An Unbearable Lightness?
Rigley, Steve (2007) An Unbearable Lightness? Visual Communication, 6 (3). pp. 281-304. ISSN 1470-3572
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Creators/Authors: | Rigley, Steve |
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Abstract: | This article considers various notions of `beauty' and how these have informed the creative and critical processes of graphic design, specifically typography. The author considers how the Renaissance revival of Greek mathematics to support a `universal beauty' was gradually unpicked by Enlightenment thinkers such as Descartes, Kant and Hume, and how this process has subsequently shaped modernist and postmodernist attitudes towards `beauty'. From our current vantage point it could be argued that `beauty' should now be considered a redundant concept; however, design schools and studios continue to make value judgements dividing the `beautiful' from the `ugly'. On what basis are these judgements made and are they still valid in a pluralistic society? Is it possible that we now have a new sensibility, a different notion of beauty? Reflecting upon important questions raised by the American designer and writer Steven Heller in his controversial essay `The Cult of the Ugly' in Eye magazine in 1993, the author proposes that 14 years on from the article, we can indeed witness a new aesthetic sensibility, shared but not universal, rooted in loss yet also `found'. |
Official URL: | http://vcj.sagepub.com |
Output Type: | Article |
Schools and Departments: | School of Design |
Dates: | Date Date Type 1 October 2007 Published |
Status: | Published |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/1470357207081001 |
Output ID: | 1585 |
Deposited By: | Steve Rigley |
Deposited On: | 21 Nov 2011 11:44 |
Last Modified: | 15 Apr 2019 14:02 |