Dutch graphic art crosses distant borders
Mehru Jaffer, Contributor, Jakarta
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.
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.
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.
In the spirit of the Renaissance when the individuality of Dutch artistes first flowered, graphic designers continue to create with similar daring whether it is in the sphere of poster design or typography, all evident in the works on exhibit.
Taking advantage of the introduction of the Apple computer and its lay-out software, designers are even inventing a new family of letters whose new fonts are distributed by independent publishing houses, such as Fontshop and The Enschede Letter Foundry.
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.
Keeping within that simple and wide definition that states that anything made by man is art is inclusive now of not just paintings and sculptures but also buildings, furniture, automobiles, cities and garbage dumps. To the aggravation of the purist every change that human activity brings about upon the face of nature is considered art be it beautiful or ugly, beneficial or destructive.
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 aesthetically. Within this narrow definition a distinction is made between fine, and useful art with the former consisting of works designed to produce an esthetic 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.
However, useful art like a poster has both an esthetic and a utilitarian dimension like automobiles, glass tumblers or a chair. Woven baskets, desk lamps and a host of other handmade or manufactured objects have a primarily useful function, are made for that purpose but can also be enjoyed as objects of beauty. There are people who will buy one brand of car rather than another for esthetic reasons, even less for mechanical reasons of which they may not know anything.
Works of the Dutch graphic artists show that 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. As is obvious in the display in the exhibition on postal services and bank facilities, the approach is that of a cohesive whole of house styles, logos, lettering on buildings and vehicles all comprehensive, complex and expensive business today.
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.