Art

"It was interesting and kind of fun to do--but I wasn't really interested in puppetry then. It was just a means to an end."

"Working as I do with movement of puppet creatures, I'm always struck by the feebleness of our efforts to achieve naturalistic movement. Just looking at the incredible movement of a lizard or a bird, or even the smallest insect, can be a very humbling experience."

"I feel that almost everyone maintains a childlike quality throughout their adulthood. One of the nice things about the puppet form is that it has the ability to communicate with this childlike side of the audience."

"Parents are concerned that if kids see that a person operates the Muppet, an illusion will be shattered. But I think kids see us as just the people who carry their friends around."

"A good character is almost always derived from an aspect of the performer's personality."

"One of the nice things about puppets is that it's your own hand in there. You can make it do anything you want it to."

"When I hear the art of puppetry discussed, I often feel frustrated in that it's one of those pure things that somehow becomes much less interesting when it is overdiscussed or analyzed."

"My excitement about making the [puppet] team was slightly tempered by the fact that everyone who auditioned had made the team."

"We have a ways to go in understanding the power of puppetry … Our problem is for too long we have thought of puppets being for children. … The appeal of puppetry to me is it's much more freeing for an artist … Puppetry is a completely controllable means to attack your characters in every possible way. The artist has the possibility to create a much larger landscape with puppetry. The human becomes more human in that sense. Another of the great things about puppetry is the ability to transform."

"I had never worked with puppets before so just the concept of talking to this green, grungy-lookin' rag comin' out of a trash can was totally alien to me."

"And although I'm not exactly sure what [Jim Henson] did, whatever it was really moved me."

"Without the good will of manipulators and audience alike, puppets cannot sustain an illusion of life."

"Well, the thing to remember here is that my own personality has absolutely nothing to do with this weirdo."

"And so that he can tell what’s happening, a puppeteer always watches his performance in a television monitor. In a way, the puppeteer becomes an audience to his own performance."

"Jim [Henson] had a lot of respect for puppetry, but not much for the puppet as a physical object. It was a means to an end. If he was giving a live demonstration, he didn't care if people saw him put his hand in the puppet, and he didn't try to sustain the illusion once the performance was over."

"Modern industrial design is based on the principle of conspicuous economy [but] the bourgeois culture which dominates the Western World is founded... on the principle of conspicuous waste."

"Modern industrial design has advanced at a rapid pace during the last ten years. Its successes are no longer confined to objects which, like automobiles and airplanes, are themselves the product of new conditions. Modern design has also begun to conquer the traditional arts, and the feeling for abstract form, first expressed in our time in the works of Picasso, Braque, Brancusi, Duchamps-Villon in Europe, or Stieglitz, Benton, and Storrs for example in the United States, has finally entered architecture and the decorative arts."

"In brief the industrial designer is a fashion designer of industrial products and is called upon by industry and manufacturers to "style" their products or to "streamline" them."

"The designer of today, in most branches of art and particularly in the field of industrial design, needs more than vision and inspiration. This can be seen easily by anyone who will trouble himself to analyze the motif of some costly production and consider its chance to endure on the basis of artistic worth, rather than mere excellence of technical finish."

"As architecture stands for parent design principles and represents some of the world's best examples of composition and design, industrial design should be based upon the best examples of architectural design."

"The course in industrial design is as follows: First year: Free-hand drawing — Drawing in outline from the flat, from groups of geometrical solids, from objects, memory drawing. Industrial design — Geometrical and free-hand designing in flat outline, historical ornament (ancient) . Mechanical drawing — Elementary perspective, practical geometry. Mathematics — Mensuration, ^first year), Euclid, book 1 (one term only). Second year Free-hand drawing — Drawing in light and shade from the flat and model, from groups of geometrical solids, from ornamental casts, from objects, memory drawing. Industrial design — Designing from plant forms in outline (flat), elementary color (flat), historical ornament (medieval). Third year: Free-hand drawing — Continuation of work of second year, drawing in monochrome, memory drawing. Industrial design — Plastic design, historical ornament (modern), history of design, clay modeling. Work in the special courses is intended largely to supplement the work done in the regular course, but it is of a much more practical nature."

"There are many branches of manufacturing industry which greatly depend for their success upon the designer's art, and it is necessary that the industrial designer should possess a knowledge of the processes of the manufacture in which his designs will be utilized, as well as of the properties and capabilities of the material to which they will be applied."

"The subject of industrial design is one of three important practical co-related subjects which should be taught in public schools, and to which practice and skill in drawing should be applied. Satisfactory results in this subject, however, depend entirely upon the manner in which it is taught. Instruction in industrial design means a clear presentation of the principles which obtain in the construction and harmonious arrangement of geometric form for decorative purposes, the proper use of plant forms in ornamental arrangements, and the principles of good taste to be found in the great history styles of art."

"The only way of reaping a harvest of good industrial design is by sowing the seed of good Art."

"Our industrial design is very bad still — a great deal of it — though infinitely better than it was thirty years ago. So a great deal of our teaching of design may be, I fear is, unsound; but all the sound teaching we have is through such schools as this, and even in our errors there is, let us hope, instruction."

"This question of industrial design is nearly distinct from the general Art education of the public, the former being very much a manufacturers' undertaking, while the other, being of the first importance, appeals to the community at large for sympathy and support."

"The plan of the books is the first systematic effort made in this country to cover the whole field of Art Education for schools, by embracing every subject included under the head of Elementary Drawing. Pupils going through the course in all the subjects will be thoroughly grounded, and prepared either for practical industrial art or the further professional study of the fine arts."

"At the suggestion of the publishers, this work was undertaken to form one of their series of Dictionaries and Cyclopeadias. In this view, it has been the intention to make it a complete course of instruction and book of reference to the mechanic, architect and engineer. It has not, therefore, been confined to the explanation and illustration of the methods of projection, and the delineation of objects which might serve as copies to the draughtsman, matters of essential importance for the correct and intelligible representation of every form; but it contains the means of determining the amount and direction of strains to which different parts of a machine or structure may be subjected, and the rules for disposing and proportioning of the material employed, to the safe and permanent resistance of those strains, with practical applications of the same."

"It has been well observed that the world, more especially the English portion of it, during the last half century, has been in its working dress; that is to say, although we have done some very wonderful things in the way of mechanics, and have produced other things which are marvels of cheapness, yet as regards the production of really beautiful objects, particularly those required in every-day life, we have been behind most other epochs of civilization. Of course there is no prima facie reason why cheap things should be ugly, for a die or mould of a good design costs no more than a bad one; but still the fact remains that the objects in use in every-day life are not beautiful, and it is to effect a change in this respect that the Government have established Schools of Design and the excellent Museum of which I shall have to speak hereafter. Great praise must also be given to the Society of Arts for beginning the movement and carrying it on to the present time; and although the sphere of its action must necessarily be infinitely smaller than that of the Government Schools, yet we should always remember that the initiative of our great English exhibitions of industry came from the Society, and that it is to those exhibitions that we owe the stirring among the dry bones of industrial art which is now taking place."

"Let us, then, take care of that art which is intended to penetrate into the houses of the lowly. In doing this we may rest assured, that that which is intended to embrace a more exalted position will not be forgotten. Let us not lose tight of the sentiment to nobly expressed by the poet — blind yet bold — when he says:—"

"In treating the subject a purpose has been kept in view, viz., to try to explain the principles involved in certain methods employed for the production of ornament, and this in order to guide the industrial designer to sure and certain results. To be successful the processes involved in the production of articles of manufacture must be understood, and to this the earnest attention of all interested in the improvement of manufacture should be directed. The abstract teaching of design is comparatively valueless, and success will only be achieved when to the taste of the designer the skill of the workman is united."

"The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war."

"The study of Industrial Design is really as indispensably necessary as the ordinary rudiments of learning. It ought to form an essential feature in the education of young persons for whatever profession or employment they may intend to select, as the great business of their lives; for without a knowledge of drawing, no scientific work, whether relating to Mechanics, Agriculture, or Manufactures, can be advantageously studied."

"INDUSTRIAL DESIGN is destined to become a universal language ; for in our material age of rapid transition, from abstract, to applied, Science — in the midst of our extraordinary tendency towards the perfection of the means of conversion, or manufacturing production — it must soon pass current in every land."

"Fine Art then, records by idealised imitation the glorious works of good men, whilst it holds those of bad men up to our abhorrence — it gives to posterity their images, either on the tinted canvass or the sculptured marble — it imitates the beautiful effects of nature as seen in the glowing landscape or the rising storm, and perpetuates the appearance of those beauteous gems of the seasons — flowers and fruits, which, though fading whilst the painter catches their tints, yet live after decay by and through his genius. Industrial Art, on the contrary, aims at the embellishment of the works of man, by and through that power which is given to the artist for the investigation of the beautiful in nature; and in transferring it to the loom, the printing machine, the potter's wheel, or the metal worker's mould, he reproduces nature in a new form, adapting it to his purpose by an intelligence arising out of his knowledge as an artist and as a workman. In short, the adaptation of the natural type to a new material compels him to reproduce, almost create, as well as imitate — invent as well as copy — design as well as draw!"

"It appears that all the students who enter the school commence as if they were intended for artists in the higher sense of the word, and are not expected to decide as to whether they will devote themselves to the Fine Arts or to Industrial Design, until after they have completed their exercises in the drawing and painting of the figure from the antique and from the living model. It is for this reason, and from the fact that artists for industrial purposes are both well-paid and highly considered (as being well-instructed men), that so many individuals in France engage themselves in both pursuits."

"Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and, we may now say, London, together with many other cities in which periodical Exhibitions of Industrial Art take place, have not, as yet, any appropriate edifice - for these Exhibitions, but some temporary erection or already - existing building is fitted up for the purpose. When the multitude of productions as impose the necessity of an especial erection, it has been necessarily attended with great expense, which is the more objectionable since it is destined to be removed after a very brief existence. The King of Bavaria has been the first to see the necessity of an edifice constructed solely for Exhibitions of Industrial Art, and has, accordingly, caused to be erected a suitable building, of which we are enable to present an engraving. It was inaugurated on the 25th of last August, the King's birthday."

"Industrial design had its origins in the Industrial Revolution, when factory production began to supplant craft production of housewares, textiles, tools, and other consumer goods."

"If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever."

"Industrial design is a big industry, so there are always new businesses opening up that have really exciting opportunities."

"Manufacturers are realizing that good industrial design is an important ingredient in their products' success and a vital factor in industrial competitiveness in both domestic and international markets."

"What Charles and Ray Eames are to furniture design, Raymond Loewy is to industrial design—the modern master"

"If there is a designer whose name is synonymous with industrial design it is Raymond Loewy (1893-1986)."

"There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today. Industrial design, by concocting the tawdry idiocies hawked by advertisers, comes a close second. Never before in history have grown men sat down and seriously designed electric hairbrushes, rhinestone-covered file boxes, and mink carpeting for bathrooms, and then drawn up elaborate plans to make and sell these gadgets to millions of people. Before (in the “good old days”), if a person liked killing people, he had to become a general, purchase a coal mine, or else study nuclear physics. Today, industrial design has put murder on a mass production basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous breed."

"A lot of people are open to new things, as long as they look like the old ones."

"Industrial design keeps the customer happy, his client in the black and the designer busy."

""Can we afford industrial design?" "Is the industrial design consultant merely a stylist ?" "Does the employment of a designer tend to raise the standard of design?" These questions leap to the mind. My friend, , Honorary r.d.i., has gone to a great deal of trouble in his answers to these questions..."

"In speaking and thinking of industrial design, care must be taken not to limit its application to the few obvious trades. Industrial design is important to every industry and its value in most hast already been demonstrated."

"A most important element for the consideration of the industrial designer is sales. There is only one reason for hiring an industrial designer, and that is to increase the sales of a product."

"Industrial design is not necessary in the production of goods; but it makes goods more acceptable."