Art | Design Interaction – Course

Art | Design Interaction is a 12-week undergraduate course that explores the ideas, influences and parallels between art, design and architecture. Creative output doesn’t happen in a vacuum and closer inspection inevitably reveals patterns of similarity.  Whether these patterns of similarity are intended or coincidental, the aesthetics and ideologies of art, design and architecture movements often overlap.

Supergraphics in the built environment often echo art and design. This can be seen in the red facade inscribed with ‘WC’ of the award-winning Clifton Road Reserve Public Toilets (2015) by Brent Scott of Citrus Studio Architecture (NZ) and Lorser Feitelson’s ‘Hardedge Line Painting’ (1963).

This course tracks the evolution and development of art and design, and the way in which these movements have co-influenced each other over time.  The course highlights the way these movements continue to influence contemporary design practice.

The course provides students with a unique opportunity to broaden their understanding of art and design from historical and contemporary perspectives, and apply their knowledge to practical integrated art and design solutions.  Key learning objectives include:

• Identify and describe a range of major art and design movements between the 19^th and 21^st Centuries and the evolutionary and interactive nature of these movements.
• Identify, describe and apply the methodologies and approaches evident from visual analysis of art and art movements (Form, Line, Shape, Colour, Composition, etc).
• Create an original work applying the principles of visual analysis combined with an understanding of historical art movements.
• Understand and critically evaluate an artist or an artwork from contextual, historical and theoretical perspectives.

Weekly topics include:

1. Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, Realism and Symbolism
2. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Art Nouveau
3. Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism
4. The Bauhaus and Modernism
5. Dadaism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism
6. Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Minimalism
7. Colour Field painting and Colour/Light Installation Art
8. Photography
9. Comic Book Art and the Graphic Novel
10. Animation and Video Art
11. Earth and Installation art
12. Ethical, moral and legal issues in creative practice

I developed this 12-week course as a TEQSA-compliant higher education course and it was delivered at a private college in Sydney, from February  2013 onwards. The course has parallels with Alan Krell’s ‘Mapping the Modern’ and ‘Mapping the Post-Modern’, Faculty of Art & Design, University of New South Wales.  

Image credits:

1. Swiss-born Rondinone has created a number of installations including It’s late… (1999-2000). The installation features six channel video (black and white) screened onto the walls in a room lit with blue light accompanied by an ambient-music piece that repeats the phrase ‘everyday sunshine’. The installation takes on a slightly different shape depending on its location.
2. Award-winning Clifton Road Reserve Public Toilets by Citrus Studio Architecture. This building won the Small Project Award in the ArchitectureNOW Awards (2016). You can check out these awards on the ArchitectureNOW website. The building also won the Resene Total Colour Commercial Exterior Colour Maestro Award as per Resene’s website.
3. Lorser Feitelson, ‘Hardedge Line Painting’, 1963, from the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. You can check out this painting on their website.