Design and Art

Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art

by Alex Coles (Editor)

The first anthology to address the rise of the "design-art" phenomenon—the breakdown of boundaries between art and architectural, graphic, or product design begun in the Pop and Minimalist eras. This reader in Whitechapel's Documents of Contemporary Art series investigates the interchange between art and design. Since the the Pop and Minimalist eras—as the work of artists ranging from Andy Warhol to Dan Graham demonstrates—the traditional boundaries between art and architectural, graphic, and product design have dissolved in critically significant ways. Design and Art traces the rise of the "design-art" phenomenon through the writings of critics and practitioners active in both fields.The texts include writings by Paul Rand, Hal Foster, Miwon Kwon, and others that set the parameters of the debate; utopian visions, including those of architect Peter Cook and writer Douglas Coupland; project descriptions by artists (among them Tobias Rehberger and Jorge Pardo) juxtaposed with theoretical writings; surveys of group practices by such collectives as N55 and Superflex; and views of the artist as mediator—a role assumed in the past to be the province of the designer—as seen in work by Frederick Kiesler, Ed Ruscha, and others. Finally, a book that doesn't privilege either the art world or the design world but puts them in dialogue with each other. Contributors
David Bourdon, Peter Cook/Archigram, Douglas Coupland, Kees Dorst, Charles Eames, Experimental Jetset, Vilém Flusser, Hal Foster, Liam Gillick, Dan Graham, Clement Greenberg, Richard Hamilton, Donald Judd, Frederick Kiesler, Miwon Kwon, Maria Lind, M/M, N55, George Nelson, Lucy Orta, Jorge Pardo, Norman Potter, Rick Poynor, Paul Rand, Tobias Rehberger, Ed Ruscha, Joe Scanlan, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Superflex, Manfredo Tafuri, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Paul Virilio, Joep van Lieshout, Andy Warhol, Benjamin Weil, Mark Wigley, Andrea Zittel Copublished with Whitechapel Art Gallery, London

Genres: Design, Art

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jimmy]

i think i really like this new series...this one is an edited collection of contemporary essays about the tension between "design" and "art"....something everyone's always getting their design and art panties into a wad about. most of the essays are pretty relevant, but the design of the book itself is pretty awful...but it's good to see books like this in print, since it's such a contemporary topic, and there aren't too many books specifically about this topic out there...