14
DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE,
1997
| Editorial
DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTUREThe 14th Temes de Disseny, as the reader can
see, a miscellany. In it, we bring together themes which directly refer to
matters clearly springing from the complex universe of design, along with
others which we would place in the wider context of thought and culture; there
are also those which correspond to a diffuse field between pragmatic semiotics,
rhetoric, and the theory of argument. We can say that the contents honour our
title, as they join design to communication and, in the end, culture. We
believe that this composition responds to the eclectic traits which are
current, not only in the professional and intellectual fields of design, but
also in culture generally. Moreover, design has always been a widely
multi-disciplinary activity, and this has always been evident in the theoretic
reflections it has provoked. Thus, therefore, in agreement with our line of
argument, the articles we present are an exact model of the current moment,
with its lack of orthodoxy together with theoretic and thematic dispersion.
In this number we wish to remember and give a modest,
though deeply felt, posthumous homage to Jose Maria Valverde, philosopher,
poet, translator; a master whose memory will be indelible for his pupils. Quite
definitely, an honest man whose solidarity he would probably like everyone to
remember.
Valverde, with his life and attitude, was an intellectual who knew how to combine academic culture and everyday life perfectly. He knew that philosophy has its abode on the streets and can be found there when talking to people, whatever their condition or culture; he also knew that true academic philosophy cannot in any way and should not be words on words, but rather they must be the living stuff of human solidarity. He was a professor of aesthetics and had a beautiful
life, as we cannot find a more beautiful gest than that invested in working
against the injustice and abuse of tyrants. Many will remember him during the
years of the Franco dictatorship, in which the purest and clearest intolerance
ruled, leaving the Spanish university to go into exile to defend the freedom of
words with solidarity.
The publishers and collaborators of this publication, especially the members of the Consulting Board who had him as a companion and colleague, dedicate these lines to him, because the meaning of his words, translated into writing, become more current each time someone reads them. The summary opens precisely with the text by Jose Maria Valverde «William Morris, aesthetic forerunner», published so many years1 ago that it is practically unknown nowadays. We believe the interest it had when it was written is untouched and, moreover, through the years has added more of historical and biographical nature. For this reason we have felt it was convenient to re-publish it for the benefit of our readers. As we can see, the work, although dating from the beginning of the 50´s, a really dark, even tragic, time for Catalonia and Spain, has an undeniable freshness, because, despite the ideological starvation imposed by censure, he said there, without shouting, everything that needed to be said. Moreover, as far as I can see, it is a well-written text in an efficient Spanish style which is also full of elegance. Valverde gives some biographic references on William Morris and goes deeper into the way the British author gives value to work and, specifically, artistic work as a basis for his own aesthetic practice as he had no aesthetic theory in the philosophical sense. It is really interesting to establish that Morris' view of art and craftsmanship came from the culture of industrial society. He was, so to say, nostalgic for the honest work of the traditional craftsman, while living in the midst of the blackest industrialism in the UK. All this is stressed by Valverde from the perspective of the rather remote fifties of our century. In Morris' time, machines were rude and only produced ugliness to contemporaries' eyes. After nearly a hundred years, after having overcome the first and most undesirable consequences of industrialism, Valverde can understand the situation better and denounce it more fairly than Morris could. On the same theme as Valverde's, we introduce a text by Anna Calvera, investigator, who has worked with great dedication on William Morris' work and has done so with results which clear up some aspects of his ideology not well-understood or interpreted until now. I believe Ms Calvera clarifies and sets in its just perspective the apparent contradictions between his ideology, which was contrary to many realities and the consequences of industrialisation, and his condition of forerunner of contemporary industrial and interior design. It is worth taking into account that Valverde's point of view corresponds to a view which is in direct debt to industrial society, while Ms Calvera's study corresponds to that given by the end of modernism and even the exhaustion of the postmodern reaction. At any rate, now that we have assumed the consequences of industrialisation, now that ornament no longer causes us anxiety, and artisan production is neatly as far from us as that based on the serial production belonging to incipient industrialism, it would be interesting to continue reflecting on the humanising and alienating dimensions of work. Morris' work, as it is presented in the two articles the reader will find in this issue, presents different though not contradictory angles. To begin with, by means of his company, he intended to keep up good taste and an adequate form of craft tradition in a time when they were being lost and ugliness invaded society; then, Morris is clearly a forerunner not only of modern design, but also of the company which carries out and distributes designed products. Then there is his humanistic dimension and his social critique, which he developed through political practice, writing, and the ethics of work environment. There are also aspects, presented as minor, in his aesthetic and artistic reflections, as well as his literary intents. To comply with the title of our magazine, which explains that, along with design, we also treat culture and communication themes, we present Albert Berrio's article «Pier Paolo Passolini's Edipo Re» and Gregorio Luri's «The Myth of Prometheus». Myths have been with us since the dawn of time. Although it sometimes seems as if mythic thinking is an exclusive characteristic of primitive cultures, the truth is that we currently create new ones and remember the old ones. In fact, the creation of new myths is unceasing, although we, as contemporaries, are hardly conscious of doing so. As to the old ones, we remember them as such, although we often slight them or forget them. Now we can notice, within the cultural environment
left us by the efforts to break the stays imposed by modernity, that we are
recovering many of the themes, attitudes and paths begun centuries ago. This
renewed interest in the culture of myths which we can observe is a clear
example of what I mean. The two articles which are part of this miscellaneous issue are an answer
to two of the most important myths in European culture: Prometheus, friend to
Man, and King Oedipus, the ever-present tragedy.
As its name suggests, Berrio's article is a study of the deceased famous Italian cinema director. That cinema is one of the means of expression of our century is something no-one would argue against today. With the possibilities granted by this audio-visual medium, there have been works intended simply to entertain, whether well or badly made; also, however, occasionally, we can see products like the one the author discusses, which can only be qualified as ambitious, with many angles to be analysed and with deeply mature aesthetic and cultural messages. Berrio analyses the film using the keys given us by the myths played out and with the help of current Freudian psychoanalytic interpretation. With all this cultural baggage, Pasolini made a film far from banal, through which he interprets the beautiful myth. As in fact it is one of the most important themes of our anthropological unconscious, new interpretations which bring up to date the eternal ties between parents and children, nature and culture, will never be void. As we can gather from Luri's work, the acquisition of fire was a sort of conceptually wider intellectual and plastic representation which we have to explain human nature in its most intimate dimension. In the diverse versions of the myth, Prometheus takes from the gods both the natural fire which gives life and the cultural fire which turns into technology. Jordi Pericot's «Transit through Possible Worlds» and Arantxa Capdevila's «Design of a political propaganda spot: converging communication strategies», although speaking of different subjects, have some remarkable coincidences. In the case of Pericot's work, we find an effort to complete his pragmatic semiotics with the idea of «possible worlds». Pericot has for years been trying to construct a theory of image from the instruments given him by the study of linguistics and also semiotics. Recently, he has spread his point of view to the whole audio-visual field. «The possible world» is an idea developed from Leibnitz’ philosophy and it has been applied to the understanding of literary creation. Pericot wants to apply it to any text, thus turning it into a «pragmatic instrument» as he says. As set out in this text, the creation of possible worlds would make a pragmatic strategy by means of which each individual could make sense of the information received. Another of the aspects it is worth paying attention to is that Pericot, by his strategy, blurs the difference between the real world and formal constructions; it would seem as if human beings lived in a world which is sometimes conventional, sometimes formal. It is a subject to reflect on. In the same way, I believe it is interesting to study the relation between «play on language» and «possible world» if the latter is to become a pragmatic implement. Capdevila, on the other hand, intends to give us a way
to study political propaganda TV spots. She does so by using two different
implements: Chaim Perelmann's theory of argument, clearly logical in nature,
and the idea of «a possible world»,
which can belong to onthology or the world of poetry. The use of this idea to
show up the mechanisms of persuasion could be a practical example of Pericot's
proposal.
Anna Papiol, with her work on «Lasting and ephimeral», enriches us with a lovely
reflection on the two types which, from the human standpoint, things placed in
the world have: the lasting and the ephimeral. With the help of poets such as
Pindar, Horace, Quevedo, and Borges, she tells us how we have extended to other
eras the passing of cultural time and how, today, faced with the present, we
build altars to praise finiteness.
Culture, especially high culture, has always been a
bet on transcending the space of a lifetime. But modernity has installed
innovation as a basic value in our thought. The ephimeral is the condition of
current cultural work, in a sort of absolutism of modernity which makes it all
banal.
It is obvious that from the culture of design we find
it basic to reflect on what is new and what, to our eyes, is still lasting.
What sense does forced obsolescence of forms make while we recover historical
proposals in a sort of forced rejuvenation?
In a very different order of things, bur also within
the world of design, we have the article by Emili Padrós and Martín Ruiz de Azúa
«Unfinished Objects». It is an argument against the market understood as an
absolute institution which allows us to satisfy our needs and makes us happy; a
market nourished by objects with which we have very intense relationships. The
authors analyse the emotional connotations we attribute to objects beyond what
are now called their primary functions. This means searching for an
anthropological intensity in objects, which they no doubt have, beyond the
pre-cariousness we are forced to by the proposals coming from the commercial
sectors.
With this, we find the
arguments developed at the beginning on the variety of themes and subjects
which enrich the current issue of our magazine. We are not to see them as an
example of heterogeneity, but rather as an example of eclecticism in use.
Jordi Berrio 1. Valverde, José María, «William
Morris, precursor estético», in Revista de Ideas Estéticas, nº 47,
Madrid, 1954
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Contents
14
DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE,
1997
Gregorio LURI MEDRANO Iconography of the Prometheus myth 14 DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, 1997 ARANTXA CAPDEVILA I GÓMEZ Design of a political propaganda spot: converging communication strategies 14 DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, 1997 ALBERT BERRIO Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Edipo re 14 DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, 1997 ANNA CALVERA The modernity of William Morris 14 DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, 1997 JOSÉ MARIA VALVERDE William Morris, aesthetic forerunner 14 DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, 1997 JORDI PERICOT Transit through possible worlds 14 DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, 1997 EMILI PADRÓS FERRER, MARTÍN RUIZ DE AZÚA Unfinished objects 14 DESIGN, COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, 1997 ANNA PAPIOL CONSTANTÍ Lasting and ephimeral |