Practice and art

The designer is one of the professionals of our modern utopia whose task really is to make the world a better place. Design involves an idea of the development, or evolution, of an object or a production method. Yet, uttered in a certain tone of voice, "designed by an architect" or "Finnish Design" merely refer to fabulously bad design. Unstable flower vases by top designers, chairs that give you a backache or cutlery that invariably fall off the plate make people laugh - and gloat. See what they did again! We all know better what kind of products we want. On the other hand, the impracticality of a fancy design object may well give it an aura as a work of art…

Modernism-functionalism made everyday rationality the ideal of architects and designers. Functionality also became a slogan used for adapting the Finns to the consumer society, making them constantly buy new, "practical" objects. In the visual arts, impracticality was a virtue for a long time - l'art pour l'art, not l'art pour la vie. Artists even turned everyday objects into crazy, entirely unusable ones: lined a coffee cup with fur, for example. The urinal or a dish drying rack of Marcel Duchamp hardly lose their functional features when placed on a pedestal, but the original uses may no longer seem appropriate .

More recently, everyday object forms, commodities and the seriality of industrially produced objects have become an inherent part of the arsenal of visual arts, a tool for exploring the borderline between art and the everyday, the commerciality of art and the mechanisms of the consumer society. In the late 1980s, Alvar Gullichsen, as Pärre Bonk, Managing Director, toured fairs and galleries presenting the products of Bonk Business Inc.: gadgets more or less reminiscent of a vacuum cleaner. The Raba Hiff brochures presented Bonk objects as end products of scientific research. The innovations, however, worked only on paper and the objects were not even for sale - except as works of art.

The motorcycle

The slogan "form follows function" has inspired a myriad devices for the market, some of them more practical than others. Heikki "Hese" Tolonen, industrial designer, presents a new interpretation of the cliché. His diploma work was a sculpture, which is also a perfectly functioning motorcycle. In his words, it is a utility article made by the methods of sculpture. Tolonen admires pre-WW II vehicles, in which all components were necessary and functionally constructed and which made no attempt to hide "ugly" technology. Today, this kind of “locomotive aesthetics” is easily regarded as non-design.

In the old days, an object available on the market was demonstrated to be a logical effect caused by a need. Nowadays, the logic of TV shopping and Tupperware presentations is giving way to a celebration of images and desires. In the vehicle industry, design is an instrument for marketing. In Japanese motorcycle factories, designers are busy creating different "covers" for different target segments. There are also special "designer bikes", distinguished creations by a famous designer or office. The yuppification of motorcycling is a challenge for the manufacturers.

Tolonen's bike is a proof of craft for the biking circles – a good motorcycle involving a lot of engineering and technical skill. Yet it was clear from the very start that the bike would be launched in the context of art. "There's more mad artist in me than designer," says Tolonen. The madness is manifest in the scale, in the very idea of fitting the bike with a motor of a big jeep! Tolonen built his bike by hand, bit by bit. He sees his method as the opposite of the impersonal process of industrial design in which a team produces proposals within the given commission, and actual production is only started after a number of prototypes have been tested.

Design as an object of art

To many a designer from Tapio Wirkkala to Stefan Lindfors, it has been significant to gain merits as a creator of works of art as well - a fact admirably exploited by industrial manufacturers. In everyday idiom, design refers to relatively exclusive products that are noted in international auctions.
The obvious non-democracy of design made the 1990s designers take interest in all kinds of inexpensive objects, such as toothbrushes and tights as Philippe Starck did. At the same time, design became trendy, and design-like objects arrived in department stores; "funny", identical lumps of plastic, for example, one of which was a soap dish and another a toaster.

A relationship to "real art" has characterised art within the context of arts and crafts for a long time. An interior architect by training, Panu Puolakka works at the artists’ co-operative, ROR-Productions, making "popular art", unique utility articles. Many of his designs are specifically made with the private home in mind, such as the rug, light fittings and the pixel shelf. "I'm fascinated by the idea of an object having a function in addition to the dimension as a work of art. I want to create practical objects, but without the compromises related to art and content involved in industrial production. My designs are rarely suitable for industrial production lines. This is why they are often unique or small, limited series."

The message conveyed by the object depends on the context. In an art museum objects are not assessed by their functionality. In design museums utility articles are also separated from their intended context. A lemon juicer or a calculator are displayed in showcases, tractors and operating tables as photographic enlargements. When the Museum of Art and Design presents objects falling in the category of art, they are usually classified as arts and crafts. The concept has a history: processing certain forms of handicrafts into art. We speak about art textiles, art ceramics, and art glass. What is central in art is seeking the ideal form for combining material and technique.

The rug

One of the icons of arts and crafts is the rug. Eva Brummer, the Grand Old Lady in Finnish rug design (who will celebrate her 100th birthday this year) used to work on her patterns by the loom with the weaver, improvising on the basis of her sketch. The abstract expression and lively surface of her rugs gained appreciation in exhibitions in the 1940s and 1950s. Later, the appearance of art rugs changed, but the orthodox idea of rug design is still based on "painting with yarn".

Panu Puolakka also finds he is looking for the "correct" expression in his tufted textile TV2. The rug-like surface consists of hundreds of tufts, which can be rendered on scale paper by colouring fields as if they were pixels. The Finnish TV tuning image is perfectly imitated on the tufted surface. Thus, Puolakka's point of departure was not how to create a fine rug, but how to create an interesting work.

The idea of using a tuning image to make a textile was a result of a sudden burst of inspiration. Puolakka was fascinated by the idea of combining an electronic image and traditional handicraft technique. Puolakka plays with the relationship between form and technique in other works as well. His Kontakt radio lamp, for example, is 100% hand made despite its futuristic-industrial, designed form.

"One of the functions of art is to make manifest what is beautiful in everyday life. The tuning image is beautiful, but no one realised this until it was turned into a rug."

Leena Svinhufvud
Museum education, Museum of art and design