Art Chantry = too easy these days, no?

I don't know Art Chantry's work, will Google. In fact, if the show is still on in late July, I'll see it myself when I'm in New York.

My opening last night was in Tokyo, a group show of the usual Hiropon Factory and Koyama Gallery suspects. Yoshitomo Nara (he of the menacing little girls) asked me if I liked a punk band called Everygreen something, I said no, punk was too noisy for me. But these guys are all pop music crazy, and musicians like me continue to find visual artists more rock starry than rock stars.

The show is huge! A lot of really famous imagery he's responsible for. So many of his designs were in Print magazine over the years, but now it seems just like it's not enough, somehow, as far as popular opinion goes in the design world. I may be wrong, I don't know. To me, Kozik seems over with, too, but he's still churning out devil-girl posters for rock bands.

Really interesting. I just found an interview of Art Chantry here in which he says exactly what I was thinking. It DOESN'T fly anymore. Wow! And for a moment, I thought I was maybe being hard on the guy.
.... (interview)--->

Speak Up: As a designer that has started his career before the mainstream use of computers, do you see the computer as a tool, crutch, or hindrance?

Art Chantry: I view computers with huge ambivalence. It is both a blessing (in that it extends the dialog of graphic design back into the hands of the amateur - the primary source of innovation) and away from the hands of the knowledgeable professional (often the source of control and self-interest). I love the Internet and the computer communication world. I don't love the computer as a one-stop all-solution design tool. It’s a remarkably flawed production tool as well. The history of the language of design is one of collaboration and interactivity. The computer takes away most of that group process and puts it into the hands of one single person. I used to rely upon a score of craftsmen and artists to complete my tasks - typesetters, copywriters, illustrators, proofreaders, editors, photographers, darkroom strippers, pre-production, press operators, paper experts, salesmen, etc. etc. One by one all of this expertise has been eliminated (500+ years of skill) and suddenly dropped into MY lap. Subsequently, quality has to go down. On top of that, since I’m suddenly competing with people (and clients) who literally bought software a week ago and are now perfectly competent in graphic design to a very high level. What I can ask for my 'art' is devalued dramatically. Be honest, who really needs to hire me when they can spend much less money and do it themselves? Currently, I am getting rates below what I was charging when I started out almost 30 years ago. In addition, I now have to support $20,000 worth of equipment and upgrades. All for the clients in the design market to get a uniform c-level quality of execution.

As you can see, computers are a truly mixed bag. It’s thrown the 'industry' into a buyer's market. The client has never had more total control over graphic design. How often does the client take your disk and personally re-work it? That NEVER happened before the computer. Graphic design was respected as a sort of magic that helped people (usually to make money). Now it's a troublesome decoration process that must be applied to stay even. Sad.

We are almost at a point where we need to redefine the term 'graphic designer' in order to differentiate between what is going on in the industry of design versus the language of design. What I do can just barely be considered 'graphic design' anymore. But I haven't changed, the industry has changed. Strange."

so, why do you even bother, huh? write about something else.

art

if the rare possibility of nara asking you again arises, tell him you know someone with the hookup and pass along my email!

In a career sense, I mean. I'm not sure what doors a new kid would knock on with a portfolio full of the sort of stuff you've become famous for.