Paul Rand on aesthetics, art & design

“Aesthetics is the study of art, or the study of the interaction and the fusion of form and contents. So the distinction between esthetics and art is that esthetics is the study of art.

Art is an idea that has found its perfect form. Doesn’t make any difference what the source is:advertising, paintings, sculpture or architecture – the formal problems are the same. Art is a by product, not a goal, you don’t say: i’m gonna do art.

You just say i’m gonna do whatever you’re gonna do, but you never call it art, art is if you’re lucky. Without content there is no form, and without form there is no content. A work of art is realised when form and content fuse.

When form predominates, meaning is blunted.
When content predominates, interest lags.

To realise a work of art, certain conflicts must be resolved, between ends and means, between form and function, form and content, form and expression. It is the merging of these conflicts that determines the aesthetic quality of a painting, a design, a sculpture, a building.

The vocabulary of the language of art, or aesthetics: order, unity, variety, contrast, symmetry, a-symmetry, colour, rhythm, harmony, dissonant, rhyme, interval, regularity, coherence, tention, balance, proportion, scale, weight, texture, line, mass, space, shape, light, shade and colour (and many others)

This is the language of form. The idea of proportion is the same in all forms of art.

Graphic design is one of those phrases that doesn’t mean anything, because anything that is graphic, is graphic. Painting or dancing if you see it, writing if you see it, is graphic.

Painting is no different from graphic design in terms of art, they are both forms of art. One uses painting or water colour, and the other uses whatever he uses.”

Transcribed from “Conversations with Paul Rand”, and “Conversation with Paul Rand”.