Form unfollows function: subversions of functionality

Thesis

This practice-led doctoral thesis explores what happens when we consider works of art as designed objects (i.e., their process of production as a process of design) through two discrete yet mutually informing components: a series of original objects and a written dissertation.

This practice-led doctoral thesis explores what happens when we consider works of art as designed objects The objects, which play with the language of industrial design yet are presented in a traditional fine art exhibition setting, are intended to oscillate between a sense of utility and a sense of futility, thereby destabilising the ground on which they are presented and received. By straddling both registers, the objects resist neat subsumption either into the category of “art” or that of “design,” consequently urging their re-evaluation.

The dissertation, which draws on Donald Norman’s theory of the design of everyday things on the one hand and Wolfgang Kemp’s theory of reception aesthetics in the visual arts on the other, sets up a theoretical framework for considering the products of artistic production in design terms (namely, affordances, constraints, signifiers, feedback, mapping, and conceptual model). Through a close focus on three works of modern art—Claes Oldenburg’s "Saw," Joseph Beuys’s "Capri Battery," and Lygia Clark’s "Critter"—the dissertation offers keyhole comparisons of everyday products and the canonical sculptures, whereby the analyses of the former enable unexpected “functional” readings of the latter.

Through these two complementary forms of enquiry (the object-making and the writing), the thesis aims to challenge traditional distinctions between different modes of creative production, and it argues for a consideration of artistic production as a rational mode of visual and material production that does not follow means-end rationality.

Authors: Strauss, I

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-9g8xmjapy
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: contemporary art; modern art; Lygia Clark; reception aesthetics; Claes Oldenburg; modern sculpture; design of everyday things; art and design; Donald Norman; Joseph Beuys; reader-response theory; Wolfgang Kemp; design
• Subjects: Visual reception theory; Design; Art