design and the trump card
Now the mandate is to “design something for when I feel lonely,” he added. “For when I feel empty. For when I’m turned down by my love. For when I’m scared because I’m going to die. For when I lose a kid. Design now is fulfilling important things that for a long time were more expected from art, but that art today is failing to deliver because it’s so immersed in itself.
I know this is a bit past due, but this NYTimes article —-> After the Boom, a Better Kind of Art, about “design art” or “art furniture” seen at Design Miami is really worth the read. Design can get away with anything. It’s more shameless than fashion, a lot of the time. And we should be jealous! Read the article, look at the numbers ( and when I say numbers I mean $$$), and you just TRY and tell me why a super-slickly designed “art” CHAIR made of PLASTIC or something, reels in the big bucks and no one fucking QUESTIONS if it’s worth the price tag or not, when objects made of similar cheap and immediate materials, even if it came from a similar conceptual departure and took a comparable amount of time to make yet is simply just smaller (yes of course a price gap is caused by size differences/material consumption, sure, but I mean my god, plastic is plastic, resin is resin, and that shit ain’t that expensive… and god knows that WE know that when material ain’t an arm and a leg, we make up for it with skill) would NEVER be “worth” that kind of money. WHY? Ok, in rare cases, sure but it isn’t the same, indicated by the fact that “art jewelry” is still pretty much off the highbrow art AND design radar, generally speaking. To sell jewelry with those kind of price tags, the shit’s still gotta be made of gold, sadly, or have a bunch of fucking diamonds in it. ARE OUR IDEAS TOTALLY WORTHLESS??? But furniture gets an easier ride because of its approachability, its universality its perception of being needed as it’s functional. It’s easier to justify perhaps, to wrap your head around. And please don’t think i’m speaking negatively; my we’re-fooling-everyone life partner, Misha sent me this article, and he is quite the art furniture or art design (whatever you want to call it <— that just happens to also be a direct quote from the article. Can we say, same problems??? God damn vocabulary always gotta mess everything up) extraordinaire . He just has a slightly easier struggle. And will probably make a hell of a lot more money than the rest of us lowly art jewelry people.
Here are some other quotes from the article, surely to make your brain say, BUT WAIT, HAVEN’T WE, THE CONTEMPORARY JEWELRY ARTISTS, BEEN DOING THIS ALREADY? WHERE IS OUR GREAT MARKET?? :
“…has long worked with designers to produce objects that have the conceptual depth and rarity of fine art”
“Design art has so much growth potential where I’m fortunate to be a spearhead of this new movement… Meanwhile, in the arts It’s so difficult to find something that stands out and proposes something new anymore.”
SO. Do you think we, contemporary jewelry, art jewelry, WHATEVER, is more closely aligned with art, or design? Are we actually a sub-category of design based on the definitions presented by this article? I mean we happen to have already been making art jewelry for awhile, maybe that’s why no one published an article about it in the NYTimes or anywhere in the public sphere, for that matter, because it started a long time ago. I happen to think we’ve already been filling the great divide between art and design, just a little more quietly I suppose. So i’ll ask again, where’s our great market? Hell, the economy stinks right? At least contemporary jewelry is cheaper to collect. And you get to fucking wear it. EYES OPEN, WORLD.
I will mention that Caroline van Hoek (described as a design gallery mind you) did attend at Design Miami with a list of amazing artists that went something like this: Giampaolo Babetto, Gijs Bakker, Ralph Bakker, Alexander Blank, Helen Britton, Beatrice Brovia, Klaus Burgel, Nicolas Cheng, Willemijn De Greef, David Huycke, Beate Klockmann, Daniel Kruger, Fritz Maierhofer, Barbara Paganin, Seth Papac, Renzo Pasquale, Ruudt Peters, Robert Smit, StudyOPortable, Lisa Walker and Annamaria Zanella. Thanks Caroline!
I wonder how she did this year.
Now back to that first quote at the top of the post. Maybe that guy should start thinking about making jewelry. We already do all that too.
But then again, so does Misha. Click on the image above for a link to his website.
GREATER THAN OR EQUAL TO 
THANK YOU! both for the link to the article (I hadn’t seen it yet either) and the passion evidenced in your response. They (everyone who hasn’t heard of art/research/contemporary jewellery) ARE slow to not have us on their radar. Perhaps it’s time – if the masses still aren’t listening after all these years – for us to rise up and demand that people take notice. xx m
Hi Melissa! Thanks for the comment, really happy to read it. I checked out your own blog and your website, so impressive! I’ve linked your blog to mine also. But really I am so impressed with your work. Thanks for appearing! Glad to meet you, virtually that is.
Kellie, you have a point here. This is the gray area where art and design and craft get all mixed up. We all know how crazy the art world is with its prices. In this case, as compared with jewelry, I guess size does matter…those who buy big art pieces or design pieces can make an “investment” or a social “statement” – which ever their motivation for spending so much money. The only way we can confort ourselves is that the art jewelry market will never crash as those bigger art and design markets do when the economy slows down. Our work is more intimate and personal…just please, world, give us some credit!