My discussion tomorrow will focus on the idea of 'retro', I did that reading first and the other readings all seemed to connect back to it, and the idea of it's relation to culture and ourselves.
In the introduction to her book Elizabeth Guffey is extremely critical of retro and goes so far as to describe it as something that keeps us from moving forward. In a school such as NSCAD, where crating designs on the letterpress and binding books by hand is encouraged and where our style as a school and teaching methods could be viewed by some as extremely retro I am interested to see the discussion that ensues from this topic. This begs the initial question: how can we move forward while studying at a school that is obsessed with the past?
Current designers in many disciplines draw inspiration liberally and with frequency from effective designs from the past. When an architect studies the designs of FLW and his influences can be seen in the final design of a new building, is that keeping that man from moving forward as a designer, or is he simply helping to inform his design decisions by drawing on the greater knowledge of a past genius in order to learn from him? As designers we seek to make objects that are functional and beautiful, so if we are inspired by the past are the styles we apply to our designs 'empty gestures' as Guffey suggests?
Ok so there it is my first go at this, cut me some slack if it isn't perfect folks, because going first is hard.
Thank you. Yesterday at the opening of the school gallery a designer spoke about letterpress as a way forward. I don't think any tool by itself can bog someone down. Yes, a pedagogy can, but I'd need to understand better what you mean and get more specific and less vague. Keep in mind that the great modernists Frank Lloyd Wright, Eileen Gray, and Le Corbusier all copied Owen Jones's "Grammar of Ornament" (1856)--please do google it-- while in art school: knowing the past did not prevent them from being inventive and liberated from it.
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