i attended a lecture today, part of a fantastic course offered at the modern art museum here in são paulo. it's called "projeto 4x1" (4 by 1 project) and it's 1 theme and 4 points of views, aka 4 different lecturers. this month it's design and today's class was by the "minister of brazilian design", alexandre wollner. here he is in wikipedia, in portuguese though, sorry!
the best word i can find to describe today's lecture is: enlightening. it's great to hear someone that has a lot of experience talk. it generated discussions and made me think about brazil and education. it's crazy how more and more i find that education is the basis of everything. it's the difference there is today in 1st world countries. it is what brazil lacks and it's recurrent in all areas.
i always vent about how a lot of contemporary artists today have not done their homework, so to speak. in my opinion, in order for you to have something to say, you have to have done your research. nothing is new in a way but there can be different readings and interpretations and those are, yes, all valid, to some extent. but to create a building without having looked at and studied frank lloyd wright is an empty project. it's void of intention if you are an artist and you want to participate in today's dialogue but are not willing to study what has been done.
in a sense, wollner takes design much more seriously than the "common" person and studied the basis of it all the way in germany, in the ulm school of design. and although he does have strong opinions about things and how they should be done, he's got content and substance.
and for the last point, it is always gratifying to see that if something is studied and created with a whole structure behind it, it lasts. and it shows. i agree with wollner that a lot of design today is "in fashion" and a lot of it is done completely subjectively. and that not only doesn't last, but it does not bring results. instead, there is a right answer for doing design and it is based on proportion and concepts and math and physics from da vinci and archimedes, to name a few obvious ones. you can't see it right away on the result itself, per se, but somehow, it comes through.
a design based on fundamentals and geometry is timeless. and that concept can be applied to any work, not only design. not to go off on a limb here, but i hope i'm not being too idealistic, like wollner suggested today, in that "if you do your work, it shows and you'll be rewarded" but i do tend to stick to that. hope it works!
(worked for helvetica, worked for wollner... not a bad path to follow)
