Aesthetics – an immanent value of design

Aesthetics – an immanent value of design


Estetyka – immanentna wartość designu / Aesthetics – an immanent value of design,
w: Ewa Siemieńska (redakcja), Wartość dodana. Światowe wzornictwo z Polski /
Added value. Global design from Poland, Instytut Wzornictwa Przemysłowego,
Warszawa, 2009


We associate aesthetics with beauty and art.

One of the stars of the design world, known to Poles from thousands of mentions in the press, expresses the optimistic point of view that, in fact, beauty has ‘democratised itself’ thanks to design, which, unlike art, it finds its way into the hands of ordinary people. He, the designer, offers it to everyone.

Poland’s foremost teachers and masters of design undertake the work in the belief that the contribution design makes to an object should be intertwined with its very essence, its relationship with humans and their lives; design is thus not some kind of supplement, bonus or addition. Aesthetics is not one of many design parameters; it is an outcome of them all and it lies over them all. Let me explain this.

The fact that only a tiny percentage of Poles can afford the works of the stars in the profession simply speaks volumes about the Polish economy. To whom should the fact that many of his works are, at base, kitsch, ludic, satiric and blasé, far removed from beauty and a stranger to it, be proved? To their happy purchasers? To the authors of contemporary works of reference or design journals, who themselves do as designers-for-hire and eagerly surrender to the invisible hand of the market and the ripples of circumstance? This is when Polish sceptics’ use of the word ‘design’ in a pejorative sense, as synonymous with fancy, frills and, at bottom, vanity. Excess. There is nothing exemplary here for the authentic ‘democratic’ design upon which we should set such stake in Poland.

Poland’s foremost teachers and masters of design undertake the work in the belief that the contribution design makes to an object should be intertwined with its very essence, its relationship with humans and their lives; design is thus not some kind of supplement, bonus or addition. Aesthetics is not one of many design parameters; it is an outcome of them all and it lies over them all. Let me explain this.


The aesthetics of design

The fundamental meaning of aesthetics is as a collection of assumptions or principles regarding what is beautiful, exquisite, attractive, ugly or abominable. These principles may be present at the following stages: 1. theory, 2. assumption, or 3. the work. Next, at stage 1. they are formulated linguistically, (for instance, defining a product’s identity during planning), 2. embraced unconsciously by artists, designers or end-user (defining their ‘taste), or 3. brought to life, embodied in objects, human products; they pervade the object, constitute the tenets by which it is regulated. In a word, they are immanent. In each of these instances, aesthetics constitute more of a doctrine, ideology or style (this last when the principles form a coherent system) than they do a philosophy. Authentically philosophical aesthetics illuminate and give rise to reflection, discussion and critical analysis of an object

I would like to add that positively evaluative and normative use of the word ‘aesthetics’ by the average Pole identifies it with hygiene, neatness and precision. Or ornamentation and decorativeness. With an amusing play on form. Exciting games with colour and shape.


 Polish design aesthetics?

When Polish design aesthetics are referred to, this could be with the thought of Polish theories and concepts and in mind, or the theory prevalent in Poland as to what is aesthetic in design, or what is aesthetic in Polish design. In Poland, the turn of 1989 saw the birth of a will to make up for the country’s colossal material backwardness, a will which seems to have given ‘practice’ primacy over theory. In turn, practice means the will to participate on the world market. The will to see designs go into serial manufacture; so many worthwhile designs never progressed beyond the prototype stage, due to the inefficiency of industry and the economy.

Businesses continue with the mass import of ‘global’ concepts and templates. In this regard, American feature films, ‘celebrities’ and rock music all exert a greater influence than the articles dealing directly and openly with design which appear in the cultural sections of newspapers and periodicals. In general, we constitute a territory for a colonisation which is indirect and painless, inasmuch as the claustrophobic mood of the ‘Polish spirit’, inescapable during the era of Soviet Socialist confinement, means that this very spirit itself begs for a draught of innovation from the great, wide world. This relates to the spirit of Polish supermarkets, showrooms and shopping ‘galleries’ (!) It is a great good fortune that it does not concern the design faculties of Polish HEIs. Neither does it touch the design departments of Poland’s art museums, nor her design museums because the latter… well, in the 21st century, they do not exist.

With the collapse of Soviet Socialism and the dominance of left-wing ideology, the egalitarian aesthetic, based on the conviction that design proposes universal, supracultural solutions which are good for everyone was by no means conquered. There are numerous Polish designers who approach their endeavours in the commendable belief that in terms of quality and character, the individuality of a design should not merely be a reflection of the economic status enjoyed by its potential purchasers, but should enrich cultural diversity. They create in the belief that a solutions aesthetic level is more than a function of economic and technological conditions. Despair?

Does the design which emerges in any given country remain uncontemporary in direct proportion to the extent that the country itself utilises the most up-to-date technology without actually creating it?


Design and art

Production methods, construction principles, economics and ergonomics are all of primary significance to design. It is only recently that many people have been persuaded that a designer should resemble an engineer and not an artist (I would say a peacetime, rather than a ‘wartime’ painter).

The founders of design departments in Poland encountered a terminological situation which they found conceptually unacceptable. Calling design a ‘decorative art’ indicates a role as an ornamental, beautifying extra. Calling it ‘applied art’ presupposes that design is similar to ‘applied sciences’. In practice, it was intended to apply the benefits of pure art, reproducing the forms discovered therein. And anyway, the ‘aesthetics’ label is by no means deserved by those design objects which are reminiscent of abstract sculptural or painterly compositions. Why should designers not be the pioneers of new forms and the viewpoints corresponding to them – a new sensibility?

The Polish practice of situating design departments alongside the art departments of fine arts departments may well have been conditioned by institutional inertia and traditionalism. Nonetheless, there is an essential rightness to their being situated like this. First, there is the nature of design as an art. Second, contact with other artists and with works in other forms, and the students’ sharing of studio space are of key significance when it comes to new ideas and the development of sensitivity, in terms of an open point of view in the dialogue with other artists, who do not accept, either consciously or unconsciously, the obviousness of a given standpoint. After all, this is where the true creative making of art lies! The aesthetic category of a form simply underscores the meaning of a point of view; forms change along with standpoints. New forms wreak change not only points of view, but people, too!

I oppose the standpoint which negates the relationship between design, ideas and ideals, being convinced that the work of the designer cannot find a single and sufficient basis in scientific or technical knowledge because there, it will not find the very objects that designers create, which are cultural artefacts. The least resistance was aroused by my proposal that “wzornictwo” (the Polish name for the German “Formgestaltung” or English “design”) be called and understood as ‘the art of design-making’ (Z-wiednie. Ontologiczne podstawy sztuki projektowania; Ontological Fundamentals of the Art of Design-making, 1993). Since one of the meaning of the word ‘art’ is that of ‘skill’, with connotations of ‘extraordinary’. Defining “wzornictwo” as one of the ‘design arts’, “sztuki projektowe” (Wzornictwo/design, 1998) I advanced in the conviction that, just as with all the arts, the key categories are which define design are the aesthetic categories of form and image.


Aesthetic category of form

The etymology of the term ‘aesthetics’, deriving from the Greek, aesthesis, refers to sensory perception. Its selection for the purpose of defining spheres of beauty and ugliness was most clearly made in the belief that these values appear to us via the agency of the senses, in perception.

What is aesthetic is that which is connected with what is perceived and is based on it, though it is not identical to it. This thesis requires amplification: it is about that which only appears when it is perceived and as a result of the perception. By means of vision, touch or kinestetics. And this is precisely the sphere in which the competence of design lies! It forms the reason for its being!

The constructor, the technologist, the materials expert and the ergonomist describe an object using objective categories. Its designer treats it as a subjective condition, viewing it from the subjective angle. He is not concerned with the object as it is when no one can see it, but with the way it appears to a person, what the person will see in it and discover from it, with what meanings are connected with it. An example from the geometrical level: a differentiation must be made between an object’s actual shape, the arrangement of its elements and its dynamism, and the subjective shape, or arrangement, which it appears to the perceiver to possess, which is why one of the tasks of a designer is to ensure that what appears in a given dimension does not swerve from that which is actually there.

The aesthetic category of form thus embraces the perceived shape and arrangement, its appearance (the perceptive qualities). These factors constitute the picture that the user has of an object, and the user-object relationship. In conclusion: these are all factors defining the design of an object.


Aesthetic values – superadded values?

Functionalism continues to number among the standpoints most frequently called upon by Polish professors of design. In the field of aesthetics, this „ism” unites coincident theses: about the undesignability of beauty and its epiphenomenal quality. „Epiphenomenality” means here, that the aesthetical values of an object are not something, the designer can simply determine, and that they appear somewhat casually, incidentally, as an extra together with a form which optimally serves its appointed purposes. In the opposite case the designer falls into an empty aesthetization.

The aesthetic intuition of the superadded aesthetic value has a long „ancient” history. It was shared by the functionalism of the 20th century. In the Polish thought it appears at least already in the Dworzanin polski (The Polish Courtier), by Łukasz Górnicki, published in 1566. The Renaissance author emphasized, that when an object, such as a sailing ship (in the era of IT an appropriate example would be ...?), fulfils its function „it is no less pleasant to the eye, than useful”, because then its construction elements „have so much beauty in them, that whoever looks at it, thinks that it was made not so much for its use but as a feast for the eyes”. Hence the thesis in the Dworzanin: „And so beauty is always there, where there is to be something good”.

If the value is superadded in this manner, it is not added. It is, aesthetically speaking, not some addition or attribute to a previously defined object. On the contrary, it intertwines with its essence and can be a means, by which the essence of the object becomes apparent in the form.

This is the second reason to consider aesthetics as an inherent value of design. The first, which I already indicated above, results from the central role fulfilled by the aesthetic category of form in design: it is its reason for being, describes the scopes of its competence and responsibility.

04.2009.