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Commercial Art Discovers Design MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • American Design Ethic Commercial Art Discovers Design Arthur J. Pulos Published on: Apr 22, 2021 License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • American Design Ethic Commercial Art Discovers Design Design is now studied in relation to its purpose.… Art as now taught is not an end but a means … we are at last beginning to teach art as an economic as well as an aesthetic factor. Frank Purdy, 1921 ([102], 208) As the 1920s opened, there was still a polarization between those who believed that the Americans either could not or should not hope to develop their own design capabilities in the decorative and industrial arts and those who were convinced that the Americans must be awakened to the necessity of adding aesthetic value to their products if they were to meet worldwide competition. Some felt that, since the United States was peopled with immigrants, the resulting mixture of races was not conducive to the evolution of a national cultural identity. Many well-meaning Americans seemed to be caught in a web of European fashion and taste, fascinated with foreign expression and forever doomed to look abroad for cultural leadership. They were either caught in the avalanche of artifacts from the continent when “great decorators of note ravaged Europe for the spoils of the luxurious reigns of the Louis’ and the splendid relics of the Renaissance” [178] or caught in the apologies of those who claimed, as Mrs. John Henry Hammond did, that she bought foreign things “not because I prefer foreign goods, or have necessarily greater confidence in foreign goods, but because in so many cases they have suited me better; their artistic merit is higher, showing the results of more highly trained designers and artisans.” “If I could always find what I wanted in American goods,” said Mrs. Hammond, “I would support American industry every time.” ([100], 38) Louis Tiffany contradicted her, saying that “the average American would rather bring back poor and thoroughly inartistic work from abroad than purchase domestic art in his own country.” Tiffany expressed his frustration in attempting to convince manufacturers that they could benefit by supporting American designers: “Our manufacturers are entirely too commercial. We imitate rather than originate…. The artist must be as much a part of the business as the efficiency expert.” ([98], 196) Unfortunately, American manufacturers were slow in recognizing American creative talent and skill. Tiffany and others believed that World War I had marked a turning point—that the American industrial arts, despite the general feeling that they were generations behind those of Europe, would begin to catch up. William Frank Purdy, president of the Art Alliance in 1920 and industrial-arts editor for Arts and Decoration magazine, was one of the strongest advocates of American industrial arts. He recognized that “whenever 2 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • American Design Ethic Commercial Art Discovers Design the art element was needed, it seemed the simpler and the surer course to import it ready-made—in the form of design, artists and craftsmen, or finished products—from Europe, although we had paid dearly for this privilege.” ([97], 27) By 1921 the New York Times was including the category of industrial design in its index, although the title was used primarily as a reference for the industrial arts. A strong sentiment had begun to develop for government-supported training of American designers. One result of this trend was the launching in 1920 of a comprehensive study, under the direction of Charles R. Richards of the Cooper Union, of the state of the industrial arts and industrial-arts education in the United States and abroad. The study was administered by the National Society for Vocational Education with grants totaling $120,000 from the General Education Board of the federal government and the University of the State of New York. Although the study did not succeed in convincing the federal government to support industrial arts education, and the responsibility was thus left in the hands of private schools and a few state-supported academic institutions, it did reflect a shift in the traditional approach to education in the design arts. The Richards study was directed primarily at those industries in which design exercises an important influence—the “art industries,” in contrast to the “artless” industries. The art industries (some 510 of them, including textiles, costume jewelry, silverware, furniture, lighting fixtures, art metalwork, ceramics, glass, wallpaper, and printing) were asked whether they believed that they would benefit from an improvement in American design education. No industry rejected outright the concept of American-trained designers, but all expressed a reservation about the ability of young American designers to fill their special needs. The furniture industry feared that American designers would want to make original designs in violation of that industry’s long-established custom of producing historical styles (preferably those of England). Silverware manufacturers were quick to point out that the high capitalization of their tools and dies discouraged innovative design, and that they preferred to employ highly trained technicians rather than designers. The general feeling of the industrial-arts industries was that, if any new ideas were to be introduced, they would have to be originated by architects and decorators in the specialized service of wealthy clients. They were suspicious of the intrusion of young American design ideas into their established markets. The Richards study also noted that there were 274 schools of art listed in the 1920 American Art Annual, of which 58 were the most serious about the applied or 3 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • American Design Ethic Commercial Art Discovers Design industrial arts (although there was no clearly discernible interest on their part in finding places in industry for their graduates). The list included such privately endowed schools as the Maryland Institute, the Ohio Mechanics Institute, the Cleveland School of Art, the Otis Art Institute, Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, the School of Applied Art for Women in New York City, the Philadelphia Museum School of Design, the Carnegie Institute of Technology, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute, and the Skidmore School of Art. Other schools were associated with universities, such as the College of Industrial Arts at Denton, Texas, the Newcomb School of Art in New Orleans, the Art Department of Teachers’ College of Columbia University, the School of Fine Arts of Washington University in St. Louis, and the College of Fine Arts of Syracuse University. Private art schools in the Richards survey included the California School of Arts and Crafts, the New Art School of Boston, the School of Fine and Applied Arts in New York, the Academy in Cincinnati, and the art schools of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo and the Art Institute of Chicago. The list also included several public schools, such as the Massachusetts Normal Art School, the Milwaukee State Normal School, the Fawcett School of Industrial Art at Newark, and the Evening School of Industrial Arts in New York. In all, there were some 55 schools teaching industrial arts in the United States in the early 1920s. However, it seems that the graduates of these schools were no more interested in the industrial-arts industries than the industries were in employing the graduates. The schools were preoccupied with the lingering Arts and Crafts movement, and few, if any, looked to industry as a primary area of service. Nowhere was there any evidence of industrial design, as such, being considered of sufficient academic value to serve the “artless” industries—those manufacturing the essential products of everyday life. The Richards study reported at length on the need to attract promising young people to design rather than to the fine arts: One consideration that affects the quality of American youth entering upon applied-art education is the essentially modern quarrel between the fine arts and the applied arts. The idea that the fine arts as represented by painting and sculpture are something superior to the applied arts and that their practice is a matter of greater dignity is an attitude that persists tenaciously. There is still a vast difference in the appeal to young persons as between the career of a painter or sculptor and that of a designer. Even in schools where courses in both the fine and applied arts are given, the school authorities are very often found influencing 4 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • American Design Ethic Commercial Art Discovers Design talented students toward painting and sculpture and away from the study of industrial art. We are only slowly coming to recognize the true meaning of the applied arts in our national life. We are only gradually coming to recognize that art is fine not because of a particular medium, but when the expression of line, mass and color is fine and beautiful, whether this be in a painting or a rug, and that art is not fine when this expression is poor and commonplace, whether the medium be sculptured bronze or a piece of furniture. To obtain better student material in our art schools we also need not only higher material rewards for designers but a more recognized and dignified status. With us the designer has practically no status other than that of a worker in the industries. In Europe he is regarded as an artist and occupies a dignified position in the community. ([74], 493) The concern expressed about appropriate recognition of the designer in this last point in the Richards study touches once again one of the most sensitive issues affecting the quality and potential of design.
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