FSB – Alice Richter — Art and design irreconcilable?

Art and design irreconcilable? Investigating a pronouncement by Otl Aicher

Alice Richter

I enrolled for the optional “Otl Aicher” course taught by Prof. Haverland and addressed myself to specific works and texts by Otl Aicher. I notably began to apply my mind to the numerous volumes of Aicher’s texts published by FSB following an excursion to the company’s premises at Brakel. I came across the following proposition in the process, which I would like to go into in greater depth:

“design is a cultural manifestation against embellishment, artistic value-added and historicist classification by global style. (…) there exists a kind of irreconcilability between art and design, they are as incompatible as fire and water. the creative intensity of design is no less than that of art.

on the contrary, making a thing not only beautiful but also right presupposes additional creative capabilities. art is value-free. art is pointless in the sense that there doesn’t need to be any point to it. design is gauged with reference to things, what point there is to them, their social acceptability, how they work, and how cost-effective they are. these are not matters art needs to trouble itself with.”

Otl Aicher argues that craftsmanship can and should be viewed separately from art, craftsmanship serving as a synonym for design. But is it that easy to separate art from design? And is there still any desire in modern society to draw such a clear dividing line?

I posed myself these questions upon reading, amongst other things, the texts die unterschrift (“The Signature”) and der nicht mehr brauchbare gebrauchsgegenstand (“The no longer usable utilitarian object”) written by Otl Aicher.
I have personally always regarded design and art as being related, as comprising two equal-status, indivisible parts that enrich our lives. The transition from design to art is fluid in my opinion.

Otl Aicher, by contrast, regards the two spheres as being distinct. Design draws on craftsmanship, the archetypal way in which shape is lent to commonplace objects. Art, on the other hand, should rather be viewed as a parallel phenomenon. And where art and design do cross, the upshot are what can be referred to as “unusable utilitarian objects”. One example of this is the cutlery conceived by Ferruccio Laviani.

The designer took the utilitarian objects knife, fork and spoon and deformed them in such a way as to make them formally unrecognisable. Otl Aicher argues that they no longer serve the purpose of being used to eat food. They are accordingly pointless, which for Aicher equates to their being art. Ergo: art = pointless.

But is this really the case? Is there really no justification for, or point to, art in all its guises in our society? This sentiment is no longer applicable to today’s society in my opinion. Craftsmanship has assumed different proportions. It is now far more than a mere means to an end. Utilitarian objects such as furniture, luminaires and cutlery have become a form of communication, of expression. Even such non-usable utilitarian objects have been accommodated. The debate now is far more about taste than efficacy.

The issue at stake may in reality, however, revolve around how design and art can actually be defined. Otl Aicher had a grounding in craftsmanship himself and possibly had a different idea of what it means to be a designer as a result. I was originally more involved with the classic fine arts myself, which may explain why I view the issue from a different angle. I would like to sum up by suggesting this is a topic that, as a whole, throws up a number of engaging questions to which there is no right or wrong answer. Whether we’re designers, artists or consumers, our interests and leanings give us all a different angle on things, with some justification in each case.

Project remit:

With a view to adding an illustrative dimension to the discussion, I set about the task by creating an “assemblage”. This is an extension of the collage and constitutes a form of art with origins in the age of dadaism/surrealism. It served artists of the time as a means of directly criticising the values and stigmas of the society in which they lived. My own assemblage comprises a range of utilitarian objects connected with the act of “gripping”. The centre is taken up by lever handle 1045 by FSB.

This is a classic and functional form of door handle that exactly reflects the values expounded by Otl Aicher. The FSB company embodies a large proportion of Otl Aicher’s creative outpourings itself. He designed the corporate design still used by the company along with a lever handle conforming to specified gripping principles. The work is rounded off by various other objects such as, for instance, push-button mobile phones, brushes and scissors, all of which are functional, handheld objects.

It is also important to point out that art did actually influence Otl Aicher too, even if this only occurred towards the end of his life and away from the public glare. He modelled busts of Hans and Sophie Scholl that exuded none of the severity of his other designs. It was my intention to to create art by combining a number of different utilitarian handheld objects and hence demonstrate that, in my view, it is not possible to clearly delineate between art and design and that, instead, they both mould and influence our society.