April 11, 2011
Is it ART?…Is it DESIGN?
Graphic Designer Ron Miriello (www.miriellografico.com) has a unique perspective on practicing Graphic Design in both the United States and Italy. In a recent Pecha Kucha talk in San Diego, Ron made an interesting observation regarding how we treat our designers and craftsmen in the United States. In Italy, he shared, the artisans, craftsmen, graphic designers, and architects are all artists. The formal preoccupation with titles and labels doesn’t exist as it does in the States. Here we feel the need to put a label and/or title on a landscape architect, architect, or graphic designer and that is his role, never to be confused with an artist. But I often struggle with this and ask the question, “Can great landscape architecture also be considered good public art?” And conversely, “When is good art in the landscape a great piece of landscape architecture?”
To illustrate this point, let’s compare three works of artful designs in the landscape:
The first is the roof garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The project description includes the notion of camouflage. “This project takes the art of camouflage and the artifice of simulation a step further by using the simulation of camouflage itself as a source for design speculation.”
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The next example is Grand Canal Square in Dublin, Ireland. The design narrative states, “the design is characterized by an unusual composition of red ‘carpet’. whois tld . It extends from the theatre both in and beyond the dock, and then he moved to lush “green carpet” planters with lawns and vegetation. Red carpet is made from a light pitch-glass paving, covered with red glowing light angled bats.”
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And the final example is the Palm Garden at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The project description, from a recent LA Times article, includes: “plants have been inserted into a structure articulated by cor-ten steel walls, rusted to a soft, luxurious, velvety chestnut color…Clusters of yellowish agave and purplish bromeliads work with the green, blue and grayish fronds of assorted palms to create a quiet aura of slow, even expanded prehistoric sludge of the surrounding La Brea tar pits.”
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All of these are beautifully detailed and artful designs; which do you think were created by a public artist and which by a landscape architect?
The answers: Museum of Modern Art Roof Garden, New York, Ken Smith, Landscape Architect; The Grand Canal, Dublin, Martha Schwartz, Landscape Architect; Los Angeles County Museum of Art Palm Garden, Los Angeles, Robert Irwin, Public Artist.
There are obstacles and turf battles to overcome, but I suggest that we take a look at our friends in Europe and place less emphasis on our titles. If we allow the line between ART and DESIGN to blur more readily, we might find that perspective would enrich our world.
