Dutch graphic art crosses borders
---------------------- Mehru Jaffer Contributor Jakarta
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The current exhibition of Dutch graphic design is a delightful visual experience of many vanishing borders in the world of art.
Surrounded by a colorful selection of diverse exhibits created by Dutch designers and design studios in the last decade from posters, books, catalogs and website, a tremendous joy is experienced that is similar to finding even a little bond between physics and philosophy, religion and reason and commerce and culture.
Graphic design has traditionally been a discipline open to developments in the fine arts, architecture and photography. However the artist today is experiencing an abundance in a new visual culture, based on advertising, television and images created on the computer which is being happily incorporated to create much innovative work.
The graphic designer has indeed emerged as an artiste even though the controversy over what is art remains as old as the human race itself. According to the simplest and widest definition, art is anything that is man-made. As opposed to a sunset that may be beautiful but is not a work of art although it may have tremendous aesthetic quality. A sunset becomes a piece of art only when imitated to look like one by an artiste.
The ordinary usage of art remains less wide. In daily life when a work of art is spoken of it means a much narrower range of objects, namely those responded to esthetically. Within this narrow definition a distinction is made between fine and useful art, with the former consisting of works designed to produce an aesthetic appreciation of paintings, sculptures, poems, musical instruments and all those man made things that are enjoyed for their own sake rather than as means to something else.
All graphic art is important for the visual impact it has not just on individuals but entire societies. Good architectural graphics are stressed and public buildings such as airports depend upon clear and handsome graphics to make the space esthetically acceptable and useful.
The Dutch design everything now with young designer using lifestyles, trends and mood boards to create house styles for museums, companies, institutions and government departments. An important aspect of graphics is the printed matter including trend setting magazines that represent the avant-garde of new taste in color, typography, photography or the use of pioneering, interactive media.
Curator Toon Lauwen points out that in Dutch public magazines focus on youth culture, the eye is met with a computer feast in multilayered lay-outs of photography and conceptual typography that lean toward the dynamics of MTV, computer games and websites. But in the more earnest periodicals, the architecture magazine, Forum, for example, fashion and the spirit of the times certainly play a role, which is why their designers are frequently changed.
The section on books with such stylistic designs seems to encourage the choice of a book only by its cover, while the purpose of publications like catalogs seems to be little else but to provide sumptuous visual feasts. There are posters on exhibit also as yet another tribute to the great creative freedom that cultural institutions provide their designers today reflecting changing mores like sexual openness and ethnic diversity.
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Dutch Graphic Arts
Until November 3
Erasmus Huis, Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said Kav. S-3, Kuningan, South Jakarta (tel. 524-1069)
Open daily except Sunday from 8 a.m.