First Draft of Essay
Word count: 1598
“Could it be argued that Fine Art ought to be assigned more “value” than Graphic Design?”
Traditionally, there has been a distinct separation between the practices of art and design, particularly when comparing what appear as two very different fields: fine art and graphic design. Throughout history, fine art has readily been assigned and compared to the notion of value which is seen to have stemmed from the ties fine art has with cult practices and religion, and the monumental impact it has had on the development and progression of society and culture. The “unique singularity” (Larsen, 2010) associated with the sacredness of art works has consistently placed the discipline of fine art on a pedestal which many design disciplines seemingly fail to reach. The field of graphic design regularly falls under the category of having less cultural significance and value than fine art, which is often caused by its relationship with reproducibility and how it acts as a means of commercial problem solving. However, despite the cultural significance applied to the fine arts throughout history, the question of whether or not fine art ought to be assigned more value than graphic design is one which still remains contestable.
One of the most notable differences between fine art and graphic design as practices can be stripped down to the simple idea of fine art possessing ambiguity and complexity of meanings, holding a place in culture without any particular set function, while, in comparison, graphic design is generally said to exist for a purpose, in particular to communicate. In terms of content, the argument of creativity versus problem solving can be introduced. Art is supposedly a manifestation of creativity whereas graphic design is simply problem solving. The flaws in this argument lie with the consideration that creativity should be “more appropriately thought of as cultural production” (Barnard, 2005; p169) as defined by anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu, where graphic design and art both fit as examples of this, as both require a certain degree of creativity. It could then be said that in terms of cultural prestige and capital, there is less of a distinction between fine art and graphic design which lacks notability in the present day considerations of the two fields. Another major distinction between the two comes with the audience associated with each practice. The work of fine art is traditionally and historically targeted at the elite in society, used in religious acts and rituals, and placed in exhibitions, in opposition to graphic design where the work is generally for the masses and can be found virtually anywhere. This dissimilarity acts as a separation between the fields, and relates back to the function of each area, yet should not necessarily be a basis for assigning more value to one over the other.
A way of separating graphic design away from art comes with the reproducibility of the work. Take, for example, the oil painting of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci (figure 1.) which is arguably the most famous painting in the world and which is associated with high culture and authenticity. With the growing presence of graphic design as a creative field, the Mona Lisa image has been reproduced countless times, particularly in the graphic field of advertising. One example of this type of reproduction is show in an advertisement for the car, the Audi Q7, (figure 2.) where the designer has used a remake of the iconic image and combined it with the slogan tag line “A Masterpiece With Much More” (‘Bibhuti’, 2009), which points to the value of this particular piece of artwork and the general authenticity of it. However, these reproductions used in graphic design and advertising are inauthentic as by comparing them side by side with da Vinci’s painting, it increases the authentic value of the original, through the idea that the “whole sphere of authenticity eludes technological [and, of course, not only technological] reproducibility” (Anon. 2005). In other words, it is only possible to fully perceive the true authenticity of the original by way of comparison and contrast to the “many inadequate, inauthentic reproduction” (Anon. 2005). This then poses the argument that although fine art, such as works like the Mona Lisa, may have more value, it cannot actually be seen without the comparison to graphic design, such as the Audi Q7 advertisement. Furthermore, the use of these reproductions removes some of the high and low culture categorisation of such works through its use in work that is being mass produced on a commercial scale.
One important reference for defining the values applied to art and to graphic design is Walter Benjamin’s theory of ‘aura’. This comes into play when using the idea of reproducibility as a distinction between art and design. In his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Benjamin introduces the idea of the role of art being to provide a “magical foundation for the cult” (Larsen, 2010) where reproduction of this work was “unthinkable” as this would destroy the sacredness of it, thus removing its purpose. The quality assigned to art in this way is that it is ‘authentic’ and through this idea of authenticity comes the concept of ‘aura’. Aura, “the sense of uniqueness and authenticity that is felt before a work of art” (Barnard, 2005; p175) is applied to works of fine art, yet in terms of graphic design, the “reproduction of an image precludes the possibility of a unique one-off or original image” (Barnard, 2005; p176), thus removes the possibility of applying aura to design. It may be argued then that fine art ought to be assigned more value than graphic design, yet this does not take into account the way aura is assigned to work. In the same way as with looking at the authenticity of work, aura can only be seen after the destruction of aura through the means of mechanical reproduction, so it can be said that aura itself is a “product of technological reproducibility” (Anon. 2005). The age of mechanical reproduction and the effect of changing social conditions brought a revolutionary change to the way artwork was experienced where a “general willingness to accept a reproduction in place of the original also signifies an unwillingness to participate in the ritualistic aesthetics and politics of earlier times” (Larsen, 2010), which strengthened the notion of aura on original, one-off works of art. In terms of the Mona Lisa example, the original only can be said to have aura due to the lack of aura surrounding the many reproductions. This can be seen as a rather crude set of binary oppositions between the values of art and graphic design; without the lack of value and aura associate with graphic design, fine art would not be assigned with this sense of value.
An interesting approach to arguing where value ought to be assigned between fine art and graphic design is to apply a more structuralist approach. Structuralism “questions the notion of originality” (Stevens, 2009) and has been criticised for ignoring the “artist, the artwork and the reader-viewer in favour of the system of communication” (Stevens, 2009), thus showing the way which graphic design could possess more value than fine art. It is said that the structuralist approach “diminishes the role of the artist” (Stevens, 2009), where major emphasis is placed on the artist in the practice of fine art, and less attention is paid to the designer in commercial work. There are many fine art pieces in existence which are famous purely because they are associated with the artist who created them, whereas in graphic design the designer is less important to the actual finished work. Several structuralist critics also have suggested that work containing a “higher information load” (Stevens, 2009), in other words is more complex in meaning and expressing more information is of a higher quality. This reflects both ways in terms of the fine art versus graphic design argument. On one side, fine art could be said to be more complex in terms of the meaning due to the conceptual aspect of most works, yet this disregards one of the fundamental aspects of graphic design as a practice. Graphic design exists to communicate, so in terms of structuralism where the system of communication is valued over the artist, graphic design could be seen to have more value assigned to it. In terms of the Mona Lisa as an example, the original is associated with the other works of Leonardo da Vinci, where not only the actual artwork, but also the name of the artist is important, yet with the Audi Q7 car advertisement, one only sees the work as a means of communication in the way of persuading potential customers to buy the car. The piece of graphic design for the advertisement comes without a designers name as this is less of a concern in the design fields, yet the work stands alone without the need for a name on it to increase its value.
Through observing the applications of the ideas of authenticity, aura, and reproducibility, it becomes apparent that it is not fully possible to directly say that one of the two should be assigned more value than the other. In terms of structuralism, and the idea of binary oppositions, it could be said that art and design reciprocate and respond to each other. Without fine art, design may never have evolved to what it is today, and many significant pieces of graphic design work appear to have their roots in and take inspiration from the fine arts. On the other side, fine art is said to have more value, through the application of aura to work, than graphic design, yet without a direct comparison to design and its reproducibility, there would be no argument for why fine art retains value. The common perception of the distinction between the values of fine art and graphic design lies with the simple explanations of art as a subjective experience, with conceptual elements which are open to interpretation, while design is produced for a determined purpose, fulfilling a function and spreading a specific message. In terms of value, however, there is no defined reasoning to say fine art ought to be assigned more value than graphic design, and through the application of different theories and ideologies, it could just as easily be argued that neither should possess more value, but that both practices should be valued in its own way as they are not directly comparable, and without valuing one, the other could not also be assigned value.
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Figure 1.
The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
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Figure 2.
Audi Q7 advertisement, Unknown artist
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