pour tea (at least not well. Like the space ship that was sent to Krikkit in Hitchhikers Guide to the Gallaxy). But if started from a form, any form you like, a cow, a house, a face, a random lump of clay, then you could adjust it until it did pour tea. And if it pours tea, then regardless of what it looks like, it is a tea pot.
(Like Kublai Kahn and Marco Polo's model cities in Invisible Cities. Perfect adjusted enough to be lived in (and obviously a model), or only the inconsistencies and impossibilities, adjusted enough to exist.)
I hope some of that made sense. You can just say, 'hmm, very interesting, Lex' when I get back and then you don't actually have to pay attention to it. :-)
I have plans for tomorrow and the second half of Friday. I probably update again then, Friday afternoon, before I go to church and then take myself out to a nice restuarant. I'll see what happens to me on Thursday. I like Frankfurt, I think it's a good city, despite the proliferation of post-war buildings.
(Oh, I found the old and good looking parts of Darmstadt yesterday when I didn't get off the bus in time and walked through more (but different) back streets to get back to a bus that would take me to the station.)
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