"Aesthetic simplicity, which is a satisfaction to the mind if valid and profound, derives from inner complexity. The Doric temple's simplicity to the eye is achieved through the famous subtelties and precision of its distorted geometry. ... The Doric temple could achieve apparent simplicity through real complexity."
Venturi also says that "Less is bore."
This quotation immediately reminded me of an "opposite" post-modern position. I thought it might be good to offer another view of the relationship ebtween simplicity and complexity which I think links more clearly to Venturi's later comments.Studies in Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) also have a saying: "Surface complexity stems from an underlying deep simplicity." For example, "chaotic" behaviour on the surface may actually be guided by underlying principles and a set of minimum requirements. If I ask individuals in a a group of 100 people to identify two other people and then postion themselves equidistant between the two people, there will a great deal of movement and confusion as everyone moves around. There would be no visible pattern to the activity and it would look totally disorderly; however, knowing the underlying "rule" (or the deep simplicity) makes "sense" of the chaos. The point is that these underlying principles allow CASs to adapt to an ever-changing environment versus a rigid system which does not permit self-organization and in which there is no diversity but all "agents" are the same.
Venturi speaks to this when he says: "Then equilibrium must be created out of opposites." He also advocates for differentiarion as a means toward survival which is congruent with CAS behaviour.
Perhaps the City Hall of Mississauga is an example of surface complexity with deep simplicity.
Another rejection of the orderly, efficient and standardized is Superstudio. These Italian radicals focused more on the consumer object and the domestic environment. They promosted "evasive design" which they defined as "the activity of planning and operating in the field of industrial production assuming poetry and the irrational as its method, and trying to institutionalize continuous evasion of everyday dreariness created by the equivocations of rationalism and functionality." This links to Venturi's "Less if bore" in its call for variety and freedom.
I forgot to put my question at the bottom: What is the legacy of post-modernism at NSCAD? What's your sense of it studying Design here?
ReplyDeleteI'm in fine arts. I'm not going there....ever.(^_-)
ReplyDeleteMy definition of what Post Modernism is definitely not THE definition. It is merely an interpretation. It certainly is derived from the word Modernism. From my understanding of what Modernism is, based on the few art history courses I’ve had to take so far, is that it is like this: it is a set of concepts or ideas created with the intent on being new, BUT, unlike the modernists, it nods back to influences of the past. It basically is a new twist on an old idea.
ReplyDeletePost Modernism is a realm with many layers beyond Modernism, and definitely is closer to the now in this time. It seems that many ideas have already been created in their purer form: everything we’re doing has already been done before. Post Modernism is striving to achieve the same thing Modernism does, but uses an appropriate combination of separate past ideas into something that is an entirely new concept as a result. And by appropriate, I mean that even though the two or more styles might be complete different and not logical to put together, the resultant emergence is something else with a whole unifying theme.
Like the Titanium Clad Building shown on Professor Shales powerpoint slides yesterday; of Guggenheim Bilbao, 1997 by Frank Gehry, it is a combination of previous conceptual ideas and blending them into one. The result still feels “fragmented” which was intended to reflect on society’s diversity and messy fragmentation of the real human world.
As far as Modernist and Post Modernist examples at N.S.C.A.D. or art education in general? I think these days you’d be hard pressed to find someone who comes up with a successful Modernist approach to a visual problem. It does happen from time to time, but like I’ve mentioned before above, everything we’re doing now has already been done before, and so usually what is created is a Post Modernism result or a Modernism one. As students, I think we all strive to create something new with the ideal intent to be the first person to do that, but these days those pickins’ are pretty slim. We generally create something new, with a nod to the past in an area that has influenced us. As Nate mentioned in class, Post Modernism is the general language of art today, and our job as students is to learn to interpret and use this language to communicate in what is now the art world of today.
Yeah, I found a few quotes which really resonated with a particular aspect of our discussions on modernism and postmodernism.
ReplyDelete"The movement from a view of life as essentially simples and orderly to a view of life as complex and ironic is what every individual passes through... amid simplicity and order rationalism is born, but rationalism proves inadequate in any period of upheaval...
A feeling for paradox allows seemingly dissimilar things to exist side by side, their very incongruity suggesting a kind of truth."