On Art's Romance with Design

摘要

There always has been a rift between art and design in our culture. Yes, there has. Purists submit that the distance between art and design has to be preserved in the name of specificity; in an age where there is a multimedia meltdown, they warn that art must take care not to relinquish what is specific to it. Meanwhile, more nonchalant players insist that, on the contrary, to survive and be relevant in such an age, art needs to be more gregarious—it must reach out beyond its own confines—and design is surely one of its more suitable bedfellows. The sense of specificity that comes with an awareness of a discipline's history, however, is as important to design art as the ability to make connections between disciplines. So perhaps both groups are partially misguided.