Fundamentals Of Art And Design
Art is surplus emotional energy. After using it for daily needs if you have any surplus left, then this manifests as art. Now do you realise why artistic people have distinctive often moody temperaments?!
Art is an ethereal expression that has no worldly function to serve. Design on the other hand has a function to fulfill. A designer works within a format. He connects pre-existing dots differently. So the end result is often artistic. But in design “form does follow function”.
Both art and design educations provide skills for enhancement, but the common seed is aesthetic sense.
This is inborn in a person. It starts with a wonder sense or awe. What a child experiences in a grand building or an adult in front of a stunning sunset. This wonder sense is enhanced by good upbringing and a sound education. This makes your parents and good teachers extremely important. They give you the chance to evolve at subtler levels while the rest, often unknowingly, perform at survival levels.
Both art and design ultimately manifest in the material, but their inner core is always immaterial or spiritual. People wonder how to recognize good art and I say “stop searching in the object in front of you”. Instead for a silent moment focus deep within the subject- YOU. If in that inward gaze you experience an upliftment then that is good art. Art and design both are meant to delight the heart, stir the mind and move the body…but that’s where the similarity ends. Beyond the ‘heart mind body’ intelligent equipment there is spirit. Only art can stir that spirit.
A good chair design will impress you, you will contemplate its production and feel its comfort, but all along your intelligence is still active. You are conscious of the chair as object and you the subject. Whereas in front of a good painting…you will end up silent and for a moment you will lose your conscious self and get lost in it’s beauty. Like in the sunset.