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What's the Difference Between Art & Design?
YouTube: | https://youtube.com/watch?v=dZmkPmfW0XA |
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Duration: | 11:29 |
Uploaded: | 2024-08-01 |
Last sync: | 2024-09-08 19:15 |
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Citation formatting is not guaranteed to be accurate. | |
MLA Full: | "What's the Difference Between Art & Design?" YouTube, uploaded by CrashCourse, 1 August 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZmkPmfW0XA. |
MLA Inline: | (CrashCourse, 2024) |
APA Full: | CrashCourse. (2024, August 1). What's the Difference Between Art & Design? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=dZmkPmfW0XA |
APA Inline: | (CrashCourse, 2024) |
Chicago Full: |
CrashCourse, "What's the Difference Between Art & Design?", August 1, 2024, YouTube, 11:29, https://youtube.com/watch?v=dZmkPmfW0XA. |
What counts as design? What counts as art? And how did this debate start? In this episode of Crash Course Art History, we’ll trace the history of privileging some materials and techniques over others. We’ll explore how street fashion, dinner plates, and a swan candelabrum blur boundaries that were never clear-cut to begin with.
Crash Course Art History #14
Introduction: "The Dinner Party" 00:00
A Timeline of the Debate 02:03
Folk Art 05:12
The Sapeurs 06:59
Blending Art & Design 08:04
Review & Credits 10:06
Image Descriptions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ETiCxe4GrVzFii7dBhF42oHx1EUCCh5y12wbtUjsH8A/edit
Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GW2NKzhpMNMmRyAFJVhFJG9cSfUOMRL-QrcWuHcWcIA/edit?usp=sharing
***
Support us for $5/month on Patreon to keep Crash Course free for everyone forever! https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse
Or support us directly: https://complexly.com/support
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Thanks to the following patrons for their generous monthly contributions that help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever:
Emily Beazley, Brandon Thomas, Forrest Langseth, oranjeez, Rie Ohta, Jack Hart, UwU, Leah H., David Fanska, Andrew Woods, Ken Davidian, Stephen Akuffo, Toni Miles, Steve Segreto, Kyle & Katherine Callahan, Laurel Stevens, Krystle Young, Burt Humburg, Scott Harrison, Mark & Susan Billian, Alan Bridgeman, Breanna Bosso, Matt Curls, Jennifer Killen, Jon Allen, Sarah & Nathan Catchings, team dorsey, Bernardo Garza, Trevin Beattie, Eric Koslow, Indija-ka Siriwardena, Jason Rostoker, Siobhán, Ken Penttinen, Nathan Taylor, Barrett Nuzum, Les Aker, William McGraw, ClareG, Rizwan Kassim, Constance Urist, Alex Hackman, kelsey warren, Katie Dean, Stephen McCandless, Wai Jack Sin, Ian Dundore, Caleb Weeks, Vaso
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Crash Course Art History #14
Introduction: "The Dinner Party" 00:00
A Timeline of the Debate 02:03
Folk Art 05:12
The Sapeurs 06:59
Blending Art & Design 08:04
Review & Credits 10:06
Image Descriptions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ETiCxe4GrVzFii7dBhF42oHx1EUCCh5y12wbtUjsH8A/edit
Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GW2NKzhpMNMmRyAFJVhFJG9cSfUOMRL-QrcWuHcWcIA/edit?usp=sharing
***
Support us for $5/month on Patreon to keep Crash Course free for everyone forever! https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse
Or support us directly: https://complexly.com/support
Join our Crash Course email list to get the latest news and highlights: https://mailchi.mp/crashcourse/email
Get our special Crash Course Educators newsletter: http://eepurl.com/iBgMhY
Thanks to the following patrons for their generous monthly contributions that help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever:
Emily Beazley, Brandon Thomas, Forrest Langseth, oranjeez, Rie Ohta, Jack Hart, UwU, Leah H., David Fanska, Andrew Woods, Ken Davidian, Stephen Akuffo, Toni Miles, Steve Segreto, Kyle & Katherine Callahan, Laurel Stevens, Krystle Young, Burt Humburg, Scott Harrison, Mark & Susan Billian, Alan Bridgeman, Breanna Bosso, Matt Curls, Jennifer Killen, Jon Allen, Sarah & Nathan Catchings, team dorsey, Bernardo Garza, Trevin Beattie, Eric Koslow, Indija-ka Siriwardena, Jason Rostoker, Siobhán, Ken Penttinen, Nathan Taylor, Barrett Nuzum, Les Aker, William McGraw, ClareG, Rizwan Kassim, Constance Urist, Alex Hackman, kelsey warren, Katie Dean, Stephen McCandless, Wai Jack Sin, Ian Dundore, Caleb Weeks, Vaso
__
Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thecrashcourse/
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/YouTubeCrashCourse
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/TheCrashCourse
CC Kids: http://www.youtube.com/crashcoursekids
This is Judy Chicago’s 1970s installation “The Dinner Party.” It’s a setting for a banquet representing 1,038 women from history.
Some have seats of honor, like writer Virginia Woolf and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. The place settings have embroidered placemats, gold ceramic chalices, utensils, and porcelain dinner plates that look quite a bit like… Georgia O’Keeffe paintings–including the plate dedicated to O’Keeffe herself.
Then and now, the plates can evoke strong emotions. But unlike most works of art, you could feasibly eat off of some of these. They could actually serve a practical purpose.
So how would we categorize these things? Are they works of art? Or are they something else entirely… Hi!
I'm Sarah Urist Green, and this is Crash Course Art History. [THEME MUSIC] We might call Chicago’s plates a work of design, an object meant to improve some aspect of the world or solve a problem, in the same spirit as a button or a zipper. To figure out the overlap between art and design, let’s Venn diagram this situation. In the design circle, curators, scholars, and collectors might put objects made for a practical purpose.
Think toasters, furniture, buildings. In the “art” circle, they might put objects created for a museum or gallery, like paintings and sculptures, meant to evoke an emotional or personal reaction. According to these definitions, it’s the intention behind the objects that forms the dividing line.
But of course, an object can be useful and evocative at the same time. What about fashion? Pottery?
Quilts? Hand-carved spoons or stained-glass lamps? This little mug with a frog at the bottom that I’ve had since I was a kid is still useful and also gives me all the feels.
So…if art and design have so much in common, why do we separate them at all? Well, to dig into that, we’re gonna have to go back in time. Boom.
We’re in Medieval Europe. Craft was the name of the game here. We’re talkin’ objects with a domestic function that require technical skill to make.
Things like metalworks, lace, and tapestries that were made either collectively or anonymously. But fast-forward to Renaissance Europe, and the idea of art reflecting individual creativity took hold. And so did questions, like, “Are painting and sculpting more than skilled crafts?
Are they expressions of intellect, talent, perhaps even genius?” The scales tipped in the latter direction, and elevated artists to a whole ‘nother level. But the boundaries between art and design were far from settled. In 18th-century France, decorative furniture became all the rage.
Porcelain factories churned out extravagant creations that wealthy collectors just had to have. Like this swan candelabrum or this vase of fake flowers, both made with porcelain. Or check out this Wedgwood vase, with handles carved to look like snakes fighting over an egg.
I mean that’s so fancy I think you have to pronounce it “vahze”. But Enlightenment thinkers debated what to call these functional yet expressive objects. Did they count as art?
In one corner, French author Denis Diderot drew a hard line. It took brains to make art, he argued, placing it on a higher plane than design, which was, quote “more of the hand than the mind.” Like those people who only like “highbrow” or “arthouse” films, where everything is sad and nothing really happens but it gets nominated for lots of awards. But the Marquis de Laborde, a French banker and politician, thought it was time to get rid of the distinction between art and design altogether.
He thought art should broaden to include all of life, supporting both our intellectual and physical needs. Clothes, furniture, swan candelabrum— it all counts. He’s more like those who can appreciate art films but can also appreciate all the great fantasy, sci-fi, and comedies that rarely get nominations.
By the 19th century, The Industrial Revolution had taken off and the Arts and Crafts movement was big. While that phrase might call to mind friendship bracelets and crocheted pot lifters, it was much more elaborate. It celebrated the handcrafted skill behind useful, beautiful objects like furniture, textiles, wallpaper, ceramics, and jewelry.
And the Art Nouveau movement blossomed at the same time. It featured soft, wavy lines inspired by nature in the artistic designs of cabinets, houses, Paris Metro signs, and this incredible coffee pot that looks like a fennel bulb, with a beetle for a knob. These objects, meant to be both functional and expressive, complicated the art versus design debate.
It wasn’t easy to put a door like this into just one category. So, those ideas that began in Renaissance Europe — praising some materials as “art,” and others as lesser than — started to break down. Actually, lots of artistic design exists outside of this Eurocentric story.
Think about weaving, a method of textile production that combines two sets of threads to form a fabric. Weaving is useful, decorative, and often categorized as folk art — a broad term for handmade objects and materials that often serve a function or reflect a shared culture. Weaving has been a form of artmaking for millennia, and we know this because ancient tools and even thread have survived.
And in some cultures, woven textiles signify important cultural values and ideas. Take this work from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It’s called tampan —a woven image exchanged by families in the Lampung province to celebrate important life stages, from births and deaths to building a new house.
This one depicts an enormous ship manned by a captain, crew members, and musicians. It floats across a sea filled with fish, turtles, and even a crab, symbolizing safe passage to the next phase of life. To a 19th-century viewer in Lampung, the tampan evoked reverence, which is emphasized by the artist’s use of red, a sacred color in that region.
While people of all classes used tampan for rites of passage, this one’s opulence shows that it was made for a noble family. And while tampan is mainly an art form of the past, wealthy Lampung women have continued wearing woven tapis skirts for centuries, usually for ceremonial purposes. So, textiles are an excellent example of meaningful art that serves a purpose: you can wear it.
But the different ways people wear and style clothing can also convey artistic meanings. Let’s head to the drawing board… Meet the Sapeurs. Clad in designer clothes, they strut the streets of Brazzaville and Kinshasa.
Mixing colors, patterns, and luxury labels, Sapeurs command attention in the mostly lower-income communities where they live. They’re local celebrities, vying to outdo each other while projecting confidence and joy. They’re part of a movement called La Sape, short for the “Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People.” It’s also French slang for “clothes.” La Sape’s origins hark back to the 1920s, when wearing European clothing was one way Congolese people could garner respect while living under French and Belgian colonial rule.
But La Sape truly took off after independence in the 1960s. Some Congolese started traveling to Europe, bringing back expensive designer clothes. And remixing French fashion became a way of expressing identity and political resistance at once.
Sapeurs have been playing with their image ever since, inventing themselves — and inspiring others — through art you can wear. The Sapeurs curate functional clothing that expresses complex ideas and cultural identity. So while the art and design worlds argue over boundaries, artists keep doing whatever they want to do–creating innovative forms of culture that blur the lines between both.
Like French artist Thierry Jeannot with his 2010 work “Green Transmutation”. What looks like crystal is actually hundreds of discarded plastic bottles, collected in Mexico City and formed into a functional light source. It’s actually kind of similar to the swan candelabrum we saw earlier, with its wavy lines that take inspiration from the natural world.
But the two works speak to very different cultural contexts. While the 18th-century artist was inspired by nature, elevating it to the level of art and design, the contemporary artist peels away that illusion of art as luxury objects made of fine materials– in order to highlight environmental concerns. And finally, let’s return to Judy Chicago’s dinner plates.
Some denounced the work as over the line, even pornographic. Influential critic Hilton Kramer dismissed it as “failed art” that was “crass, solemn, and single-minded.” But the plates are just one element of a densely layered and meaningful work of art. Chicago’s installation makes space for women who had been largely left out of history.
She gives them a seat at the table – literally. Chicago used techniques often coded as craft or design– like embroidery, ceramics, and china painting— all historically considered “women’s work”, and ranked below “high” art in that tired, old European hierarchy. By merging elements of art and design, Chicago pushes the boundaries of both.
And she raises fascinating questions about how history itself gets constructed and told. I think this calls for the canon cannon. So the centuries-long debate of art versus design comes down to…a difference of opinion.
It’s a battle between what’s considered “highbrow” and “lowbrow,” not unlike arguments you find in the depths of Reddit. But when we spend so much time trying to define something as subjective as art and design, we can miss the amazing stuff that falls in the middle—the experimentation with form, the innovation with new materials, and the messy, complex, and always-shifting messages that art can convey. These label-defying works show us this kind of black-and-white thinking isn’t a useful measure for all times and places.
Because if there’s one thing we do know for sure, it’s that human creativity is too vast and varied to be limited by our pesky urge to define it. Next time, we’ll explore how colliding cultures set off an explosion of new styles—collectively known as “modern art.” I’ll see you then. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Art History which was filmed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and was made with the help of all these uncategorizable people.
If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.
Some have seats of honor, like writer Virginia Woolf and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. The place settings have embroidered placemats, gold ceramic chalices, utensils, and porcelain dinner plates that look quite a bit like… Georgia O’Keeffe paintings–including the plate dedicated to O’Keeffe herself.
Then and now, the plates can evoke strong emotions. But unlike most works of art, you could feasibly eat off of some of these. They could actually serve a practical purpose.
So how would we categorize these things? Are they works of art? Or are they something else entirely… Hi!
I'm Sarah Urist Green, and this is Crash Course Art History. [THEME MUSIC] We might call Chicago’s plates a work of design, an object meant to improve some aspect of the world or solve a problem, in the same spirit as a button or a zipper. To figure out the overlap between art and design, let’s Venn diagram this situation. In the design circle, curators, scholars, and collectors might put objects made for a practical purpose.
Think toasters, furniture, buildings. In the “art” circle, they might put objects created for a museum or gallery, like paintings and sculptures, meant to evoke an emotional or personal reaction. According to these definitions, it’s the intention behind the objects that forms the dividing line.
But of course, an object can be useful and evocative at the same time. What about fashion? Pottery?
Quilts? Hand-carved spoons or stained-glass lamps? This little mug with a frog at the bottom that I’ve had since I was a kid is still useful and also gives me all the feels.
So…if art and design have so much in common, why do we separate them at all? Well, to dig into that, we’re gonna have to go back in time. Boom.
We’re in Medieval Europe. Craft was the name of the game here. We’re talkin’ objects with a domestic function that require technical skill to make.
Things like metalworks, lace, and tapestries that were made either collectively or anonymously. But fast-forward to Renaissance Europe, and the idea of art reflecting individual creativity took hold. And so did questions, like, “Are painting and sculpting more than skilled crafts?
Are they expressions of intellect, talent, perhaps even genius?” The scales tipped in the latter direction, and elevated artists to a whole ‘nother level. But the boundaries between art and design were far from settled. In 18th-century France, decorative furniture became all the rage.
Porcelain factories churned out extravagant creations that wealthy collectors just had to have. Like this swan candelabrum or this vase of fake flowers, both made with porcelain. Or check out this Wedgwood vase, with handles carved to look like snakes fighting over an egg.
I mean that’s so fancy I think you have to pronounce it “vahze”. But Enlightenment thinkers debated what to call these functional yet expressive objects. Did they count as art?
In one corner, French author Denis Diderot drew a hard line. It took brains to make art, he argued, placing it on a higher plane than design, which was, quote “more of the hand than the mind.” Like those people who only like “highbrow” or “arthouse” films, where everything is sad and nothing really happens but it gets nominated for lots of awards. But the Marquis de Laborde, a French banker and politician, thought it was time to get rid of the distinction between art and design altogether.
He thought art should broaden to include all of life, supporting both our intellectual and physical needs. Clothes, furniture, swan candelabrum— it all counts. He’s more like those who can appreciate art films but can also appreciate all the great fantasy, sci-fi, and comedies that rarely get nominations.
By the 19th century, The Industrial Revolution had taken off and the Arts and Crafts movement was big. While that phrase might call to mind friendship bracelets and crocheted pot lifters, it was much more elaborate. It celebrated the handcrafted skill behind useful, beautiful objects like furniture, textiles, wallpaper, ceramics, and jewelry.
And the Art Nouveau movement blossomed at the same time. It featured soft, wavy lines inspired by nature in the artistic designs of cabinets, houses, Paris Metro signs, and this incredible coffee pot that looks like a fennel bulb, with a beetle for a knob. These objects, meant to be both functional and expressive, complicated the art versus design debate.
It wasn’t easy to put a door like this into just one category. So, those ideas that began in Renaissance Europe — praising some materials as “art,” and others as lesser than — started to break down. Actually, lots of artistic design exists outside of this Eurocentric story.
Think about weaving, a method of textile production that combines two sets of threads to form a fabric. Weaving is useful, decorative, and often categorized as folk art — a broad term for handmade objects and materials that often serve a function or reflect a shared culture. Weaving has been a form of artmaking for millennia, and we know this because ancient tools and even thread have survived.
And in some cultures, woven textiles signify important cultural values and ideas. Take this work from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It’s called tampan —a woven image exchanged by families in the Lampung province to celebrate important life stages, from births and deaths to building a new house.
This one depicts an enormous ship manned by a captain, crew members, and musicians. It floats across a sea filled with fish, turtles, and even a crab, symbolizing safe passage to the next phase of life. To a 19th-century viewer in Lampung, the tampan evoked reverence, which is emphasized by the artist’s use of red, a sacred color in that region.
While people of all classes used tampan for rites of passage, this one’s opulence shows that it was made for a noble family. And while tampan is mainly an art form of the past, wealthy Lampung women have continued wearing woven tapis skirts for centuries, usually for ceremonial purposes. So, textiles are an excellent example of meaningful art that serves a purpose: you can wear it.
But the different ways people wear and style clothing can also convey artistic meanings. Let’s head to the drawing board… Meet the Sapeurs. Clad in designer clothes, they strut the streets of Brazzaville and Kinshasa.
Mixing colors, patterns, and luxury labels, Sapeurs command attention in the mostly lower-income communities where they live. They’re local celebrities, vying to outdo each other while projecting confidence and joy. They’re part of a movement called La Sape, short for the “Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People.” It’s also French slang for “clothes.” La Sape’s origins hark back to the 1920s, when wearing European clothing was one way Congolese people could garner respect while living under French and Belgian colonial rule.
But La Sape truly took off after independence in the 1960s. Some Congolese started traveling to Europe, bringing back expensive designer clothes. And remixing French fashion became a way of expressing identity and political resistance at once.
Sapeurs have been playing with their image ever since, inventing themselves — and inspiring others — through art you can wear. The Sapeurs curate functional clothing that expresses complex ideas and cultural identity. So while the art and design worlds argue over boundaries, artists keep doing whatever they want to do–creating innovative forms of culture that blur the lines between both.
Like French artist Thierry Jeannot with his 2010 work “Green Transmutation”. What looks like crystal is actually hundreds of discarded plastic bottles, collected in Mexico City and formed into a functional light source. It’s actually kind of similar to the swan candelabrum we saw earlier, with its wavy lines that take inspiration from the natural world.
But the two works speak to very different cultural contexts. While the 18th-century artist was inspired by nature, elevating it to the level of art and design, the contemporary artist peels away that illusion of art as luxury objects made of fine materials– in order to highlight environmental concerns. And finally, let’s return to Judy Chicago’s dinner plates.
Some denounced the work as over the line, even pornographic. Influential critic Hilton Kramer dismissed it as “failed art” that was “crass, solemn, and single-minded.” But the plates are just one element of a densely layered and meaningful work of art. Chicago’s installation makes space for women who had been largely left out of history.
She gives them a seat at the table – literally. Chicago used techniques often coded as craft or design– like embroidery, ceramics, and china painting— all historically considered “women’s work”, and ranked below “high” art in that tired, old European hierarchy. By merging elements of art and design, Chicago pushes the boundaries of both.
And she raises fascinating questions about how history itself gets constructed and told. I think this calls for the canon cannon. So the centuries-long debate of art versus design comes down to…a difference of opinion.
It’s a battle between what’s considered “highbrow” and “lowbrow,” not unlike arguments you find in the depths of Reddit. But when we spend so much time trying to define something as subjective as art and design, we can miss the amazing stuff that falls in the middle—the experimentation with form, the innovation with new materials, and the messy, complex, and always-shifting messages that art can convey. These label-defying works show us this kind of black-and-white thinking isn’t a useful measure for all times and places.
Because if there’s one thing we do know for sure, it’s that human creativity is too vast and varied to be limited by our pesky urge to define it. Next time, we’ll explore how colliding cultures set off an explosion of new styles—collectively known as “modern art.” I’ll see you then. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Art History which was filmed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and was made with the help of all these uncategorizable people.
If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can join our community on Patreon.