Monday, September 17, 2007

The Aesthethic Movement

The Aesthetic movement was a rebellion against the heavy ornamentation and mass production of goods that was introduced after the Industrial Revolution. The first two key players of the Aesthetic Movement were John Ruskin and William Morris. They both beleived that all of the technology and new furnishings of the Victorian had caused a great seperation between the art and the artist. They felt that the true beauty of crafting a piece of furniture or creating an original design had been lost to the machine. The new designs of the Aesthetic movement were very referential to nature and not to the latest fashion of displaying how much wealth someone possessed through the amount of ornamentation and fabric draped on anything that would stand still.
John Rustic was mainly a writer on the theory of arts and crafts, while William Morris was one of the designers who actually implemented these theories. He is most known for his furniture design as well as patterns. In addition to his designs , Morris was greatly involved with rebelling against capitalists whom he believed to have created the unequality between classes due to the mass production of goods.
Furthermore, I belive that at some point "stuff just becomes stuff" unless there is something meaninful about where goods come from or how they were created. I believe that William Morris and John Ruskin had great ideas about reuniting the artist with the art.
I think a perfect comparison to the Aesthetic movement's rebellion against the Victorian Era, is today's rebellion against unsustainable buildings as well as unrenewable products. The Victorian Era brought so much happiness to the people that were finally able to afford things they never dreamed of and became the new "middle class". People came to realize that possessions do not hold as much meaning when they are so easily accessible. Today, we have every demand at such convience that we forget the simple things in life. We have become so advanced that we forget that nature is the only reason we are here in the first place. We have all been so comfrotable with today's convientient technology that we forget about the issues it brings, much like the loss of craftsmenship. I wonder what John Ruskin and William Morris would think off today's world and where they would steer design because of our environmental issues? What do you think?

This blog is intended for the interior design students in the college of design at the University of Kentucky. It was created with the intent to present students with information, providing them with a channel for contemplation and discussion.