Art or Design
"Design is not art. Design has to function. Artists primarily work off instinct, whereas designers employ a methodical, data-driven process.” (Source: https://www.toptal.com/designers/creative-direction/art-vs-design#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDesign%20is%20not%20art.,%2C%20data%2Ddriven%20process.%E2%80%9D)
That said, there can be overlap between both.
To explore these definitions more, I will look at one designer, one artist and one designer who blurs the boundaries between both disciplines.
The designer I have chosen is Bethan Gray. Her website states "Bethan tells cultural stories through craft and design, creating best-selling collections of luxury furniture and homeware that are at once decorative and highly original, while remaining comfortable and functional." (Source: https://bethangray.com)
This is a Bethan Gray pattern called Inky Dhow and is inspired by the sails of Dhow boats; traditional Arabian sailing vessels, whose sails are made from fabric strips which are sewn together. Her inspiration for the design is easily understood when we read about her heritage: "Born to a Scottish father and Welsh mother, her maternal family descends from a nomadic Rajasthani clan that migrated across Arabia and Persia over centuries. Inspired by her heritage, and fueled by a deep-seated curiosity about global art and culture, Bethan has travelled to India, Asia, the Middle East, Northern Africa and South America."
(Source: https://bethangray.com/stories)
The fluid lines are meant to capture the movement of the sails of these ships billowing in the wind and she drew the original design using ink; hence the name. It is a pattern that repeats throughout her work, almost like a signature.
Inky Dhow features in a collection of furniture, including cabinets, tables, ceramics and sofas. Even though the surface pattern of each piece is richly conceptual and decorative, the pieces themselves are functional objects that have a specific purpose; i.e. they are a comfortable, ergonomic and practical sofa.
The stories section of her website explains: "She works.... to bring contemporary design and technology together with traditional craft, resulting in furniture and home accessories that give endangered skills new relevance in commercial markets."
Contrastingly, the designer Dewi van de Klomp's 'Soft Cabinets' are pieces of furniture that exist more to create dialogue around everyday household materials than they do to be functional objects; although they can be used as furniture too.
The Dutch designer "started to experiment using a foam found commonly in household furniture, making a series of objects in an attempt to show the material's "poetic side".... The foam furniture collection comprises a series of shelves in different shapes and sizes that take on new forms depending on their contents, bending and warping as books, magazines, plates or glasses are slotted inside.... "The cabinets seem almost alive," said the designer, "protecting their content while carrying them in their own way, questioning and challenging our vision of strength and resistance and therewith the material used, in a very poetic way.... Each of the pieces are cut by a machine before being finished off by hand, and are produced on-request only. " (Source: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/08/13/dewi-van-de-klomp-foam-furniture-soft-cabinets-design)
With this series, she is intentionally flirting with design boundaries. When asked about these pieces, she said: "The work is not about having the most functional cabinet, but rather they are showpieces. Literally, they are designed to show your nicest books or dishes. Not the stuff you are using daily, but the stuff you love so much you want to show it off. But also, in a figurative sense, the cabinets show the foam material in its purest form," she added. "They are designed to make you start appreciating the material and to show off the material itself." (Source: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/08/13/dewi-van-de-klomp-foam-furniture-soft-cabinets-design)
The artist I have chosen is Andy Warhol. His piece 'Little Electric Chair', part of his 'Death and Disasters' series, is a portrait of 'Old Sparky', one of the electric chairs used to facilitate the death penalty in the US. He made his screen-print the same year that this chair facilitated it's last two executions in New York. He used an eerily over exposed press photograph as his source of inspiration and applied a clashing palette range to amplify the disturbing quality of the original image.
He went on to produced multiple versions of this image, to explore how we can become desensitized to horror and brutality the more we are exposed to it.
This piece of art exists to facilitate dialogue about the death penalty and the controversy that surrounds it as a political and moral action. That is its function, and this brief was set by Warhol, all be it steered and informed by his social context.
