A reader asks Matt whether he feels the realm of so-called “fine art” encompasses a higher level of creativity or importance than the realm of design.

Matt responds:

Frank Lloyd Wright said:  “Form follows function.”

Does it have to be pleasing for it to be utilitarian?  Here we get into people’s tastes.  Some poeple like no frills, no fuss, no dips, no curves.  Others are, “More is more and less is nothing!”

As a merchandiser, you could probably sell a dead cow’s head to someone, and then charge them more if the tongue is bigger, given the right kind of publicity, having people talk about it, and all that.

I believe that things are the way they are because we’re now into mass merchandising, which will take care of maybe 90-percent of the people.  The other 10-percent want to make sure that everyone knows they’re different.  Therefore, if everybody has a round toothbrush, then I must have a straight one or else my teeth will fall out!

We’re really arguing about something that we have a bias towards.  It’s a great example of the human nature that we love to argue about everything.  When you’re through arguing about something, and you’re still friends, and you still have the same opinion as you did when you went into it—that’s love.

That’s what we’re all striving for, because if you took a poll, you’d probably find that even among people who supposedly know what they’re talking about, 50-percent are going to say yes, and 50-percent are going to say no.

I must confess that I look at the form of things when I’m purchasing anything.  Does it make sense to me?  Can it stand or does it have to be propped up?  Does it please me when I look at it, or is it just something that I have to have?

I’ve never seen an exotic roll of toilet paper.  Tooth paste usually looks the same.  A loaf of bread can have sesame seeds and all kinds of goodies put onto it, and be put into a very fine package, and sold for more money.  Mundane objects can be made much more exotic, but they fall out of favor if someone doesn’t buy it.

When you talk about design, you’re usually talking about an economic event.  Nobody has designed anything they don’t want people to eventually throw away and get a new one.

Art, I believe, has more liberty, because you can get people hanging up rotten meat and fried come or a big pile of puke, or Damien Hirst cutting cows in half and throwing them in formaldehyde, in order to shock.  It doesn’t seem to me that design would try to shock people, because if they’re shocked, they might not buy it.

It probably becomes more of a question to ask in a business sense, whereas I think art is more of a spiritual sense.  That’s not to say that something we look at and can pick up and examine doesn’t have a spirit.  If we look at all of the major religions around the world and things like the Greek worry beads or the Catholic rosary beads—all the different symbols that we hold dear to our spiritual side—they speak to how we meld together our material and spiritual sides into a whole person.

I suppose it really comes down to the case of eating an apple.  We eat the outside, but we don’t eat the core. 

Matt