Truth To Materials

Gooooooood evening! What a wonderful evening indeed. Besides the cold, my arms are cold. Okay, enough about me. This week was a stimulating lesson about truth to materials or materiality. Hmmm an interesting topic, I had never reallly thought about being truthful to the materials that I use. I mean I use paper as any other person would use paper. But materials have physical limits, and being true to that physical limit of the material would mean that you are true to it. You respect the materials for their true nature, for material, has a clear function and logeivity. I mean you wouldnt really make a house of paper and live in it, that would be stupid, unless it was for art or an experiment, or even to test the physical limits of that material.

Materials such as cast iron allowed artists to over decorate, reacting against truth to materials. Artists must respect the materials for their true nature and decoration must be from the material. An artist who is certainly true to materials is Frank Lloyd Wright. He was an American architect, interior designer, writer and an educator. He designed more than 1000 projects and 500 of those were built. Wright believed in organic architecture, which is a philosophy of architecture which encourages harmony between human living and the natural world. "So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but instead exalting the simple laws of common sense or of super-sense if you prefer determining form by way of the nature of materials..." - Frank Lloyd Wright, An Organic Architecture, 1939' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_architecture . This idea of organic architecture is shown through Frank Lloyd Wright's design of 'Falling Water'.

An artist who plays with the idea of being somewhat untrue to her materials is Lisa Walker. Lisa Walker makes jewellery out of found objects. This often results in quirky and interesting pieces of jewellery. Assembling the jewellery and the tension between what the object is and changing it into a work that incorporates form and colour is very true in what we see in her work. I feel that being true to the material is definately respecting it and using it for its purpose. But if we were true to materials since the begnining of time, respected, didnt explore, experiment or break convention like so many artists these days, imagine how boring and similar all art would be. I say, thank goodness for opinons.